Christy's Reef

The Dreaded HLLE

2012-01-17T21:16:00.000-08:00

So I was feeding the tank the other week, the usual quick head count of fish, then stir and dump food in, before moving on to other things like various fluid levels etc and noticed my regal tang had a circular "lesion" looking thing near his eye. It was almost perfectly circular/oval and didn't have any ragged edges and was a bit discolored, kind of greyish compared to the vivid blue coloring he normally is. I thought it kind of odd and posted on Canreef. After I did, I thought to go down and have a closer look at the fish. When I finally got a good look at the other side, I had my diagnosis. HLLE or Head and Lateral Line Erosion. Total bummer :(

Jeez I thought I was safe using Kent carbon. I've used it for...well, years really. I can't even remember a time when I didn't use it. I have it running in a phosban reactor. However, lately I've been lazy about clearing out the fines on startup. I don't rinse it, never have, but I usually let the first gallon or two of flowthrough go into a bucket and dump it before letting it flow into the sump. I haven't been doing that for awhile.

I looked back through some photos (the last photo I had was AUGUST!! crazy!) and sure enough, you can see the beginnings of it.

I have some photos from June but they're pretty terrible. I can't see any signs of it starting then but then the pits might be pretty small. He's a fast mover so the shots are kind of blurry. I'd say sometime between June and August was the start of it. I have no idea what I did differently in that time, although I'd say I did less maintenance than ever and likely it was the bad husbandry with the carbon. I've been coating everything I feed in Selcon so hopefully that does the trick and he heals up or at least it stops the progression.

Other than that, not much to report. My bulbs still haven't arrived, they're waiting for some backordered stuff to be shipped with it. I have high hopes for these new bulbs and my SPS coloration. Its gonna be magic I tells ya! Magic!! ;)

Year End

2011-12-30T21:09:00.000-08:00

Almost the end of another year, my tank is just two months shy of being 2 years old. Frankly I think it looked better last year. And I miss my Bellus angel :(

Oct 2010

And Dec 2011

I'm kind of disappointed with the coloration I'm getting in the tank, not sure what I am doing wrong other than missing the weekly water changes. They're about every second week now or whenever I can fit one in. Then again I have been having low alkalinity problems too... I guess I need to get back on track. Its time for the yearly bulb swap out as well (hello Boxing Day sales!) so that will be coming up as soon as I get them in the mail. Some of the corals grew pretty well over the year, others croaked or were removed because they were taking over. All in all I need to get back on track and figure out whatever it is that makes the tank happy.

In other news, I removed the turaki. It was just getting worse and worse and only the undersides of the coral seemed to be fairly intact. I found a couple of branches that looked half decent and fragged them off and dipped them in Coral Rx. I also dipped the frag I made a couple months ago as it was showing signs of the same issues the main colony was having, although not nearly as bad. So far the frags look pretty good, but its only been a couple of days.

I also had to remove the yellow scroll (left side, next to the pink pocillipora). There was just no tissue left on it, algae had taken over and the fish were pruning the algae so the tissue had no chance to regrow. The underside of it was completely fine (which I thought was odd) but it just wasn't coming back so I turfed it. On the bright side, while doing that, the yellow acro, marshall tricolor and rosaria on that side (very far left) broke off the rock as one chunk of coral (they've all grown together) and I found an acan which was attached to the yellow acro which was being shaded out by pretty much everything on that side so I disengaged it from the acro and put it in the spot where the scroll was. Its a bit bleached out but coming around. Of course, getting the coral trifecta attached to the rock again was another matter *le sigh*

Bought a Christmas present for the tank. Its called The Portal and made by ivsportal.com Its pretty cool, a magnifying viewer for corals that attaches to the glass and doubles as a glass cleaner.

I don't have high hopes for it actually cleaning the glass but its pretty helpful if you have a bit of scuzz on the glass right in the middle of your viewing area (or to the left of it, ew! sorry about the crap photo!). As for the viewing, its just awesome. They had one set up at the LFS on their display tank and I was sold. Unfortunately not sold on the price, but thanks to some Christmas money, its all mine now ;)

Photo taken through The Portal

I thought a photo taken through it would be pretty neat but it just really doesn't compare to just looking through it. I found that a photo taken through the magnifier or just against the glass was about the same. No matter, that's what I have zoom lenses for. But this is pretty cool, and *if* I had red bugs (and thank goodness I don't) I could easily see them with this viewer without having to squint to search one out like I do without it ;)

Happy Reefing and Happy New Year! :)

December update

2011-12-08T20:46:00.001-08:00

Things are looking better in the tank although the turaki is looking pretty rough. I fragged a chunk off and it seems to be doing ok, better than the colony anyways so I guess that is something. Here is a pic of the colony:

As you can see it has bubbly cyano on most of the tips, a lot of the tips are "eaten away" and don't have any tissue on them. Some parts are looking better than others and I'm hoping that the coral wins and not the cyano. Oh well, if worse comes to worse I still have the frag and know where I can get another piece if necessary.

Another affected coral was one of my tricolors. This one I swear was fine one minute and the next the tissue just peeled back like a banana skin to reveal white skeleton beneath. It was the oddest thing. Its starting to recover as you can see in the photo:

Although there are a couple of really odd spots in it off to one side, the coral is grey colored. Like all the color just went out of it in that spot. Not really bleached per se, but I dunno how to describe it. Something odd going on with this one....

So I was doing my regular tank maintenance on Sunday, waterchange, skimmer cup cleaning etc. Tried to restart the skimmer and it was a no go. I pulled out the impeller as I could hear the motor humming and sure enough, the impeller magnet was split and rusted to all hell (gee, algae issues much?):

Yes folks, it must be close to Christmas. My tank does this to me every year, either around my birthday or Christmas. It wants a piece of the present action too I guess. Anyway, a new impeller courtesy of Reef Dynamics (skimmer is a EuroReef RS250) is $80 and $25 to ship it. Frankly I think the $25 to ship it stings more than the sticker price. Anyway I had a look online and there were a lot of google results for GX6000 (the pump) and sedra 9000 together so I figured I'd have a go. My old ER skimmer had a Dolphin pump running on it which is also similar to a Sedra pump and used a Sedra 5000 impeller on it so I figured Sedra must have something going for it if everyone and their dog is copying their pumps. I also have the sedra needlewheel from that skimmer (the needlewheel didn't fit, I just needed the magnet) and it looks remarkably similar. Here is a pic:

Crazy eh? They're almost exactly the same. The only difference I could find is that the Reef Dynamics one uses black plastic which is softer and the needles actually can be bent a little while the sedra one has very stiff needles and they're a bit shorter (although that could be because its rated for a smaller impeller/smaller pump, I put the new impeller in the skimmer before I took photos and it was such an ordeal I'm not hauling it out just to take a photo. Take my word for it :) ). So it turns out yes the Sedra 9000 impeller fits the GX6000. Nowhere on the internet is that in the same sentence so I'm saying it. So all you googlers that land on my page can thank me for typing it ;)

Anyhoo, the skimmer is running again after 4 days down time. Hopefully it pulls out lots of nice gunk :P

Now for a tank photo:

And some other photos:

New squamosa I picked up awhile ago, its not overly striking but there's just something about those blue spots :)

November update

2011-11-25T19:44:00.001-08:00

So I stopped dosing potassium and for the most part the tip recession has halted, now of course cyano is settling in on the exposed bits. Another thing I thought it might have been is that I routinely thaw my frozen mysis, rinse it and then refreeze it in a container. When I need to feed, I add some water, swirl it around for a bit and then dump it into the tank, which I have been doing for quite awhile. However, this last month I thawed a whole 16oz package of mysis into the container and then added the water as normal, not thinking of what the giant frozen block of mysis was doing to the water temperature. I was pretty much pouring that cold water right onto some of the corals. I suspect this because all the corals that are affected are right near where I dump the food into the tank. So, I've changed this and I now have cubed my frozen mysis after rinsing and I try to let it thaw over a couple of hours before I dump it into the tank, or I have it run through the return inlet in the sump so it can at least mix there a bit before heading to the main tank. I'm not restarting potassium until everything is ticketyboo again though. It never ceases to amaze me how fast the tank can go to crapola yet how slow it is to return to its former splendor.

My turaki colony has taken a bit of a hit as well. It wasn't in the feeding radius (that I know of, but maybe its just persnickety)but its had a fair bit of recession and cyano is really attacking it. I've fragged a chunk off but its very cyano-ey looking as well and I'm pretty sure I'll end up chucking the whole colony. I may be able to save a very tiny branch and get it going again but I'm not feeling very positive about it.

Other than that there isn't' much new, I've only added a squamosa clam to the tank, its small abut 3" or so, brown with blue spots (which are pretty neat-o). No pics yet, the tank has been pretty neglected and I haven't even bothered to clean the glass, partly out of laziness and partly because the tank seems to do better with dirty glass. I'm not sure if that's really true or if its just that I can't see in to see whats happening so by the time I actually clean it a week or so later everything looks like its grown/colored up etc. I've started doing that on a regular basis just so I get a bit more jazzed about the tank. I've become a bit bored with it lately, mostly because I have zero room for frags, not much time to deal with the tank other than fish inspection, feeding and waterchanges and haven't seen any fish that I'm interested in at the LFS/online shops (which I also haven't been to in months). I'm sure it will pass.....eventually.

October update

2011-10-22T21:00:00.002-07:00

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 ;)

August update

2011-08-31T15:44:00.000-07:00

So speckly maxima died shortly after my last post, there was no long drawn out death, just poof! the shell was empty. Right after that I started giving the blue maxima the staredown and sure enough, it started to go downhill as well. It was really gaping for awhile and the bottom part of the mantle got kind of shrivelly but the mantle was still extending as normal (which really doesn't mean a bloody thing in clamworld) and its still hanging in there and is looking, I daresay, slightly better. At least its not gaping as badly but the mantle is still shrivelled below the incurrent siphon. Theres still hope I suppose.

Other than that, things are growing as usual, some things growing like mad, some not so much. I actually have one acro that is getting pretty close to the water, you can't really tell all that well in this shot but its within 1" of the surface which is pretty neat. I'll be interested to see what it does once it reaches the surface.

This acro is also being attacked by the orange digitata, you can see it through the branches and the digi is currently attempting to overtake the base of the acro (actually its already overtaken most of it and the base of the acro is pretty dead even though the arms are looking great). Sadly the digi is more interested in just killing everything around it and spreading horizontally more than vertically so I've decided to attempt to get rid of it. I say attempt because its bloody everywhere. Its encrusted on a ton of rock and really intertwined with that acro. I'm hoping to save the acro but it might come down to just removing that chunk of rock and fragging off a branch of the acro to start over. Its really too bad as the digi is a gorgeous orange color that is seldom seen in hard corals (at least in my neck of the woods, I've only seen a montipora capricornis in that color) but the damned thing has such aggressive growth. I've just never had such success with digitata before.

Stupid digitata, why do you have to be so mean!?

Hmm, what else. Oh my dosing pump had a clogged line on it which caused the line to pop off right at the doser. It doesn't stop the doser from dosing whatever is handy., in this case the controller for my Tunze 6100. I didn't really notice until a few days later (smrt) that the hose had popped off and about a week after that I noticed that the pump wasn't running. Then it took me another week to figure out what the problem was. Magnesium had dripped on the controller and "stuck" the feed control in the on position. So the pump would pulse when first turned on but then it thought it was in feed mode (permanently) so it would shut off. Luckily a fellow reefer came to my aid and gave me another controller so weeks later we are back on track. Hmm, I wonder if the lessened flow was part of the clam issue??

Anyway, on to photos! Tank shot as of yesterday:

and from the back:

A lot of my photos look like this ;)

July update

2011-07-26T15:03:00.003-07:00

Well its been a month since my last post and sadly not much is new really. I went on vacation last week and yet another clam died. I'm down to my blue maxima and the little speckly maxima I acquired in March. I have no idea what is going on, they just sort of power down and poof. I wish they'd die when I was around so I could check for pinched mantle. They don't have any outward signs of pinched mantle though so who knows. I'll have to start keeping an eye on my parameters again, perhaps they're wonky and the clams are having growth issues. I'll have to consult my clam book too, maybe theres some answers in there. Anyway, things are growing like mad, I need to do some fragging again and perhaps remove a few colonies as some are growing into others. The fish are doing well. The male bangaii cardinal seems to be holding a batch of eggs every couple of weeks or so. I feel kind of sorry for him as he doesn't eat much. He isn't scraggly looking though, just as healthy as the female but I feel bad at feeding time when he's sort of eyeing the food but has no room for it in his fat face :P I'm sure the rest of the critters in the tank love when he gives up the batch of babies, feeding time at the zoo. Too bad I don't have something setup to rear them, not that I have the time.

I lost the candy hogfish in early july due to jumping. I've never had one jump before, I guess they're not suited to tanks with no tops on them, I won't be getting another one. I never really noticed it being a problem before but I guess the lighting hood I had on the tank was a good ricochet point and the fish stayed in the tank. I did lose a few to the crossbrace I had on my old 90 gallon though.

Anyway, I'll try to get some more pics up in the next few days. I feel like I just take pics of the same thing over and over again. Nobody complains though (at least the two of you that actually read this don't seem to mind) so I'll just carry on ;)

Summer doldrums

2011-06-26T13:51:00.002-07:00

The cyano is still there but not as bad as it used to be. I never did get around to getting more zeozyme, I'll get around to it eventually. The tank has been plugging along without much intervention on my behalf. I went on a little fragging spree as some things were getting overgrown and shading other things out or attempting to kill them. There's still a few more frags to be made but I haven't had time or anywhere to take them and my frag racks are full.

Not really much to report in this post, I did take some photos though so I'll make do with that :)

Ultimate Prostrata

My 10+ year old Pocilipora damicornis looking gorgeously pink :)

Hawkins Echinata

My pink Pocilipora has spawned a couple times in the tank, little colonies are starting to appear in the oddest spots :)

Bad blogger

2011-06-03T10:36:00.001-07:00

Oops, I missed a May post. Nuts. Anyway, I haven't had much time for the tank lately, lots of feeding, topping up the auto-topoff tank and that's about it. We were gone for a couple of weeks and had the tank sitter watch the tank with no problems whatsoever (yay!). Everything is growing and for once the alkalinity is half decent (9.3dkH which is probably why everything is growing).

The cyano is holding steady, its not overbearing but not gone either. Either I am winning the war or its stopped to rethink its plan of attack. I've been using Zeozyme on it and it takes awhile but eventually has been knocking it back. I ran out though so hopefully the cyano doesn't get ahead of me before I can get some more.

Sadly, I lost the littlest maxima clam. Not surprising really, I have a terrible track record with the smaller clams. They do great, grow a little and then slowly decline. I could see the decline a couple of weeks ago as the mantle wasn't protruding as much as usual and then slowly it retracted. I couldn't quite tell if it was pinched mantle as it does have that look. They kind of go poof in the night which is disappointing as I would have liked to take it in for some histology and see if it indeed had pinched mantle or was just in poor health. The other clam is going gangbusters and is looking fabulous. I'll have to post some photos.

I did a bit of re-organizing of the tank, moved a few things and sold some other pieces off. Some things were getting too big and others I just wasn't liking as much anymore. I was hoping to make a bit of room for various other things but as usual, not much room was made although I did manage to fit a few things that were on the bottom of the tank and moved them up onto the rock.

I'll try to get some photos up in the next few days, they're more fun than just words ;)

Weird RTN and little clams

2011-04-24T15:43:00.001-07:00

Oh jeez, its been awhile hasn't it? Since I last posted, the weird tissue scraping issue on those couple of corals I posted last month has come to a halt. They haven't healed up but they haven't progressed either. This makes me happy as one of them was my prized red planet.

I lost a purple polyped pink birdsnest to a spontaneous goo event. I dunno, STN I guess but not just the typical "quick" loss of tissue that is usually STN for me. The tissues just turned to jelly and disintegrated from the tips down the length of the coral to the base, or vice versa. This is the same thing that my S. calendrium did last year. I did manage to save a couple of pieces, one was dead the next morning and the second took about 5 days and was a goner as well so no frag rescue of that one. Everything else in the tank seems to be okay.

At the end of March I ordered a couple of maxima clams online. They were much smaller than anticipated and my track record with tiny clams is terrible. One is about 2.5 inches and the other just over an inch. I set them up in the wrasses old rubbermaid container.

BTW, the birdsnest next to the container is the one I lost. RIP, pretty thing.

Anyway, this was a big mistake. Within about 2 seconds the wrasse recognized his old sleeping grounds and immediately dived in. It was like watching a dieter and a donut reunite. You could almost hear him going "wheeee!" as he proceeded to empty the container of sand over the following few days. He also flipped the clams out of the container several times. Eventually I gave up on trying to keep them in it and wedged them in between the container and the glass. I also turned off the vortech behind the container to keep the flow down so as not to blow the clams all over the place. This increased the cyano growth in that area...lovely.

The clams are quite lovely. The blue one is pretty similar to the larger blue one I have but we'll see if it is still the same as it gets bigger. I'm totally in love with the black/gold one. The pattern is gorgeous.

Anyway, back to the clam saga. Well after the container was empty I still needed something to keep the clams coralled. I had to put a rock in the container to keep it weighed down and then put the clams in the container. This didn't last long as one of the fish decided it would be great fun to tote the clams around in his mouth, dropping them off in various locations. I found them in the rockwork, in the ricordea pile and halfway down the tank. Nervous that one would end up under the rockwork I proceeded to put them back in the container...with the rock...and put a tomato bag over the whole thing. See if you can get in there you little fish bastards! :P

I turned the vortech back on the low setting just to keep the currents up in that area now that they're in the container. Its growing a fair bit of cyano which is no big surprise. Hopefully the clams grow fast so they don't have to be in there too long.

Something funky goin on

2011-03-14T17:43:00.000-07:00

So I was taking some pics of the tank today and noticed a few of the SPS are looking a bit rough, but only on the undersides. Its almost like the tissue is rubbed off. Here are some pics so you'll see what I mean

Very odd. I dosed coral snow the other night, perhaps it has something to do with that? Beats me, I hope they all heal up though. There were a couple others that were hard to get photos of.

Not much else new, I managed to get a few more photos so I'll just leave it at that :)

And a FTS! :)

Finally I'm a Winner!

