Preparing for Thanksgiving Break
We’ll be out of town for a few days over Thanksgiving, starting Weds morning. I’m not worried about temperature control, the skimmer, make-up water, or lighting, but I am hesitant to not feed the tank for essentially 4 days. We had a vacation feeder, but even with new batteries the drum wouldn’t rotate, so over lunch today I’m going to try to find a LFS in Evanston and buy a new one. I may even leave it in place after Thanksgiving, to feed the fish a few pellets during the middle of the day.
In the meantime I’ve been feeding the tank well. Two feedings of Rod’s last night (one in the evening, one at lights out), and this morning I went hog wild and dropped in two cubes of frozen mysis while I got ready for work. Between the hungry fish and the corals with feeding tentacles stilll extended, I don’t think much went to waste. Tonight I’ll probably do two small Rod’s feedings again.
Now the question is what to do with unruly’s betta?
Saturday Maintenance – Water change, and some planning
Today I did some minor maintenance in addition to the regular dosing of VSV and blowing out of live rock. Very minor – did a 5-gallon water change.
Didn’t get around to figuring out the moonlinght situation, but I did plan out some new electrical routing and some high- and low-level cutouts for pumps and the makeup water solenoid. That took quite a bit of planning but I think I have a good solution worked out now. Maybe I’ll scan the electric diagrams I made up and post them here… but more likely is I’ll upload them to the equipment section of the reef page.
Some regular maintenance, some trouble shooting
This morning I dropped a cube of frozen mysis in the tank to let the fish feed a bit. I think a good portion went down the overflow. Doh!
Right after work and before heading out for dinner I did some quick maintenance on the tank. I epoxied an SPS frag in place, a nice pink/purple one that kept getting knocked over by the urchin. I had a little epoxy left over so I used it to try to stabilize one of the rocks. I left the skimmer off (the curing epoxy makes it overflow) and dosed 2.5ml VSV, fed the tank some Rod’s food.
After we got back later that night I turned the skimmer back on. The sump had a film on the surface of the water from the kalk reactor. I don’t know why, this has never happened in the past. Over-saturated? I need to test the parameters. Anyway, I moved the kalk reactor discharge tube into the skimmer discharge pipe, which dumps into the fuge area. I figure this will cause better mixing than letting the reactor discharge drip onto the surface of the water. In the morning I’ll break up the film some more and see if it returns.
Big disappointment of the night was that the moonlights were off. The 6VDC transformer was plugged in, so I have a little investigating to do tomorrow. It can only be so many things, there’s not much to the moonlight system.
Some cleaning, and a PJ update
Last night I took a powerhead to the live rock (first time since Sunday) and cleaned the skimmer. An awful lot of detritus came off the rock. I continue to see a big dent being made in the algae so I am not going to let myself get discouraged; I think a lot of what I see blowing around the tank lately is dead algae. I accidentally broke a tip off my pink/purple SPS while cleaning off the rock. That’s twice I’ve nailed that coral, it is a fast grower though.
Saw a snail in the skimmer body. I can only imagine it got in there by travelling down the overflow. Hmmmm. Is that a flood waiting to happen? I have all the float switches necessary for a high-level cutout; I think it’s time I put one in.
I am thinking about changing the sump layout a bit, I don’t know. Have had this thought cross my mind before. Maybe take the fuge area and open it up a bit, replace a portion of the glass wall with some egg crate.
Male PJ spit the eggs overnight.
Slacked off…
Yesterday morning I neglected to dose VSV. Last night the lights shut off before I managed to feed the tank, so I didn’t bother. Also didn’t blow out the live rock.
This morning I did remember to dose VSV (~2.6ml) and decided to drop a cube of frozen mysis in the tank, since the fish were all semi-awake. The male PJ is still carrying eggs.
I noticed a film on the surface of the sump water – from the kalk water? I will investigate that, maybe I need to submerge the feed lne instead of dripping it onto the surface. Tonight I also want to remeasure the water parameters (alk & ca primarily) and track it this week to see how stable it is.
Water Parameters
Checked the water parameters for the first time in what feels like a long time…
Ca: 360
Alk: 7.2 dKH
Mg: 1320
Salinity: 35 ppt
I cleaned out the kalk reactor and put in 2/3 cup of kalk.
I also mixed up some two-part solution, I may need to start dosing that weekly or more often. I added 1.5oz of each part tonight.
