Ok so I know its been awhile. Life got pretty busy around here and I got lazy. The tank did pretty well for itself and I pretty much left it alone, doing my regular weekly waterchanges and various parameter checks and keeping my dosing levels on track. However at some point last fall, I checked the phosphate levels and they were much higher than they should have been. This is partly because I hadn't been looking at the correct scale (all this time!!!) So instead of my phosphate levels being at a happy 0.03ppm they were actually about 3 times that. No wonder I had algae!! I had just recently changed out my GFO so I figured, clearly it wasn't getting the job done. I had heard great things about a different product which was a liquid additive. Basically you measure your phosphate, dose accordingly to drop the levels by a safe amount and then the next day test and dose again etc until you get to your happy place. However, by day 4, I got sloppy and dosed the same as day 3 and didn't realize my skimmer wasn't doing its job. By day 5 or 6 my weekly waterchange came up and I saw my skimmer wasn't working and the $hit was already hitting the fan. A couple frags were receding, some were completely dead. Half a colony was gonzo, I completely lost my 12+ year old Pocilipora damicornis. Bad idea.
So away I went, waterchange after waterchange. I went through an entire bucket of salt and then some. Things started to slow down and so did I. I saw a tuft of hair algae. WTF? Lets get that outta there. However, there were some patches hiding in the midst. Life got busy and I was really really disheartened by the loss of my oldest and most beloved coral. By the time I felt like paying attention, it was flowing fields of green hair algae in the tank. I got disheartened and it got worse and worse. How the hell do you fix that when you've got enough time for a waterchange and a feeding and thats it? You make time, I guess. However, for those of you who don't know about hair algae, its a long and arduous battle. Not much eats it because apparently it tastes like crap (I don't know this from personal experience but I did read it on the internet so it must be true). We have crap for LFS around here and driving to the nearest decent one (1.5hr drive) was just not going to happen. I ended up going to one of the lesser ones and picking up some more cleaning crew but it was a waste of time as half the snails died anyways and today I found the damned urchin deader than a doornail today (WTH do those things eat anyways because I've got about eleventy billion different algal species in my tank to choose from!). So I was thinking between the manual removal which I could barely make time for and the sea hare which may do a decent job but starve to death after it was all said and done, I should really get my act together. So I now have a sea hare in my tank and he has enough food in there to keep him busy for at least a few months. I was under the impression that they were crazy for hair algae, I dunno, this one is a muncher but certainly not Speedy Gonzales. I can live with that. Sometimes its like Christmas where you get up and see a big patch of hair algae missing, sometimes its a regular day where I can't see anything new. I haven't seen him in the tank since day 2 (its been about 2.5 weeks) but I know where he's been (and he must be nocturnal, although I still don't have much time for tank viewing).
The fish are all doing well, actually I just bought another bellus angel who is patiently swimming around in the QT tank being treated with chloroquine phosphate. Only 7-10 more days to go (I haven't decided how brave I am going to be, Velvet scares the bejeesus out of me). I've lost many corals, when I actually get around to posting a photo, you'll see some major changes in coralscaping, esp of my larger colonies which are now gone. Seems like I have a frag farm every few years.
Eventually I'll get back into it, I always do. But the periods of disinterest are much closer together than they've ever been. I often lament to my reefer friends that I am coming close to the end. However, we have made some stupid pact that we're all in this together and apparently I'm not allowed to quit. Which I suppose is a good thing but sometimes I think its incredibly lame, why do I subscribe to it? Then again, I can't imagine going downstairs only to stare at a wall for 10-15 minutes. How boring would that be? ;)
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