gerbilbox

I discovered lots of copepods in my tank! I haven't seen them since college biology lab. I noticed white specks scurrying along glass before the lights came on. I had to use a magnifying glass to recognized them, and I also spotted several females carrying their egg sacs. Whoohoo! I suspect that they arrived with my ISPF order that I introduced last week.

My tank is still cloudy, and it might be a bacterial bloom. It might be getting better but it's still cloudy even though I've been changing the filter floss daily and running activated carbon all this week. It started when I added the invertebrates from IPSF clouded the tank with brownish sediment that came with the animals. The brown sand eventually settled, but it remained cloudy and white. The bacterial bloom could have also started earlier but was overlapping with the fading algae bloom; I didn't notice it until the suspended algae completely faded away. I'm not concerned since various reef forum posts suggest that it's harmless and would eventually die off like my algae bloom. None of my critters are showing obvious signs of stress, and my new corals continue to do well; the hammer coral is starting to sprout new tentacles. The pH is holding at 8.0, which may be due to the bacterial bloom metabolizing oxygen since it was at 8.2 before.