Sadly, I have to report that the beautiful Copperband Butterfly died today. It looked rather thin last night, which was the first time I noticed it. Since I saw it eat frozen food at the LFS, I wasn't worried about it. Plus it eats featerdusters and aiptasia, right? Well, my son's tank has both of those!
I feel badly, because she was a beauty. *sigh*
I've been meaning to update my Blog for some time now, but things keep getting in the way. A few days ago, I took pictures of every creature I could in the 55g reef. Here's the page.
I built some cooling fan brackets for a club member, so I felt they needed to be added to a webpage. I incorporated the cooling fans on my 55g to the same page, since they were only listed in these logs and wouldn't be found otherwise.
While feeding the tanks tonight, I noticed Peaches was out a little more, and the brusing I observed seem lessened. There's hope yet.
I went to Dallas Marine today because they were giving away the eels they had, and picked up a Snowflake eel. Another club member has one in his reef tank, so I felt it wasn't a huge risk. Still, it is going in my son's 29g where it can't cause too much trouble. Hiding in a piece of LR (live rock), I decided to see what else came with it:
Over in my 29g, things are looking better. One of the three BTAs has been having some trouble eating. Because it is hanging off the side of a rock, gravity isn't a benefit plus the neighboring BTA seems to be stealing its food. Keeping the clownfish out of these anemones during feeding is a must, because they are just so hard on it. I can't wait for these to grow larger so they can defend themselves and actually consume a meal without needing so much intervention on my part.
Here is a new bicolor blenny, peeking out from the frilly mushrooms. Interestingly, the lower mushroom didn't like the little guy and deflated pretty quickly. It should be interesting to see where this little guy ends up in the future.
My crazy Cleaner Shrimp is hosting in my Rose BTA now. Literally, it stands in the anemone and just hangs out. Amazing.
One of the benefits of selling RO/DI units, I have plenty of filters on hand at any time. So I swapped out the sediment and carbon block prefilters this week, since it is June. I'll change them again in December, as this seems like an easy way to remember.
Finally! The BTA is done splitting. It only took about two months for it to finish.
I now have three baby BTAs in my 29g. I would have had four, but one disintegrated due to lack of food. My mistake... I was waiting for it to come out in the open to be fed and didn't make it a priority to feed it, and it just melted away one afternoon to my surprise.
I feed the BTAs every other day with krill or shrimp. Now I'll make sure to feed each one of these guys.
Running the T-5s today, I noticed two things. The tank looked the same as when I've run VHO actinics, so the new bulbs are working out perfectly. The other thing I noticed is the tank is running a half degree lower than usual, and that is a good thing. Less heat, less wattage, same look! So far, I'm happy. :)
Two new things to share today:
I installed the new High Output lighting to supplement my Metal Halides, because I felt they would save me money in bulbs and in wattage consumed each day: T-5 Lighting
I fell in love with a baby Tridacna maxima clam, and traded in a rock covered with more than 30 red mushrooms in exchange.
