Theres an LFS near(I say near, it's on the other side of Columbia so about 35 minutes away) that keeps a nice selection of the Caribsea lifelock out so you can see what you're buying. I'm gonna go pick a few nice cavey pieces to add to the tank. Might do that Sunday...
Sounds like a great idea.
The clowns got an extra bedroom ;)Soo... we caved. We got a new squishy. The indo bug was biting really bad and we had to scratch it. I ordered a small 4" Trachyphyllia radiata. My huge radiata completely dwarfs it right now, but it will grow. It's red, purple and green.
Just out of acclimation, still closed up
Clownfish checking out the new addition
Hour and a half later, opened up pretty well...
Size comparison with the metallic green monster
Quick mid maintenance cycle update...
Alk holding steady at 7.8dKH @ 4.1ml dose a day. Switched to new reagent for the Hana alk tester and it was 0.1dKH low when we did a comparison before our last vial ran out. I upped the dose to 4.25ml a day to see if we can get it back up closer to 8.0dKH.
The vibrant is still on 2.5ml a day dose. I haven't seen any progress with the ulva, actually quite the opposite, but the skimmer cup was GREEN today. Like huge green flakes in the cup green.
ATI ICP results are back for the test we sent off one Feb 13. Most major elements are in line, trace are all but depleted and we have a few things elevated. Particularly sulphur. Not sure where that could be coming from. May be a dirty sand bed. Next maintenance day I'm going to siphon it really well and get any detritus out of the dead spots in the back of the tank. Nutrients are bottomed out. I cant detect any with my kits and ATI is showing .01 and .02 ppm NO3 and PO4.
With the trace elements depleted, and the nutrients all but bottomed out, I decided to toss the chaeto. Yep, I shut down my refugium. It was too effective, and out competeing corals for the good stuff. The vibrant might have killed it off anyway, and I'm not going to put it back in after eventually clearing up the ulva and not treating the chaeto also. I've been tossing around the idea of a cryptic zone and I think that's which way I'm leaning right now. I'm going to downsize skimmers to the Curve 3.5 but I have to trim some acrylic to get it to fit in the front of the sump, then the large chamber will be a dedicated cryptic zone. I'll put some mud down, and add some live rock for some structure, then look into seeding some sponges for filtration. Also KZ has a product to dose for sponge growth. Eventually I'd like to run sockless with this set up, little to no carbon and no GFO.
+10000 but Robin already knew that ;)
Amen!!! Really interested to see how the cryptic zone does.Quick mid maintenance cycle update...
Alk holding steady at 7.8dKH @ 4.1ml dose a day. Switched to new reagent for the Hana alk tester and it was 0.1dKH low when we did a comparison before our last vial ran out. I upped the dose to 4.25ml a day to see if we can get it back up closer to 8.0dKH.
The vibrant is still on 2.5ml a day dose. I haven't seen any progress with the ulva, actually quite the opposite, but the skimmer cup was GREEN today. Like huge green flakes in the cup green.
ATI ICP results are back for the test we sent off one Feb 13. Most major elements are in line, trace are all but depleted and we have a few things elevated. Particularly sulphur. Not sure where that could be coming from. May be a dirty sand bed. Next maintenance day I'm going to siphon it really well and get any detritus out of the dead spots in the back of the tank. Nutrients are bottomed out. I cant detect any with my kits and ATI is showing .01 and .02 ppm NO3 and PO4.
With the trace elements depleted, and the nutrients all but bottomed out, I decided to toss the chaeto. Yep, I shut down my refugium. It was too effective, and out competeing corals for the good stuff. The vibrant might have killed it off anyway, and I'm not going to put it back in after eventually clearing up the ulva and not treating the chaeto also. I've been tossing around the idea of a cryptic zone and I think that's which way I'm leaning right now. I'm going to downsize skimmers to the Curve 3.5 but I have to trim some acrylic to get it to fit in the front of the sump, then the large chamber will be a dedicated cryptic zone. I'll put some mud down, and add some live rock for some structure, then look into seeding some sponges for filtration. Also KZ has a product to dose for sponge growth. Eventually I'd like to run sockless with this set up, little to no carbon and no GFO.
I dont think anything can compete with it for nutrient removal. I was feeding 2 cubes of the San Fran Bay brine, plankton and or PE mysis and a thicc chunk of LRS a day, and nutrients were dead zero. Fish were happy af, but couldn't get nutrients to show up. Unless you are dosing extra trace on top of what your corals use, then you'll have problems.
16 new corals halfway through March, seems reasonable!Had a great time at Reef Dreams this Saturday. Not gonna let a little mass hysteria keep me from buying coral... @Magellan brought it to my attention I may have a little problem with that. Not even 3 full months into the year and I've already added double digit numbers to the tank.
Anyway, we had a limited budget this year compared to the previous years, but still managed to get some nice pieces. The main coral I wanted even if it took up my entire budget was Gonzo's XXX goni. (DO NOT GOOGLE THAT)...
It ended up only taking half of our budget, so we got a handful more from Brian at JamRock corals. I've always enjoyed doing business with him and he had some fire in his frag tank. We got a tall 1.5-2" Bali Slimmer, an even taller elkhorn branching monti, what the heck Bubblegum digi, a sunset encrusting monti, and a rainbow acan.
Water change tomorrow(due this past saturday) and trimming the sump to fit the smaller skimmer in the front chamber. Still going to run the larger Curve 5 for now. Then comes planning for the cryptic zone.
Ehhh, not sure. Probably just keep up biweekly water changes.
