Finally Back to the Reef!
The nursery is done! Well, painting of the nursery is at least done. We still have filing cabinets and a bookcase to sort out and make way for nursery furniture. But the most labor-intensive aspects of the nursery are now done. Unruly’s party last week went well and we had a great weekend with her parents. The tank wasn’t looking perfect, but I at least got the algae off the walls. Still have a fair amount of coralline on there to deal with, but the inhabitants were at least visible! Now I should finally have time to dedicate to doing some maintenance!
I thought the anemone shrimp may have died, a few weeks back. It was nowhere to be seen near the anemone’s. Over dinner one night unruly noticed a molt floating around the tank – good sign! Still, no shrimp to be seen near the anemones… turns out, that’s because the shrimp is now in the frogspawn on the other side of the tank! I’ll have to get a photo of it. When it’s out and about on the top of the coral, it’s pretty cool looking.
Other than that, not a lot happening in the tank. Nutrient levels must have spiked a bit when I ran skimmerless a few weeks ago, because caulerpa suddenly took off in the tank. I need to deal with that – at some point this week I would like to do a 10-gallon water change, replace the GFO and carbon, and probably do some manual removal of the algae with tweezers. I think the GFO has been in the filter for close to 6 weeks now? Way too long.
A Quick Update
Been pretty focused on the nursery lately so not much to update on the tank. Cleaned the skimmer out yesterday and made some new top-off water. Biggest excitement on the tank has been one of the anemones, which has been moving back and forth every other day between two spots in the tank. Pretty entertaining.
Sometime in the next two days I’m going to do a thorough cleaning on the tank walls. Unruly has some friends coming in on Thursday, so that’s my deadline!
New Lamps, Skimmer Back In Service
Received the new 175W Iwakasi lamps on Saturday from Hellolights and put them right into service. I wanted to stagger their replacement, doing one now and the other in a month or two, but it’s been over a year since I’ve repalced these and I didn’t want to waste any more time. Next round I may stagger them.
Turned the skimmer back on last night for the first time in about 2 weeks. I had been trying every other day, only to have it overflow immediately due to the painting in the other room. It’s finally pretty stable. I have noticed some increased algae growth – especially some caulerpa in the display tank. Drat.
Planning on a water change tomorrow night, with replacement filter media.
