View Single Post
Unread 12/30/2017, 05:13 PM   #105
Kinetic
Registered Member
 
Kinetic's Avatar
 
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: SF Bay Area
Posts: 7,230
A few updates:

Orchid dottybacks now have separate established burrows, but like to swim around together quite a bit. They seem to really like swimming next to snails for some reason. Anyone else notice this? Especially my big turbos.

My magnifica decided to walk around quite a bit recently. On Sunday it did a full walk around on the top of the pedestal, getting really close to my Gyre intake. I was worried (though the gyre has a mesh guard on it). Yesterday night, it fully got off the pedestal and walked down to where the BTA's are. Early morning it got back on the pedestal. Around lunch it came down to the front of the rockwork. And finally late afternoon it's back on the pedestal and has stayed there since. It inflated bigger than I've ever seen it. Probably 10" across (normally 6-7"). I'm not sure exactly what's going on. I didn't change the flow or lighting for awhile now. I don't really feed it, but I tried anyway to make sure it was OK, and it ate right away and has a tight mouth and is well inflated. I guess she just wanted a look around. Nothing died in her wake, so we're good. I hope she still likes the pedestal.

I've been feeding APBreed TDO Chroma Boost to the fish with the Neptune AFS for two weeks now. The fancy white extreme clownfish is a lot redder now, and the orange parts of the mocha davincis are really intense as well. They're all looking healthy. I think I'll continue feeding. I noticed the orchid dottybacks look a bit pinker than purple now (but that might just be my imagination). But the clowns are absolutely redder.

Sailfin blenny is still alive. I haven't seen him eat or chomp on anything. He's still small. I'm thinking of letting him out of the isolation box into the rest of the DT. I'm not sure he'll survive. He'll most likely get eaten by the Pygmy Hawkfish. I wonder if anyone has a pico/nano tank that'll take him nearby. Also, my tank doesn't have much algae these days. Might not survive if he won't eat any prepared foods.

Phosphates are still around, but low (7ppb). Nitrates aren't detectable. My chaeto has all melted away, and my nice DIY reactor is empty. I tried dosing iron, but nothing happened. I'm pretty sure my chaeto didn't make it because there's not enough nitrate. Overall, there's very little nuisance algae (just some film on the glass that I clean every 2 days), and there's no nitrates to speak of. So I guess I'll just leave things be. I was thinking of pulling my marinepure plate, but I'm scared that'll throw off the balance of everything else in my tank. It's a bit too much of a UNLS now. Not sure what to do next. Just leave it?

I've been hand dosing daily about 24mm of Alk/Ca using Aquaforest's Components. Mg has always been high, so I've been leaving that out. I'm keeping Alk at about 7.5-8.5dKH. I bought an Apex DOS that I need to pickup from a local reefer to help dose throughout the day instead of spiking it every night. I'll use that to dose the Alk/CA daily. I might pickup a BRS dosing pump and run it on a timer to dose some nitrates.

It's been cold. My 125watt heater isn't keeping up, and I have to run my house heater up to 66* so that my tank can keep up the heat when I'm away from home. I'm probably going to add another heater somehow (need to free up an outlet on the Neptune EB4).

Now for the photos:

Need to hide the plugs somehow. My Icecap Gyre batt backup is sticking out, boo:



The little isolation box on the top left is where the sailfin blenny lives for now. It's covered in algae. Check out how red my fancy white ext. is now after TDO Chromaboost.



The Rainbow BTA is getting bigger?



Mocha Davinci clowns are still drunk/high off of this mag:






Kinetic is offline   Reply With Quote