First things first. This damn algae I have been battling for some time now. Its a brown slime algae i'm assuming, starts as a thing film on the sand then, the rocks and on and on. I was struggling with P04 for a while, couldn't get it under 0.25ppm. Picked up a GFO reactor, and its been running non stop for about 2 weeks. "measurable" P04 is 0.0ppm, I even tried doubling up the salifert test like the instructions say for a smaller scale test. The only thing that seemed to work was a 3day black out I did at the beginning of November. It worked awesome, tank was spotless for about 2 days. then it all came back, green hair algae, brown slime. its so bad my poor skunk shrimp is covered in algae. I do 15% water changes weekly, before the change I blast all the rock surfaces, and pull out whatever algae I can get by hand. Is there any way to end this battle? On a side note, It seems that all my hermits and nassarious snails have gone MIA. All my florida and mexican turbos are still counted for.
Question 2: While hunting for a missing goby today, I climbed behind the tank and got a look inside the overflow of the tank. What I found were the pictures below..
http://www.flickr.com/photos/titanphotog/11411660363/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/titanphotog/11411524355
the ant looking things, I believe someone told me are good pods, and not to worry about them, But there's a freaking TON in there. Should I just leave them alone, or try to get some of them to go down the bulkhead and into the fuge? And the white stringy things. They appear to be fan worms of some kind? can anyone confirm or ID? The second picture looks like eggs of some kind, but too big to be pods possibly?
Last question.. and then I think i'm done for a while. We have a very shy goby, he's a yashi gobi, Named him waldo cause we can never find the little guy. He has his hole, and loves his hole. He was starting to get adventures and he would come out during feeding. Then the coral banded shrimp decided to hang out right above his home, and we haven't seen him come out since. Not for food, or anything. I could see his little head in the hole, so I know he's still there, and I check the ground outside the tank daily, out of paranoia. Is he going to be alright? will he work up his courage to venture back out later on? Or is there something I should do to try and relive some stress from him?
Question 2: While hunting for a missing goby today, I climbed behind the tank and got a look inside the overflow of the tank. What I found were the pictures below..
http://www.flickr.com/photos/titanphotog/11411660363/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/titanphotog/11411524355
the ant looking things, I believe someone told me are good pods, and not to worry about them, But there's a freaking TON in there. Should I just leave them alone, or try to get some of them to go down the bulkhead and into the fuge? And the white stringy things. They appear to be fan worms of some kind? can anyone confirm or ID? The second picture looks like eggs of some kind, but too big to be pods possibly?
Last question.. and then I think i'm done for a while. We have a very shy goby, he's a yashi gobi, Named him waldo cause we can never find the little guy. He has his hole, and loves his hole. He was starting to get adventures and he would come out during feeding. Then the coral banded shrimp decided to hang out right above his home, and we haven't seen him come out since. Not for food, or anything. I could see his little head in the hole, so I know he's still there, and I check the ground outside the tank daily, out of paranoia. Is he going to be alright? will he work up his courage to venture back out later on? Or is there something I should do to try and relive some stress from him?
