Holey crap! What happened to September?? Sheesh, I really thought I had posted something but apparently not. Ok we last left off at a cranky maxima clam, a digitata attacking everything and a dead controller. So the clam somehow resurrected itself and is now fine and looking fantastic. I'm still not sure what happened, perhaps something stung the lower part of the mantle or something, anyway the clam mantle just looked better and better week by week and eventually all was well once again. Its in exactly the same spot as its always been (not for lack of trying to move it, it just moves back to where it wants to be) and so far so good.
The dead controller was well, just dead. There was no resurrecting it. Luckily a local reef buddy had a spare one that he gave me for free (SO NICE!!!) so things have been hunky dory since then.
The orange digitata just had to go, bloody thing was stinging everything and taking over a goodly portion of the tank. I ended up ripping out the whole rock that it and the green acro was on and just taking both colonies off of it. I tried separating them but it was a no go. I took a really large branch off of the green acro and remounted it and the rest went off to the LFS. Incidentally, I got a new tank with blue spots squamosa clam and some fish food for that :) I eradicated all of the orange digitata I could find and most of the blue I could find as well. The bloody stuff is just everywhere. I think I missed a spot of the blue which will likely come back to haunt me but oh well, its really hard to reach in some spots.
Actually I ended up removing quite a few colonies, some were browning out and just weren't performing well in the tank, others just weren't as pretty as the neighbor it was growing into. I really just mounted all my frags too close together. This is the first time I've had a lot of really large colonies (I also went a bit nuts with the frags in this tank, I really admire those who will put like 5 different acros in their tank and then just let them go crazy. I don't have the willpower for that sadly). Anyway, the tank doesn't look all that much different except for that one wonderful colony that was almost to the waters surface. Hopefully another 6 months and it will fill in the space. Then again, another 6 months of growth like that and I'll probably have to frag it again :p
I've been having problems with tip burn the past couple of weeks. Tonight I finally had some time to do some research and it turns out the potassium I've been dosing is the culprit. Bloody hell, what a pain. Here I am dosing it to get my colors up and its the thing doing the damage. Anyway, I did a water change today (and dosed the stupid potassium right after) but I'll probably do another water change tomorrow if I can find the time and hopefully things turn around. The tip burn isn't hugely bad, it is on quite a few colonies but hasn't progressed more than a few millimeters on the tips, its mostly unsightly and of course algae takes over where the skeleton is exposed. Stupid cyano, I still haven't fully gotten rid of that stuff :(
Other than that things are surprisingly good for the little time I spend actually dealing with the tank. I spend about 5 minutes twice a day feeding the fish and making sure nothing died and a water change/skimmer clean on the weekend if I can get to it (bi-weekly most of the time). Not too shabby if the tank can look this good without me ;)
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