Made Topoff Water
Made another 5-gallon batch of top-off water tonight and added 1 teaspoon of kalk powder. I don’t think I made a note when I made the last batch, so I’m not sure if I’m still on a 3-day cycle… suppose I’ll find out on Sunday!
Water Change
Finally got around last night to doing the water change I mentioned doing over the weekend. Changed 10 gallons of water. For the first 5 gallons I siphoned algae & detritus directly off the live rock. For the second 5 gallons I used an MJ1200 to blow out the rock (what a whirlwind of detritus that caused) and then siphoned out what I could from the water column. I also cleaned the skimmer and emptied the collection jug.
New photos
After cleaning the acrylic the other day I decided to take some full tank photos. Didn’t spend any time cleaning up the tank scratches etc in photoshop, so these are pretty raw. This week I think I’ll try my hand at some new macro photos.
click for animated gif
I had tried making a smaller version of the above animated gif for the blog header, but it screwed up a bunch of formating and was so small that essentially no detail was visible. So… still trying to figure out a good header image. The series of photos above makes me really want to get some color in the top half of the tank. The lower 1/3 or half of the tank has been growing out for years and it’s pretty apparent that the top half is mostly barren live rock, especially on the side facing the living room (where the anemone had been for a couple months before moving). On the kitchen side there is at least the anemone, a small piece of millepora that is starting to grow, an encrusting rainbow monti, and a deepwater acro that is also starting to grow. That side will fill out in time, it’s the living room side that needs more color!
Here’s a photo of the tank looking into the kitchen. This is a merge of two photos to preserve the detail of both the tank in the foreground and the kitchen in the background. Looking at it in person the tank is a lot brighter, but the camera washed out any details at slower exposures.
View into the kitchen
Notice the Vortech MP40w on the tank wall? It’s barely visible, next to the closed loop intake pipe. I love how the Vortech pump blends in with the background. It is not apparent until you get close to the tank, and even then it’s not something that draws your eye to it.
Major tank cleaning underway
I got inspired by the new Magnavore algae cleaner, and decided yesterday to go to town on the coralline algae that had built up on the tank walls and back wall. This is stuff the Magnavore wasn’t taking off, so I needed to reach in and do it by hand. I used a couple old airline rewards cards on most of the tank, but also used a razor blade on the back wall where I’m not as concerned about scratches. The tank is looking great! There’s one area I need to finish, which was out of reach with the metal halides in the canopy. If I pull them out I’ll be able to reach that corner of the tank.
Today I hope to finish that, and do a 10-gallon water change. I’ll target siphon some algae and detritus in the rockwork with the first 5 gallons, and then I think I’ll blow out the rock with a power head and try to siphon all that out with the second 5 gallons.
More on the Art Institute exhibit
Browsing the Art Institute of Chicago’s website, I found more on the photograph I mentioned yesterday. It was a piece created by Jeff Wall, titled The Flooded Grave. Here’s a description from the Art Institute Website:
Jeff Wall uses state-of-the art photographic and computer technology to create images that share the composition, scale, and ambitions of the grandest history paintings. His works often have the formal clarity of documentary photography, however, most of his photographs rely on staged scenes. Unrivaled in its technical complexity, this landscape is the product of nearly two years of work. It comprises images taken in two Vancouver cemeteries that are seamlessly merged with photographs of a living aquatic system the artist created in his studio.
The Flooded Grave by Jeff Wall, Image Courtesy the Art Institute of Chicago
Very cool! In real life, the photo was almost 7 feet x 10 feet with remarkable detail. If you find yourself in Chicago I highly recommend you visit the Institute and check it out!!
Magnavore comes through; Art Institute Opening
Three of four posts ago I mentioned that I bought a new Magnavore algae cleaner but was accidentally shipped a glasscare brush instead of the acrylicare brush I had ordered. Sent them an email asking how to exchange the brush, and their response was a new tracking number. Received the acrylicare brush today in the mail. No return receipt, no other emails, so I suppose they don’t want the glasscare brush back…? I’m going to email them to make sure and then offer it to any local that could use it. Not sure how many people that will appeal to, since they’d need both a glass tank and a Magnavore cleaner…
The brush made a world of difference. I popped it on the cleaner, put on a new acrylic pad (what an awesome feature that is, replacement pads!) and went to town on the algae on the tank walls. I had already gotten the easy stuff – the film algae – off; the remaining algae was some coralline and some tough thin hard layer of algae, similar in appearance to coralline but dark green/brown. This brush worked wonders. It wasn’t single pass like it was for the normal film of algae, but slowly and steadily it took the algae off the tank walls. Much easier than my MagFloat.
Of course, now that the tank is super clean I can see all the fine scratches the acrylic has gotten over the past 2-1/2 years. Next tank will be glass!!
On a different note (but still reef related, I promise!) we visited the Art Institute here in Chicago last night for a members tour of their new Renzo Piano-designed wing. The architecture was beautiful. The modern art on display… not our cup of tea. It is just not an artform we appreciate. We did get two great laughs though. The video exhibit was a film of a British rapper in the studio. He was smoking a HUGE joint, and the narrator on the self-guided audio tour said [paraphrasing] “… the musician is so deeply intimate with his music when you look into his eyes watching this film you will see he is in an almost trance-like state of mind.” Uhhhhh…. yeah! He’s high as a kite!! The architecture exhibit had some pretty cool displays, but the layout left a bit to be desired. There was a single path for entry and exit, which caused a huge bottleneck of pedestrians in a corner, immediately adjacent to a video display that had people standing stationary watching. You would think an architecture exhibit would have been designed with better layout for traffic management…
Ready for the reef part? Outside the photography exhibit was this enormous photo of a graveyard with one dug out grave. It had standing water in the bottom full of lagoon-fauna! Anemones, urchins, etc. Very visually stunning, the contrast was very cool. There wasn’t much description available for the photo but I’ll see what I can dig up. Outside of the building itself I think it was our favorite piece last night.
