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  #11  
Old 01-10-2013, 10:14 PM
SmallFry SmallFry is offline
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Default Finally, an update..

So a few things have happened since the last update..

Sadly the flasher wrasse did another of his disappearing acts again, but this time he didn't reappear. I'm now down to the four fish. The gramma is still the same size, but the others have grown quite a bit..

I bought a frag of Green Star Polyps to as a test piece for a while because it was cheap, and apparently pretty hard to kill.. It seemed to do OK. I did have a few issues with cyano and algae growth though which eventually spurred me into building my upflow algae scrubber.



I was skeptical at first, and all it's grown so far is brown slime and a few odd tufts of green fuzzy stuff, but the cyano seems to have gone and the tank is looking cleaner, so I guess it's doing something.

I have also invested in a 5 stage RO/DI system that does drinking water for the house which will probably be helping and the RO sure tastes better than city water. The improvements in terms of algae/cyano pre-date that so I think a lot of it is actually the scrubber. It is nice now not having to go to the local gas station and worry about what the TDS might be. The total volume of the system is now about 120gallons and it gets a 10% water change every couple of weeks. I don't dose anything beyond that at the moment because there's not enough in there to be using that much. In time I will probably need to start as I build up the corals/clams..

Buoyed up by this success I went to the LFS (OK, 2 1/2 hrs away) for some snails to complete the job. Came back with a Favia, and a Montipora digitata..



and



I've since moved the Montipora to the top of the rock work, and it's really growing - faster than I expected. The polyps don't come out too far when the lights are on, but they really come out at night. I figure if it's growing that much it must be happy..
The Favia doesn't seem to be doing that much, perhaps the darker parts are turning a paler shade of brown and the polyps don't seem to be expanding that much. I'm not really that sure of what to do with it since I've read a fair bit on the internet suggesting that it's a pretty low light coral, but my coral book says that it likes intense light but will 'tolerate' lower light. I wonder if I'm blasting it with too much light.. Doesn't seem to bothered about eating either, though this may be my technique..

Anyway, I went to the LFS again to get the snails which they were out of last time. I got them, but somehow ended up with a Fromia sea star, and a Crocea Clam. It's now sat pretty much where the Montipora was before I moved it, at the same level as the Favia (about 8-9" away horizontally) and seems fairly happy. Well, it doesn't look unhappy as far as I can see - clam body language isn't something I know a huge amount about. It's a little over 2".

From the front of the tank


And from above


Does anyone else have this problem with going to the LFS for something cheap and returning with something else that's totally different and exponentially more expensive?

I think things will stay pretty much like this for the next couple of months while I'm back at school, but my plan is to get some more frags in there at some point..
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  #12  
Old 12-31-2013, 05:20 AM
SmallFry SmallFry is offline
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Default

Things have been going pretty slowly but I did get some more frags - a few different kinds of montipora, which grew well up to the point that the montipora eating Nudibranchs appeared. You can guess the rest.

The tank has been montipora-less for about 6 months now so I think they should've died out and I might try adding some more montipora,as they seemed to like it in there.

I'm getting to spend more time on the tank now since we finished the Airstream (OK it'll never be totally finished but the workload has decreased) and even got to take it on holiday.


I noticed that my DIY rock was starting to crumble, then noticed my alk wouldn't stay up and it emerged that my calcium test was nuts. The end of the story is that the DIY rock got replaced with 50lbs of pukani from fijireefrock on Boxing ay. And very nice stuff it is too..


Now I just need more coral..
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