2011-03-09T14:19:00.000-08:00

So sometime in the beginning of February (I think), I purchased a matted filefish. I see I even posted about it. The filefish ate mysis and only mysis. None of the delectable, tasty morsels of majanos or aiptasia which my tank had gratuitous numbers to offer. Mysis. I suspect the other fish mentioned to him that if he just held off for a bit he wouldn't have to grout around for such peasanty food, he could have food offered to him on a silver platter. My fish are like that.

So weeks went by and daily I inspected the growing fields of aiptasia and majanos in my tank, with growing worry. Damned fish wasn't doing a bloody thing. It was time to bring out the big guns. One of the semi-local stores was selling the Aiptasia Zapper which promised to save me from majano hell. I eagerly anticipated its arrival and rubbed my hands together with glee when it arrived. I was in zapping heaven! Oh the awesomeness! However, after about 2 days I'd say about 50% of them weren't dead, they were laughing at me. Some majanos died, none of the aiptasia died. They came back, half mangled from the terrible shock I gave them. If they had had middle fingers they would have been held high.

Time continued to go by and I was disheartened. I had no time for the tank, I fed the fish and thought about the majanos happily replicating away in the tank. Little %^(#*!! One day in an effort to calm my son down during one of his many meltdowns, I took him down to see the tank (he likes the bright lights and fish). I couldn't find a single majano!! Much like watching a pot set to boil, the matted filefish had done his job and eaten every last one when I wasn't looking! Apparently he doesn't like aiptaisa...yet (hopefully). One particular rock had about 6 on it so I took the rock out and removed them manually (one came back). Oh happy day! Something actually worked for a change.

And you know that if I hadn't spent the $80 on that Aiptasia Zapper the filefish would have been a dud.

Right?

February update

2011-02-09T15:01:00.001-08:00

Whew! Its been awhile since I posted. This blog isn't the only thing that's been neglected. The tank is out of control in the way of majanos and aiptasia. I added a matted filefish a couple of weeks ago but he likes mysis more than pest anemones so I've ordered an aiptasia zapper from oceaniccorals so it should be here by the end of this week and I can go to town on the little buggers. There are literally, fields of them on some rocks, like 20 or 30. Lucky I've only seen 2 rocks so far that are that bad. I took a couple rocks out last week and just doused them with sodium hydroxide, other rocks I manually removed them. Those rocks without nooks and crannies are pretty easy to remove them with a pair of forceps.

In other news, I lost my bellus angel. Stupidity on my part of course. I was selling a skimmer and the guy wanted to know how quiet it was so I turned off my return pump on the main tank to quieten things down. Afterwards I forgot to turn it back on until the next morning. Since it provides most of the aeration via surface agitation and I had the skimmer off for a chemi-clean treatment, the angel was the first to go from lowered oxygen. I was pretty choked about that and hopefully I don't pull any stupid moves like that in the future, granted that's not likely to happen as I usually only do these things once and learn my lesson but these days you never know.

I bought a set of 14K MH bulbs off of Ebay for $10 a bulb, should be interesting to see how they fire. I just put my new set of Ushios on there and they're lovely and white but I've always wanted to try out 14K bulbs, not really knowing what kind to get as every brand is different. I sort of just stumbled on the Ushios as it was and most of the higher kelvin bulbs have lower PAR. I've always stuck to those bulbs that have higher PAR but frankly, even when I was running Iwasaki bulbs (which have the highest PAR) I wasn't getting the lovely colors that I am now. Besides, at $10 a bulb I can replace them more often if they yellow up quickly. Anyway all this talk and I still haven't tried them out, hopefully this weekend.

Other than that not much new, stuff is growing like weeds and there needs to be some serious pruning of a few corals. Lucky we have a frag swap coming up so I won't have to house them on my frag racks for too long. I'd love to get those racks out of the tank completely but I have a few tiny frags on them that need to grow out a bit before I mount them. Where I'm going to mount them is another matter...which is probably why they're going to be on the racks for some time ;)

New Years Photos

2011-01-01T21:04:00.000-08:00

I did actually did get around to taking those photos!

As you can see, its getting pretty crowded in there. There are a few pieces that I'd like to remove, they're just not turning out as fabulous as I thought they would. The large pink pocillipora colony that is directly under the frag rack on the left also split itself in half and has one at 4 o'clock to the right of it, that half needs to be removed to make way for some of the stuff on the frag rack. Other than some errant mushrooms and pest anemones the tank is looking pretty darned good.

Happy New Year!! :)

New Year, New Bulbs! :)

2010-12-31T22:00:00.000-08:00

Got me some new ushio halides! I can't believe the color temperature difference between the new and old bulbs. I usually run my bulbs for at least a year, these ones were about 2 months short of a year but the new ones are such a crisp white its really quite shocking. Almost makes me want to replace my bulbs more often but that would be rather costly at $75 each.

The cyano has encamped on the rocks. I've done two chemi-clean treatments, it disappears for the most part for the length of the treatment and a week afterwards but then reappears in small patches. I discovered that the reason it was there to begin with was because the last batch of frozen mysis I bought wasn't rinsed like I normally do. Call it lack of sleep. Anyway, I have rinsed the last of that batch and the new batch but it would seem that theres no turning back unless of course I do some sort of killer dose on the tank. I think I'll likely just stick to siphoning it out for the next while to give the tank a break. Three dosages in a month might be a bit much.

I meant to get some photos up, you know, the old year end photos but that didn't happen. Hopefully I'll have time to break out the camera tomorrow and at least get the photos onto the camera, then it will likely take awhile to get them off the camera and to here but you never know. Stranger things have happened :)

New Addition

2010-12-18T20:01:00.001-08:00

At the end of the month we added a new reefer to the family :) Cameron Matthew, born November 28th.

Suffice it to say the tank has taken a bit of a hit. I managed to get a chemi-clean treatment in there for the cyano as it was totally getting out of control. The reason: I wasn't rinsing my frozen food. Usually I just rinse the whole batch upon buying it from the store but this time I just threw it in the freezer and broke pieces off as I needed it (I usually do this but at least its rinsed!). So the cyano was blanketing everything. The tank is looking much better but other than that waterchange for the chemi-clean, I think thats the only thing I've done to it besides feed the fish and dump fresh water into the ATO since my last update. I've done my yearly MH bulb order so it will be nice to have some new bulbs in there, especially since one of them is ridiculously old after having to replace a dead bulb back in October.

I also lost a clam, one of my croceas. It had a bunch of odd hydroid like polyps growing on the shell, they don't burn corals but the clam was retracting its mantle on the side they were growing heavily on. This particular clam never really extended its mantle fully especially after it was being nipped by the regal tang earlier in the year but its mantle seemed to be out less and less as time went by. I didn't notice how bad it was getting or have time to do anything about until it was probably too late. I gave the shell a good scrub and the clam seemed to be trying to rebound but then the inevitable morning came when the shell was half empty.

November Update

2010-11-13T20:43:00.001-08:00

Its been awhile since I posted. Not much going on with the tank itself, stuff is growing. Patches of cyano have popped up but nothing to freak out about (although I think I said that last time and then it totally got out of hand). I'm not as worried about using the chemi-clean now as I was before, especially since I have figured out how to control the skimmer output.

I ended up having to go another round with the majanos. Some grew back due to their placement, I found it easier to kill those majanos that were facing "up" than those that were facing "out". So a few came back, and some stayed away. I went after about 20 or so this time and I figure I had about a 75% success rate. I also found two large patches of them after the fact so I'll have to go another round with them.

Last weekend was a total cluster on the equipment front. I decided to have a go at the bearings on my vortech mp40. It was pretty noisy and I had isolated the noise to shoddy bearings. Following this thread on ReefCentral I took the dry side apart and tried to get the bearings off. One was already off and embedded in the back side of the motor cover. Easy peasy. The second was on there pretty good. I had a pretty good grip on the magnet to get the bearing off, but the magnet twisted and was soft enough that it tore. Then about 30 seconds later I dropped the damned thing on the cement floor and it was toast. Typical. The one thing it says not to do in the thread and it happens to me. I tried gluing it back together but it looked ugly and was a terrible glue job, so much so that it didn't even fit in the motor again. Not surprising as it fell apart in like 10 different chunks. Anyway a plea went out on Canreef and someone answered the call and shipped me one of their spare drysides. I will be forever grateful. It even has good bearings and is nice and quiet :)

So the day after killing my vortech I decided my skimmer could use a good cleaning. I took off the collection cup and tilted the skimmer body to drain out the water. Damned thing broke at the seam (from the main tube where it tapers to hold the collection cup). Suffice it to say I was unimpressed. However it was a clean break and a few applications of weldon 16 and we're back in business. It ain't pretty but whatever, it runs and its not like anyone looks in there anyways.

So ya, after that I pretty much gave up on any tank equipment maintenance. Screw it, from now on I'll just do waterchanges and leave it be. At least until it knows its after Christmas. I swear my tank knows when my birthday and Christmas is coming up and something major has to break (ie. wavebox on my birthday last year). Its nice getting a big ticket item as a gift but not when its to replace something broken. "Ya I already have one of those and it broke so heres another one. Whee." Not nearly as fun as getting something new and exciting! ;)

Death to Majanos

2010-10-11T18:25:00.001-07:00

So it took a few days to get the skimmer back online, I ended up having to lower the water in the skimmer by removing the gate valve, which is all but useless as it is open all the time (poor placement, we'll have to fix that) but all is good now and the tank looks pretty damned good actually. All the cyano is gone and some of the fugly brown crap that was hanging out on the rocks is gone as well. Of course now I can see the wafer algae more clearly and well, there is considerably more than I had previously thought. I shouldn't be surprised though, really. My tank maintenance lately has been lackluster at best.

My ultralith regime has totally fallen by the wayside. I'm not even sure when the last time I changed the rocks out (end of August I think), guess I should do that and get back on the wagon. Some corals are coloring up but a lot of them still have a ways to go to get to their former glory.

Requisite photos to hold your attentions:

I did some reading on RC about majano eradication. Someone posted about using a 4N solution of sodium hydroxide (NaOH). Man, it certainly does the job. I did a test on a couple baddies with the powerheads off and it works like a charm. However it does create a lot of precipitate which is kind of scary/nerve wracking. The precipitate is supposed to be harmless but it takes a couple of seconds to form and in that time if you are injecting too quickly the solution can land on various other corals and do them in. So far casualties have been 3 majanos (yay!), 1 orange mushroom (sort of yay!) and half a ricordea (oops!). It also burns the crap out of brown wafer algae as you can see in this photo, its the greenish spot to the upper left of the ricordea (which is slightly melty)

And here is what it did to the mushroom:

I'm not overly sad about the potential loss of this mushroom. I've never been able to grow mushrooms so I was totally unfazed when I put these ones in the tank, "whatever, I'll have like two pretty mushrooms on a rock forever". Yeah, right, somewhere in the last few months I've lost the ability to not grow mushrooms and I have about 20 in various spots in the tank, and they're effing huge, like tennis ball size. Yes I will be keeping their populations in check from now on if this one croaks.

Oh right, I have a before and after photo of "potential" majano eradication (I'm waiting to see if they're actually gone or just in hiding):

Yes it also eradicates coralline as you can see. I just did a couple on that rock as the precipitate was starting to scare me. After seeing the amount of precipitate and how much my fish seemed to be interested in it (or what I was doing, either way, they were stirring it up and freaking me out) I took a good hard look at just how many majanos are in the tank. The majority of them seem to be clustered on rocks that were removable or were originally a "plug" which is basically a large rock (it the ones those colonies from the LFS come on) so I just took the coral out, removed it from the plug and epoxied it down back in the tank and turfed the plug. Some of the other smaller rocks will be easily removed from the tank where I can go to town on them with the NaOH but I'd say there are still about 20-30 majanos in the tank that will have to be carefully injected. I have my work cut out for me.

In other news, my pink "irridescent" pocillipora (left side of the tank in the back forty, not the damicornis, the one above/behind it) spawned a number of months ago (I think August as Marie pointed out some little patches of it on my wavebox) and I'm not sure if it has spawned since or if it just took that long for the single polyps to turn into something my eyes could see but I have pink pocilliporas everywhere! You can see the one to the right of my lokani in this photo:

Thats about how big they are, I've counted over 25 of them so far. It going to be a serious pain in the arse if they all turn into small colonies, but luckily you can nuke them with NaOH too. Yes, I went on a bit of a killing spree today nuking this and that. Testing the waters, so to speak.

And now, if you've made it through this entire post, you are rewarded with a few more crappy slightly-out-of-focus photos!

And a new full tank shot

This morning the bulb on the left hand side decided it only wanted to work for about 10 minutes and then promptly died, so I'm using an old one which I think is well over a year old. Its much more yellowy in person and likely I'm the only one that notices because I know its an old bulb. Thank god I never throw anything out :P

Bye Bye Cyano

2010-10-09T18:10:00.000-07:00

I finally got fed up with the rampant cyano in the tank. I was siphoning mid week and then doing 20% waterchanges on the weekend but to no avail, the damned stuff was back in a matter of days. To hell with that, I chemi-cleaned the tank. Worked like a charm but 3 days post treatment my skimmer is still overflowing like a mofo. I hope the extra nutrients o' death don't affect the tank.

I noticed today that my tuxedo urchin isn't faring so well. He's just sitting in a corner and I notice there are a few spines on the tank bottom close by so I would imagine he isn't long for this world. I wish I had known this would happen before I chemi-cleaned the tank, I could have removed him to my nano. I don't remember reading anything about this on the package. Hopefully he pulls through.

I also seem to have a moderately heavy infestation of majano anemones which are clustered on some rocks and singlets on others. There are quite a few, I'd say aout 50, in the tank and I'm looking at my options for removal. I've already tried the Tailored Aquatics Aiptasia Destroyer which melts them for a few weeks but they then return, and usually with a friend. I did some reading on Reefcentral and someone has had success melting them with a 4N solution of sodium hydroxide. Some people have also been making and using "majano zappers" but I suck pretty bad at DIY and haven't found anyone selling them online.

Other than that, things are doing pretty well in the tank. Corals are growing, some are coloring up nicely, others are still kind of boring looking. I'll continue with the ultralith, mostly because I haven't run out of it yet. I have no idea whether its actually doing anything, mostly because my dosing has been sporadic (someone suggested that with all the cyano, I cut back to dosing every 3 days which hasn't gone so well). Now that the cyano is gone, hopefully I can get back to dosing every day which is easier for me as I remember it daily but every 3 days for some reason is waay more difficult ;)

Bubbly SPS Event

2010-09-13T20:06:00.002-07:00

Bit of a hiccup with the tank. Last thursday I arrived home to a goodly portion of my green S. caliendrum birdsnest bleached white and parts had a beige slime to them. I took it out of the tank, fragged off the affected parts, cut a couple frags off of the good side and placed them on my frag racks at opposite ends of the tank. I put the colony back in the tank, hoping that I could save it. However the next morning it looked like this:

Gross! Only the few branches on the right remained intact but I could see that the bases and undersides of them were starting to go so I ended up having to toss the whole colony. The colonies directly under the affected coral weren't happy campers either:

As well, my irridescent pink birdsnest, which was my "indicator coral" in my 90 gallon and my pink P. damnicornis were both looking stressed with their polyps tucked in. The pink birdsnest was always my indicator that something was up in my 90 gallon and would always resurrect itself after running carbon or doing a waterchange, it was the oddest thing until one day something really did it in and I lost about 90% of it to STN. Thankfully I didn't have the heart to toss it and after it stopped receeding it came back and is now back to its former glory.

After removing the affected colony I changed out the carbon and started making water for a 20% waterchange. By a few hours later, the other colonies returned to normal and by the next day it was business as usual in the tank. Weird!

Update and TDS Issues

2010-09-07T20:57:00.001-07:00

No new photos. I have rampant cyano again. So annoying!! I've cut back on the ultralith to dosing every 3rd day as suggested by another ultralith-er. For every majano I inject with aiptasia destroyer, two come back. The wafer algae seems to be in check, not sure why though. Probably because the caulerpa is stealing all the nutrients. Some corals have colored up some, some have not. Theres a frag swap this coming weekend so I'm thinking of thinning the ranks and getting rid of some of the brown, maybe some else is patient enough to wait it out.

I guess I shouldn't complain though, stuff is still growing and I'm not as diligent with the tank as I used to be even though I'm still doing weekly waterchanges. I checked the TDS of the RO unit the other day as I couldn't remember the last time I changed the cartridges, TDS was still 2 which was good. I changed the cartridges anyways. However, the TDS of the waterchange bucket was 34 and the ato tank was 40! WTF?? I did my regular waterchange anyways (why? I have no idea, it seemed like a waste of water?) and emptied the ATO (this I had no problem with, there were "fuzzies" floating in it). Started making new water with just the cold tap (someone mentioned that anything above 76 can open the pores in the RO membrane). I tested the water after about 2 hours or so and the TDS was 5. Great! I only ran it for a little while and then had to turn it off before going to bed. Today I turned it back on to make more water. Hours later I tested it and now its 62!! Frig me, this is ridiculous!

Ultralith Begins

2010-08-15T15:27:00.001-07:00

So I did get around to starting Ultralith on July 30. Been running it a couple weeks now, not really anything to report. Sometimes I see clearer water, sometimes I think its all in my head. Its a pretty slow acting system so I really don't expect to see any changes until at least 6 weeks in. The system is relatively simple but whoever wrote their instruction manual needs a good talking to, it constantly contradicts itself and is poorly organized. I never really know if I'm doing it properly, for all I know it could be a truly fabulous system but I'm not doing it right (I wasn't last time and didn't figure it out until 4 weeks in, but there was no instruction manual back then).

Some things are coloring up after the vacation brownout, others are really resistant including my purple cross and tropical paradise. Both remain unsightly shades of brown and shadows of their former selves. Some of the yellows are still a bit on the dark side but are returning to vibrancy. Its funny how some corals are so affected while others are just as lovely as they were before I left. Oh well, gives me something to do I guess. It would be boring if it were all perfection all the time :p

I got a couple new fish, one of the stores down south got a fish order in and posted the list online. Lo and behold they had gotten in orange spotted blennies!!! I was going down there anyways but um, wheeeee!!!! I got the orange spotted blenny and a linear blenny (Ecsenius lineatus) which had some crazy European name like Klausewitz's blenny or something. Never heard of that before. There is potential that he might nip at the bases of SPS but I have lots so hopefully he doesn't do much damage (LOL, no doubt in 6 months I'll be referring to this post).

