melev

It's been nearly 400 days since the 400g was restarted, and overall everything is vastly improved from where it was about 90 days ago. All the color has returned to the corals and new growth is readily apparent.

One nuisance I was observing was this strange brown patchy stuff on the substrate which looked worse than diatoms but not enough to be dinoflagellates. When I cleaned the area between the sandbed and the glass to get that nice clean white look, the next day it was instantly brown again with bubbles trapped in the strata viewable through the glass. Annoying me, I decided to try dosing 3% peroxide for about a week but that really didn't seem to make a change. I tested Alkalinity and was shocked (5 dkH!) to find it quite low -- so for the past two days I've been buffering it up manually. It turns out that somehow I swapped the connections on the Calcium reactor's check valve which prevented CO2 from entering the reactor. Frankly, I'm impressed the reef handled the lack of alkalinity. The blunder has been corrected, and perhaps that will resolve the stuff on the sandbed next.

I do wonder if the eels have issue with the anemones because they don't come out very much. Perhaps they too feel the sting of those tentacles. One was shipped to a friend in PA, but I may need to cull a few more to create some space for the eels to roam more.

The deepwater acro continues to maintain the green coloration - it's a slow grower.

The above montipora has healed up beautifully. It looking nothing like this 90 days ago.

The Grape montipora is super pretty from any angle.

If you recall, I mentioned a tiny bit of DNA that appeared on this rock a few months ago. Now you can see two tiny trees growing in the center of the above image. They are surely from the Staghorn acropora above it.

Gradually the War coral favia is returning to its former coloration. A few months ago, this area was completely brown. It'll be a while before it looks silver again. The reddish area above the main section is prettier to me, encrusting nicely on the rockwork.

My daily view continues to make me smile as I see the fish move about their reef.