Snorkeler's Cube

[Blog to be migrated from http://rcsnorkeler.blogspot.com/, you can read the rest of the past story there]

It is interesting to note how maintaining a marine aquarium sometimes is a roller coaster of emotions.

Discouraging:
Right now it is quite discouraging to see the plague proportions my Valonias have reached. Shortly after the Valonia eating crab died I spent 5 days away from home (birth of a child, praise the Lord) and left my auto-feeder on. I think it auto-fed too much, as my green hair algae grew a lot, an so did the Valonias. There is a FOWLR acronym in reef keeping, meaning Fish Only With Live Rock. Not my case, as I have a few corals, but assuming it were my tank right now is looking more like FOWLV, Fish Only With Live Valonias . They are really everywhere.

I intend to do some major cleanup of the rocks, maybe in a month's time, maybe earlier, taking each rock out and scrubbing the Valonias out of them. I'm also going to study Valonias and Green Hair Algae more, ordered a book on Algae which I hope will help me design future steps. Probably they'll involve getting livestock that eats Valonias, and, installing an Ultra-Violet Sterilizer to gradually kill the spores that Valonias release, reducing their success rates.

Encouraging:
My corals seems a lot happier recently.... yes, the Zoanthus colony and the Palithoa colony are wide open now. Specially the Palithoa was a surprise, as it had been shrunk and only shyly open for the last months. But in November it started opening again, extending it's border tentacles, I am so happy with that. Why? Well, it means I'm getting the water quality under control again! What was the main reason, IMHO? Less feeding, definitely. The fish might be going a little hungry right now, but I'm sure there is less stuff left in the water which means less nutrients. Second main reason probably is better controlled Alkalinity and Calcium. Aside from two 40L water changes in the recent weeks (done to cleanup green hair algae) I've been using Purple Up, a suggestion from my LFS. It is simple to administer and helps to ensure Ca, Iodine and other elements don't go too low.

So, it is a roller coaster sometimes. But one can not give up. Even people who later became Tank Of The Month at ReefCentral had plague proportion Valonia invasions (seapug did, and a few years later his tank was TOTM). I'm confident it is possible to revert the situation, without going crazy. I think with careful study and further steps I'll win this battle, Lord willing.

As many people have told me online, patience is an important, if not the most important, attitude for successful long term reef keeping. Lots of study and careful planning come next, I guess.

Here is a picture of my Palithoa, showing what I mean. It is happy, but the Valonias are everywhere, on the rock below it and on the rock it is attached to. Notice how the tentacles of the left hand side polyps are extended. Even when the tank was new and the Palithoa had just been implanted it never extended tentacles so wide and open like that.



Water quality must be improving.

Snorkeler