After the introduction of the second nori feeder I noticed that the powder blue tang has started to eat mysis as well as nori and now has quite the voracious appetite for it. I can see him looking healthier (read: fatter) and the ick is slowly disappearing. However it still has a stronghold on the lavender tang which has quite a number of spots on his back end (but he is developing a double chin, he's quite portly). He's a bit more timid (although who would have thought, he gave every new fish the gears) so I would imagine it might take some time for it to be completely eliminated on the lavender.

In other news, the orange shoulder tang is growing like a weed. Seriously I don't think I've ever seen such a fast growing fish, he and the lavender were the same size when I got them, the orange shoulder is now about 1.5x the size of the lavender (who has probably put on a good inch or so). I can see him challenging the regal for pig of the tank. Both of them are like hoovers at feeding time, they just can't seem to get enough.

I'm not sure if I mentioned that I lost a pyjama cardinal while on vacation. I'm not overly surprised, they were incredibly timid and I think the flow in my tank was a bit of a shock to them. I did turn one of my powerheads down and turned off two others but none of them were eating overly well and it likely wasn't the greatest timing in my purchasing them. Anyway, the other two are much less timid now and are all over the tank, sometimes at opposite ends of each other, sometimes they "find" each other and hang out for awhile. I hope they don't end up being two males or something.

My little ricordea forest is coming along nicely, I guess with the extra nutrients in the tank while I was away everything grew in together and it really looks quite fabulous. I think I might try to get a couple blue ricordeas in there too.

And a few more gratuitous pictures just because they turned out half decent ;)

Return to Paradise

2010-07-28T21:05:00.001-07:00

Just returned from a 10 day vacation with success on all fronts. I got a tan, felt rested and somewhat recharged and the tank survived quite nicely. The aquatronica float switch failed on about day 5 but my tanksitter manually topped up the sump every day or so, so everything was groovy (Thanks Kristen!!). I'll have to write out some instructions next time. I'm not sure why the bloody thing fails when there is plenty of water in the topoff tank. Maybe it needs to be cleaned or something.

I'm slowly getting things assembled to start ultralith. I'm kind of apprehensive about starting something that I don't really have much follow through with. I'm not one for dosing which is why I bought the dosing pump for my calcium/magnesium/alkalinity. Spending another $300+ for another dosing pump just so I can be married to ultralith doesn't make much sense to me so I suppose this will be just "dabbling" with it. I don't really want to go too full on as its too hard on the system when I (eventually) quit. I'd like to be somewhere in between wildly successful and somewhat lowered nutrients. I don't need to be ultra low like they advertise, I just need less so I can control the algae and majano population, as well as the vermetid snail population which seems to be creeping up. At least they're easily killed by filling their tubes with kalk, but some of the tube angles really make it difficult, same with killing the majanos, they grow in the oddest places.

Ick still persists in the tank. The orange shoulder tang is now about 1.5x the size of the lavender and I had no idea these fish could grow quite so fast. He is quite the aggressor, not in a super aggressive way (that sounds dumb) but he definitely is trying to be the dominant fish. So he occasionally chases the lavender which spooks the powder blue, both of which are the major carriers for ick. The regal has a light dusting as well, I'm not sure why, I guess he gets a little skittish from time to time, which is odd as he's the largest fish in the tank but also the weirdest so I guess thats it.

A friend of mine gave me another nori feeder so some of the other fish can get in there at feeding time as opposed to the regal, lavender and orange shoulder hogging it all. Now some of the more timid fish such as the bellus and powder blue can feed at one while the pigs go whole hog on the other one. Its nice to see the powder blue eating some "prepared" food as he still seems to be only interested in picking off the rocks. I'm not overly worried as he's still nice and fat but I'd really like to get some garlic into him (via mysis/nori) to stave off the ick.

Bye bye majanos!

2010-07-04T19:03:00.002-07:00

So this week I went on a bit of a killing spree. And I enjoyed it! Does that make me a bad person??

The tank has been pretty neglected lately, and by neglected I mean I do all the usual waterchanges, skimmer cup cleaning etc but not much looking other than to feed, count the fish, make sure they are all fat and then move on. Suffice it to say when I actually looked at it there are frigging majanos, aiptasia, flatworms, bubble algae and brown wafer algae all over the place.

Enough of that crap. I broke out the flatworm exit and used almost the whole bottle on the tank. Die you stinking flatworms! Who knew there were that many on the tank, I kind of laughed at the instructions "Do not underestimate the number of flatworms in your tank". Yeah thats for sure, they were dying in droves! I thought I had siphoned most of them out. Apparently not.

Next, aiptasia and majanos. I mixed up some superconcentrated Aiptasia Destroyer and went to town on them. Some are pretty difficult to get as they're growing on an angle so you can't really pile on the solution (I like to make little Matterhorn mountains on top of them for good measure). I think I blasted most of them. I even put some of the solution on patches of brown wafer algae just for fun. Works like a hot damn. Unfortunately I'd take out my tank if I attempted to get all the wafer algae.

As for the bubble algae and the rest of the brown wafer algae, I've decided to get back on the FM Ultralith system. Even though I thought it was a pain in the arse measuring all the solutions (why can't they make little pumps for them, one pump = 1ml or something?) it did do a great job of eliminating almost every algae present in the tank the last time I used it. Well, except for the dreaded caulerpa which seems to be impossible to get rid of. I'll probably start ultralith after I get back from holidays though at the end of the month. No point in starting only to have a big gap of no dosing after barely getting started.

My sort-of-local club had a frag swap this past weekend and I had a great old time buying stuff both at the swap and stores. Some pics of the new acquisitions :)

Powder Blue Tang

2010-06-11T19:15:00.001-07:00

Not much new with the tank, most of the green slime is gone but the red waxes and wanes. I just siphon it out when it gets ugly. At least the green stuff isn't providing that lovely yellowy cast to the tank anymore. Corals are growing, some faster than others.

FTS

New addition as you can see, a Powder Blue Tang. Apparently they should be added last, so as this is going to be my last tang (don't hold me to that though). I found a nice fat healthy looking one. He's super mellow and I have yet to see him eat any prepared foods I offer to the tank. No lumpy gut though, he grazes on algae all day (and there is no shortage of algae in the tank). There was only a day of posturing/chasing by the lavender tang and everyone settled in nicely. I think the frenzy at feeding time stresses him out a little as he hides in the rocks, he has a bit of ick, and of course now so does everyone else. Hopefully they'll get over that soon.

And finally a cool photo of my melanurus wrasse sleeping in his sandbed. He's one lazy bugger.

Photo Shoot

2010-05-19T21:22:00.001-07:00

Not much new with the tank. The cyano is subsiding (finally!!!) and is only left in a couple small patches. The green slime is also abating but still covers 75% of the tank, albeit not as thick as it used to be. There is still a yellowish cast to the tank that I don't like but I figure another month or so and perhaps it will be gone.

I lost the orange spotted blenny. I was pretty bummed about that. He died of apparent starvation (sunken gut). I offered mysis, spirulina brine, cyclopeeze flake and formula 1 and 2 pellets. I thought he was eating the mysis/spirulina brine and I even caught him eating algae off the glass but I guess that wasn't enough for him. He was perched happily on one of my clams and then an hour later he was dead. *sigh* Pretty depressing.

I had a little overhead tank shoot which turned out quite successfully so less chat, more photos :)

Orange Spotted Blenny!!!

2010-05-03T21:17:00.001-07:00

The Orange Spotted Blenny is a fish that I considered the "holy grail" of my fish list. I previously had one in 2003 when I managed to convince Alan at JandL Aquatics to hold one for me. He told me he had to fight people off of it and I gladly whisked it away to my tank. Sadly it liked to jump into the overflow. I fished him out several times but one day he made it down to the sump and jumped out. Fish jerky. That was probably the only fish I ever cried at losing.

And here we are 7 years later I found another one! See what I mean about holy grail?! I have requests in at like 10 different LFS for this fish and nobody can get them in. Its crazy. But then came Ken at BlueWorldAquatic to the rescue! I now have a orange spotted blenny!!!! Thanks Ken 1. being such a great guy and approaching me about this and 2. actually sending me this fish. I feel like I've won a lottery! :)

Isn't he soooooooo cute???!!! ;)

And to combat their love of ejecting themselves out of the tank I have eggcrate going into the overflow (which I'm sure he could work his way into if he so desired and was determined about it). I have a stockman cap on my overflow pipe (he can't get in there) and now have placed full netting over the tank. Surprisingly the netting doesn't make the tank any less bright. I was a bit worried that it would, but not worried enough to stop me from getting this fish ;) Yay me!!

Whee new frags! :)

2010-04-23T21:34:00.001-07:00

New tank photo in the FTS gallery.

Not much new really, still have the cyano and green slime algae problem. The slime algae returned to its former glory, not sure what is up with that. Its still a funky rust color but healthier looking. I did a big turkey baste last night and got it away from most of the corals, course its back again today. The green slime grows like crazy. I'm trying a Zeovit Coral Snow/Brighwell Microbacter7 combo, some people have had success with that. The biopellets aren't doing a bloody thing IMO. I guess I should be more patient but its seems its not one of my virtues.

Fish are doing well, fat and sassy. The ick has subsided somewhat, in that the lavender is still the most affected but the regal is almost clean. I can live with that. Still feeding huge amounts of garlic. Its kind of revolting, certainly not that pleasant garlic smell that suddenly makes you crave steak or something. That Brightwell Garlic Power practically makes me gag.

Got a few new corals:

Hawkins Echinata (wheeee!)

30,000 Leagues Lokani

Oregon Tort

Fish Stories

2010-04-15T21:15:00.001-07:00

Well the fish still have ick despite my religious garlicky food feedings twice daily (sometimes thrice on weekends). I'm sure this isn't helping my algae issues any. I think the NP biopellets are kicking in as the cyano has changed its appearance from a dark red and lush (think a red field of wheat in the breeze) to light rusty brown and stringy, I think its slowly being starved to death and I for one am enjoying watching it. The green slime algae is very tenacious though. It seems to like my grey/pink blastomussa the best, smothering it weekly. No doubt all the extra feedings aren't helping. I turkey baste once weekly and siphon once weekly to clean off all the really badly affected areas. Its a really good time, you should try it :P

The fish are doing well, all are fat from the extra feedings. The orange shoulder tang is settling in nicely and there are no fights or chases anymore. That first couple of weeks is always the most nervewracking. A couple of weeks ago, actually just after my last post I noticed a number of dark grey/blackish "scratches" on the orange shoulder tang that seemed to be increasing in number as time went on. I did some reading on "black ick" or Paravortex, a turbellarian ectoparasite and while I couldn't identify exactly what it was on the fish (he's a damned fast swimmer), I treated the tank with Prazipro and after about 7 days most of them were gone. I wish it had worked that well on the ick.

March Update (long)

2010-03-28T20:27:00.001-07:00

Well its been a busy month. I've installed an auto top-off with a float valve that came with my Aquatronica controller. Previously I used a trusty horse trough float valve that I replaced yearly. The system I had previously was pretty simple and was just gravity fed. I probably could have done that again but I used the sump from the 90gal as a topoff container and didn't feel like getting it drilled. So the new system uses a powerhead that is controlled by the Aquatronica.

The tank is covered in green slime algae and some sort of hairy version of cyano. It didn't take long to set in, about a week after I moved the tank over. It started out bubbly but the more flow I applied, the more tenacious it gets. Everything looks a bit sludgy. Oh and I have flatworms. And red bugs. I was going to make a snide comment here but I think Murphy is listening.

I bought some N/P Biopellets to try. Everyone is raving about how fabulous they are and a few people have reported cyano disappearing after a short while with them so I'm hoping that gets the job done for mine. I bought a phosban 550 reactor to run them in. I must say, its designed for Phosban and Phosban only. I'm surprised the TLF people were so short sighted when they designed it. Anyway, I've modified it some to make it more "appropriate" for my applications. As well, the amount of flow that it requires to make the biopellets move in the reactor seems to be quite a bit more than people are reporting using the MR1 or Vertex reactors (they're using a MJ1200) so as I couldn't find a decent pump locally I built a manifold that splits flow off my Dart pump and it works like a charm. I've also got two empty spots on my Aquatronica power bar now as both the biopellet reactor and carbon reactor run off the manifold. Sweet! :) Anyway, I just finally got it all organized yesterday so hopefully the biopellets work quickly.

I have some new fish. A new lavender tang, cleaner wrasse and orange shoulder tang. I really wanted a lavender tang and when a much healthier (read bigger and fatter) one arrived at the LFS I couldn't pass it up. He was a bit shy at first but now motors around the tank like he owns it. Of course about a week later, bot the regal and the lavender both had "cloudy" eyes and some white spots. Out came the garlic and I stunk up the basement. Over the course of the week, their eyes cleared up and there were just a few spots on the lavender and then almost overnight he was just covered. And I was out of garlic.It was going really well and there were just a few spots and then whammo! like the next morning he was covered. I sort of had a little freak out as I haven't really dealt much with ick. The tank did have a pretty bad case of it a number of years ago but I had a little neon goby that worked like a demon to clean the fish. Neon gobies are few and far between around here it seems so...I bought a cleaner wrasse. I know, I shouldn't have. It took a few days but the fish are all clean as whistles. And the cleaner wrasse does have a go at mysis but I think they're too big for him so I'll have to try a few different things.

Last week I bought an orange shoulder tang (told you I've been busy). I neglected to do my research on this one. The store got one in a few weeks ago, he was in transition and still had his yellow juvenile colors. Fat, healthy, I should have bought him. By the time I went back, of course he was gone. The store got one in the next week and immediately put it in their display tank. He was gorgeous, full adult colors and spectacular. Finally last week they got 2 in, learning my lesson from the little lavender (what can I say, I love little fish), I chose the larger one. After putting him in the tank, the lavender immediately went after him. It wasn't until they both went racing by that I clued in. They're both Acanthurus! D'oh! We're on day 3 here and things are calming down. They're not fast friends yet but the orange shoulder is out from under the rocks and eating and picking at things. Which is a good sign. Every once in awhile the two of them go roaring by, I think with time they'll probably be ok (I hope!).

Lastly, I bought a used Vortech MP40 gen 1. The price was right and I wanted it to go on the left hand bottom back corner of the tank where the Tunze 6045 was. I couldn't stand the cord coming out of that side of the tank, it looked terrible in the photos. This one isn't wireless and it chatters like nobodys business if you ramp it up past 50% so I keep it tuned low. I think the bearings in the dry side are on their way out. The wet side needs to be replaced too as its the old magnet. Eventually I'll get around to it.

Other lastly :P The clams are back in the tank. I picked them up from the LFS a couple of weeks ago, didn't take long for the snacking to resume. Wouldn't you know it, it was the regal after all. Little bugger. He only likes croceas though. He's left the teardrop maxima and a blue maxima alone. The damage isn't as bad as it was the last time though and the clams are already healing. I'm also feeding him 3x a day which is probably helping. He's a greedy bugger.

I put some new photos in the photo gallery and new FTS in the full tank shots tab. Have a look :)

New Look!

2010-03-26T22:37:00.000-07:00

Well I've decided that after 6+ years of having this blog, it was time for an overhaul. I've decided to go with a blogger template because its a lot of farting around to add photos to the old template, I'm hoping this will go a little faster and smoother. Besides, new tank = new blog! I still have everything archived so its not like the blog is completely new, just a bit different looking. Some bits of the old blog are still here :)

Tank move

2010-03-06T20:22:00.000-08:00

Tank is moved!! Yay!

The move went really well except that my candy hogfish was missing for a number of days. I took half the tank apart to look for him and eventually found him dried up on the floor. He went over to the tank in a rock (couldn't get him out of it) and I guess halfway over he dropped out of the rock (why couldn't he have done that when I had the rock in the tank!!!). That was pretty upsetting to find.

The raccoon butterfly has been re-homed to a tank flourishing with aiptasia and majanos and various other delicacies to eat. He was just nipping at my acans and blastos too much and I really wanted my clams back.
The powder blue just wouldn't leave the lavender tang alone and was becoming aggressive. I'd like to add several more tangs to the tank and if this happens every time, well what a pain in the arse. So the PBT was re-homed as well. Unfortunately the lavender didn't fare well after the removal of the PBT, he was out and eating but hidden a good part of the time. I think the move really tipped the scales and he was hardly out at all and wouldn't eat. Just too stressed I guess. I found him dead a couple days ago. He was pretty small and thin to start with, he was starting to fatten up but not quick enough for my liking.

As you can see in the last photo, the clams are back. The spotted maxima died at the LFS (maximas are so touchy!!) but the teardrop and two croceas are now joined by a new blue maxima.

All the frags are mounted (I'm down to a single frag rack of various broken bits and tiny frags)! I'm really excited to see what kind of growth and colors I'll get. The ushio bulbs are way brighter with the HQI ballasts, its pretty impressive actually. So far I'm not supplementing with actinics, I just haven't gotten around to ordering the 6' bulbs and was thinking I might even go LED. Someone in town builds custom lengths so I was thinking I might go that route for the dawn/dusk effect. The ushios are a nice crisp white and don't really need supplementation so I might just run the LED before and after the MH are on, then again it might be awesome and I'll run them the whole time. Gotta amass more funds for that though.

Almost Moving Day!! :)

2010-02-24T20:33:00.000-08:00

This blog is so close to turning into the home of my new 180 gallon tank. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Literally!!

Finally got the light rack up after a typical night of DIY. You know, those nights when the drill is half dead, you can't find anything and then you realize you've measured all wrong and have to do extra work to make it fit? Got it done though and it looks great!

I put in a radium bulb to see how it looked, I'm really liking the color. I bought the bulbs used and they don't have much time left on them (I think they're about 8+ months old or so) but its a good way of seeing whether the color is nice or not. They make my ushios look piss yellow.

