It's a beauty, wish my spouse would take over every once in awhile and let me sit around, supervise and drink a beer! Lucky you!
Well at any given moment on a weekend there is a 35% probability I will have a beer in my hand. That goes up to 55% after 11am.
No new pictures to share at this moment but I'll give a status update...
I have had some setbacks in the QT realm. I lost my jawfish due to a presumed praziquantel overdose, and both of my beloved tank-raised double saddle butterflies who so valiantly fought ich and were due to be put in the display in only a matter of days. I'll spare the details but it was a heartbreaking loss. I really liked those guys. Normally if a fish can make it to the display he does great. I just seem to have a problem getting them in there.
I had held off on putting the butterflies in because I decided to treat the tank with Flatworm Exit. I've done this twice now and it seems to kill 95% of the little bastards, but there are always some stragglers that live to fight another day. I was nervous about the treatment, but there were no ill-effects on either occasion, other than my hydnophora getting really pissed off. Anyway I think I may have a nutrient problem, as I am having some brown cyano (I think) growing on my rocks. And flatworms feed on detritus. My fuge is only 40 gallons, and half of that is taken up with a DSB. And this is for a 240 gallon tank. I may add an auxiliary fuge. My nitrates and phosphates read zero but hair algae is about in the fuge (thankfully) and cyano is starting to grow in the main tank. Maybe a bigger fuge will help.
I am also thinking of adding one of the new ATI Bubblemaster skimmers. This should help pull out some extra junk, if I can figure out how to fit the damn thing into my sump (internal models only at this point).
Last week I moved up to 400W 10K Hamilton bulbs. My acros are brown, and one theory is that my 250W bulbs were too far off the surface (12"). The tank is 24" deep, so it could be they're not receiving enough light. I'll see if this changes things. I am not planning to add any more acros until I can be sure I can get them to color up. My fish load is small, I wonder if they need more poop to thrive? Maybe my little girl can help with that...
Also the tank (or rather my Aquacontroller) woke me up at 5:00am this morning. It's funny how the baby can wake up at 5am and I either kick my wife, or just go back to sleep. After all she's got to learn to sleep through the night, right? Well if the tank alarm goes off at 5am I'm out of bed and running around the crawlspace in my underwear in 30 seconds flat. As usual it turned out to be my ORP alarm. Usually my ORP ranges between 370 and 390 but it was up to 415. Usually this means its time to clean the probe. How nice of the tank to inform me of this at 5am.
My next planned addition is an Achilles tang and a spotted mandarin. Difficult fish but I'm hoping a well-aerated and high flow 8' long tank with lots of swimming room will provide a good environment.
Thanks for reading, my wife is tired of my talking about the tank so I have to vent somewhere.
