Christy's Reef

Well this week I found another dead crab, hairy little bugger and long claws. Good riddance I say. The less damage done, the happier I am.

So I guess with all those dead snails in my tank I'm having some sort of algae cycle. That crab didn't quite finish them off, I thought he just yanked them out of the shell. But when I pulled all the shells out, whew! thats some disgusting smell. I must have yarded about 10 snail shells out altogether. Friggin crabs. As you can see by the tank pic, the algae on the back glass just doesn't quit and there is quite a bit on the rocks. I suppose at some point I'm gonna have to get in there and remove it manually. I think I'll leave the stuff on the rocks though, I'm really not into taking the puzzle apart to scrub it all. Hopefully the fish will get snacky and finish it off for me!

Also you may, or may not, notice that the pump on the right hand side has magically turned into a hagen 802. In my infinite wisdom, I took the tunzes out one at a time for cleaning and managed to send one of the more important parts down the sink drain, the part that hangs it from the magnet. I had no idea it would actually fit down there, so FYI for those of you that have Tunze streams. The best part is that its gonna be awhile before I get the part. I felt really smrt that day. Thank god for my collection of random tank equipment.

So I put some more rock in my tank, probly another 5 pounds or so. Thats about 12 pounds in total in the last month or so, I think I'm going to stop now. Mostly because the tank is getting rather full and no doubt in about 6 months or so I'll decide I hate the "wall" look and want to sell half of it off. I've replaced the tank pic up top there to the latest and greatest. I even managed to get all my bali frags up onto the rock instead of hanging out on the bottom glass or in the "back forty". That was an accomplishment in itself. Man I have a ridiculous amount of coral, and I LOVE IT! :p

So some of my stuff is finally starting to color up. Its not really that obvious in the tank photo so I took some closeups of some of my favorite corals. This one is rather fuzzy and finally starting to color up. At some point last year it was really looking quite fabulous and then suddenly went to brown, now I'm seeing it return to its former glory and dang does it ever look cool!! This one is coloring up as well and somehow I seem to have 3 of them in my tank, from three different people. They all looked different in their tanks, however they've managed to become pretty much the same in mine. I'll still hold out for minute differences though :p My pink pocilipora damicornis has also become a glorious pink color and is pretty damned stunning.
My red blastomussa is doing quite spectacularly, and I just included this pic because its such a gorgeous colour. My yellow bali acro is doing quite well, but what got me in this pic was the small blue acro in the lower left. Absolutely amazing, its really too bad its so damned small, I don't want to take the risk of prying it off the rock to move it, its had a rather hard life being so small, and at one point it got munched on by that damn crab and was a mere nubbin. Its slowly coming back and actually has new growth on it!

Also I don't know whether I posted a pic of my new blastomussa. My friend Rich gave it to me, I guess he didn't want it in his tank anymore. Oh, now I remember, it had an aiptasia on it. Easy to remove and good score for me! It looks like its had a bit of a rough go but its slowly coming back in my tank. I'd sort of like to get it up off the bottom of the tank but as usual, real estate issues come into play.