Not too much to report but some pictures what the hey. Wish I could add my name to the hat of 8' tanks that seem to be all the rage but that's um not going to happen anytime soon.
I technically had fish in the tank in 2010! New Year's Eve I got a zero nitrite reading after what felt like weeks hovering at 0.1 so I promptly went and picked up a few small chromis. A couple days later I moved over the one big chromis from the cube, they found each other and school pretty good. It's hilarious the size difference, the four new are about 1" max and the old guy is almost 2.5" so it's like seeing the mother ship or something.
Diatom bloom is abating, not all gone as yet but going away. Water remains cloudy though and has been for the better part of at least a week. Previously it would sort of come and go. I'm not sure what's up with that. I don't have an ammonia test kit but I have been testing nitrite and it's consistently reading zero. So hopefully it will clear up.
Filter socks - have to clean them out everyday. Hope that's a function of the diatoms and will settle down to something less frequent.
January 8 FTS -
You can see the flow pattern of the hidden 6080 on the back glass, the big brown patch. I'm thinking the 6080 is going to come out, I have some major tweaking to do with the flow still before I'm happy with what I see.
End shot:
Other than that I've moved over some gorgonians, a baby RBTA, and added a pile of cleanup crew.
I took a picture of these guys in the bucket because I figure that's the last I'll ever see of them..
Going..
Going ... gone ...
Fighter meets Strawberry..
Some spaghetti worms from the small cube..
And this little guy makes 6 fish so far. Need a better photo but this was the best of the bunch.
He had actually been chased into the sump a few times in the cube that he ended up living there for a few months. So for now I'm not going to move any fish over to let him establish here and hopefully not be bullied. The ones I'm a little worried about are the trigger, the canary wrasse and the dottyback. I think the chasing should be not a problem once he's established and these guys become the newcomers.
In the meantime I'm dripping some more corals and some clams for introduction tomorrow. I'd do more but the cloudy water really has me a little worried. As we all know the only thing that happens quickly is disaster so I'm not allowing myself to be rushed here. The next few steps are going to be interesting: tomorrow, if all goes well, I plan to move the two clams out of the big cube into the tank. But the 2 clams in the little tank are going to go into the cube for now instead of the big tank, and then maybe they'll have their turn after another week or so. The reason for this is that they are firmly attached to their rocks - and I'm not going to remove them - but the rocks are covered in aiptasia and caulerpa. So the tangs, rabbits and butterflies are going to have a heyday cleaning the rocks off.
Caulerpa, valonia and anything else that's green for that matter, shouldn't be an issue in the big tank much the same as it isn't an issue in the big cube, since the 3 tangs and the rabbit devour the stuff if given any. Aiptasia on the other hand is something I hope not to introduce if I can avoid it since the butterflies aren't going to go into the big tank.
And on that last note I am going to be starting up a new thread for my pending FOWLR.
Won't be anything too spectacular though. The cube is going to come down and be sold, the two butterflies and the golden dwarf eel will be moved into their own home. Could just keep them in the cube indefinitely but the cube has to be moved anyhow, won't really fit in the tank room in the corner thanks to the TWO corner overflows (who builds a 30" cube with dual overflows .. seriously. Anyhow, water under the bridge now) and just to hopefully keep costs "somewhat" under control it will be a bit of a downgrade. Oh well. So much for the plan to move to one tank to simplify things.