cmbspd

Its day 10 since my 110g was setup up using liverock from a local reefer's teardown. Things are progressing rapidly, too rapidly I'm sure many would say. Luckily I skipped the bulk of the nitrogen cycle because of the rock. I never detected any ammonia and likely little NO2 (Red Sea kits have poor resolution). My nitrates built up to something like 25ppm, but two series of water changes have cut that down to 4ppm. That's important because my tank came with a large blue hippo tang and the liverock was already encrusted with a variety of corals that I have a responsibility to keep alive. I'm going to wait a few days before another water change to see if the NO3 is stable or climbs again. I'm now working to establish a better Ca-Alk ratio. My Ca was only around 350ppm while alk was a reasonable 3.8 meq/l. I'm slowly dosing with CaCl and after two days I've increased Ca to almost 400, with no adverse effects. Once I've got these balanced, I'll turn my attention to boosting Mg a little. Its currenly 1200ppm.

I changed out my heaters and now temperature is a decent 78-79F. The finnex company gave me a return authorization so I guess that I'll send their heaters back and hope that they send me something whose thermostat isn't 15 degrees colder than its supposed to be!

Here is a full tank shot



I added a cleanup crew on saturday - ~ 30 snails, 10 hermit crabs and 1 emerald crab. I also added two cleaner shrimp. Wow, are they amazingly cool! They are so interactive. My girlfriend and I also picked out two ocellaris clowns. They are currently in quarantine for the next month so the tank should be well-matured by the time they are ready to be added. The CUC has done a number on the diatoms. I also "discovered" that a lot of what I thought was coralline algae on the rocks was actually a red algae that the snails love to eat.

Okay, so I had a moment of weakness. On sunday I went with the guy who sold me my tank to visit a local coral grower and bought two corals. I couldn't keep my eyes off of this really cool elegance coral and my girlfriend fell in love with a hammer coral. We are pushing the envelope with getting the tank up and running. But a picture says a thousand words:



There is also a great example of what I think is coral warfare on one of my rocks. This little acropora type coral looks like it is keeping an encrusting montipora at bay.



The SPS had several of its branches broken when I setup the tank so they became my first frags. So far they are showing good polyp extension despite the less than perfect water chemistry.

I'm also beginning my first battles with invasives. I sucked the innards out of large bubble algae with a syringe and I have one Aiptasia that is quite the survivor. I knew it was there when I added my liverock so I burned its hole with a blowtorch. But, I guess that I mostly burned the hole next to it because it emerged three days ago. Then I tried to expoxy its hole, but didn't quite get it completely so tonight I tried to stab it with a syringe of boiling water - no luck, its back! I'll keep at it.

BTW, does anyone know what this coral is? It sort of looks like a mini-frogspawn to my untrained eye...