5/16/2012 - Been quite a while since I've updated. I've been rebuilding this website and working on a few others, which has kept me rather busy in what little spare time I have.

Since the last update, the rock change looks to have solved the bryopsis problem - now I have bubble algae. Pretty sure I got it off of a frag from Coral Corral, considering the first place I saw it was on a frag from them. I have gotten 3 emerald crabs so far, and I haven't one them eat any bubble algae, and two of them have perished.

I have stuck with chaetomorpha algae, skimming and vinegar for nutrient control. Other than the aformentioned bubble algae, it's been very good so far. I've been doing 5g water changes weekly and my top off has about 3 tablespoons of vinergar and kalkwasser to match. The SPS growth has really started to take off in the last 2 months. The coraline algae is starting to hold really good now.

I've spent the summer doing some remodeling of the house, which included retiling the area where the tank was. So we had the drain the tank, move the corals, fish and rock, yet try to save as much water as possible. I set up the 29 gallon tank nearby for the fish, 2 trash cans with 6 mil liners for water and some rocks that have encrusted coral and a large plastic bin for the reast of the coral. Tip: if you ever have to move your tank - have a long hose that you can use, really makes this process so much easier.

To move the tank, we drained as much water as possible and I put some of those hard plastic furniture mover thingys under each corner. This made it so easy! We moved the tank and stand together, got the rock, coral fish back into the tank and refilled in about 2 hours flat. I thought that went incredibly well. After the 3 weeks it took to redo the floor in the original room, we did it again - 2 hours again. Of course, the rock work was a mess, and it took a couple of weeks to get the coral and rock back where I liked it.

In the last month, I've had a small outbreak of hair algae, not too bad, I think it's sourcing from the pukani rock I got last year. I'm just pulling as it grows, and I'm also dipping smaller rocks in hydrogen peroxcide, seems to work. The emerald crab seems to have knocked back the bubble algae. Still so sign of bryopsis...

10/15/2012

Been busy playing with new camera (Panasonic Lumix FZ200). Still fighting hair algae. Have beeb plucking and sticking with vinegar and chaetomorpha. It's not getting worse, but nothing seems to eat it either. Starting back on the old algaefix this week.

Here's a couple of tank shots.

11/30
Spent the last 2 months trying to fight off a hair algae assault. Used some Algae Fix (to no avail) and went back to GFO. The Algae Fix managed to kill off my chaetomorpha, piss of some of the SPS, but not dent the hair algae. The GFO was dry and rusty and no matter how much I rinsed, there was brown everywhere.

I'm now on my second run of GFO, used a lot less and turned the flow in the reactor way down. In the midst of all this, right before Thanksgiving, the sump decided to leak. Of course, we were going out of town for the entire week. So, swapped it out with the 29 gallon glass tank after adding a couple of acrylic partitions for bubble control. The tank was higher than the old sump and had to redo a lot of the plumbing too. Nothing like a challenge to redo plumbing, replace the sump and do it before all the fish die from lack of oxygen.

So far, the hair algae isn't gone, but I've stopped adding Algae Fix and have been using spot treatments of hydrogen peroxide (which works great), pulling by hand and I seem to be making progress. None of the rocks are so bad they require replacement, but I also found out the wife feeds way too much (source?).