Snorkeler's Cube

I've been wanting to blog for a while now, but boy... is being a father of 3 like a hurricane, or what? Kids are great but they sure do drain a lot of energy from me & mrs.

I took these FTS pictures on May 15th to show how the reef looked as it approaches 5 years of age, with little changes in the overall setup. Little did I know that shortly after it I would have a "vodka party" in the tank, with a few casualties:

Right side:

Front side:

Left side:

Left side:

Overall everyone doing OK, except the trumpet corals which seemed to be gradually receding, as well as the leather which didn't extend it's tentacles as well as the anemone which is shrunk to minimum size.

A day after that picture one of the Green Chromis died, I think of age, for there was no sign of disease.

Then, more or less 1 week after this picture, I get home from work and hear a strange sound inside the aquarium cabinet... like a dosing pump running without stopping. Opened the cabinet, guess what, a dosing pump was running berserk without stopping! The vodka one! I look at the 250ml vodka bottle, it's empty, look at my fish, they seem to be grinning.... uh oh....

Of course, wife and 2 friends who were in the house right beside the aquarium for the previous hour didn't notice a thing... ~:-/

I think the bottle was about 100ml to 150ml full when the pump went wild. My daily dose was about 5ml, distributed in 4 doses per day. So no wonder the fish were grinning!!!!

To make a long story short, there was a bacterial bloom, water went cloudy, and despite water changes (probably not enough nor as fast as needed) and severe skimming, over the course of 3 days:

• the other Green Chromis died
• my Orchid Dottyback died (with us since Jan 2010)
• the shrimp died
• the larger white Xenia shriveled and died
• the smaller white Xenia shriveled but survived and is growing again
• the blue mushroom corals lost their color, but the green ones weren't affected
• some small blue polyps apparently evaporated into nothing, but now are reappearing
• several cleaning crew perished

The Clownfish couple didn't seem to notice a thing, they were the sole fish survivors. Hardy fish are those... not to mention all the Vodka...

After all the issues I did some cleanup. Removed dead cleaning crew shells (there were many, as I'm sure you've noticed in the pics), added some new turbo snails and hermit crabs, turned the vodka on again at 1/4 dose, and let the aquarium be.

Actually, I substituted the Vodka for Cachaça, which is basically the same but has some sugar in it (and is a lot less expensive here, being local produce...). The fish didn't complain, so I guess they like it too ;-) .

The interesting twist on this is that:

• the Trumpet corals are making a comeback, expanding to full size and looking healthy
• the Leather coral started to send some tentacles out

What I'm thinking now is "was the Peppermint Shrimp the one bothering them?".... when I add one to get rid of the aiptasias, which will surely reappear, I guess I'll find out....

Hope to post updated FTS soon (they'll look very similar tho the ones above anyway).

Happy reefing!