Christy's Reef

So last night I did my usual weekly waterchange (woohoo...NOT) and everything was tickety boo. Things weren't as dirty as I did double duty last weekend on the water changes as my ineptness necessitated it (yucky chiller guck into tank post-waterchange...SMRT). Anyhoo, I went out for a couple hours afterwards. Come home, check out the tank and my midas blenny is doing the funky chicken swimming around in circles. Talk about weird. I have a good look at him and his whole back end is discolored, sort of irridescent looking and he is not looking good. At one point he sort of sucked onto my tunze powerhead which I immediately unplugged. While he crawled under a rock, I inspected all the possibilities. Could he have been sucked onto the Tunze earlier? No, he would have had little indents all over his side from the suction. Then I spotted the salt on the halide bulb and reflector. I guess he must have taken a run at it. I figure either he got burned, or he landed on the eurobracing and floundered there in the heat for a bit before flopping back into the tank. Either way he didn't make it :( RIP little buddy.

As for the zoo muncher, well he doesn't have many zoos left to eat. I took them all out and put them in a 5 gallon tank. So far they're looking pretty good. I'm hoping they hold their color. Eventually they're going to be in a 6 gallon tank with about the same lighting (currently 2x15W CF bulbs). I really like the TruVu Microseries 6 gallon tank and a friend has offered to make me one of all things!! How sweet is that?? So currently I'm in the planning stages. I often wonder if planning and starting up a new tank isn't just as much or more fun than maintaining one. Well with my luck I can definitely say the planning is less frustrating than the maintenance. Anyway, I've already ordered the lighting, a coralife 12" 2x18W CF hood since the tank is 12x12x12. I'm also thinking about going with black sand, I haven't quite made my mind up but there will definitely be sand. I really miss it in the big tank but I think its removal has been key to my success in the last year.