SushiGirl
Premium Member
Been a busy couple of months...severe back pain for 2 months and surgery looming. Ugh.
Also a busy time for the tank. My boyfriend decided we needed to get the nitrates down to not kill the bird's nest. We usually run 40/60 and sometimes it creeps higher. He bought a biopellet reactor and added one spoonful of pellets (to start slowly). Well, 2 weeks in things weren't looking so well. 4 weeks in things were REALLY not looking so well. He finally took them offline.
He put a bunch of carbon in the reactor and boy did the water clear up! It was so clear it looked like there was no water in the tank. But, well, can you say light shock? :facepalm: We had several corals start to bleach. A week or so of that & he pulled most of the carbon and dialed it down. Things are in the past few weeks finally starting to get back to normal/start growing again.
We lost a few corals (all new frags), including the bird's nest, burgundy/green favia, orange digitata, and the solid orange zoas (not sure what happened there, they looked bad & melted away one by one). I think we'll lose the acan next, as it bleached too much. Tonight it's mostly clear/white with a tiny bit of hot pink in the center and has shrunk to barely the size of the skeleton & has been refusing food for a couple weeks now.
The xenia are trying to come back, and the monti cap is starting to grow around the edges and fill in bare spots with polyps again. The leathers have all gotten their "fingers" on their polyps back and have quit shedding every few days, the zoas are open and spreading, the psammacora is encrusting again, and the $150 chalice has put some feeder tentacles on the new mouth it had & is starting a 3rd mouth (this thing is a food hog LOL). Mushrooms are all spread out & the small ones are starting to grow again, the hammer has at least 3 new heads starting on the 2 stalk bases, the small favia that had spread to the rock retracted all of that, but is now filling out again & is also a big pig with the mysis now that I got it eating again, and the cup is all inflated after the light shock.
I didn't really tank any pics while all this was going on, since I had my own problems too LOL.
I did take some pics in April when the moonlights were on, using the flash. You still get a little pop in color that way, interestingly enough. Of course the focus is for crap LOL.
This was the acan when it was first starting to bleach, you can see it was starting to get hot pink in the center and the green was fading out.
Some of the zoas under moonlight with the flash.
Also a busy time for the tank. My boyfriend decided we needed to get the nitrates down to not kill the bird's nest. We usually run 40/60 and sometimes it creeps higher. He bought a biopellet reactor and added one spoonful of pellets (to start slowly). Well, 2 weeks in things weren't looking so well. 4 weeks in things were REALLY not looking so well. He finally took them offline.
He put a bunch of carbon in the reactor and boy did the water clear up! It was so clear it looked like there was no water in the tank. But, well, can you say light shock? :facepalm: We had several corals start to bleach. A week or so of that & he pulled most of the carbon and dialed it down. Things are in the past few weeks finally starting to get back to normal/start growing again.
We lost a few corals (all new frags), including the bird's nest, burgundy/green favia, orange digitata, and the solid orange zoas (not sure what happened there, they looked bad & melted away one by one). I think we'll lose the acan next, as it bleached too much. Tonight it's mostly clear/white with a tiny bit of hot pink in the center and has shrunk to barely the size of the skeleton & has been refusing food for a couple weeks now.
The xenia are trying to come back, and the monti cap is starting to grow around the edges and fill in bare spots with polyps again. The leathers have all gotten their "fingers" on their polyps back and have quit shedding every few days, the zoas are open and spreading, the psammacora is encrusting again, and the $150 chalice has put some feeder tentacles on the new mouth it had & is starting a 3rd mouth (this thing is a food hog LOL). Mushrooms are all spread out & the small ones are starting to grow again, the hammer has at least 3 new heads starting on the 2 stalk bases, the small favia that had spread to the rock retracted all of that, but is now filling out again & is also a big pig with the mysis now that I got it eating again, and the cup is all inflated after the light shock.
I didn't really tank any pics while all this was going on, since I had my own problems too LOL.
I did take some pics in April when the moonlights were on, using the flash. You still get a little pop in color that way, interestingly enough. Of course the focus is for crap LOL.
This was the acan when it was first starting to bleach, you can see it was starting to get hot pink in the center and the green was fading out.
Some of the zoas under moonlight with the flash.
