Tony B (UK)
Important cool title
Update time
Not a great deal of change, on the negative side I had a problem with some alphagrog. Even though I have used this for some time to frag corals (with no issues), over the last couple of months things were not quite right. Colour was down (Martin, a local reefer noticed this too) and half the sps had zero growth, the other half just kept going with slightly dimmer colours.
A couple of weeks ago I removed all the alphagrog out of the system and the change was almost instant; corals that had showed no signs of growth burts into life again, colours are now getting better, lps look happier too. So I think it is reasonable to conclude that I had a dodgy bit of alphagrog - I will not be using that again. Today some of the microfauna decided they were going to spawn on mass, sperm and eggs a plenty; this normal healthy type of activity was lacking whilst I had alphagrog in the system.#
Other news
I recently bought a copperband butterfly fish, the main purpose was to manage the aiptasia as my pepermint shrimps have gone on strike. A lovely fish, he quickly started to accept frozen foods and then he decided to help me and eat all the aiptasia. After all the aiptasia were gone, Mr Copperband thought he would use his initiative, he wanted to be proactive. So he thought he'd help me some more and he decided that some of the lps needed a trim too! Mr Copperband is now in one of my frag tanks, where he has quickly made a new friend with Mr Scopas.
I've had to remove some corals as I had some colonies that had just outgrown the tank and I also needed to make space for some new bits that I had been waiting on for ages, namely a acropora echinata and a montipora setosa. I also had a huge cat in the frag system which is now back in the main tank. The corals that have been removed are my orange plating monti and an acro efflo. I've also moved one or two other bits about.
I am very pleased to report that the tank is now back on track, the corals are once again growing so fast that they're keeping my wire snips wet and hard at work with fragging sessions. There is a huge amount of new growth on all the corals, colours are almost back to where they were and no doubt given another month or so, things will be 100% again.
I also bought some chromis, I have a shoal of eight. They add so much life and movement to the tank, no doubt these will be right little devils once they start to spawn.
Later this week I hope to do a photo shoot if I get time. For now, here's a video showing the tank as of today, sorry for the poor quality it is taken off my phone:
http://youtu.be/E62bVT0801g
Not a great deal of change, on the negative side I had a problem with some alphagrog. Even though I have used this for some time to frag corals (with no issues), over the last couple of months things were not quite right. Colour was down (Martin, a local reefer noticed this too) and half the sps had zero growth, the other half just kept going with slightly dimmer colours.
A couple of weeks ago I removed all the alphagrog out of the system and the change was almost instant; corals that had showed no signs of growth burts into life again, colours are now getting better, lps look happier too. So I think it is reasonable to conclude that I had a dodgy bit of alphagrog - I will not be using that again. Today some of the microfauna decided they were going to spawn on mass, sperm and eggs a plenty; this normal healthy type of activity was lacking whilst I had alphagrog in the system.#
Other news
I recently bought a copperband butterfly fish, the main purpose was to manage the aiptasia as my pepermint shrimps have gone on strike. A lovely fish, he quickly started to accept frozen foods and then he decided to help me and eat all the aiptasia. After all the aiptasia were gone, Mr Copperband thought he would use his initiative, he wanted to be proactive. So he thought he'd help me some more and he decided that some of the lps needed a trim too! Mr Copperband is now in one of my frag tanks, where he has quickly made a new friend with Mr Scopas.
I've had to remove some corals as I had some colonies that had just outgrown the tank and I also needed to make space for some new bits that I had been waiting on for ages, namely a acropora echinata and a montipora setosa. I also had a huge cat in the frag system which is now back in the main tank. The corals that have been removed are my orange plating monti and an acro efflo. I've also moved one or two other bits about.
I am very pleased to report that the tank is now back on track, the corals are once again growing so fast that they're keeping my wire snips wet and hard at work with fragging sessions. There is a huge amount of new growth on all the corals, colours are almost back to where they were and no doubt given another month or so, things will be 100% again.
I also bought some chromis, I have a shoal of eight. They add so much life and movement to the tank, no doubt these will be right little devils once they start to spawn.
Later this week I hope to do a photo shoot if I get time. For now, here's a video showing the tank as of today, sorry for the poor quality it is taken off my phone:
http://youtu.be/E62bVT0801g
