melev

Now that I'm nearly completely caught up from all the orders that were placed over the holidays, it's nice to feel a moment of relaxation. I totally expected a serious lull in business from Christmas to New Years, but it was quite the opposite. I went to spend time with family in Arizona, and the entire time I was away orders kept rolling in. I've spent all my time trying to get everything built, packed and shipped and stressed about it the entire time.

The reef is doing very well. I probably look at it 100 times a day from various angles. I love the bright colorful fish, and seeing the healthy corals encrusting and increasing in mass. Due to the size of the corals, it's already a task to make sure they aren't too close to another one. I'm watching hammer corals eroding neighboring acans - I expected the acans to be the sturdier of the two.

I did a quick check of a couple of parameters last night, alkalinity and phosphate. Alk was dead on, measuring 8.5 dKH. Phosphate had risen slightly, but I dosed 150 drops of Phosphate Rx and they are measuring between 0 and .03ppm this morning. I had a feeling PO4 had risen because of some nuisance brown film algae growing in both the 60g and the 400g in various areas. That should decrease now.

One of the ruby red anemones in the frag tank decided to wander. I couldn't even find it the first day it moved, until I checked during lights out. That's when the anemone is at its largest, and easier to spot. The next day I discovered it has split and a baby was near the parent. Last night I couldn't find the baby, but I'm sure it will turn up soon enough.

I have a big water change to do, then I'll be able to clean out the 265g poly tank thoroughly. It hasn't had a full cleaning in 21 months because of a lack of space in the fishroom. The 215g is gone, so now the container can be fully leaned over and laid on its side to clean it out with acid and water. There's quite a bit of sediment that needs to be flushed out, primarily.

The mandarin that I moved over to the 400g has already come out in the open, which is nice. He's too pretty to be hiding all the time. Hopefully he'll fatten up again, since he's in the tank that gets more food offerings.

Tank temperature has been pretty stable. Here's the last seven days. It mainly runs between 78° and 79° daily. This is the number I check the most.

pH measures between 8.1 and 8.25

ORP is dancing around the 300-320 range right now. I don't do anything about it, it's just a monitored reading. When it is way off, either something has happened or the probe needs a good cleaning.