melev

Funny how things can change between blog entries. I picked up four new corals at Frank's Tanks last night, got them acclimated, dipped and placed in the 400g.

The cyano I was grumbling about was a little bit worse in the frag tank and I decided what am I doing waiting for it to go away when I sell the stuff that kills it sitting on a shelf for my customers? I mean, I sell the stuff I use, so why am I not using it? RedCyano Rx has been dosed. That takes care of that.

The skimmer is offline for the next few days, and now's the prefect time to clean the twin Eheim pumps. The carbon reactor has been cleaned out - ready for a refill. The biopellet reactor's upper plate has gotten significantly clogged up with sponge, bacteria and whatever mulm comes off the pellets themselves to the point that I had to pull it out and clean it. Overnight, I soaked a 1000ml (yes, 1 liter) of Vertex NP biopellets to replenish the media in the reactor. I've talked about biopellets quite a bit on RA, but there's been no official product review for Vertex written, so I'll get that done soon.

Interestingly, since adding the cyano remover to my tank, the water draining into the sump has become quieter and I'm not sure why. It's been a little louder than I prefer, nearly surging into the refugium and bubble tower but since adding RedCyano Rx it's significantly quieter.

The new corals I picked up at Frank's were grown in the store from frags. I liked that these weren't tiny specks of life, because once you add something to the 400g you need it to be big enough to see it from a few feet away.

Lime-green A. millepora

Green Slimer, or A. yongei - I'm trying this coral yet again. I don't know why I have such a fascination with this common / mundane coral but I love it and have had zero luck keeping it alive long term. I'm trying once more.

A. millepora - this one has purple tips and the overall fuzzy coral seemed somewhat bluish. I love millis...

A very nice deepwater Acropora sp. Possibly A. caroliniana.

It was easier to float them in the 60g than the 400g, for acclimation as well as picture taking. After 30 minutes in ReVive, they were added to the reef tank, placed into the sandbed for the time being until I can putty them to the rockwork.

In the 60g cube, I keep a sponge filter on the Vortech at all times. It's a little bit more work because I need to pull it off for cleaning every three days, but I don't want to take a chance and have an anemone get damaged one day. Each time I feed this tank, I turn off the Vortech and let the livestock capture the food blowing around from the return line's flow. 10 minutes later, I turn the Vortech back on. During the feeding period, this is the perfect time to clean that sponge if I think about it.

Yesterday, I also had to do a little Apex maintenance. For some reason a few weeks ago, I couldn't use the display module's buttons. It somehow got password protected. Then when I tried to log into the Apex with my computer's browser, it didn't accept my password. After sending Neptune Systems an email, I got their reply within 10 minutes with what I needed to do. Re-establishing contact with my controller, I was able to get to the dashboard once more. I don't need to use this very much, but when desired, it should work. I've noticed my heaters seem to be on a lot lately, and the Apex shows that they seem to be running two-to-three hours at a time to raise the tank temperature half a degree. That seems like a lot considering I have 1150w of heaters plugged in. The Apex indicates I'm only using about 6 amps per session, which indicates that two of the four heaters need to be adjusted a little bit higher so they will kick on and perform their task. Once all four are working, I expect the powered duration to decrease.