melev

After a cursory google search, I didn't land on a satisfying answer to how birdsnest shows up in different areas of the tank. It's an easy coral to frag, and can be glued where you like. It can break accidentally and grow where it lands. But how does is show up on the side of some random rock all of a sudden? Are polyps blowing around and landing elsewhere, growing new colonies? If so, that's news to me.

I spotted this little guy in April. Granted, it's low enough that there is ...

Many years ago, I had an SPS die in my 29g reef. I was told that it likely died due to boring algae. Unsure what they meant by that, I asked for a little more information since the coral never had any type of algae on it while it was alive. I was told that the skeleton being green was an indication that a type of algae was within the skeleton itself, that it had bored its way into the coral and weakened the living tissue. The most common cases of boring algae are when a system has very high ...

Checking on an acropora in the reef today, I saw new white areas of damage on a coral that has never suffered once. Since I thought I'd resolved the alkalinity situation earlier this week, that meant two things: 1) I'm not done with areas of loss, and 2) I hadn't found the solution yet. The anemones still aren't their normal happy selves, and the SPS losses are discouraging. I should just fill the tank with leathers and mushrooms and call it a day.

Every day this week my skimmer ...

My blog a few days ago detailed how some corals and anemones were distressed, while other livestock seemed fine. I learned a few things that day when I tried to restore the lack of alkalinity in the system, which is great.

I think more personal reefs suffer from alkalinity swings than most realize. Sure, accidents happen and excess solutions pump into the tank non-stop to the point that the livestock has little chance of survival. Some tanks overheat, others literally catch fire, ...

Strange mystery with my reef for the past 48-72 hours. It started about three days ago when I observed all the anemones in the Anemone cube shriveling up as if they were spawning. The tank didn't look cloudy though.


What I'd done prior to this event was replace the CO2 tank to my calcium reactor which had evaporated in less than two weeks due to some leak, more than likely. Since a lack of CO2 existed for at least a day, the pH in the calcium reactor rose from the normal ...