Yah with these peninsula tanks, I think elevating the coral is the key to the success so the fish can swim freely on the underside of the rock and you can shell the lower outside with corals creating a bubble on the inside where the fish can live and sleep.
So update time!
Tested the TDS in my RO/DI reservoir and it was at 185 TDS. So decided to change my filters as this is probably what was causing my Diatom problem. While I was changing my filters I was thinking about how the hobby has changed and how I have changed how I participate in the hobby and I realized I was getting too caught up in the "high end corals" and trying to make money from the hobby. This is causing me to skimp on focusing on making my display all that it can be instead making room for storing frags.
Over the next month or two these are my goals for my tank:
- Rehome the devil wrasse lurking in my sump (Scarlet pinstripe wrasse: free to anyone who wants it. PM me if you're interested. Would be a good addition to a tank with puffers and the like)
- Clean up and sell/trade my zoa grow out disks
- Move my skimmer into the chamber that is currently housing my zoa colonies
- build a reactor for growing gracilaria to supplement my tang's diet
- get my tank to a rock solid 7.8-8 dkh constant (Currently at 7.2 and slowly rising)
- start culturing phyto so I can get some of the NPS gorgonians and a feather starfish. I still need to figure out an efficient container to grow phyto in. If anyone has any ideas post here.
- get acropower on a dosing pump so I can get a consistant addition to the tank. I have always done the glug methodology on this but I think if I get it more consistent I will get much better results. PM me if you have a BRS 1.1 ML/M doser that you would be willing to trade for coral/some other equipment I have.
- Swap my garbage DA float switches out for my Hydor ATO. My floats keep getting stuck causing my ato to over fill.
But over the years I have lost touch of what this hobby is really about. Providing the best care we possibly can for the creatures we bring into our lives. I used to give frags of corals I liked to people I was close to in the hobby in case I had something happen to my tank but I have not done this in the last 3 years. I need to start doing this again.
And video update and some pictures.
Yah in just the 10 years I have been in this hobby, the attitude has changed so much in this hobby from helping each other achieve and learn and work together and more shifting to more make a profit so you can buy more "high end" corals. It really makes me sad when I see sps tanks of just 1/2 inch "high end" frags when a lot of the tanks never make it to maturity because the frags take 3-5 years to grow to the colonies that make a tank look full and awesome. I think it may have been a reef builders article that Mike Paletta wrote a year or so back that just finally clicked with me that made me want to shift my attitude in this hobby back to the way it was.
Unfortunately about 6 months ago life tossed a curve ball at me that caused me to tear down my tank. I am hoping to be able to start it back up again but not sure when.
