Christy's Reef

So I cranked up the Ozonizer last Tuesday. Hah, I have to laugh I always buy these things that I'm sort of scared of, they sit in the box for ages until I finally get motivated enough to install them. Then after they're installed its like my tank is no different than before. It cracks me up actually. I don't know what I thought, I guess I figured I'd set it up wrong and it would nuke my tank. It didn't. It hasn't really done much for my tank actually. I guess its one of those "time will tell" deals.

So I had a bit of a rock slide last week. One small rock was really off keel, something has been moving things around lately, big things. I'm not sure if its the fish or what but I thought I'd just move the rock back into position and half the rock ended up everywhere. I was pretty irate trying to put the damned tank back together after that. Its kind of like that kids game "Operation" you know the one where you have to remove the patients' organs without touching the sides or the buzzer goes off. Yeah well this was the case of not smashing/fragging the corals on the rocks. I did end up with a considerable number of tiny fragged bits thats for sure (mostly birdsnest bits). I worked on it for about 3 hours and then gave up and finished it the next day. Very frustrating and I lost my big yellow birdsnest that sat front and center in the tank (it was going through some extreme tissue necrosis anyway but depressing nonetheless). But I suppose it did end up working out well as I really got in there and did some maintenance that needed to be done for quite awhile now. Anyways, I've posted the newest tank photo (from today) up above.

So once again my tank is full of frags as I removed all the STN affected corals and clipped them off just above the area that had tissue recession and then remounted them. So far I haven't seen any recession at all (but its only been 4 days). I did take a few photos so I could post them here. Most of the recession was from the bottom up, which I've read on RC that is a nutrient issue. I hardly feed the tank at all though, I'm not sure where all the nutrients are coming from. Besides that since I haven't seen any recession on the newly clipped frags (yes I know its early) I'm wondering if maybe its some kind of bacterial infection? Who knows, I'm grasping at straws here.

Anyhoo, on to the photos. My large yellow acro, which originally looked like this, was starting to look like this. Much of the recession on this one was from the base up, but tissue necrosis was also happening in the middle of various branches and seemed to work its way from the outer branches, inwards. So finally after having a good look at it (and it was white on both sides by this time, I fragged the living crap out of it and it now looks like this (minus the algae bits, I basted those off but was too lazy to take another photo).

Yet another acro that was receeding. At the time this photo was taken, the skeleton was really white, after a few days I did notice the "greenness" which is bacteria/algae leaching into the skeleton due to excess phosphate (or so I've read). Thats when I cranked up the phosban reactor full tilt. That particular coral has been relocated and now looks like this.

Also my "blue" milli, which has never been blue except for the first 5 days I had it, has been receeding like crazy, much faster than many of the other corals and currently looks like this. Luckily I lopped off a chunk and relocated it, its actually starting to color up and you can see it if you squint really hard.

Throughout all this tank BS I must say that my clam is doing fabulously well and is sort of changing color on the edges of the mantle! It used to have a purple mantle with a pattern on it, the pattern is completely gone now, I can't decide whether I like the old version or new version better :p

So suffice it to say, my tank has a bit of a different look. Not hugely different but rocks and corals have been moved about. I'll be happy with it until the next wave of crap hits ;)