It's been a month since my last update! Hmm... a few things:
- The new fish are all doing really well. The tailspot blenny comes out mostly at feeding time. I love to see that fish. May have to get more blennies!
- I chopped out almost the entire colony of sour apple birdsnest. It was HUGE... just barely fit in a 5 gallon bucket. There is still a small colony left over. I must have fragged the colony 20 times in 2 years and it still got massive. Such a cool coral though so I couldn't get rid of it entirely. I've actually sold the colony several times and always kept a small frag. I just love how it looks but it was crowding and shading other corals way too much. Was able to put a few corals in the massive space opened up - good size colony of tricolor validia, frag of 20k lokani, and I also moved my pink stylo into this spot. Showing close-up of this area below. Updated FTS also below. Next change will be removing the red/orange cap so I have more real estate for branching corals (1-2 more).
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- Tunze sent me a flow rectifier for my 6150 stream 3. This is pretty awesome! It's just a vortex that takes the rotating current and makes the flow laminar. Really increases the flowthrough in a VERY noticeable way. Holy cow! If you have a stream 3 and a 6' (+) tank, you need to get the flow rectifier. I'm considering getting a second and only powering the tank with those 2 pumps. That's how good they are. Before upgrading the pump I was getting a protein slick on the far end of the tank despite having 2 x 6105s and the stream 3 moving water. Now, the slick is completely gone. I expect my skimmer to pull more gunk now. Water clarity should also improve once the fine sediment is removed from the water column. The corals should also respond quite nicely.
- Flooded my basement! Ok, that's a bit dramatic. Here's the full story... I added the flow rectifier to the 6150 last night, awesome. This morning I was coming downstairs at 4:30 am to work out. On my way past the basement stairs I hear a noise that just isn't right. Listen more... way too much water noise! ***?! I head down and don't see anything wrong with my tank. Look at the sump and it's got about 1/3 the water it should. Unplug the return pump. Look in the display again. The stream 3 is now pointing up at a 45 deg angle and sloshing water all over, and obviously some of it going out of the tank! Figure about 8-10 gallons of saltwater spilled on the carpet. Argh!! So I didn't end up working out but spent 2 hours cleaning up saltwater instead. :0) Thankfully there were only a couple small spots that were saturated. It was hard to get much with the shop vac so mostly I used towels to soak it up. Now there are fans all around. Good thing is that it's dry winter here in Michigan instead of humid summer. That'll help quite a bit. The water was never "piling up" so the walls are fine. Really gonna need to make sure the inside of the stand dries out fully though as it's almost entirely closed and somewhat inaccessible.
Aftermath - reduced the power on the stream 3 to pulse between 75% (instead of 100%) and about 40%. It still moves a LOT of water but hopefully not enough to move itself again. I may move it to the overflow so it stays put even with stronger flow (1/4" acrylic vs 1/2" glass). If I get a second, it'll definitely go on the overflow (opposite sides) and that should result in some pretty wicked flow.
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