Ok, time for an update. Been a while since I posted in this thread so there is a good bit that needs to get relayed. No new pictures at this point, but expect some sooner than later (just need to clean up a bit of a mess in the tank.. more about that later).
In the "Dissappointing" column we have our last livestock shipment. Out of the entire order only 3 fish survived (3 of the 4 Dispar Anthias). Every other fish has been MIA almost since introduction. This was also the first order that we had a fish arrive DOA. I can only speculate that the time of year and ambient temperatures played a role in the deaths and that the ones that arrived "intact" were still damaged and never recovered from shipping. Those 3 fish turned out to be quite darned expensive and wiped out our tank livestock budget for the foreseeable future. I allowed myself to give in to pressure from various directions to go ahead and take delivery in December versus my but instinct to wait until Spring (for budgetary reasons also). But I have no to blame but myself since no one held a gun to my head and forced me to go through with the order.
The 3 Dispars that survived are still with us and doing well. They generally school with our Bartletts, but there are two, smaller Dispars, that tend to like to go off on their own (the larger male Dispar is one that survived, and he currently likes to hang with the Bartletts more than with the other 2 Dispars).
No other fish news outside of realizing that some fish were no longer with us (like the bangaii and our oldest female orchid dottyback). We did have an odd coral RTN event that hit one section of rock, almost like they all stung each other, but of the 4 colonies only 2 were actually touching. The RTN/STN started at one edge of the encrusted sections and moved across the colony, working it's way up the branches, to the other side. 2 of them we were able to frag and save, one only 2 small frags survived so far, the other (pink jade) we got early and save a significant number or frags. --- The mess I was referring to .. there are several rocks lining the bottom of the tank with frags glued to them. One can hardly see the sand bottom.. which is not how I want the tank to look.
A week or so ago we noticed that just after lights out that the tank became very cloudy. My wife asked if I had just dosed sugar or done some other maintenance to stiry up the tank (I had not). It turned out that our caulerpa macro had gone asexual and dumped into our tank. I spent the next hour+ cleaning the skimmer sup and riser (so make it more effective/efficient at skimming out the algae crap) tearing as much of the caulerpa out of our sump as possible. When I was done there was a huge pile of grape caulerpa on the floor and several bristle worm bristles in my right hand fingers *sigh* (took almost a week to work themselves all the way out). I left in a nice sized "solony" of razor caulerpa and the chaeto. I still need to get back in there and clean out any straggler caulerpa and probably also get rid of the razor caulerpa.
Amazingly we had no losses from that even and by morning the tank was crystal clear again. During the event I did a half dose of sugar, which I considered to be a worthwhile gamble. I know that the bacteria bloom spurred on by the sugar strips alot of O2 out of the water, but the bateria also eats/helps export alot of DOCs, which is primarliy was the caulerpa dumped back into our tank. That plus our oversized skimmer and lots of surface area and aggitation helped me to feel that it was the right move. As I mentioned the water was crystal clear the next day (and the skimmer stunk horribly so).
Our orange shoulder tang has been digging around alot and has created some mountains and caves. I don't so much mind the caves, but the mountains can be a pain.. and I don't jsut mean when they bury a coral (or three). There are a couple of places with 6" or more of sand piled up that I need to take care of before they start growing some really nasty stuff underneath them. I already knocked/moved one of the older piles and didn't see any nasties or see any bad side affects from it. So we should be OK so long as I don't post pone it too long.
That about sums up the livestock updates... next post will be equipment updates
. I also wanted to note that when I built the lighting rack I used the SS hardware to hold it together, not hold it up.. in other words most all of the cross members sit on top of the main supported ones (hanging from the sliding track), versus putting them underneath (where the bolts would be holding them up). Small concession I know, and still using two dissimilar metals, but at least it gives us a little more "security" if things starte going south faster than I expected.
