More maintenance
I took some time tonight to clean some things up in the tank. I started by pulling some more caulerpa and halimeda algae off the rocks. Then I scraped some algae from around the edge of what I learned today is a “Tropicana Twister” montipora. It’s an amazing orange color, but has barely grown for me. While doing so I saw the octofrogspawn had pulled in a bit and what did I see between the branches? HUNDREDS of little bubble algaes. Sure am glad I have those emerald crabs in the tank, doing their jobs… I immediately started plucking the bubbles off. I had read that when the bubbles are small and dark green there’s no need to worry about releasing spores, so I didn’t take too much care when plucking. Several popped. So it goes.
I also rearranged some of the corals in the tank. There was a clutter of frags on the sand so I placed a couple up in the rockwork. One is an oddly shaped montipora. It was brown when I got it and now is a purplish brown… still mostly brown. I moved that up a little higher to see if it would color up a bit. I then moved a “fuzzy acro” down onto the sand bed. It has been really fading in color since I got it [actually, it's the top-down photo in the far right sidebar]. At first I attributed it to the red bugs it had when I acquired the frag, but now I’m thinking too much light. The tips are a great purple color, and it’s grown quite a bit, but the green tissue has been fading. I moved the raspberry mille into its place. A bit more central under the lights, which I think will make the frag look better from more viewpoints, but a bit less flow; I’ll see how it reacts and I may end up moving it back.
Quiet weekend
This weekend I spent some time pruning back caulerpa in the display tank. In the process I uncovered a big pile of bubble algae. Thankfully that was held together by a very small piece of live rock, so I yanked the whole thing from the tank and tossed it. Much easier than trying to prune individual bubbles! The caulerpa has really gotten away from me. I was surprised how much had built up in there.
So later this week I’ll be doing a water change, maybe prune some more algae. Exciting plans!
Water Change, and Knocked Up
Did a regular 5-gallon water change last night. I tried the skimmer method again and it worked a bit better this time. It took about 4 hours to complete but worked much better than my first attempt.
This time I was smart enough not to reach in the tank or anything before starting the water change, so the skimmer didn’t lose its head of foam. I turned off my make-up controls, closed the skimmer discharge valve a bit and directed the collection-cup waste tube into my water change waste-water bucket. I adjusted it a couple times but pretty much maintained a slow trickle of water into the bucket. The waste water never went 100% clear, but smelled nastier at the start than at the finish. The waste bucket definitely smelled ripe, I think it was much dirtier than the water I’ve collected using a traditional siphon method. When the waste bucket was full, I opened the skimmer valve back up, letting the foam head settle down again, and then added my new salt water to the sump. It was nice to see that the sump held enough water that I could pull my 5-gallons out with the return pump running without needing to top off.
Next time I do this I may let the process take 6 hours or so, and may even follow it up with a traditional 5-gallon water change via siphoning – after using a powerhead to blow out the live rock and stir up detritus in the tank.
Unrelated note, the male pajama cardinal was carrying eggs this morning. There was some bickering this past week, with both torn fins on both pajama cardinals. The female won out, apparently. Isn’t that usually how it works? :)
Not much happening…
I’ve been quiet for a while, because not much has been going on. I’ve been doing only routine maintenance this past week, after the flurry of activity last Tues & Weds. Feedings, keeping the tank walls relatively clean. Still holding off on VSV. I’ve decided I may resume dosing that in a month or two, there are some other tank parameters and pieces of equipment I want to get set up first.
I’ve decided that I want to increase my flow in the tank. I am hoping to do so by changing my “MJ1200 sweeping closed loop.” That loop right now is two MJ1200’s in the overflow, plumbed to two outlets on the far side of the tank. “Sweeping” because I have a small motor that can rotate the outlets ~90 degrees. They do a great job of keeping the surface agitated, but my original hope was to improve flow in the middle of the rockwork where the real closed loop doesn’t have much impact. The MJ1200’s just aren’t powerful enough to reach the rockwork though, the flow falls short. So, I am going to look into making my own version of a propeller-based powerhead, similar to Vortech of Koralia or Tunze. The big difference is I would like to have the motors out of the water (ala Vortech) but located above the tank. I’m really not sure how this will work, but I’m looking into it. Ideally it will be quiet, controllable speed, and powerful enough to keep detritus off the rockwork where it’s currently settling.
Second round of maintenance!
I wasted a lot (a lot) of time tonight trying to fix that leaking union at the Eheim. It was just one thing after another. But, it is running and it is tight. While I had everything pulled out to access the pump I added a cup of kalk to my reactor.
I read an interesting idea tonight on reefcentral. Accomplish a water change by skimming extremely wet. The logic was, you want to get the nastiest water possible out during a water change. What water would you rather use to start a new system with – skimmate, overflow water, or water you siphoned out of the tank? That had me sold. Skimmate for my water changes it is! That is some of the nastiest stuff I’ve ever seen. Some people have set up an automated system to skim a few gallons out over the course of a couple days, at the same time topping off with new salt water. That wouldn’t work well for me, but I did like one other guy’s method. He adds his fresh salt water to the tank, and then skims really wet for a couple hours, and gets a few gallons (in his case several dozen gallons) of skimmate out.
I tried it tonight… but I wasn’t as successful. When I restarted the Eheim pump the foam head on the skimmer disappeared. In fact, even as I write this it hasn’t started skimming again. I tried the new method anyway. I took the drain hose from the skimmer cup and routed it to my 5-gallon water change bucket. I closed the skimmer valve almost 100%, let the “foam” level rise up the neck, and over an hour or so collected the skimmate (which was almost perfectly clear). I think it was pretty much water straight from my overflow. But, no worse than my normal water change. Next time I’ll know not to disturb the tank at all and keep the head built up.
After I was done I dosed Prodibio BioDigest. This was my last vial, so time to make a purchase.
Drip leak, and a return call from the good Doctors.
Woke up this morning and heard the Eheim making a hell of a racket, so I shut it down. Right after I did I saw something out of the corner of my eye and after a closer look saw a small leak dripping from the inlet piping. I must not have tightened the union enough or the O-ring got offset or something. I didn’t bother trying to fix it because I had to go to work, so I valved off the pump and drained the line to stop the leak. It was dry underneath, so I think the pump suction was drawing in air instead of leaking water. That must have been the noise I heard. If it was bright enough to see inside the tank I’m sure I would have seen a bunch of microbubbles on the rock. Guess I know what I’ll be working on first tonight. These unions were a pain in the neck when I installed the system and they’re just as bad now.
Got a voicemail from Drs Foster & Smith regarding the third Brazillian Flameback Angel. This is the 3rd call from them, if anyone is keeping score. First they told me the fish couldn’t be shipped due to health. Then they called and confirmed the fish would not be shipable and I swear they said it had died in recovery. Now they left a message saying it has recovered and can be shipped if I am interested?? Bizarre. I think I will decline though. The two in the tank seem to have worked out a dominance heirarchy and I really don’t want to disrupt that. I think this third fish would have been the largest of the trio, and that is just asking for trouble.
