Just a bit of an update. The tank is doing great once again. Every coral rebounded and many look better than ever. Go figure. I'm not really sure that I even lost anything at this point other than fish. Maybe a mushroom or two and a few polyps but that would be it. Only one coral shows any kind of distress and that is a finger coral which had some damage but is now healing up well. Even the star polyps that I thought were dead have rebounded and growing again while most of my leathers are looking better as far as polyp extension than they or any leather in the tank ever did.
The ORP has been climbing 5-7 points every day for the last four or five days. It kind of stalled around 250 for a little while. Its now up to a peak of 278 today and tomorrow should hit 285 based on the trend the last 4 or 5 days. I have not been running Ozone for over a week now as I didn't feel I needed it based on what I was seeing in the tank.
I really love my Apex. I've always loved it for the control it has provided me over the years but taken for granted it's monitoring ability whether it's PH, ORP or Conductivity. I have to say, it's really nice to be able to track the certain things like my ORP which to me is a very good indicator of a tanks water quality. Something that was never a concern before this issue is so useful to me now just by shear virtue that it gives me more tangible evidence (beyond my corals health) that my tank is rebounding.
This graph is my ORP trend for the last week. It's nice to see the continual improvement without my intervention other than daily 5 gallon water changes. A couple days ago, I added some Mircobacter to the water in the compartment with the ORP probe and you can see where the ORP dropped a bit as a result but bounced right back.
The new fish are doing well. The two Sargent Major Damsels broke out with a case of Lympho which was a bit concerning to say the least. One is completely cleared up and the other is just about normal now. At first I thought it might have been ich which really had me concerned as these fish came from a copper treated QT system. It was also one of the reason why I decided not to add any more fish last week. Fortunately the Fox Face didn't show any signs of it and is doing well. He's still pretty shy but keeping himself fat foraging on the rocks and avoiding my feeding.
My little power head trick didn't seem to phase the anemone as he just moved enough to avoid the direct flow so I pulled the power head out of the tank last week. Well today I came home and I didn't see him at which time I about panicked. After a quick glance around the tank, I found him back in his original spot which was a relief on many levels as he is no longer bugging any of the corals.
That is about it for now. I will get back on track with my restocking efforts maybe as early as this weekend as there are a few clowns, a couple yellow tail damsels and a lemon peel angel at my friends house waiting to come home. After that will be a bunch of cardinals and maybe some new flame angles. I've got a long way to go to get my fish population back to where it was but it will start getting closer over the next 30 days.
