Fri, 11/04/2005 - 18:52

I want to thank everyone that took the time to call, email or PM their thoughts, suggestions, and personal (similar) experiences. It really was tough to accept my mistake, since it cost the lives of the animals I choose to care for on a daily basis. Day by day, I felt a little better and was able to accept the situation and focus on what I still have. The losses were terrible, because many were with me for many years and several are very difficult to replace due to their specific needs. I'm not in any hurry to get more fish, and am still considering the removal of the Hippo tangs that are in the tank now.

Some things I've been considering:

I've always wanted a Potters Angel. Now that I have no dwarf angels in the tank, there is no risk of fighting.

It would be nice to have a harem of Flame Angels - 1 male and 5 females. It would look fantastic, but Flame Angels are only reef-safe half of the time. So putting 6 of them in my reef might be tempting, but likely a huge mistake in judgement unless I just want rocks. LOL

I may try getting some clams again. No Flame Angel or Coral Beauty to pick at it, nor the Copperband Butterfly that was known to pick at clams in the past.

I could get an open meaty brain, because again no angels. Are you starting to see a trend here? Those beautiful fish do limit the choices some.

It would be fun to put in like 15 Green or Blue Chromis so they can school through the tank, but then I'm increasing the bioload again.

Or a bunch of Dispar Anthias, but they have to be feed 2-3 times per day, so again bioload and waste to factor into the equation.

Since my fascination with SPS continues, it almost seems wiser to remove the Hippos (Tucker nips at everything, and the two Yellow Bellies are overly active and splash my bulbs regularly) and focus on colorful corals. Once the tank is filling out, I could consider adding some other fish later.

Since the event occured, the tank never looked bad. The water quality looks remarkable, the corals are happy, and the skimmer is producing less skimmate. Water tests indicate everything is on track, and the fact that I see very little green growing on the glass anymore is another great indicator. Coralline is really expanding well on the back glass of the tank, something I'd not seen in months. Keeping PO4 low has made a huge difference.

A few days ago, an SPS colony that I've had for 23 months died in 24 hours. I decided to put it on the porch to bleach, and I'll likely save it. Here it is just before it was 100% gone:

I wasn't surprised this coral died, because for the past 90 days it has looked very strange with too many colors. The tissue didn't look right either. It looked rather brittle, for lack of a better word. Corals tend to stay one color, and this one had four or more colors occuring at once, and each day that it was still alive was a bonus. I would have loved to keep it longer, as the polyps were purple, but this was an understandable loss and not one of those "What on earth happened?!" type situations.

In the meantime, I picked up a new coral, a lovely staghorn with blue tips. You can see the coral that just died right behind it on the right.

As you can see from this picture, the tank looks pretty good. It just doesn't have the activity is had in the past.

In other news, Casper (my seahorse) isn't too happy with her new tankmate. I added a large Peppermint Shrimp to devour the aiptasia in there, and ever since Casper has clung to one spot almost around the clock. Tomorrow I'll transfer the shrimp to my reef where it can work on those aiptasia. I'll probably move the Cleaner shrimp as well, because it has grown quite a bit. Casper wants me to build her new tank soon. More about that later.

The prop tank has had flatworm problems, but last weekend I nuked them with Flatworm eXit, and cleaned the tank well. As the flatworms died, I siphoned them out into a bucket. The water in the bucket was somewhat orange, so siphoning them out was wise to avoid letting their toxin affect the corals. It looks so much better now, and I hope the corals will show improvement. Here's my article if you have to treat your tank: Flatworms!