Trouble in paradise.

So if you're the type that enjoys "SchadenFreude" then you'll love this . . . my favorite coral of all time, the Oregon Tort, has gotten sick.  Call it "white tip disease" or just slow death it wasn't happy so I took the chance and broke it out of the tank to dip it in Coral Revive and frag it into as many pieces as I could.  Much of the frags are pale and so I think sick, but the piece I put back is still dark navy, but only time will tell if this will work or not.  Hopefully at least a couple of the frags will live.  The silver lining if there is one, is that I have lots more room to add the ORA Pearlberry and Ice Fire Echinata in premium position now.  I'm including a couple crappy photos just so everyone can see what I'm talking about.  Funny thing is all the other corals are looking superb . . . .

Water change day.

Did a sump vacuum, rock rinse, and water change today.  2.5 hours.  Using ESV salt now instead of Coralife, and it mixes much faster and clearer, not that that means anything by itself, but there it is . . .

The Tubbs Blue Zoo rock has fully recovered with all polyps open.  Took about 1 month.  After a month of being closed up I was certain it was a goner, but here again patience and care paid off.  On the flip side, one of my stylo's fell over after I tried to move it into an area of lower light.  I left it at the top of the tank with high flow for about 6 months and it did grow, but it still hasn't gotten that deep pink with hints of purple that it had in Rick Souta's tank in Oregon.  We'll see if the new location is any better.  Possible it's like the purple acropora nana which doesn't really show it's best color until the colony grows fairly large.

Off to work tomorrow and this time I have to leave early so got to get everything done tonight.  Not gonna get to the skimmer this week, but it really doesn't look that bad so I think I'm o.k. waiting 'til next Tuesday.  Really want to get a web cam for my tank.  I'm hoping once I have Verizon FIOS installed I can try their home monitoring system!


That's it for today,

Joe

The list gets longer . . .

Since being home Sunday my days have been filled so the list of work is starting to pile up.  Hopefully, I can get it done next week:

water change
Iwaki pump clean
vacuum sump
rinse sump LR
adjust Ranco controller temp
catch Banggai babies in sump
cut frags

Interesting note:  I changed to 250 watt Radiums from 400 watt Radiums and then I brought the interval for the Radiums down from 10 hours to 8 hours and my corals never looked better.  Just today  I am adjusting the interval down to 7 hours, and we'll see how it goes.

Also, a picture of the new Scoly as well as two corals I thought I had lost.  The acan I got way back in 2007 when I changed from the 280 to the 240 and the Tubs I have been trying to grow for years.  Both corals seemed to have virtually disappeared and the Tubs were shut tight for the longest time, but now everybody seems to be recovering.  Sometimes it's just a mystery . . .

Hi ho Hi ho, It's off to work i go. . .

Once again the slight nervous trepidation as I prepare to leave my baby alone for 3 days.  Heading off to Rome, but I'll be back late Sunday night.  Cleaned the glass and the skimmer, dosed 1L of B-Ionic, and topped off the RO bucket before leaving.  Also got a new coral, but I'm worried about a tiny amount of damage on the rim.  It's a Scoly, and I'm a wee bit ashamed to say what I paid for it, but hey it's beautiful!  Can't seem to get the photo from email right now so I'll have to wait until I get back home Sunday or Monday.

Cheers All!

Joe

Testing and dosing day.

Started the morning by dosing 1L B-Ionic because I knew it had been a while since my last dose and figured the tank would need it.  Now this afternoon I just finished testing all the parameters:

Ca            450 ppt
Mg        1450 ppm
Alk           8.0 dKH
pH            8.3
I             above NSW
NO3       0.25 ppm
PO4        0.00 ppm

That says to me that the PO4x4 stuff works incredibly well.  I still can't believe that a mere 250 ml treats a 700 gallon system with no trouble.



Also did some aquascape rearranging today.  I was on ORA's webste reading up on my Ponape comments and noticed they recommended lower light for more green tinging of color and darker purple so I broke up the piece I had been growing and put frags at a couple different levels in the tank.  That also made the high light, high flow spot that it had been inhabiting available for a new frag.  It's a piece of $500 Efflo that is not looking to $500ish right now but I have high hopes!

Check out my new Facebook page!

I recently thought that to connect to more people, I should set up a Facebook page so if you have a chance, please go on and check it out, like it, and tell your friends about it!

http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/The-Coral-Gardener/260898250643419

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 . . . .