Photos of the Day.

Playin' around with the camera again after cleaning out the water change bin.  The Agway container always gets a red slime in it.  Not sure if it's the container, the salt, or the RO water or something altogether different.  Anywats it doesn't seem to have any bad effects, but I keep cleaning it with clorox anyways.  What's an extra hour of work . . . .

Tunze cleaning.

About 45 minutes of work this morning cleaning 2 of the Tunzes from my main tank.  It's truly amazing how much loss in flow there is as they get dirty.   Forgot to mention the added saga yesterday as the skimmer wasn't working when I went to check on it before cleaning it.  Seems a piece of salt creep broke free from the outside of the venturi air intake and blocked the airflow so no bubbles.  Don't know how long it was like that, but it seemed to me that the water had gotten slightly greenish with excess algae.  Now 24 hours later everything is crystal clear again.  Such a delicate balance we keep.

Today's photo is a picture of my Tunze cleaning kit :)

Project corals.

I think I promised photos of corals that I'm hoping will become good candidates for farming.  The Gemmifera I bought way back in 2007, and it went brown for the longest time, but with my recent change to an ULNS (Ultra-low Nutrient System), it's been getting back the spectacular yellow with blue highlights it had when I first got it.  It's also a fast grower so it coulb be ideal.  The Tenuis is old school, but I love it when it's doing well, and the yellow with blue polyp is awesome, and not something I've ssen in anyone elses tank, though I'm sure it's out there somewhere . . .

Work, work, work.

Spent from 8 to 11 AM this morning doing tank chores.  Cleaned frag tank, cleaned skimmer, dosed 1 L B-Ionic, cleaned display tank, cleaned 2 tunzes for basement system with Muriatic acid, setup a new Tunze multicontroller in the basement so as to create back and forth flow, cleaned PO4x4 reactor and restarted PO4x4 on the system.  Haven't actually tested the water yet to confirm that it needed it, but I have a sneaking suspicion.

Tomorrow I need to clean the upstairs Tunzes.  I also have made a big change in the flow upstairs.  I was using 4 Tunzes simultaneously (2 x 6105s and 2 x 6055s), but they were all set to their lowest power.  Now I put them on max power and run one pair at a time so I can go back to creating an alternating flow pattern.  I had been noticing some anomalous growth formation with my monti's and after talking to Jason I decided it was because I had too much flow in one direction.  We'll see . . .

Going to work.

I always have some slight trepidation as I go to work since I'm gone from the house for 3 or 4 days.  Today is no different.  Cleaned the glass, siphoned the sand bed, added 1L of B-Ionic, and adjusted the RO top off drip (winter dry air) before heading out.  We'll see how it looks on Monday night when I get home : )

Joe

The Banggai Gardener

Never meant to be a fish breeder, but heck if my Banggai Cardinals don't keep producing viable offspring.  Sold 5 last month and I'm taking another 3 month old to Greenwich Aquaria today plus I've got 6 in the sump that are only a couple weeks old and by that I mean living out of the parents mouth.  Don't know how long they hang out in the parent mouth.  Guess I should figure that out and maybe pay a little more attention.

Did some reaquascaping the other day as my anemone moved a couple inches to one side and was encroaching on my latest favorite, my tenuis.  Also took some updated shots of "project" corals.  My Gemmifera is of particular interest as it's getting some amazing coloration and is a relatively fast grower.  After reading the article in CORAL magazine about Dustin Dorton and ORA, I'd love to be able to give him a viable mother colony to create a new commercially grown coral!  Wouldn't that be AWESOME?!?

Today's Maintenance.

8:45 AM.  The whole family is still asleep, but I've been up since 5:33 (trouble with getting older - you can't sleep in)  So far I calibrated a new pH probe and tested my tank water at about 7:30 AM - pH 8.3 then cleaned the basement frag tank and the skimmer.  I also retested the alkalinity since yesterdays reading was so low, and I added 1 L of B-Ionic as a result.  Today's reading was 8.5 dKH

Cleaning the frag tank is a big chore because I'm still getting a large amount of cyanobacteria in that tank.  Not sure why, but it seems to collect some type of spiky detritus.  I have no idea what the stuff is, but the tank has a bare bottom with 2 tunzes blowing on it continuously and it still builds up a layer of hair algae with red slime on the outside.  Fortunately I keep the tank almost empty so it's relatively easy to clean.  At the moment it's slightly more difficult than normal because I am keeping my buddies corals and fish in there until he gets his new tank up an running. 

On another side note if anyone is looking for me on RC, I am no longer there as I have become disenchanted with what I believe to be their heavy hand of censorship.  I was involved in a discussion regarding Red Sea's new product NO3:PO4x, but Randy Holmes-Farley, an Harvard and Stanford educated chemist highly regarded in many fields, felt that the discussion had become too tilted towards "how to use" the product versus a discussion worthy of "his" chemistry forum, and so the moderators decided to shut down the thread.  This was not the first time I have witnessed what I considered excessive interference with RC discussions so as a result I have said "Good-bye" to RC.


Joe