In other news, my new melanurus wrasse died. I was pretty upset about that, he didn't even last a week. Oddest thing, he was swimming around in the morning then dead when I got home from work. He ate practically right after being acclimated too. Nuts :(

Anyway, I'm hoping to get the lights moved over tomorrow night, then the livestock on Friday. Wish me luck! ;)

Facebook Fun :)

2010-02-18T17:11:00.002-08:00

I thought it might be fun to link my blog to facebook. A couple of my friends do it and it keeps everyone in the loop. Now you'll all see what a fish nerd I already am (which a goodly lot of you already know anyways). The photos don't seem to be showing up except for that one tank photo, not sure what is up with that, you might have to view them at my actual blog for awhile until I can figure it out. http://www.christysreef.blogspot.com

The light rack for the new tank is complete, I just have to pick it up, hopefully on Sunday. I already put a couple fish in the new tank: a bellus angel and a little melanurus wrasse. I totally missed my big guy :( but it will be nice to see another one in there. I still think they're one of the most beautiful wrasses I've ever seen. Just about bought a Coris venusta last weekend, that one is definitely in the top 5 as well.

Fun with Chemistry

2010-01-30T17:17:00.003-08:00

New tank photo!

Yeah I know, still with the frag racks. I'm hoping my friend will weld me up a light rack soon so I can get everything transferred over to the new tank. In the meantime, I've just been amassing frags.

So I have to laugh. All this time I thought my nitrates were high, I think I've mentioned it before (or thought I had mentioned it). I had "high" nitrates the whole time I was using zeovit, about 25ppm or so. I've tried and tried to get them down but finally figured screw it, the tank looks fine so no harm no foul. Turns out it was my test kit, or rather how I was doing the test. The salifert test kits come with a different looking vial, its not a cylindrical one that all the other test kits come with. It has a larger bottom on it and is square shaped. So when you put one millilitre of water in there its really only about 4mm depth. In the cylindrical vial, its considerably deeper. So usually when Iget a new test kit, I run the test, clean the vial and then put it in the "vial drawer" where they all get mixed up. The square vial got pushed to the back and I've been using a cylindrical one which reads 25ppm. The square vial reads 2.5ppm. Now I put the square vial back in the nitrate test kit where it belongs ;)

Some new photos:

Happy New Year...Hopefully?

2010-01-07T17:37:00.004-08:00

Yay, a new year! Hopefully it won't suck like it did last year for fish tank stuff.

So, after the bulb incident, I lost three fish, the midas blenny, 6 year old scopas tang and 2 year old powder blue tang . I think the fish losses hit me the worst, corals are easily replaced, for the most part but fish are so individual. You can replace them but its just not the same.

I've since installed glass on one of the reflectors however, due to the placement of the sea swirl on the right side, its pretty much right under and almost inside the reflector so I can't put glass in. I find this ironic, perhaps in an Alanis Morissette way

Um what else, oh of course before the bulb thing happened I had ordered two fish from the LFS, a peppermint hogfish and a tailspot wrasse. They arrived about a week after the bulb incident. The wrasse arrived DOA but I brought home the hogfish and a new powder blue tang. My candy hogfish (which isn't supposed to be aggressive and is supposed to get along swimmingly with everyone else) immediately took offense and the peppermint lived behind my wavebox for a time before the candy sent him into the overflow where he seemed fine until I found him dead on the third day. Awesome...NOT! Sometimes I marvel how I waste money on this hobby, in hindsight that could have been a tunze part!

The powder blue has icked up, as expected but is eating even though he's a still a bit skittish. My last one took about 2 weeks to settle in. I'm kind of hoping that while he's still settling in I can get a powder brown in there too, not sure whether I want to risk it or not but apparently if you add them at the same time (or close to) they're ok together.

A week ago, I finally figured out how to "fix" the wavebox. I just stole the driver from a "6100" I had. I didn't realize that when the driver box comes apart, the pump has a plug that goes into a circuit board inside. I figured it would be all wires and junk. I can do plugs, just not wiring. I'm happy that its working again, for how long, who knows? I'm sure parts are easy to come by but my wallet is spent so it will be some time before I can get the other wavebox and the 6100/6000 working (so story on the 6100, they sell the 6000 with the 6100 powerhead and a less powerful transformer so those not in the know sell the 6000 as the 6100 because it says so on the back of the powerhead, not knowing that the output is half of what the 6100 is. So the lesson is, if you're buying a used 6100, ask them for the electrical info on the transformer so you don't get ripped off. Apparently you can "upgrade" the transformer to the more powerful one for about $100 but if you've already sunk that into the purchase price of the pump, its a bit more painful).

Anyway, now I'm looking into getting another driver and the transformer upgrade so i can run the "6100" as well I need to get a new power supply for the newer wavebox and I can run both waveboxes in the new tank or sell one. I'm thinking selling one is probably a smarter idea but when have I ever been smart? :P

Hellish Update

2009-12-14T19:30:00.004-08:00

Hmm, since I last posted:

The big tank is running, has 60lbs of live rock in it which stinks to high heaven and doesn't look like 60lbs of rock. My ER250 is working like a charm and pulling out lots of gack, albeit the pump is incredibly noisy (noisier than my Dart).

The impeller in my smaller euroreef packed it in. The magnet part swelled up and it wasn't turning so well. I got a new one though. Note to self, while Dolphin and Sedra pumps are "essentially" the same thing, the sedra has a bigger needlewheel. No worries, I used the new magnet part and all the rest of the old parts. Works like a charm!

My wavebox died. Yes this was the one I got back in like April or something. I think its the power supply but I'm waiting to hear from Xenia whether it will be covered under warranty. Currently I have crammed a 6100 in there with the impeller and impeller housing of the old wavebox pump. Turns out this is THE thing to do on Reefcentral for DIY waveboxes. Man I am smrt!

One of my metal halide bulbs broke. It kept running though and the UV fried most of the corals on the right hand side of the tank including everything on my frag rack, most of which is toast. My scopas and powder blue tang both have "cataract" looking issues on the upper part of their eyeballs. Both are eating but the PBT doesn't look as "healthy" as usual and I'm preparing for a bout with ick.

The bulb thing was today so this will be short and sweet. I've been meaning to update with photos and such but, well, I'm just not in the mood and the tank looks like death warmed over on the right hand side.

Prazipro Rocks My World

2009-11-22T14:12:00.008-08:00

The prazipro worked like a hot damn. After 5 days I ran carbon and did a large waterchange. I did see a bit of algae after the two treatments (erythro and prazipro) which likely wasn't the smartest running those pretty much back to back but what can you do? Anyway, I figure it was the erythro that was the culprit, it probly killed off some of the good bacteria and the tank cycled a little. No biggie, couple more waterchanges and we're good to go.

The raccoon butterfly is working out awesomely. He has either eaten most of the majanos or really put the hate on them and they're cowering in fear. I can still see a few but only when the actinics are on and their hidden tentacles glow green. Thats fine with me, they're probably not getting enough light/food and eventually they'll whither away anyways. The half dozen aiptasia that I had are also gone as well as that hideous patch of zoanthids/hydroid-type thingys that were on the left hand side of the tank. They really were kind of fugly and were spreading like wildfire. Now of course it makes me wonder, once all that stuff is gone, what will the butterfly move on to next? I'm thinking my blastos as two of them are decidedly unhappy and haven't been very poofy lately. I'm changing out the carbon more often and running polyfilters just in case sometihng needs to be cleared out of the water.

I've actually been doing a lot of work getting the big tank prepped lately. We put a hole in the wall and built the stand and I'm actually filling the tank as we speak. I'm hoping to get the plumbing finished tomorrow (gotta get the sump drilled) and get some rock in it later on this week. Should be pretty awesome, here are some pics:

Eew Flukes!?

2009-11-07T15:28:00.003-08:00

Ok so the answer to the fluke issue was Prazipro AND its reef safe so I didn't have to stress out the fish by trying to catch it out of the tank for FW dips and such. I promptly went on the hunt for it and ended up having to drive 1.5hrs round trip for a $50 bottle of it (turns out they only had the pond version which is more concentrated and in a large bottle). Oh well, I sucked it up and bought it. What else is a girl to do?

I managed to get a few half decent pics of the flukes:

As you can see, pretty gross. It sort of looked like just some scale loss/mucous issues but that first pic really tells the tale.

So I dosed according to the bottle (a whole 14mls out of 473, woo!) and it says to leave it 5-7 days then run carbon and I'll probly do a large waterchange then. This is day 2. Yesterday, about 4 hours after I dosed, most of the flukes were already gone except for a few on his eye and one on his side and one on his tail This morning, he still had one hanger on on his eye and the one on his tail and this afternoon it looks like just the one on the tail (which may or may not be a fluke, its bloody hard to tell). This stuff works pretty quickly. I'm hoping by tomorrow there will be no sign of the flukes. If that is the case, I'll likely just run it for the 5 days.
So far, no signs of any other issues in the tank. Its business as usual, although my porites coral is a bit pissed at something, half its polyps are retracted, the other half are normal Not sure what is up with that. And that prazipro stuff has a distinct smell to it, the tank now smells like it, sort of sweet and I don't know, flowery maybe?

Tasty Majanos and Hangers-On

2009-11-04T19:57:00.003-08:00

The raccoon is putting the beatdown to the majanos. He hasn't gotten them all yet, I bet he's maybe got about 20% but the rest are cowering in fear. Literally, they're kind of hard to find as they're crammed back into the rocks and aren't out in the light as much as they were.

The powder blue tang has finally settled down and the raccoon can now travel the full length of the tank. Although those two days he lived under the wavebox he ate all the majanos, hydroids and a couple featherdusters. If he could just eat the rest of the hydroids too, that would be awesome.

Now the bad news. I was looking at him tonight and noticed that he hadn't escaped unscathed and saw what looked like small marks on both sides of him, as well as some ratty looking fins. Turns out they're flukes. F&*k! I guess this is what I get for not quarantining, or at least FW dipping on entry to the tank. I'm usually pretty careful with where I buy from but I guess not careful enough. The LFS said they did a methylene blue dip but turns out thats one of the weakest and not the most effective dips for various ectoparasitic issues (flukes, velvet etc). I'm not sure how the hell I'm going to get the fish out of there or whether I can drop the whole tank salinity and to what point do I have to drop it? Thank god for the internets. Hopefully they have the answer :S

Smell Ya Later Green Goo!

2009-10-31T18:12:00.005-07:00

So the green slimy disgustingness is gone. I did a half dose of maracyn, waited 24 hours and then did a 1/4 dose for another 24 hours just to make sure. After that I cranked up the carbon and did a 40 gallon waterchange. I have another one scheduled for tomorrow and hopefully after that I can turn the skimmer back on (the froth is amazing even just coming from the overflow into the sump!). Most of the yellow acros are a browny yellow and a few purply ones are just brown. Should be back to normal in a few weeks or so.

My LFS finally got a raccoon butterfly fish that I had been wanting to combat the majanos. Of course my Powder Blue Tang went after him pretty hard in the first little bit, its calmed down somewhat now (2 days later) and he's started to venture out from under the wavebox. I noticed that given that cramped space he's pretty much picked everything off the rock, including some ugly (but non-stinging) hydroid-like critters. Hopefully he goes for the majanos soon. He's pretty fast once he spots something so I'm thinking most of my hitchhiker featherdusters and such won't be long for this world. As long as he moves on to the majanos I'll be happy. I think he's still a bit stressed out to eat, the LFS said they were eating mysis but I haven't seen him go after any yet (its a bit of a zoo in there at feeding time anyways so once he's more confident I'm sure he'll get right in there). I sure am liking the look of him in my tank though, I wish more butterflies were reef safe and I still want a copperband pretty badly. *sigh*

RIP Melanurus :(

2009-10-26T18:54:00.003-07:00

My tailspot wrasse died last night. We'd been away on holidays for a week and my tanksitter noticed it on Thurday and tried to remove him to a QT on Friday with no luck. By the time I got home Saturday both eyes were severely swollen (popeye) and he was pretty listless. I figured he was a goner but decided to treat with maracyn and put him in a QT tank. I'm not sure whether it was the QT or whether it was just inevitable but this morning he was gone. I'm pretty bummed about that.

In other news, my tank is rampant with a green slimy version of cyano. Well the green part anyways, all cyano seems to be slimy. I did a 25% waterchange yesterday and siphoned most of it out and guess what? Its back again. Woo, shocker! Anyway, I'm dosing the tank with erythromycin. Screw it, I've done it before, might as well do it again, I don't have to deal with any sandbed issues. Hopefully it works against this green crap which blankets most of the tank bottom as well as the lower rocks. I also found some hair algae in the back forty growing on the glass so I'm wondering if phosphates are high as I switched to a new frozen mysis. Its supposed to be competition for Piscine Energetics (same nutritional info and fished from the same source) but I have a feeling it needs to be rinsed. I should have been doing that all along. I think I'm also only going to feed every second day, for awhile anyways.

Whee Frags!

2009-10-10T17:24:00.007-07:00

Frag mania! So I had purchased some frags way back when. I was running out of room and a friend kept them for me while I was all "oh I'm going to get the big tank running soon" (which I've come to terms with, more on that later) anyhoo, 6 months later, tank crash etc. I have room! :P Plus I was feeling guilty that she had this fugly frag rack full of my stuff, smack dab in the middle of her tank, detracting from her gorgeous tank view. So yesterday I made the trek and got my stuff, I think I had about 9 frags or so of various corals I had ordered from CoralMaster all of which have grown like crazy. As well, my friend was nice enough to clip me several pieces from her collection, which is quite extensive and the most gorgeous colors!

So I took some pics and as usual I thought I was Annie Liebovitz but most of them look like arse. Here are the ones that turned out as well as a group shot :)Some of them I sort of know what they are, others I haven't a clue. Here they are!

Acropora striata

Acropora gemmifera

Acropora hairyensis (ok I have no idea but talk about hairy!)

I think this is an Acropora plana

Acropora rosaria

Acropora turaki

Dunno but it has gorgeous blue polyps

"Super grape" A. millepora

Acropora nana/valida

And heres the full frag rack! (2 pics so I could get closer in) :)

>

So somewhere in those two pics there is a yellow tenuis, highlighter milli, A. lovelli, A. loisettae and a A. vermiculata.

What fun! Of course I don't know where I'm putting them all but man, what a rush getting this much at once!

No idea but all that yellow you see is actually green!

Update

2009-09-26T19:21:00.008-07:00

New tank photo up top (hopefully as it was being a pain in the arse earlier).

The tank is doing well, I haven't really been doing much with it besides feeding and waterchanges. Even the waterchanges have been a bit slack lately. Now that summer is over, I need to get back on track. The tank has been doing pretty well without my attentions though, I'm wondering if I should mess with a good thing ;)

I sold my chiller. The new house has a concrete slab basement which is a cold as... well, lets just say its cold. Anyway, I'm actually having troubles keeping the tank at temperature, it seems to hover around 77 or so. Which is mostly fine, its the night temperatures I'm worried about. So far so good though. It hasn't really gotten cold enough to turn the house heat on but when it does that will also help out. Without the chiller, the mag 12 really hauls the water, I've had to do away with my stockman standpipe as it was slowing the flow. I'm too lazy to put a valve on the return line so the tank is a bit noisier than usual, its in the basement though so I don't have to hear it.

The dosing pump is doing a lovely job as usual. I was baking baking soda in the oven and using that but I was finding a lot of precipitate in the sump so I've given up on the baking part and am just adding baking soda to the tank. The pH is running a bit lower than usual (7.9, which is what it used to run with the calcium reactor) and I haven't seen any adverse effects.

Had the camera out tonight, on to the pics!

New Stuffs!

2009-09-07T20:03:00.008-07:00

So the tank is rebounding. The colors are coming back slowly and things are looking better and better each day. I turned on the ozone for a bit but I'm having to recharge the air dryer beads daily and well to be frank, its annoying and I'm just not seeing the benefits of ozone right now so I'm not running it. Yes I'm fickle.

I went to a frag swap a few weeks ago and scored a few new pieces to fill in some of the holes. Some sort of yellow stag acro, bright pink birdsnest, couple mystery acros, a green digitata and a really nice piece of pink milli as well as a couple of "colony" sized pieces from one of the stores across the way that was having a killer sale.

My frag rack is back to being mostly full, or at least fuller than it was. The delicate acro on the left was part of a full colony that I bought about a month ago to see how the tank was doing. Evidently the tank wasn't doing well enough to handle that acro as thats all I have left of the original colony. Its doing really well though, and as usual, theres $50 invested in that 2" bit of coral. Sheesh. Most of the corals on the rack are survivors except for the pink birdsnest I got at the frag swap.

Frag swappage :)

A really cool photosynthetic gorgonian from the frag swap. I've never really been much for these guys, mostly because all I see around here is that corky finger stuff which doesn't really float my boat. This one is pretty cool though, and if it does well I might get a couple of other varieties now that I've found a source for it (fellow reefer).

I also got a new fish! I couldn't resist. I've been looking for a midas blenny for awhile now and they're so pricey around here. I managed to scoop one for a really good deal. He's adapted to tank live "swimmingly" and managing to get into the thick of it during feeding time. He was a bit skinny looking when I first got him but I'm managing to get him fattened up a bit.

I also took a few pics of the survivors. This one is an acro I bought ages ago. Its never done stunningly well in the tank and was fragged within a few inches of its life when it started to RTN about a year ago. its managed to come back and has 2 other corals on the plug. One I think is a piece of the pocilipora behind it and the other is a piece of purple rimmed cap that I lost in a montipora eating nudibranch debacle last year. Yay bonus corals! ;)

Acropora batunai from CoralMaster. I'm quite shocked this one survived as it was reported to be rather delicate and finicky. Its almost colored up to what it was before the tank had its various issues.

This poor tricolor. I thought for sure it was a goner as I watched it die from the base up. Apparently somewhere along the way it stopped dying and now the tips are starting to plate out over the dead bits. Weird.

Some of the most bright orange ricordea I've ever seen. I'm so glad these guys survived, they're pretty awesome in person.

Super poofy blasto.

Happiest I've seen this acan in months.

This is a tiny piece of the really large purple nana/valida that sat front and center in my tank. At one point it was starting to grow onto the next rock. I lost the colony but this little bit survived and has even grown in the past couple of months.

All in all, the tank is looking pretty good for the most part. Some slimy green algae covering a few rocks and that crappy reddish shag algae covering the back glass, not to mention the joy of majanos.

