melev

Over the past few days, I've lost a few corals. One was a chalice that was being consumed with brown jelly disease. I took it out, shook it off in a bucket of tank water, then dipped it in ReVive for 15 minutes. Thereafter, it was put back in the tank, with the hope that the coral would recover. Within two days, the jelly returned and ate away the rest of it. Grrr.

A couple of other less-than healthy acros went up in smoke as well. Just RTN'd. I expected to see something in my water tests to explain it, but everything seems to be about right, other than my Magnesium that tends to run high. I have a brand new test kit, and tested twice with the same result of 1500ppm. It's strange since I never dose Mg.

Lots of corals seem to be healthy and unaffected but I hate even minor losses. Another one that died was the Peach A. millepora (likely wild caught or at the very least mari-cultured), which I've had for about six weeks.

One of the clams looks a little iffy today, while the rest look happy. This hobby can be so maddening at times.

Last week, I ordered 55lbs of carbon. I like to change it out frequently and buying it in bulk saves money. Last time I bought a big batch like this was years ago. A club in Houston was doing a group buy, and I bought a giant black bag of the stuff. When it arrived, I rebagged it in 1-gallon ziplock bags to keep it dry and fresh, opening only one bag as needed. Well, it turns out I did have a lot of it because the box where I stored it was marked 02-07. So that last giant bag lasted me nearly four years. LOL. Guess I won't have to order again until 2016.

I replaced the two 250w 10,000K XM bulbs yesterday. They were 10 months and 10 days old. This time I installed the SPS bulbs from Blue Life USA. After these burn in for a week, I'll do some PAR measurements to see what their output is. The color looks good, a crisp white. The used XMs were looking yellow to my eye. I measured their PAR last night before changing out the bulbs to compare the difference.

Last week when I came back from Minnesota, I found a yellow tang stuck 'beak-first' into a Vortech pump, but was still breathing. I'm guessing it tried to chase a bit of food into the pump's intake and got stuck. Turning off the pump, I was able to carefully pull the tang free. The other fish started to bother it, so it was quickly moved (by hand) to the sump's return area where it won't be assaulted and can heal up. I've been feeding it daily. It's pretty shy, hiding behind the gear when I come to feed it. I'm hoping that will change and that it will be inclined to take food from me soon.