Happy Birthday Andy
Happy birthday goes out to my brother, who turns the big THREE-OH today!! Wow time flies. Here’s wishing you a fun, surf- and wind-filled day Andy!!!!
Did some maintenance
Didn’t get to everything on my list, but spent some time doing maintenance on the tank last night. I focused mainly on pulling out nuisance algae, and boy did I get a lot. Only a little halimedia, but I managed to grab a whole bunch of caulerpa. This was growing in the back corner, under where I placed the Vortech, in a very difficult to reach location. I pulled out mounds of the stuff, but after I finished for the night I saw that there is a whole lot more remaining for me to pull. I also saw little tufts of halimedia tucked deep into crevices in the rockwork that I’ll need to focus on with tweezers, and a little red cotton algae that’s still kicking. To further combat that I’m going to change out the rowaphos media tonight during a water change, see if I can pull some more phosphate out of the rocks.
I cleaned the skimmer (needed it badly, and boy did it stink), and fragged an encrusting montipora that was growing on the closed loop return that I pulled out over the weekend. I tried making three frags, but two of them were small fragments and I’m not sure if they’ll make it. The third was a very large piece that I expect will begin encrusting pretty quickly. Speaking of frags, the birdsnest frag I made last week looks like it is doing well. The stag was too small of a cutting and didn’t live, so I’ll try that one again some time. The main coral is doing great in the tank.
We saw the male flameback angel demonstrating for the female again while we were eating dinner. He’s doing this a lot earlier in the evening than I would expect from what I’ve read. We saw this a good 3-1/2 hours before the last halide shuts off, but I’ve read he should be starting around an hour before lights out… maybe they’re warming up?
Saw some flirting! And went bare bottom!
No, the two are not related!!!
Did not go barebottom intentionally. I am still tweaking the settings on the new Vortech pump and managed to blow all the sand out of the front corners of the tank by accident. I figured that would happen, and I think I’ll have to just live with it. Inherent in having that much flow in such a short tank.
On a positive note, the corals seemed to adjust to the added flow just fine yesterday. Interestingly, an acropora well outside of what could be considered “direct flow” is the only coral without full polyp extension. Never would have expected that. But the corals closest to the pump – anemone, torch coral, frogspawn, and a millepora – all look very happy. This pump is keeping a lot of detritus in suspension, and the skimmer has been pulling like mad. Man, so far it has really been worth the money. I am wishing this pump had been around when I was planning the tank; I would have designed more clearance between the back of the tank and the refrigerator so I could add a second MP40 on the other side of the overflow. C’est la vie.
I do need to blow out the rocks a bit, I created a bit of a dust storm Friday night playing with the pump and sand settled all over the place.
Tonight I plan on doing that, a partial water change, clean the skimmer, and possibly prune some caulerpa. I also might start to set up my RODI storage tank. We’ll see how much I want to tackle in one evening.
The flirting: Saw some courting behaviors in the male (or what we assume has become the male) Brazilian Flameback Angel last night. I had noticed it earlier last week as well. In the evening hours he swims in the middle of the tank, his blue flanks blanch – turning a light grey, and he flitters on his side for the female. So far she seems to be ignoring him, but this is exciting for us to witness at least!
Pumping Changes Are Done!
Spent a good part of the day yesterday changing the closed loop and getting the new Ecotech Vortech MP40w installed. All in all it went really well. I took my time with it and didn’t have any snafu’s.
More details to come but:
I removed the Maxijet 1200’s.
Rerouted one outlet of the Oceans Motion valve to the “sweeping Closed Loop” outlets.
Reconfigured the sweeping closed loop to allow better rotation.
And, of course, installed the Vortech pump.
It was the sweeping closed loop work that took the most time, and I’ll detail that on the Equipment webpage of unrulymck.com. It works, and rotation is perfect, but it squeeks and groans a bit… so I had to shut it down. Too loud. :(
I noticed one of the actinic bulbs was burnt out… I have to go back through my records and see when they were replaced. Could they be causing the cyano outbreak? Speaking of lights, the tank participated in Earth Hour yesterday. Actually, to make it easier I left the lights off all day. The inhabitants didn’t seem to mind one bit. I’m sure with the crazy flow patterns and sand storms I created while changing around the pumps, the lights off just felt like a normal tropical storm blowing through. It was kind of appropriate, with the crazy late-winter storm blowing outside.
Successful tests
I checked out the new pump last night – awesome awesome awesome. Can’t wait to get this installed. So much flow.
I also test fit some pieces for my sweeping closed loop modifications – and it worked perfectly. I’m stoked, and surprised I never thought of this when I first set the system up.
I want to get the system up and running tonight, but I know I’ll probably have to wait until Saturday to complete everything. If I try to get it done tonight it will be hasty and I run the risk of screwing something up.
Weekend Update
I set up a filter sock on my return line Saturday, and spent a bit of time scrubbing some algae off the rocks with a toothbrush. I followed that up with blowing out the rock with a power head, and then unplugged the metal halides to do 48 hours of darkness. In the process I created a rockslide and broke a montipora, whoops. Glued that broken piece to a plug, now have a new frag to offer up for sale. I also clipped a small piece of the birds nest and the purple stag. I don’t know if the pieces were large enough to survive as a frag, time will tell. I have more faith in the birds nest.
Yesterday I blew out the rock some more and did a 5-gallon water change.
My thinking at this point, and maybe I’ve posted this already – it’s been on my mind so much I can’t keep track – is that my rocks have become saturated with phosphates/nitrates. The things I’m doing to pull the phosphates out of the water column aren’t effective, because the algae is getting its nutrients straight from the rocks. That at least would explain why my water always tests ~zero for both phosphates and nitrates, and why I see fading colors on my corals when I run VSV or a phosphate media reactor. Now I’m going to try manually clearing a bunch of algae, still running the phosphate reactor, and maybe a larger cleanup crew (again). I don’t know about the clean up crew, I haven’t seen the current crew take much of a liking to the algae in the tank. Maybe a mexican turbo snail…
The rest of the parts I had to order for my pumping revisions are enroute. I need to buy a couple things at the local hardware store and LFS, and then I should be good to go. I am excited to see the difference it will make!