Hopefully if I'm diligent I can get rid of that via turkey basting and scraping the back glass. I even see a few spots of coralline back there, hopefully it does well and outcompetes the algae. I guess it didn't help that the skimmer wasn't working for the past week and a half while I was on holidays. Bloody thing had a clogged airline it turned out. I didn't get a chance to have a good look at it before I left and rather than burn the pump out or something I just turned it off. Hence all of the LPS looking so darned happy. Turned out the air volute had a bunch of zeolite fines jammed in it. Bloody stuff. Anyway, I cleaned that out and drilled out the volute a bit larger. Not much to really make a difference but enough to make me feel better and its up and running now ;)

Bad News :(

2009-07-31T20:06:00.004-07:00

So the big move was coming up at the beginning of July. I had brought the clams home, housed them under their little strawberry container and all was right with the world.

Then I moved.

Suffice it to say, the move did not go well. Hence my not posting for the past month and a bit. Sadly, there was some poor timing involved and a very cold floor that everything sat on before it could get back into the tank. As a result I lost about 85% of my SPS. I got everything back into the tank and the water was cloudy and stayed that way for a couple of days before I realized it wasn't going to get any better, after all its not like I had a sandbed to create a storm in the tank. I took a sample of water to the LFS and it told the tale: sky high ammonia. All my large colonies RTNed and the ammonia was, well, stupid high. I did about 120 gallons in waterchanges over the course of that week. Dosed with prime, stability. I lost every large colony I had. My skimmer was taking out huge cupfuls of the most disgusting gack I have ever seen/smelled (you thought regular skimmate was bad). I was dumping it twice a day. When I finally got the tank stable, it went down again with the last of my "decent sized" colonies taking a hit and the ammonia was sky high once again. By that time I had a scheduled work trip that would keep me away from the tank for two weeks so I left the tank in the capable hands of a fish friend who got the ammonia levels down via prime and a waterchange.

By the time I got home, the damage was done. Those corals that had been barely hanging on when I left were bone white. Some things that I thought were bulletproof were long gone and others I thought would be finito are still hanging in there. Odd. All of my LPS couldn't be happier, I've never seen the polyps so large. The tank is what I will tentatively call stable. Mostly because there isn't much in there left to die. I lost most of the frags on the frag rack, all of my nicer (read: pricier) corals were done for.

Lucky for me I took the clams to the LFS. Two days after putting the tank back together, the fish started snacking on them again. Once I discovered the ammonia, off they went to the store. In hindsight, I probably should have taken other stuff out of the tank but at that point, I wasn't sure if it was just the ammonia or some chain reaction had started and didn't really want to send my corals over to other tanks, only to cause problems there.

During the move, I also lost 4 fish. The 2 vanderbilts chromis, the pygmy hawkfish and a little trimma goby I hadn't seen since the last time I moved the tank 3 years ago. I was pretty depressed about losing him. I also lost Bug, my bangaii cardinalfish. I couldn't find him as I was netting the fish out of the tank. I had seen him a few days earlier but don't know what happened in the in between. I was sad to have lost him too. Then to have the tank "crash" as well. Well you can imagine....

Anyway, my tank is pretty empty these days. Its pretty depressing and thats mostly why I didn't bother posting. I can't say I'm as jazzed up about the hobby as I was before. I'm sure I'll get back into it eventually. Here is a photo. The 3 larger corals you see 2 middle, one behind the regal tang, are deader than doornails. I just haven't taken them out yet, mostly because I am lazy and have only fed and watered the fish for the most part. The birdsnest just finished itself off in the last couple of days and I'm using it as a test to see how much phosphate is in the system (as you can see from the green one, there was plenty previously, I just added some phosban).

Happy as a Clam

2009-06-17T19:47:00.003-07:00

The clams are still living happily under their strawberry container. Although after I gave it a good cleaning it dind't last very long before building up another layer of crud on them. They look ok underneath though. I think I must have cut one of the "aeration" holes on the side too big though and one clam was too close, I notice its mantle is all ratty looking and it wasn't open very much. I've since repositioned him and all is well, he's happy as a clam. Well.. a clam that isn't getting nipped anyways :P

New things to report? Hmm, my aquatronica overdosed the tank on magnesium yet again. I can't remember if I mentioned that. It happened a couple of weeks ago and the tank is still pegged at 1500ppm..well, thats as high as the test kit goes anyway. I know its overdosed because my alkalinity is in the toilet. On the bright side I have growth up the ying yang which is totally awesome. Plus nothing has died, a side benefit ;) I'll have to put the doser through its paces and see wtf is going on that it doses extra mg yet the ca and alk are fine.

Colors in my tank are coming around. I started dosing my little bottle of zeo potassium-iodine-fluoride again as I was losing the blues. Sure enough, there they are. Crazy stuff, I never noticed the effect of low potassium before. Mind you, I guess I just didn't know it was potassium or that it was low and now that I know I can fix it..well, thats just neat-o! I'm wondering what other zeo junk I should start dosing again. The rest of the tank is doing pretty well actually except for that bloody green slimy bubbly algae which I think is the result of my home-job frag racks. For some reason that white eggcrate grows algae like nobody's business. Its all over the freaking tank now.

Guess maybe I should work on that alkalinity, maybe that will help keep it in check.

Sushi Under Glass....well Plastic

2009-06-11T21:13:00.003-07:00

I brought the clams home at the beginning of last week hoping that the fish would just ignore them as they had for the previous 2 years. However that was not to be. Within 24 hours (actually less than that) the clams mantles were just looking ragged from all the nips. And they'd healed so nicely!!!!! There were also larger nips than before so I'm suspecting my regal tang and scopas. So what to do? Well I was going to take them to the LFS but I didn't think they'd even fare that well until I could get them there. Then I discovered that 4lbs of strawberries makes for more than just jam! ;)

Yep, they're still under there. That plastic can grow some nasty biofilm on it. Ten days and it needed a good cleaning as I could hardly see the clams anymore (on the surface anyways). The clams are having a good old time under there, loving that they can be open and happy without threat of becoming snackycakes for the fish. Even for the few minutes I had the cover off to clean it tonight the fish were in there like dirty shirts, cleaning off whatever goodies had grown. They look so innocent, diligent little cleaners. My scopas was practically losing it he was so excited, but as usual when I'm watching he's got his halo on.

Anyway, not sure what to do at this point. Its rather unsightly having that plastic cover in the tank. I really love my clams so I'm thinking that during the tgank move the scopas will have to go. I'm on the fence about the regal though, even though he's a total idiot I do like him. Maybe I'll try leaving the scopas in the sump for awhile and see how the regal does on his own, if it continues, well I guess I'll have some thinking to do.

Early Birthday

2009-05-28T19:31:00.003-07:00

Yay new wavebox! Yes I work fast. I was using a tunze 6100 in there as a replacement but IMO it was a poor substitute. My corals and fish seem to appreciate the wavebox much better, I think its because of the "interruption" in flow rather than a ramping up and down of flow that the 6100 provided. Oh well, both will go in the big tank eventually :)

Took a few photos tonight, here are the best of them :)

Nuts!

2009-05-23T16:36:00.004-07:00

So my wavebox kicked the bucket. Not sure what thats all about, one minute it was working, the next nada. I've got another one on the say, great timing on a used one and my birthday ;) I tried retrofitting my wavebox with a tunze 6100 but they are positively tiny compared to the 6260 wavebox pump and it looked kind of silly and really didn't get the job done. I've just got the 6100 running now, its pulsing some but its not the same. Hopefully the new wavebox will be here soon.

Hmm what else, oh my frag rack is growing the brightest lime green slimy bubbly algae. Its really quite disguting yet a lovely color at the same time. I think all around I'd rather not hage it there. Plus it floats so every time I turkey baste it off of there it just floats around the surface of the water . Gross.

The dosing pump is still working out very well. The little coralline dots that I can see aren't getting any bigger but there is a lot of coralline below the rock line. I guess it just isn't partial to bright light. I do have a couple spots on the front glass that I almost didn't want to clean. And some on the overflow and such. Still pretty exciting!

No new stuff in the last while. I know, weird for me eh? Oh wait, I lied. I got a couple of frags from some friends in Powell River. Oh and theres a group order I'm getting in on. Of course I have no room so its all going to someone else's house in the meanwhile until we move. The last house deal collapsed so we're hoping to get going on another one pretty soon. Looks like we may be moving early July now. Maybe.

Update

2009-05-04T19:06:00.005-07:00

I'm sure I made another post in between the last one and this one. Oh well, not sure where it went.

The clams are healing nicely at the LFS I'll give them a couple more weeks before I try introducing them back into my tank. I don't think there will be a problem but who knows.

The dosing pump is working out wonderfully, I was having a bit of a problem with low alkalinity (around 6.8 I wanted 8.4) and it was steadily dropping so I baked up a new batch. I think the previous batch I baked and then left out overnight. Likely it sucked up some humidity from the air and maybe went back to being sodium bicarbonate instead of sodium carbonate. Anyway I've got it all fixed up and alk is at about 7.4 calcium at 400 and well, the magnesium is over 1500. Its been that way for a couple of weeks now. Which I suppose is a bit high but... I've got coralline algae!!!! I haven't had coralline algae in like 2 years! I'm totally stoked. Little pink dots on the glass. Whee!!

And in other news, I'm tank of the month on Canreef. I'm a moderator there and I run the TOTM so its mostly by default as I've always made myself or one of the mods the backup when another one falls through. Nice to showcase my tank though :) Check it out!

Clams are Tasty

2009-04-18T09:31:00.004-07:00

So the pinchy clam died last week. One minute he was just pinchy on one small part of the mantle, next minute empty shell. I hate it when that happens. No more small clams for me. Its just too hard to keep them alive it seems, whether its some strange affliction or their predilection for laying on their sides (even when you prop them up with something on either side).

So this week I had a bit of a rockslide, a coral landed on one of my clams and tore a small part of the mantle. In the ensuing days, one of my fish decided this was tasty and went to town on that clam and 2 others. It got to the point where I couldn't even see the mantle because they were retracting it so much but eventually if I spent enough time in the room with the tank they would open their shells, this is what made me think it was the fish. They wouldn't nip while I was looking (yes I know, anthropomorphic). By the time I got them out of the tank there were 4 clams affected. I still have one clam in the tank, its at the opposite end and is unaffected but I will be keeping an eagle eye as its my prized maxima with the blue spots on the brown mantle.

I haven't managed to lay blame on whoever was the culprit, I strongly suspect either my wrasse or the scopas tang. The scopas was very interested in the clams and they were clean as whistles on the outside but I didn't see him nip the mangles at all but he just spent too much time around them for my liking. As for the wrasse, well he's just a rather determined critter and has a taste for meatiness so he's on the list.

Anyway, the clams are at the LFS. I hope they do well there. Once they heal up I'll try adding them to the tank again. I think with the torn mantle something was released into the water, much like sharks and blodd and a feeding frenzy ensued (although a sneaky one because they didn't do it when I was in the room).

In other news, I've scrapped the calcium reactor and gone with an aquatronica dosing pump. I'm hoping this will be more successful in keeping my parameters in line. Magnesium has fallen way off lately despite my cramming the reactor with more than the recommended 10% of volume. So far its sucked up a goodly portion of the magnesium I ordered. Good thing I'm made of money :P

F U Calcium Reactor!

2009-04-03T18:01:00.003-07:00

So my "pinchy" little clam is still pinchy. There were a couple moments where it unpinched after a 20% waterchange, but then it pinched right back up again. I just did a 25% waterchange hoping to see it unpinch again but to no avail. At least I've finally got my parameters back in check again. Ca@410, Mg@1350 and Alk@8.6 I've given up on trying to get the alk back down. While I was running zeo my target was about 7.4 (or at least that was where the tank was settled). I don't know what the hell is going on these days but for some reason its zoomed up to 8.6. As well my mg was in the toilet for awhile. I put more zeomag in my reactor and am supplementing as well. Hopefully I can keep it up.

I've ordered a dosing pump as I'm tired of fighting with this reactor. I just can't seem to find its happy spot. So when it arrives I'll move over to dosing Randy's 2 part. I'm getting the chemicals off a guy on Canreef (ChemMaster) and I'll just bake some baking soda for the alk part.

Photographic Odyssey

2009-03-28T19:55:00.004-07:00

Had the camera out tonight.

A. exquisita/echinata (can't remember which)

A. batunai

Cali Tort

"The Precious"

"Green Sky"

"Purple Cross"

Joker Favia

I also found a couple of these hiding out. Originally there was just one and I didn't think it would be a problem. *sigh* Now that they're bigger, thats not the only spot in the tank that I've found them.

But on the brighter side, the pink pocillipora that I lost most of back in October to STN had a couple pieces of tissue left on it. I ended up leaving it in the tank as it was and it seems to be coming back, albeit damned slowly. This was it as it was going through STN.

And here it is today :)

Clams suck...but they're so pretty :(

2009-03-27T16:10:00.004-07:00

So in the last few weeks I've lost both of my squamosa clams. I just don't think small clams are destined to be in my tank and I've decided not to get any more of them. Granted, I'll say now, that I have one in calgary that I bought and a friend is holding for me so if at some point in the future I'm all "oh whee new little clam" I didn't purchase it after this point. I actually bought it last month. I know, I need an intervention. What can I say? When you see it, you'll understand.

Anyhoo, now my little maxima is doing the pinchy mantle thing, same thing the crocea did a few months ago. I did do a couple of freshwater dips on it, which I don't really think did any good, at least nothing has changed. For the crocea I ended up doing 20% waterchanges weekly and running carbon in a phosban reactor. I've done this again and have started up the 20% weekly waterchanges starting last weekend.

Suffice it to say, with all the 20% waterchanges and clam issues, I've decided not to continue with zeovit. The colors in my tank were good, but not the eye popping colors that you see on the websites. But my biggest issue with it was that I had nitrates while using it. Anyway, I took the zeo system offline and am currently running carbon and phosban in the reactors. It will be interesting to see what my nitrate levels do.

I'm also tossing around the idea of putting ozone back on the tank, it really helped with coral coloration and water clarity. Thats just something I'm thinking about right now and likely will wait until this clam is either back to normal or dead.

It is also likely that I'll be giving up on my schuran calcium reactor and going to the balling system, or some variation of it. Its super frustrating to not be able to hit my targets for ca, mg and alk. Currently my ca is about 390, alk is 9.6dkH (way high, for zeo anyway) and mg is about 1275. I'm running zeomag in my reactor yet still can't manage to keep the levels up. I'm starting to wonder if maybe my reactor can't keep up or something. Or maybe I'm just inept :P Most likely the latter.

2009-03-06T20:44:00.002-08:00

So I went to a frag auction last weekend. I tried to be good, really. I ended up having to go to home depot to buy some eggcrate to make a frag rack and then filled the whole thing!!

Yeah well what can I say? I really did try to restrain myself and some were freebies at the end. A couple of these have been moved over from my other frag rack which is a bit more shaded.

And at the same time, I may have had some stuff shipped from Ontario. Yes, I'm fully aware I have a problem. Granted I did order these ones weeks ago, but with the weather shipping was delayed and delayed and.. well you get the idea. Anyway, lets not dwell on that. Lets look at the pretties!!

Oh and one of my Calgary pretties I got in January.

And the piece de resistance, the Pink Lemonade!

Thats all I pretty much had room for. I think I send about 5-6 more corals to a friends house cuz she had more room. I would have sent all of them but well, after the ordeal of getting them I wanted to actually see them!

2009-02-26T14:56:00.003-08:00

Ok so I definitely think the clam is on the road to recovery. The "pinched" part of the mantle is now almost fully extended (although you can still see something looks off about it). One thing I've noticed throughout this is that underneath the affected area, the shell looks like it is open wider than my other clams. Granted this clam does gape more which would definitely lead to that. Who knows? I've been doing 20% weekly waterchanges lately instead of the usual 10%. God knows what thats doing to my zeovit, then again after the erythromycin thing I doubt there is much in the way of zeovit action anyways.

The skimmer is finally back to normal. I think it took almost 2 weeks to get it dialed back to the way before the EM treatment. The cyano is still gone so YAY for Erythro!! The tank is actually looking pretty good. I'm getting some green algae on the glass which I think is from going to town on the zeovit trying to get both my nitrates down and the zeovit bacterial population back up. Its just on the glass anyways so no biggie. I have noticed what I think are diatoms on the rock and am wondering whats going on with that. I thought that was a cycling issue. I've checked my RO unit and everything is hunky dory there. The diatoms aren't that bad anyways, its just me being picky I think.

2009-02-11T19:18:00.003-08:00

Clam is the same, sometimes I think he looks less pinchy, sometimes I think he looks more pinchy. Before going to bed last night I thought he was super pinchy and tonight only moderately pinchy. Typing "pinchy" really sucks :p

As for the erythromycin, well I'm wondering how long its going to take the skimmer to stop overflowing. Sheesh. No other problems with the tank, although I can almost hear the algae growing with all those nutrients in there :p

On to other things. Like frags, and the fact that I bought some over the weekend. Check out this wicked clam frag I got:

Its been days since I got it and I'm still excited about it. I think its a maxima too. Althoug sometimes I think its a crocea. I really do find the two too close in appearance. I like to think its a maxima though so I'll go with that.

I also got a really nice Acanthastrea echinata

and a Montipora undata:

and last but not least, this deepwater acro, no idea what it is but its pretty.

2009-02-09T22:46:00.002-08:00

So I have no idea what I did but the solenoid issue seems to have resolved itself. I did plug it into a different "block" of outlets on my aquatronica powerbar. Who knows, maybe that was it. I still have to give it a kick every once in awhile but for the most part its working on its own for about 95% of the time. Yay! So my ca, alk and mg are holding fairly steady. I'd like to get my mg up a bit as its hovering around 1250 or so but my alk is pretty high at about 9 dkH so running more co2 through the reactor to melt the zeomag really isn't an option at this point. Maybe I'll just put more zeomag in and see what happens.

So one of my crocea clams has had some issues for the past 5 days or so. The lower half of its mantle is rather pinchy looking. I had the peeps over at what used to be clamsdirect.com (now reefaquariumforum.com) have a look see and they don't seem to think its the dreaded pinched mantle, just a bit irritated by something. So I hauled him out and gave him a freshwater dip (when I thought it was PM) a good scrub and gave him a bit more room. I hesitate to say that he looks a bit better tonight, it may just be me. This is the "before" photo, lights are out now I'll try to get another pic tomorrow :)

However, before I posted there, I looked around in the forums and then did something which may have not been very smart. I treated the tank with erythromycin. Someone on there posted that they had fixed up their clam issue with it, and well, I had that horrible run with cyanobacteria so I thought hey why not kill two birds with one stone. Sadly it didn't cure the clam but it certainly banished the cyano back to the hell from whence it came! Sweet!

