Wow....it's been a long time since I've updated this thread....I think it's time to liven it back up. A lot has happened since I last posted....I'll just shoot off the top of my head everything I can think of.
Added a second carpet nem.....6 months later removed both of them. Decided they were not for me. It was cool to watch the clowns live in them, but a dedicated tank would be needed next time.
Started acquiring coral to stock the tank....wife was complaining it looked empty.
I always enjoy frag swaps......till then. Some $#%^&@#^@%# seller though they would include bryopsis on their frags as a freebie.
That is the story of the next 6 months. My battle to rid my system of bryopsis.
I was lucky and it was contained to my 2 frag tanks, but in the end lost a good deal of frags as they could not be save. Also killed a handfull due to high Mag which didn't seem to work for me.
Ended up tearing down both frag tanks, sterilizing them, and rebooting them for a fresh start. I am now luckily 100% bryopsis free!!!!
Then my sister decides to tear down her 180g system, and gave me whatever I wanted out of the system. Frag tanks packed to the max, DT packed to the max, wow it got full fast. I also took in her Niger Trigger, Blue Jaw trigger, Yellow Tang, Blue Hippo Tang, and Bullseye Mandarin. That was added to my pair of Bellus Angels, Starry Blenny, Maldives Lyretail Anthias 1M 2 F.
I of course saw a small bloom as my bio load shot through the roof, but things returned to normal quickly and kept in check for a month or so but then started downhill.
I fought this for a month or 2, couldn't figure out what the cause was. I lost the Niger Trigger, Female Bellus and the 2 Female Anthias. Trigger and Anthias just disappeared, and the Female Bellus jumped. Water specs were perfect, couldn't find anything wrong. I was desperate as the snotty stuff in my tank was smothering coral, diatoms were heavy, and cyano was setting in. I tried chemi-clean, didn't help a thing, so I started looking further. Started running GFO....no help. Argh. Water of the RO/DI was reading about 7, which isn't perfect but I didn't expect to cause these types of issues. Again out of desperation I changed all filters and DI to see what happens. Amazingly things starting looking better in within 3 weeks nearly all the crud in my tank was gone. It was all tied to my RO/DI system. Now the tank is crystal clean...nothing growing on the rocks.
So that bring me to today. I just fragged up a TON of stuff as the local LFS was looking for some nicer coral, and got a fair amount of store credit......which quickly burned a hole in my pocket. So I brought home the following stock.
Purple Tang - Check!!!!
Sunburst Anthias - Check!!!!
Copperband which already eats mysis - Check!!!
Pink wall Hammer - Check!!!!
Funcky read and blue chalice - Check!!!
Hawaiian Palys - Check!!!!
Very soon I be fragging up most of my chalices and offering them up for sale.
As of tonight, I decided it was time to take action as I haven't bought the dosing pumps for my Reef Angel yet. I wouldn't have the time to mod the code as I want it anyway. So I made a quick and dirty 5 gallon dripper. I've got some brightwell ALK 8.3 buffer I'm using to drip. Starting off at 8 drips per minute to see what happens. I really had no idea where to start as the instructions only had a recipe in 8 oz increments....and if I matched those I got some unreal numbers. 10 teaspoons in 4 gallons, 8 drips per minute, lets see what happens.
And now some pics: which are being randomly picked