OP
OP
surfn
I bleed orange and maroon
well, the lack of the frag tank feel was done on purpose. all of my previous tanks over the years had that feel....and i was always embarrased to take any kind of a full tank shot.
but the frag tank part is so much fun and addicting...
but in all honesty, i was just tired of all the different stuff i had, so when i created this tank I thinned out at least 50%+ of my corals and kept ONLY the best stuff i had. instead of having lots of small frags, i wanted to keep my best stuff and let it grow into colonies.
its a very good thing i did this too, b/c even though i upgraded gallons.......i lost surface area by going with the cube....as i don't have near as much room.
as far as the algae....i'm very picky about this. last spring i had tons of hair algae, bubble algae, and dictoya. the dictoya was the worse.....
when i moved, i scrubbed ALL of the rock relentlessly. but after about a month it started growing back in force.
this pic was taken in august i think...and is just totally depressing as grows over zoas and other corals to the point it chokes them out.
since then....i've been on an all out war to get rid of this stuff. here are some of the things i credit to most of its erradication (knock on wood).
i also had a good deal of bubble algae due to some "bad rock" leaching something that is feeding the bubble algae. i employed several emerald crabs since and they've actually done a good job getting rid of most of it over time.
-limit frozen food feedings to twice a week. flake food every other day and sometimes dried seaweed if i have time.
-***diverse*** clean up crew, consisting of different types of snails, small hermits, and emerald crabs. esspecially important to get snails that burrow through the sand (jumbo nasarius, cerith, fighting conchs etc.)
-1 bristle tooth tang that is quite small, but does a good job of grazing on the rock. he wouldn't touch the dictoya at all until i started to limit feedings....but now he will take very small nips out of it...but its not really enough to do much damage.....although over several months it may have.
-i also boosted magnesium to around ~1500ppm, and have kept it there over several months. you won't see any kinds of changes in algae unless you keep these numbers up consistently, and also do what i listed above.