As for the repercussions, I suppose I'll just have to take a wait and see attitude. My skimmer is still off as it just overflows like nobodys business when I turn it on. I'm running carbon full out in a phosban reactor, I'm sure my zeovit program is shot to hell. Oh well, I suppose we'll just have to wait on that one too. At least I don't have a sandbed, I hear that can be the worst.

2009-01-17T21:05:00.001-08:00

The corals link now works. The page needs more photos but working with frontpage is like being sucked into a black hole of time. Maybe tomorrow :)

2009-01-14T20:24:00.005-08:00

I can't believe I didn't post about my new fish. Poor little guy gets no respect.

He's a candy hogfish and I found him at a "new to me" store down south just before Christmas as I was buying yet another piece of equipment from a fellow reefer. He's a pretty neat fish, very inquisitive and a bit intimidated by all the larger fish, but he has plenty of spots to hide in as none of the others fit ;) He's only about 2.5 inches long or so, maybe 3. But I guess when everyone else is 6" or 7" it can be a bit scary. I had never seen one in the store before, let alone around here so I snapped him up pretty quickly. I wasn't really planning on getting him until I set the new tank up but he's not that big and is fitting in nicely.

With the issues that my solenoid is giving me (not turning on half the time, then turning on the other half of the time) I'm quite surprised that my water parameters have been holding as they are. ca is at about 380, alk at 8.6 (weird as its usually around 7.4) and mg is a bit low at about 1170. I have to fill my reactor this week so I think I'll add a bit more zeomag to see if I can boost the levels up to at least 1250 or so.

So last week I noticed that a rock had slipped out of place and well, not being able to learn from past reefing lessons, I rolled up my sleeves and got to work fixing it. Of course, a landslide ensued and well, the tank didn't quite fit back together as well as I had hoped. And the original rock is still out of place, but no matter. I'm tired of dealing with it.

I also did some pruning of the fugly brown stag on the very right hand side. Well actually I think my powerhead pruned it a couple months ago and one very large branch (pretty much half the colony) broke off at the base. I thought I could just jam it back into place but cleaning the glass was difficult as it ended up just leaning against it. I also had to cut away about half of the very large milli colony on the left side. It was just getting out of hand, shading out several corals and burning the living crap out of the others nearby. As well, the yellow pocilipora/seriatopora in the back forty had to be halved as nasty old caulerpa had taken up residence and pretty much killed off a goodly portion of it. And then I went and broke another colony due to stupidity. All in all, it got me $40 in credit at the LFS which was good enough for me. They're getting a shipment in tomorrow. I know my tank is stuffed but there was talk of purple stylophoras and, well... I just can't resist at least looking :P Besides, I have a gift certificate from christmas so it would be virtually free! ;)

Yet another gratuitous reef shot from the other day. I ended up switching positions of the pavona (piinky in the middle) with the ricordeas on the right. The pavona gets these 4" sweepers on it during feeding time and was stinging the crap out of my ugly brown austera which was right above it. Its not doing well at all. I'm hoping the repositioning of the pavona will help it fare a bit better.

2009-01-04T18:16:00.008-08:00

Happy New Year! The tank is looking pretty good these days. Over the holidays (Dec 24 to Jan 3) a few corals have grown, some haven't, some have colored up even more, and a couple have gone to brown. Specifically my pink pocillipora. It seems to have wavered between "sort of" pink and brown over the last year or so. I do think it did better on the ultralith than on zeo. The blues are perking up nicely though.

So of course I brought back some stuff from my vacation as we were visiting relatives in Calgary so we stopped in at Red Coral Aquariums. I bought an Euroreef RS250 from them for the new tank and some more ushio bulbs (they were a killer deal) so when I went in to pick the stuff up of course I just had to buy some livestock :P Here are some pics:

The clams are tipped over as they had a bit of various algaes on them and of course the tangs were right in there to nip it off. I've since righted them and notice as I'm posting this that the maxima is once again on its side, silly thing.

2008-12-15T21:51:00.008-08:00

So this weekend was a big weekend for tank stuff. Some things have gotten neglected in the last while, namely waterchanges. Lets just say December isnt' a good month for tank maintenance. However, I outdid myself this weekend. New bulbs, Ushios. I was going to try the Aquaconnect 14K's but people have been reporting that one of their pair will go yellowy looking, and well, quite frankly, been there done that. If I wanted Iwasakis I'd buy them :P Anyway, the new bulbs are sparkly white. I'd say a touch whiter than the old bulbs but I dunno, I can't see the "intensity" change between the new and old. I guess the corals will let me know.

Next, skimmer cleaning. Hauled it out completely. Someone on Canreef wanted to see my gate valve and meshwheel modifications so I took it out, got some pics and marvelled over the grossness of my skimmer. Cleaned the whole thing with vinegar and grouted out the pump, it had quite the mass of gack in the impeller housing part.

Siphoned out the sump as part of my "weekly" waterchange. At some point in the new year I'm thinking of emptying out the sump completely (not a big deal its only about 23 gallons or so) and shopvac'ing the whole thing, then vinegaring all the pumps and such. That, of course, remains to be seen whether I'll have the time for such an endeavor but you just never know. Its on the list.

Hmm, what else. Oh I changed out the zeorocks. Guess I should post on zeovit.com and find out whether my dosing schedule is still good to go. I did change them out a bit early, ended up only being a few days, I meant to do it last week so that I could get in my 10 days of daily dosing of the zeofood and zeobak before going on holidays. A friend is going to tank sit for me but she isn't back until the 28th. No biggie, the tank will be on its own for a whole 3 days. Then she'll be dosing up a storm :)

Well this was a speed version here, no time lately for anything. Don't worry, I always make time for the tank though. Here's a quick and dirty photo of the tank I took tonight.

2008-12-11T22:22:00.002-08:00

My chiller must miss me when I'm gone, it blew a fuse each day while I was getting my tank in Alberta. Weird. Lucky my tank sitter is well trained.

So tonight I've been watching my tank for awhile and I've determined that my fish are a bunch of weirdos. My wrasse I think wants to make his home on my frag rack, he keeps going up to it and swishing about trying to make a little nest for himself there. Of course its filled with frags and those that aren't nailed down fall into the staghorn acro below it.Such a treat to fish them out of that nest of branches, bloody thing. Now the tangs are all rubbing butts. I assume its likely either some really weirdass mating dance or they're only slightly agitated at one another and trying out their scalpels or whatever they're called on each other. They're not manic about it. Its like two little kids, "mooom, he's touching me" "no I'm not, he's on my side of the line, moommm". Cracks me up.

Not much new with the tank, still on zeo, still the same old same old. I should really post some pics of one of my rescue acans. It was really dwindling there for awhile and I bought some zeo LPS amino acids and its totally perked up. I think I even see a couple new polyps there. I'll have to compare it with old photos and see if its growing or what.

2008-11-29T10:37:00.002-08:00

My chiller has been "on its way out" for some time, making the most horrible squawking noise and blowing fuses. I had no idea what was wrong with it and thought it may have very well been the end for it. Turns out the evil dustbunnies had taken hold and were wreaking their havoc on it. I ended up taking it apart and getting the fan out to clean and oil it (kind of neat seeing all the insides and such). I even got the vaccum out to suck out all the dust and crap that was in there. I have no idea if that was why it was blowing fuses but at least the fan doesn't sound like someone is killing a goose anymore :P

As for the tank, well its plodding along. I'm quite surprised at how well various zoanthids are doing as I didn't seem to have much success in this tank previously with them. I now have a few different colonies popping up. Of course none of them are all that spectacular but its nice to have a variety I suppose. Likely I won't be saying that when they take over. They're already outcompeting a bunch of hydroid looking things on the left hand side of the tank. I'm thinking that part might be a good thing though ;)

I've been using Zeovit LPS amino acids for about 2 weeks now. Some of my acans/blastos just weren't doing all that well. I think using it has certainly helped. Plus I've been feeding heavily of a new product called Rods Food. Its just a mix of various seafoods chopped up. A lot of it is either really fine or really large (theres some huge shrimp chunks in there) and its not really all that fantastic for larger fish IMO, but great for feeding smaller fish and the corals and LPS thats for sure.

Definitely time for a waterchange today as I missed it the last 2 weekends (oops!) and next weekend I'm off to RedDeer to pick up a new tank!! I got a used 180 gallon with eurobracing and starphire front for a smokin deal, just couldn't resist. Unfortunately it will go into storage until we have a bigger house to put it in. No worries though, it will give me time to plan and amass all the equipment I'll need for it ;)

2008-11-08T15:53:00.002-08:00

Week 7 of zeovit. No major changes, no major issues either and I'll take that any day of the week! ;)

I found my prized abrolhoensis frag wedged between my two clams while doing a water change, theres hardly any tissue on it. Very disappointing. I must say, for some reason the deltec grey epoxy isn't as good as the purple stuff. I've had a hell of a time trying to keep frags nailed down with it.

2008-10-26T10:41:00.003-07:00

So I ended up changing out 75% of the zeolith on Wednesday (Oct 22). I was a bit concerned as I forgot to buy actual zeovit zeolith the last time I was over in the big city (duh!) and since we don't have it here (well I'd have a 3hr return trip to buy it at wildly inflated prices, whee!) and I still have some ultralith left over I figured I'd try that out, some people seem to think its interchangeable, some not. I'm over in Van again next month so I can pick some up then for the next changeout.

Anyway, its all changed and no repercussions so far. Some stuff has gone a bit brownish since the switch to zeo but for the most part those corals that were starting to color up under ultralith are continuing to do so or at least holding their own under the zeovit system. I've started adding Pohls Xtra 1ml 3x week. Its supposed to "improve color, growth and vitality!". Man maybe I should be dosing it to myself!! ;)

You know, looking at my tank here, I'm wondering if its just my fish that crap alot or how other people deal with all the detritus that builds up in a bare bottomed tank. I mean we're talking some serious piles here, some of which I can see but don't have access too....and thats just the buildup over a week! In those cases I think a vortech would come in handy. I have one of my tunze's near the bottom of the tank but the cord isn't really long enough to reach the powerbar (which is almost 2 feet off the ground). I think at this point installing a vortech would be more trouble than its worth but for my next tank I think it might be a definite possibility in keeping detritus directed to more accessible areas for removal. The tank detritus is also frustrating as I never get that "crystal clear" look that other people get. The other day I was surfing over on reefcentral and I swear some of the tanks over there don't even look like they have water in them. NOT FAIR!! Hell I don't need it that clear but it would be nice if I didn't have floaties everhwere. I feel like the fish are constantly swiming about in their own turds, which I suppose for the most part they are, and well they seem to enjoy it, much like its feeding time when the regal tang does his business. I suppose to a certain extent the rock is probly sloughing off a good deal of....well, rock I guess. I have no idea what rock sloughs off, some sort of dusty crap. Likely more fish poo. I have a herd of cows in my tank.

2008-10-19T16:10:00.002-07:00

Waterchange/Tank Maintenance Day!

Today was no holds barred. I did my normal waterchange with RBS. I'm gonna test my parameters later on once the tank has mixed it up well. I'm not sure what my hourly turnover is but I'll give it 4-5 hours to get good and mixed. I also cleaned both the Tunze 6060s. The lower one was totally gunked up with this crappy red algae that really adheres to the plastic grill on the intakes. I had to actually scrape it off with a knife. I also switched the upper and lower powerheads as the top one is usually cleaner. I couldn't believe how much the flow has increased for the bottom one, makes me wonder if that has contributed to my cyano problem. Of course I did that after I did the water change so of course it blew crap everywhere and the water isn't even really that clear anymore. :( I also cleaned the skimmer and added some media to the ca reactor which was down by a half and was mostly the zeomag. I just noticed that I filled it in June, it really hauls.

Anyway, theres a bunch of detritus in the sump that I'll have to attack next weekend during my next waterchange. Its quite icky down there, I'm not sure how that happens as I use a filter sock. I guess my fish are just really good at making detritus.

I'm just about going into week 5 of zeovit. I should have changed out the zeolites on Thursday but I was too busy and I'm soaking the stones in water for a couple of days. I guess you don't really have to but I'm not tempting fate. I'll put the new zeolith in tomorrow. It says to keep 10% to seed the new stuff. I hate that, I'd rather change out like 50% or something. Seems like changing out that much you'd be pretty much starting from scratch every time. Guess I'll have to ask some of the people who have been using it for awhile and see what they think.

2008-10-13T13:08:00.005-07:00

Woke up to this, this morning:

I tried fragging it into a few chunks but they're pretty tiny, its just too far gone. I did give a frag to a buddy a few weeks ago so hopefully he will keep his piece going and give me back a frag when it gets big enough.

I can also see another piece starting to go. Good times on the old reefing rollercoaster :s

2008-10-04T21:05:00.007-07:00

So I'm going into my fourth week of zeovit. So far so good, although I just noticed today that my pink pocilipora is starting to show signs of tissue necrosis. Its doing that "whithered" thing again, it normally looks like this. I also noticed that lately my lined blenny seems to be MIA and I strongly suspect my pygmy hawkfish. Why won't I EVER learn!!?

Its been awhile since I posted, since then I went to a reefers swapmeet a couple of weekends ago and almost escaped unscathed. Lets face it, I'm never gonna be able to pass stuff up. Ever. I got a few things, this neat frag, a frag from a friend that I'd been lusting over for quite some time and a nice blastomussa from Ocean Aquatics.

I also picked up some Reefers Best Salt which I've done one waterchange with. I kind of got tired of dosing all the time only to have my waterchanges with IO dilute it again. Kind of pisses me off to see that TN on the poci as 1. I did the entire 10% with just the RBS not mixed (which maybe I should be doing??) and 2. I bought 2 boxes of the stuff so it had better not suck!! I must say though, that poci has to be one of the pissiest corals ever. Someone 5 blocks away uses bathroom spray and its doing the whithered look. It takes weeks for it to recover too, although I don't know if its going to recover this time. I have no idea what its problem is as most everything else is doing okay (when I say most I'm talking about my cyano issue which hasn't been resolved yet).

So I'm going to try posting photos in my blog instead of hotlinking them. I'm not really sure what I'm doing so be patient.

wow this is sweet, I'll try some larger ones too :)

Wow, I'm totally going to do this from now on!! :)

2008-09-18T21:20:00.001-07:00

I got my zeovit reactor today. Man these things are pretty hokey. Anyway, I loaded it up with fresh zeorocks and cranked 'er up. I was told to run the reactor 3h on and 3h off but the water in the sump isn't high enough and the rocks end up exposed to air when I turn it off so I'm just gonna run the flow through it really slowly until I can find a check valve or some other solution.

So I'm dosing the basics:
zeofood7 - 4 drops
zeobak - 4 drops
zeostart2- 0.3ml twice daily

I'm also dosing an iron concentrate (eisen somethingorother, 4 drops daily), coral vitalizer (6 drops daily), zeoaminoacids (2 drops daily) and sponge power (2 drops daily). I'm holding off on the pohls xtra and potassium-iodide-fluoride concentrate for awhile until I get the system running.

2008-09-14T19:56:00.002-07:00

The co2 tank is empty AGAIN!! I thought I had refilled it just recently but it seems that the last fill was in April. Weird. I think where I have the solenoid plugged into the regulator its leaking CO2. I never feel dozy in the fish room but who knows. Anyway I've taken the whole thing apart and put it back together in a different format which seems more solid. Hopefully it last a bit longer. Kind of sucks though as I was hoping to get a new tank within the next couple of weeks since mine has to be hydrotested. Now I have to get it hydrotested anyways so I guess I'll hold off on the tank a bit longer unless it doesn't pass (its pretty old).

2008-09-13T20:58:00.005-07:00

Ok so new stuff, finally got some pics tonight. Good thing I wrote the names down, I've already forgotten them :P

A. abrotanoides
A. abrolhoensis needs to be turned around, all the color is on the other side :p
A. tortuosa "cali tort"
A. nasuta
bonus: green sky

Pretty nice stuff. Of course they're nicer in person, I have yet to figure out this camera an dits various issues with getting the colors right. One day :P

So the cyano is still hanging around. A little more than usual, I always seemed to have a couple patches of it at the right hand end of the tank. Its still localized in that area but tormenting what is left of my red blastomussa which I fear is near the end (it got hit very badly by the july heatwave last year and never really recovered) theres only one polyp left now :(

So I'm going to do the switch from ultralith to zeovit. I really like the fact that zeovit seems to be far more and better supported than ultralith. it seems Fauna Marin is finally getting its act together (or at least Aqua-Digital is) and they seem to be more "available" for answering questions and such. In my case this is too little too late. I would imagine that yes, I have finally gotten the ultralith system to work for me, however its not quite as "successful" as I had hoped it would be. As well, I'm really impressed with the success I've had with the coral snow and coral vitalizer. I'm still waiting on a zeovit reactor which I've purchased from someone in Calgary so as soon as that arrives I'll be ready to roll.

So I'm just going to start with the basic 4 for the first bit. I'm not a very patient person so I've already gone ahead and purchased Pohl's Xtra, the Potassium-Iodide-Fluoride concentrate, Zeo Amino Acids and Sponge Power. I did jump the gun and dosed some of the AA's and Sponge Power tonight though. I'll wait on the PIF and Pohls Xtra though and let the system settle in first. Apparently doing the switch over is quite easy, just stop dosing the FM and start with the zeo. Somehow I doubt it will not be that easy for me. It never seems to be... :P

And a few other corals I took pics of tonight :)

Orange Ricordea
Tropical Paradise (A. cerealis) frag
Pink Pocillipora
Yellow Seriatopora caliendrum

2008-09-09T19:20:00.002-07:00

New stuff post, corals from Coralmaster.com (I always forget the scientific names so I'm posting here)

A. abrolhoensis
A. abrotanoides
A. tortuosa "cali tort"
wild 1 acro
bonus: green sky

more later :)

2008-09-02T21:18:00.003-07:00

Well as quickly as it arrived, the cyano is gone. There are a couple small patches left in various spots but nothing I'm really concerned about. Total weirdness.

