Time Keeps Dragging On.....
Haven't quite given up yet, just wanted to keep my mouth shut a few days to see if I totally screwed up by rushing the livestock stocking, looks like I may have avoided crashing my system so far. 4 days after I introduced the first 7 fish I added three more, a pair of GSM Clowns and a Lawnmower Blenny, that was on the 18th, one week later and everything looks good, optimal water parameters etc. The Ricordea polyp I put in place on the 13th looked better than the ones in my frag tanks by the 18th, so I transferred another 13 polyps into the display, one week later all polyps are looking good and have expanded, a little early to claim they are growing, but that is my impression, I've photographed them for comparison purposes, in a few weeks we'll have a better idea. 2 small Xenia polyps hitchhiked in on the rubble I added on the 14th, they appear to be thriving 10 days later. On the 20th I set up one of my Eheim automated feeders, it is set to dispense a very small amount of 1 mm Spectrum pellets at 10 am, 1 pm, 4 pm & 7 pm. I am feeding other varied things (flakes, chopped seafood, frozen krill/plankton/mysis, chaeto from fuge, etc) whenever I think about it, the tank is getting fed 8 to ten times a day, this may sound like a formula for disaster, but the total quantity of food is much less than I was feeding the critters in the holding tanks, virtually all food is consumed within a minute or two, as previously mentioned the flow keeps everything in suspension until it is eaten, I love the small frequent feeding concept, I hope I can continue this while keeping my NO3- & PO4- zeroed out, but we shall see in a few months... Reconfigured the temporary lighting, by hanging the 6' hood a foot off the end of the tank I now have 2 250 HQI's centered over the 2 portholes, rather than at either end, getting a little better central lighting for the live rock. I've set up a timer, lights are going for 16 hours/day at this point, I'll leave it at that until I get the real lights in place. The fuge is on the same cycle as the tank, we'll do reverse daylight once the main lighting is in place. The Chaeto is growing like mad, I just sold 2 quantities on eBay, 1/2 gallon(packed) each, I think I will be able to export 1 of these units per week, I'll know better soon. Pods are reproducing like crazy, bristle worms and mini stars galore. Last weekend I added an additional 150 pounds or so of LR to create an elevated level in the back, it took me a total of 8 hours over three days repeatedly moving 6 or 8 rocks to get it where I wanted it without detracting from the intial layout Eric designed, only another reef keeper can understand that kind of insanity... I'm getting another bloom of algae showing up on the added LR identical to the first round, also getting a bit of other types of algae showing up, I'm planning on adding a few more snails this week. It may be my imagination, but I think some of the coralline is starting to color up, seems early for that though. I spotted the first life coming out on the LR last night, there are about 6 small pink feather dusters that showed up on one of the Kailini rocks. I tried to take photos, I'll go see how they came out now. I've got about 75 photos to go through in hopes of getting a few good ones, I will post those in a couple of hours or so.