2008-09-01T18:59:00.003-07:00

Ok so today the clam is decidedly dead. I was giving out hope that it might recover but the exhalant siphon doesn't even have any shape to it, just a hole. The two halves of the shell are only being held together by the muscle and tissue. The exhalant siphon is completely flat and the tissue underneath has risen up to block it off, so theres nothing happening there. I suspect it has been like this for awhile as it looked like that late yesterday and today as well. Then again it is a large clam and I have no scavengers to clean it up. Damn. Anyway, I did a little necropsy on it and the byssal gland has a greenish hue to it and some pink as well. The rest of the clam looked pretty normal to me but who knows what was going on at a cellular level. I would have taken it in to work for histology but I think its been dead awhile and whatever info we could have gotten is long gone now (it was rather smelly).

As an aside for those of you who posted (wow people actually read this!). I have kept a close eye on those parameters I can measure for: pH, calcium, magnesium, alkalinity, strontium, iron, potassium and iodide, all have been within normal ranges. I routinely check my RO water and the TDS is always zero or one. I still think the cyano was from another product that I was dosing. Its not as bad today than it was earlier in the week so I think I'm finally getting a handle on things in the "nutrient" department. I did another 15G waterchange today and will probably do another later on in the week and hopefully things will get back to normal soon. Likely removing the dead clam was the first step on the road to recovery.

Sad....theres an awfully big space in the tank where it used to sit. :(

2008-08-31T18:52:00.003-07:00

So after discovering my dead gold maxima, my teardrop maxima wasn't looking so hot either. About 5 days later I discovered that my teardrop was sunken in (more than usual, its quite the cranky clam), only slightly responsive and gaping like I've never seen before. The incurrent siphon had to be at least 2 inches across. I was horrified. Something in that phophate remover does not make maxima clams happy thats for sure. I immediately fired up the RODI and made water for yet another waterchange of 15 gallons this time. Anyway, the clam has been lingering for days now, its not gaping anymore but its still pretty unhappy and the mantle is retracted quite a bit, some is sort of touching the volutes around the edge of the shell but for the most part, well its looking pretty rough. I was reading in my clam book (Giant Clams in the Aquarium by James Fatheree) and he says that once they gape they're goners. I dunno if this one is just going to die a lingering death or prove James wrong. I'm hoping for the latter. The exhalant siphon moves about quite a bit and when I poke the mantle he does get a bit pissy with me so he's not quite dead yet. Strangely enough both croceas and the squamosa are fine, like nothing is wrong.

One of the side effects of all of this is a friggin WICKED case of cyano. Its disgusting, purply red snotty blanket of crap growing over EVERYTHING!! Its on corals, rock, the glass, its just gross. I keep turkey basting and I've done a few waterchanges and siphoned it out too, but to no avail. The waterchanges were mostly to get whatever was in affecting the clams diluted anyways but frig me, now I have to do research on cyanobacteria. I feel like a total noob. At least I know its not a flow issue.

Yet another waterchange is in order it would seem. Yay.

2008-08-20T17:25:00.002-07:00

My gold maxima clam died today. I am very sad/upset. I had him for 3 years and man they're damned hard to find at that size. I have no idea whats going on but the tank isn't happy. Colors are still fine but well my pink pocillipora (not the damicornis but the other one) is looking rather peaked and its polyps aren't as extended as they usually are. This tells me something is going on, I just don't know what. I wonder if it was the phosphate destroyer. I have a feeling I overdid it. I didn't really have a ton of phosphate but my test kit isn't sensitive enough to detect it lower than 0.2 and the last time I had it tested it was 0.07. Last week I lost my abalone, he was upside down at the bottom of the tank and unable to suction onto the glass. I've also been finding little brittle stars all over the tank, just sitting there. I hardly ever see them as the wrasse will nab any exposed leg if they stick it out. The stars are still alive just not very responsive.

Anyway, I've stopped using the phosphate destroyer and am feeding the shit out of the tank to try to get the phosphates back up. Everybody gets frozen food every day, yay! I know, it sounds kind of stupid but I was at a "if it ain't broke don't fix it" stage and then I tried to fix it and it broke. I won't use the phosphate destroyer again without a decent test kit. :(

2008-08-13T21:10:00.002-07:00

So I found my abalone tonight upside down, he was still sort of responsive to stimuli (ie. poking with a sharp object) but he was unable to attach to the glass. As he was a rather large "meaty" critter I decided to take him out of the tank rather than have him die in a back corner and skew all the tank parameters that I've been trying so hard to get down to zero. I kept the shell though its pretty. I don't think I'll ever have another one, although he was pretty neat I hardly ever saw him and I don't know if there was enough algae for him to eat now that I've got my system pretty under control for algae.

Speaking of algae, tonight I noticed I have no brown wafer algae. Like zero. I can't find any anywhere except for two tiny bits that are attached to my tuxedo urchin. I'm quite amazed and I'm not sure what to attribute that to. Its decline did coincide with the ultralith start so perhaps thats what did it??

I'm alwo seeing some MAJOR changes in a couple corals. My pink Pocillipora damicornis which has always been a rather dark brownish pink color (and more brown after the first Ultralith rocks change) is not going very light on the top part that is aimed towards the light. I'm really lking the color, its a nice rosy pink. My grey acro that was next to the pink birdsnest is not actually blue. LIke real blue, not that steely grey blue that it was before. The tips are growing like crazy and are a lovely sky blue color. My Acropora tenuis is finally settled in one place, not growing caulerpa and is growing some really awesome deep blue tips. And everything is GROWING!! Its friggin awesome!

I've also started another Tailored Aquatics product called Phosphate Destroyer. Apparently its pretty awesome. The last time I had my phosphates tested they were at 0.07ppm which weren't totally terrible but bad enough for a SPS tank. I wanted to start using a phosban reactor for my ultralith stones and one for my carbon so I figured I could ditch the phosban if its not really doing anything for the tank anyways. I strongly suspect that either I'm feeding too much or the ultralith hasn't kicked in "that way". I've made so many changes to the tank (dosing supplements, adding carbon, switching out the ultralith rocks to a filter bag instead of the phosban reactor, dosing a couple zeo products) that I have no idea whats going on, it could be any of those things thats doing the trick. I'm putting my faith in the two zeo products though. Since I started using those I've been seeing real results in the tank. Its pretty amazing, I can only imagine what using the whole zeo line could do for the tank.

2008-08-02T19:58:00.002-07:00

So according to my potassium test kit, I think my potassium levels are hovering aroung 350. They could really be on either side of that, I haven't quite figured out the trick to reading the test, its pretty vague. I can look at it 10 times and get a different reading each time. Someone suggested taking a photo and scoping it out that way, I think it would be just as vague only you'd have a record of the vagueness :P

I'm using a new product from Tailored Aquatics (I use their potassium as well)called Nitrate Destroyer. I'm into my 3rd week of dosing it. My nitrates really aren't all that bad (between 5 and 10ppm). Someone scoffed at me when I told them the numbers "heck even when you're zero the test can read that" but I'm still adding the stuff to see if I can get to zero. So far I haven't seen any major adjustment but I was told that it would take at least 3 weeks to start seeing the levels go down. The ultralith system doesn't seem to be doing squat to help with the levels of nitrate so I figured I had better do something about it myself.

Speaking of Ultralith, I broke down and opened a new bottle of UltraBio so I guess I'm continuing on with the system. I'm seeing some pretty nice colors in the tank, although I'm not attributing it to ultralith as stuff is just starting to look half decent after the big brownout. I've also bought some zeovit stuff too. You know that saying "don't mess with a good thing". Yeah bollocks to that I say. So I'm trying out Pohls coral vitalizer and Coral Snow. I've been reading about the coral vitalizer for ages and well now I'm finally getting to try it. I put some of both in my tank starting yesterday (4ml coral snow, 4 drops CV) and well no instant results. The water does look pretty darn clear today though :)

Oh and I'm not sure if I posted about my pygmy hawkfish. I took him out of the nano, it was just a ridiculous algae fest in there, caulerpa all over the place, hair algae and flatworms, just a total plague. It was so difficult to feed him in there cuz they're not exactly hardcore feeders, they like to stalk their prey, and if it happens to land on the sandbed before they get it, well its worm food. Suffice it to say the algae certainly was happy with all the nutrients. Anyhoo, I took the hawkfish out and put him in the main tank. Granted he's a small fish and well, they're pretty cryptic at the best of times but I managed to catch a glimpse of him giving me the hairy eyeball last week after I thought perhaps he had croaked. Tonight as I type this I can see he's hanging out right out front by the front glass, getting bolder it seems. Only took 3 weeks :P

2008-07-26T16:35:00.002-07:00

Ya know, I'll say this much about myself. I'm a slow learner when it comes to this hobby. How many times have I posted about trying to fix a single rock and hours later I'm still trying to put the tank back together etc etc? Yep, I did it again.

So while doing my epic clean last week I notice that there was a great pile of crud in the left hand corner, by the overflow. I attempted to siphon it but couldn't get under the rock to get at it so there is a small pile there. Yesterday I was over at a friends place and she had purchased a Tunze Nanostream 6045 (1100gph) and I just loved the fact that you could virtually aim it at anything and it was tiny compared to my other powerheads (and put out a ton of flow!). After installing hers (BTW, those magnets are really strong and like to get fingers caught in between them, yeeowch!) I decided it was the perfect solution to my crap pile problem.

However my concept of size and space is rather, well, non-existent. As hard as I tried I couldn't wedge it in between the back glass and the rock. But I could sort of maneuver the rock forward to get it back there. But then there was another rock halfway down that was causing a problem. By the end of the whole thing, one coral was completely off its rock, another one was so badly out of place I couldn't fit it back in and half the right (!) side of the tank needed to be reaquascaped. WTF? Hours later I finally have the tank sort of back together. I fully expect a rockslide. And I don't even have the stupid Tunze plugged in because the cord isn't long enough! Grrr!

2008-07-21T12:32:00.002-07:00

So yesterday I finally did something I was dreading for months: catching the neon goby out of the overflow box. I must say, he's been happy as a clam in there for the past 6 months or so. There were a ton of copepods for him to snack on in there but the stock must have been getting low as he is looking a bit thin these days. Anyway, yesterday morning I took the light hood off (which is a job in itself), then I procrastinated some by cleaning the bulbs and the reflectors which had lots of salt spray on them from the stupid regal tang and his nightly after dinner splashing about. Anyway, I got all that cleaned up and then scraped some of the flaking paint off the inside of the hood. Every once in awhile I find a piece in the tank and its a PITA to fish it out. I also cleaned the fan in the back that was rather disgusting full of that really mungy dusty yuck.

Then I cleaned out the overflow, it was full of various colored algae, mostly hair and some weird bristly red stuff. I couldn't believe how much detritus there was in the bottom so I turkey basted that as well, its nice and clean now. Plus I put some gutterguard on the top to help shade the light.

Of course the eventuality of having to get the goby out there finally came to pass. I was quite surprised that it took less than 5minutes. I was all ready for an epic battle of wills and everything! How anti-climactic! Anyway, he's now a member of my little group again. I don't htink he's quite used to the light, or the other fish yet (its almost like another reacclimation) but he was eating with gusto last night. I'll probably target feed him for the first bit as he doesn't really get in there with everyone else but its nice to see his little face in the tank again :)

2008-07-16T15:45:00.004-07:00

Today is potassium test day. I've officially been using it for a week today. I must say that zeovit potassium test kit is pretty brutal to read. The test sample is cloudy and you have to look through it to a colored test strip to determine your potassium concentration. Sometimes I could see it and sometimes I couldn't. I seriously think its all in my mind. Anyway, it seems to be somewhere in between 300 and 350ppm (I guess 325ppm?) which seems odd as when I tested before I started dosing last week it was between 250 and 300ppm (and it was really anyones guess as to whereabouts in between it was). I suppose if it was on the high side towards 300 it wouldn't be strange to have it risen to 325 but the guy I got the potassium from said it would probably raise it by about 1ppm per day. The bottle says its 80,000ppm but my brain hurts just thinking of the math to figure that one out.

ok I couldn't let that one go. I did the math and it really is 1.17mg/L increase per day according to the dosage. I think I'll try taking another sample later on today and see where its at. Maybe my eyes will be better then :P

2008-07-14T20:11:00.003-07:00

So I think I've finally got a handle on this ultralith stuff. I was smurfing the web and found a forum where someone posted that the diameter of the reactor that the ultralith in was an important thing for flow. Because the tube of the phosban reactor is narrower, flow needs to be reduced because there is less surface area. Anyway, I don't really get it (although sometimes it makes sense) but I reduced the flow and my water is crystal clear almost to the point where it looks like it did when I used ozone. I also reduced the UltraMinS and UltraBak to 0.5ml each (less than half the usual dose) to get things back on track and it seems to be working. Some stuff is coloring up nicely, other things well not so much. Some are just resistant to change I guess.

Anyway I'm glad I finally have that figured out, or at least I think I have it figured out. I'm down to the last few ml of Ultrabio so I had to order some more which sucks cuz its so expensive and here again, an investment in something that I'm not so sure of. Oh well, it has until the end of September and if I'm not seeing anything positive by then, I've given it 6 months and can't say I didn't try.

I'm also at the point where I have to replace 25-50% of the ultralith rocks. I'm not really looking forward to this after the big brownout last time. This time I'm following the instructions in the manual whereby I soak the rocks in RO water for a week and change it out every day or so. I sure hope this works because if it doesn't I doubt very much that I will even be attempting the 6 month run, I'll just sell what I have left or give it to someone that has the system running successfully. I haven't decided on whether I'll change out 25% or 50%. I'm soaking an in between amount so I guess I'll just decide when the time comes.

2008-07-09T20:02:00.001-07:00

Started using Tailored Aquatics Potassium as well as dosing Iron, Strontium and Iodine. Potassium seems to be talked about quite a bit in the forums so I got a zeovit test kit (which is a pain in the arse to read) and it seems that my tank is somewhere between 250 and 300 mg/L which is pretty low seeing as how natural seawater is 390 or so. Anyway, the potassium I'm dosing with raises it very slowly so it will be awhile before I'm up to NSW levels. I think I'll probably test every week or so and see how it goes.

I decided to dose the Iron as well, apparently its supposed to bring out the greens. I don't have a test kit for this however so I think I'm gonna have to find one pronto. As far as I can tell Seachem is the only one out there. Lord knows where I'm gonna find that as this is a one horse town (hagen) and none of the stores online seem to carry it.

I did test my strontium levels a couple of years ago when I had access to a test kit. They were inline with what NSW was so I didn't bother to dose. At this point I'm doing the beginner/no test kit dosage so I doubt I'll be doing any harm.

And last but not least, iodine. Yeah I'm pretty much fumbling around in the dark on this one as well. I don't have any shrimp or anything that I could possibly be wreaking havoc with so its ok. Again I'm just doing the beginner dose until I can get my hands on some test kits.

Anyway, just wanted to post this for archival purposes :)

2008-07-05T21:27:00.005-07:00

Ok so I did the deed. I took the caps out and treated them. However they didn't exactly fit back in. The tank cap was mostly a write off and since I still haven't really seen it looking any better I just turfed it. I know, sad. The purple cap, well lots was munched on underneath and it REALLY didn't fit. And well the more I looked at the tank without the caps, the more I liked it. So I just fragged off a large chunk and chucked the rest. If I didn't manage to eradicate the nudibranchs I don't want to give them lots to snack on anyways. The yellow cap was almost a complete write off - While some parts looked ok on the top they were completely eaten underneath and I didn't know how well they'd do. So I kept a couple of pieces that seemed to be okay and we'll see how they do.

To be honest, I wasn't really all that interested in treating the corals to begin with since I had taken that last photo of them. Before that photo was taken, I found a couple nudis and set them up for a photo and my wrasse swooped in and ate them. I set up another set and managed to get a photo before he ate those too. Then I ended up just breaking of all the layered scrolls so he could actually get into the corals and he went to town in there and I couldn't find a single one. The only thing that actually made me break down and treat was the fact that he didn't eat the eggs. And, while I've only seen them on the caps so far, I have a prized M. confusa in there that is doing fairly well, lest they move over to it and start munching.

So I followed the treatment laid out by Eric Borneman's article using potassium permanganate at 50mg/L. Man is that stuff ever purple!! I could hardly even see the coral. I guess the blue bucket didn't help though. I think he was treating them in a glass dish or something. So I didn't actually get to see the nudibranches die, but I do think I saw a few in the rinse dish. Its hard to tell as they sort of look like most of the other random gack in the bowl. Anyway, I didn't see any left on the pieces I put back in the tank, nor the eggs which hopefully disintegrated. I was kind of worried that the coral skeletons would pick up some of the purple color but they were white for the most part. The coral tissue did darken up quite a bit though. The yellow cap was a dark yellowy brown and the purple cap was just plain brown. We'll see how long it takes for them to color up.

Anyway, while I do miss having the caps in there (well the purple one anyways)the tank does look rather open and now I have room for my new frags I got a couple of weeks ago. They haven't done much in the coloring up department but I've been really babying them as they're just so damned cool. I was gonna post pics but quite frankly they just look like brown sticks and y'all will be "wtf? they're just brown sticks!". So i'll just post a pic of this one its called Tropical Paradise, A. cerealis

2008-06-28T18:11:00.002-07:00

So I just discovered today while updating the tank picture, that blogger doesn't allow you to double click on the photo to go to the larger sized version. What a pain in the butt. Anyways, if you want to see a larger photo go here. Anyway, I thought I'd update the photo because I'm still not sure what I'm doing about those caps and if I haul them out and chuck them I'd like a record of what the tank looked like before.

So I took some pics of the damage that the nudis have been doing to the caps. They've been doing it for quite awhile I would imagine, they look like crap and the yellow one has been on the downturn for at least 6 months I'd say. The tan and purple caps haven't been quite as long but they're looking pretty bad as well. Its kind of sad that I have to get rid of them/break them off of their moorings as the purple one is really starting to recover after that whole ultralith debacle (replacing the stones led to brown corals, still not really sure why). In that photo you can see it starting to close up on the damaged parts, here is a pic of it starting to heal up the damaged bits (please ignore the photo quality :P). I thought I had taken more photos of the damage but I can't seem to find them so I guess I didn't.

Anyway, looking at the photos it almost appears that, in the case of the purple cap, its actually growing faster than the montis can eat it. The yellow cap, well not so much. I'd say there is only about 40% of the coral still intact, the rest has gone to crap. The tan cap, well its pretty fugly. It used to have a purple rim but ever since I went off ozone its just basic boring beigey brown. I think I'll probably just get rid of that one altogether. The purple one is a good hideout for my lined blenny though, and I have another chunk of it over on the other side of the tank that I'll treat and reattach. I may just move the larger purple cap down lower as the spot its in is some prime real estate for acros ;)

2008-06-27T18:12:00.003-07:00

So the epic shipment was part of a group order that myself and two other people took part of. I took receipt of the shipment and held stuff in my tank until the other people could pick it up. When they came I gave them a bunch of other frags I had made inadvertently and some that needed to be clipped or I had doubles of, including two pieces of M. capricornis. A couple hours after she left she messaged me saying that she found montipora eating nudibranches on both pieces of cap and eggs to boot. WTF? I looked and looked and having never seen these things before had no idea really what I was looking for. I did see one little thing resembling one but it didn't move for days.

Then it moved.

And left eggs in its wake.

AAARRGGGHHH!! Cripes if it isn't one thing its another. Apparently the treatment is basically get them out of the tank into quarantine and treat them with potassium permanganate. But then you also have to scrape off every last piece of cap in the tank and god knows how long you have to leave the tank for before they either finish off any bits you missed or starve to death. What a pain in the arse. I have the potassium permanganate but I'm not sure if its really worth treating as I don't have a quarantine tank to put them in so basically I'd be potentially recontaminating them. Plus they're all nicely attached to the rock and boy would it be a pain in the arse trying to resettle them. I haven't really decided what I'm doing yet but guaranteed its going to be a bit of work.

*sigh*

2008-06-20T12:38:00.002-07:00

Got some new frags after an epic 3 day "overnight" shipping. Various issues by the courier not the shipper. Anyhoo, they're just acclimating and I wanted to "write them down" before I chuck the labelled bags out. I'm terrible with sticky notes (humid room, they don't stick) as they seem to disappear..

A. kimbeensis
A. cerealis
A. granulosa
A. aculeus
A. batunai

2008-06-16T12:40:00.003-07:00

I forgot to mention that I bought some of that UltraAmin stuff. I can't remember when I started using it. I think it was just last week. Or maybe the week before. Crap I can't remember. Lets say June 5th. Yeah I think it was about then. I've been retardedly busy lately and time just flies by. Anyway, in the week and a bit I've been using it, no fabulous results :P Not that I was expecting any but hey you never know.

Colors are continuing to return, that pink pocillipora damicornis is bloody slow to come back though, its always had a hint of brown to it, I'm not sure why it can't look freaking spectactular like the ones in magazines. Maybe it needs to be higher up or something, who knows. At this point until I get a new tank there isn't much to be done as I have limited space for anything but frags at this point.

Oh and speaking of frags.... well I couldn't resist and ordered some from calgary. They should be here this week and I have huge expectations about these ones. Hopefully they live up to them ;) I'll post pics when I get them. Damn, I wonder if I have any epoxy? Have to check on that.

So my little maxima has finally bitten the dust. Not really all that surprising, however still disappointing. The damned thing could never stay upright for more than a couple of days. Every time I saw it flopped over I'd right it but this time there was just no turning back, the damage was done and yesterday it wasn't all that responsive, today just a shell. I think something might have gotten it while it was flopped over. I see my squamosa is doing the same thing so I'm thinking I might need to build a little cradle for it or something. Damned pain in the arse small clams! Why do you have to be so pretty and make me buy you?! :P

2008-06-13T21:13:00.002-07:00

As promised, the top down shots:

photo 1

photo 2

photo 3

photo 4

Also I thought this pic was interesting, this is my "rescue acan" now and look at it before the Ultralith mishap. It was so much more colorful then!! Damn you Ultralith!! I don't even know how to fix it? Time maybe? It seems to be working for the SPS, I've tried feeding the acan before with not much success, I never know if its interested in eating what I'm offering. I suppose I'll have to just keep trying though.

2008-06-12T22:24:00.002-07:00

So tonight it was the calcium reactor pumps turn to be persnickety. It was making a funky noise, I guess it just needed to be cleaned because it was all intact. Of course you have to drain the reactor and take it apart to get to the pump. Which of course turned out to be a 60 minute cleaning-fest. I can't believe how fast it uses the media. Of course I guess you'd notice it decreasing in a 3 inch diameter tube vs. my old reactor which had a 6 inch diameter. Still it seems that it uses media rather quickly...not that I'm complaining or anything. I filled it up and put a little line on it so it will be interesting to watch.

Of course this all started with me taking some topdown photos, and then noticing that my pink birdsnest in the middle was rampant with caulerpa. Turns out its mostly whats holding that and the blueish acro (to the left of the birdsnest) to the rock. The blue acro is now kind of rickety on the rock, but no doubt the caulerpa will grow and re-cement it to the rock. I'm not too worried about that.

Normally I'm with-it enough to see when its time to prune the algae but I let it slip this time and it was pretty far gone down into a couple of other corals as well. I'm usually good about corralling it in one area. Anyway, after about an hour of picking it out I got a fairly good sized pile, probly the size of a softball or so, I think thats a personal best lately... not a all time one though. My tank used to be pretty fugly in the algae department.

As for the corals, well they're coming along. I noticed the purple cap is starting to get its color back and the polyps seem a bit happier. I think the tan cap will take longer although it wasn't spectacular to begin with, at one time it did have a lovely purple rim but I haven't seen that since probably last year. I'm going to see if I can find some potassium (apparently they're sensitive to that) and a test kit and maybe muck around with that for a bit. Thats down the road though when I make it to a store that carries all that, or when I have a big enough order for mail order.

My computer is being cranky so I'll try to post the pics tomorrow :)

2008-06-05T14:45:00.003-07:00

I think someone is working against me with this ultralith stuff. I'm not so religious with the shaking of the phosban reactor containing the ultralith rocks and quite frankly I can't remember the last time I shook it, it could be a couple days ago, maybe a week. Anyway I went to shake it last night and discovered the pump running it had died. Who knows when that happened. Stupid maxijet 600s. They're great little pumps but such an idiot design with the impellers. The magnet has two pieces of plastic attached to it, how I don't know but they sure come apart easy. I'm on my third impeller (for 3 different maxijets). I keep stealing them off other pumps that I'm not using but last night I had none to steal and ended up supergluing one back together before I decided to shut down my phosban reactor for a couple of days. If ultralith is as fabulous as they seem to think it is, it will keep my phosphates low for me (although it hasn't been doing anything for the wafer algae/caulerpa/various other pestilence algaes in my tank. If only they could design those impellers without the plastic bits somehow I bet those things would be totally unbreakable. The pump on my schuran calcium reactor is a maxijet 1000 (which I've never heard of or seen a replacement for) and it had a ceramic shaft which broke about 5 minutes after I bought it, which began the parts stealing process from various other maxijets. All my new ones have metal shafts which seem to be interchangeable.

Ok thats enough ranting about that. I hate when equipment fails due to some stupid fifty cent part. I'm in such a small town its not like we can just race out to buy whatever we need (and as per usual I don't discover it until like 9pm anyways) so I've had to have parts shipped. The impeller is about half the price of the pump but they didn't have any, so I'll have another maxijet 600 to add to the pile. At least I'll have lots of spares if the motors die :P

Corals are starting to look better. I don't think I've ever seen the clams so happy, they all have their mantles fully extended, like I don't think they could possibly extend them any further. I'm not sure if this is a sign of needing new bulbs or what, although now that I think of it I just got new ones in January or something so they should be good for another 6 months or so. Anyway, most stuff is starting to color up, a couple of the blue corals are really making more of an effort and regaining their blue. My blue milli and blue acro in the back forty next to the pink birdsnest (middle of the tank)are looking pretty great except for random tissue necrosis in parts. Usually just the tips but I'm seeing bits and pieces in other spots. I try to just prune them off as it usually stops right away and starts healing the broken spot in a few days. I sort of wonder if its some thing viral or wtf is going on. I don't think I'll ever figure that one out. Luckily the colonies its happening to are large enough that its only affecting a small portion and not too detremental.

2008-05-27T21:17:00.002-07:00

So I've been religious with the Ultralith, mostly because I'm scared of what will happen if I stop again. I wonder if the Ultralith is keeping the water clear and when I don't use it the water is "cloudy" enough to cause brownout? Its certainly not discernable to my eye. I guess if I do stop, I'll fire up the ozone right away and hope for the best. Anyway, I'm resigned to at least a few more months as I had to buy a new batch of UltraBak and UltraMinS as well as some new zeolite. Yes there is an "S" on my forehead sometimes. I don't really consider this stuff to be snake oil, I've seen it in action on another tank and it was damned spectacular. However I think he was using more than just the 4 basics (basics being Bak, MinS, Bio and Ultralith rocks). He was using PowerTrace 1-4 which is basically trace elements. Theres a couple other products as well that I'd like to try, UltraAmin (amino acids) and the actual proper reactor. I often wonder if the success of this system is limited by the fact that I have a lot of ultralith rocks crammed into a small phosban reactor and shaking really doesn't accomplish as much as one of those proper reactors with the pumping handle. Oh well, the thought of shelling out $200 for one at this point doesn't sit well with me. However, I'm sure that "S" will reappear and I'll have those products in hand soon :P

So I had a good long stare at the tank tonight. The purple cap which I thought was a goner seems to have a few polyps out. The tan one..well thats another thing as its polyps are tan colored too. I'll have to get out the long lens for that I suppose. Damn, battery is dead. I'm so used to my point and shoot cameras making noise when they turn on and off. I think I've left it on for about a week now. Lucky I still have my trusty Nikon. I just can't part with it, I'm too in love with its macro capabilities :) On second thought, I think its macro capabilities may be going downhill. Anyways, you can see the damage in these shots. The tan cap(with polyps!. You can see some of the damage, how the coral is lighter than the polyps and there are bubbly bits of algae. Its more obvious on the purple cap and you can see how much color its lost. The purple cap used to be as purple as the polyps, now its a crappy light brown with a dusting of brown algae on it that I have to turkey baste off every day.

I'm just not sure what happened but it appears that the caps got hit the hardest. I have another chunk of purple cap growing on the opposite side of the tank that looks terrible as well. The large yellow cap in the center of the tank has been steadily going downhill for the past 6 months or so. Ever since I had that "burned tips" fiasco. Parts of it die then it gets really crumbly and breaks off at the slightest touch (couple acros did the same). I wondered if the corals didn't have some sort of calcium deficiency/calcium uptake deficiency at some point but levels of Ca and Mg have been pretty stable. I'm tempted to try out some strontium/molybdenum but at this point I think I'll just hang in there and hope for the best.

2008-05-20T20:54:00.002-07:00

The tank is back to brown, I've lost a ton of color in most everything. LPS are still hanging in there, the red blastomussa isn't looking so great but its alive. Both my purple and tan colored cap (right hand side) look like the polyps have bailed out and are bleached. Most other things the polyps are out but they've lost a ton of color. I'm not sure what is going on. I had to stop ultralith while I was away for 4 days last weekend, then I was home for 4 and gone for 3. If this is what happens when you quit ultralith cold turkey I'm not sure if I'm interested in continuing.

The temperature hit 86F on the 13th (and it wasn't even a hot day) so I cranked up the chiller to get it down. I'm not sure if it was lowered too quickly or what. Things were looking crappy before the 13th its just continued downwards since then. But temperature-wise, everything has been hunky dory. Other than the ultralith stoppage I'm not sure whats going on. I'll have to do some testing I suppose. Not sure what I'm testing for though.

I did slack off on my waterchanges for the past few weeks or so. I have one ready to go for tomorrow so perhaps I'll just pick up the pace on those and do them weekly once again and hope for positive results.

Edit: Ok so I tested for nitrates (between 10 and 20ppm, not good. Definite waterchange tomorrow!!). Calcium, Magnesium and Alkalinity were fine. Guess its up to that waterchange to save the day.

2008-05-13T10:54:00.002-07:00

So I was away for a few days this past weekend. I'm not quite sure why things seem to go downhill when I'm away. Anyway, its the same as before, burned tips on some of my SPS. Mostly the same pieces but I noticed one of my prized blue frags is starting up. I guess I'll try and do a waterchange today. I'm still not sure what is causing the problem. Its very frustrating though.

Still continuing on with the ultralith. I can't really say its blowing up my skirt though. The colors are well I guess about the same as before. Perhaps I'll have to do some more reading on it and see what I'm doing wrong.

So because I had decided to continue on with ultralith (in for a penny, in for a pound), I needed to stock up on supplies which coincided with my trip (quite excellently I might add). While I was at the store a clam just jumped in the bag and came home with me. Funny how that happens. I'm not sure what kind of clam it is as it has the maxima scutes yet a squamosa pattern. Maybe its a squamaxima! or a maximosa! Whatever it is its gorgeous and I wish I had gotten two ;)

2008-05-06T19:50:00.003-07:00

I hate blogger. Apparently they've either dropped the ball or lost it completely. Tons of people including me are having FTP issues, whereby we (instead of blogger) provide the webspace and domain to host our blogs. Then we just use blogger as an easy way to update our pages rather than have to do them manually. So lately, and I'm not even sure how long its been, assuming from some peoples posts, something happened around April the 10th(or after my last post) and many people are having issues, so much that I've been trying to publish my April 23rd post every day up until now when I had to switch to bloggers hosting instead. No doubt they'll start charging next.

Anyhoo, after about 2 weeks of wrangling to get this posted and a good 2 hours of trying to fix the template to look relatively normal (html is like greek to me so it was very interesting). Here we are! FINALLY!!

So I did manage to lose a couple posts somewhere between here and there. There was a post about a giant crab in my tank. Well not giant but a good sized,what I would assume, mithrax crab. Sort of like an emerald crab but black. He's probly a couple inches and I caught him eating algae the other day. As long as thats all he eats he's safe in there.

I'm still waiting on my camera bits to post more photos. The lens I have now really doesn't quite do it for me so you'll have to wait a bit longer.

I can't really say I'm totally in love with the FaunaMarin Ultralith system. So far its not really doing it for me. I mean things are nice and all but I'm not seeing the really vivid colors. Its only been 2 months so I suppose I'll give it one more month and see how it goes. I'm seriously thinking about switching to Zeovit.

Thats about all I have to post, I'm still pretty miffed about the whole blogger thing and I can't concentrate. Maybe I'll have more to post tomorrow :)

2008-04-23T18:00:00.034-07:00

Had to refill my CO2 tank this week. It lasted longer than last time (2 months) but still I had refilled it at the end of November so not a heck of a lot longer. Sucky as this Schuran Jetstream Pico calcium reactor is supposed to be super efficient and recirculate the CO2 so it would use less. I'm not seeing it.

Not much new to report in the tank. Things are coming along nicely and coloring up. I'm hoping its from the Ultralith and that it can only get better from here :) I did notice today however that my tricolor acro that was having burned tip issues is yet again having the same issues. It seems to be the only one affected and I'm not sure what is up with that. I suppose some water changes may be necessary. I've sort of fallen back on the water changes, instead of doing my weekly 10% I've been doing them biweekly for the most part. The tank is still looking good and it hasn't affected the tank to my knowledge but who knows whats going on in there on a microscopic level.

I borrowed a friends lens for my camera and took some new photos. I was so impressed I bit the bullet and bought the lens for myself :) Its a telephoto lens that I was using with extension tubes to simulate a macro effect. I purchased the tubes on ebay and they haven't arrived yet, but you'll know when they arrive as I'll be posting new pics all over the place ;)

2008-04-09T21:37:00.003-07:00

The regal has calmed down somewhat, she hasn't been at the waters surface but still does idiotic things in the staghorn coral, she's taken to balancing herself amongst the branches and just sitting still for a little rest, its quite unsettling at times because she kind of looks dead.

She was super aggressive to everyone a couple of days ago. Everyone appeared in a snotty mood and there was a lot of tail swiping and chasing going on. I sat and watched the tank for a few hours and was wondering if maybe she was getting too big for the tank and was feeling stressed. She really hasn't grown a ton in the almost 3years I've had her, maybe an inch or so. I think she's grown more in girth than length. I've never seen a fish eat so much, sometimes I worry that the other fish don't get enough because she is such a pig. Thank goodness they're all herbivores, lord knows theres plenty of algae to go around ;)

So I spent about an hour today carefully picking out brown wafer algae. What a joy that is. At least it comes off in sheets for the most part. Any little floaties head across the tank and plaster themselves to my powerheads, which wouldn't be so bad except they start growing there. I have to start siphoning them off on a regular basis. Today I took both powerheads apart so that I could clean off the cages. I don't know how much water either one of them was circulating as there wasn't really many open ports on the intakes.

My nano tank is really hurtin, at this point I think it was truly stupid to put the pygmy hawkfish in there, its such a retarded fish and it takes quite a bit of food just to get it interested and then it stares at the food as it floats down sometimes hitting the bottom before it eats it, sometimes just hitting the bottom. As a result, algae is RAMPANT. You name it, its in there, caulerpa, valonia, green hair algae, some sort of red wiry algae and a couple other kinds I don't even know the name of. Today I looked at my prized rescue acan (not the one in the main tank a different one) and it was a big hairpie of green algae. I couldn't even see the polyps. I took it out and picked off a goodly portion of the algae, acclimated it to the big tank and put it on the bottom. All the algae is gone now (that took about 5 minutes, if only I could put a tang in my nano :P) but I only see a scant few tiny polyps left, I think its receded too far and will likely just dwindle into nothingness. Which is unfortunate as it was an absolutely gorgeous acanthastrea, it only had a few polyps left when it came into my posession. I really had high hopes for it though.

2008-04-04T16:44:00.001-07:00

My regal tang fits right in with Dory from Finding Nemo. In fact I think her name was Nori when I first got her, we mostly call her dipshit now. Every day after eating, she races to the surface of the water takes a gulp of air and then streaks back to the bottom of the tank, letting the water "fart" out her gills. She does this repeatedly for about 10 minutes.

Today I discovered she's busy at the surface of the water at one end of the tank. She just angles herself parallel with the waters surface and flips her fins and tail to splash the water (up onto my lighting hood of course which is now completely soaking into the wood ). After doing that for a few seconds she streaks away only to come back after about 15-30 seconds.

Currently she is doing the same flippy type thing but in my staghorn coral which is next to the glass on the right hand side of the tank. Often people think she's stuck in there but nope she's just being an idiot. I can actually hear her hitting the glass with her side. She kind of reminds me of a clownfish fanning her eggs.

I often wonder if this is the result of being in captivity for too long or these fish are really that "special"?