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Tank Log: Month 20 |
General Observations
It has been 3 months since the last update. While the tank in
general continues to do well, there have been a few bumps lately. At the beginning of this log, I said I'd hopefully not make any
stupid mistakes I'd have to owe up to, but my luck has finally run out.
You might notice a hole on the left side of the tank. It was were a large
staghorn coral use to be next the the hammer coral. Now there is only a small frag left. Over
the course of the last couple of months, I have had 2 of my new 400W AB bulbs
die apparently due to a bad lot, plus I accidentally broke one. The ends of the inner envelope failed where
the wires enter the envelope. In a moment of haste I decided to temporarily replace one of the
failed bulbs with one that I had laying around that had a cracked outer envelope
with part of it missing. This envelope helps to reduce the UV radiation
coming from the bulb. I tried it for an hour or so the night before and
didn't notice any of the corals reacting to the bulb before the lights turned
off. I promptly forgot all about the bulb until I came home from work the
next day and saw the hammer coral withdrawn and the large staghorn on the left
side of the tank apparently bleached. The frustrating part about this kind
of thing is that I knew better and I still did it anyway.
Current water parameters:
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Alkalinity - 4.0meq/l |
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Calcium - 400 |
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pH - 7.8 Night to 8.10 during the day (too low, need to boost up) |
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Temp - 77.0 to 81.0F |
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Salinity - 1.0255 |
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The picture shows the left end of the tank. The bleaching A. microphthalma (large stag horn in the middle) is clearly visible as well as a highly distressed hammer coral and blue millipora. The cause of this carnage was using the metal halide lamp with a broken envelope for about 6 hours before I got home. |
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Here are a couple of bottom branches that I was able to frag before the tissue degeneration got to them. The branches have remained healthy for a couple of week and I have now mounted them back up on the base of the dead coral using underwater epoxy. Hopefully this coral will regrow to it's original splendor. |
New Additions
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Flame Angle Centropyge loricula
This 3" flame angle has been a good addition to the tank. He's been with us for about a month has has been a model citizen so far. They are one of the few angels that are considered reasonably reef safe. Very colorful. |
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Blue Linka Starfish Linka Laevigata
About a 6" specimen. Looks to be in reasonably good health. |
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Horse Shoe Crab Limulus
polyphemus
Very small 1 1/2" specimen. An iffy addition for a reef tank, but I thought I would give one a try. Only observed him a couple of times in the month he has been in the tank. He normally stays buried. His where abouts can sometimes be determined by the coral frags that have been disheveled. He'll pop up when his path is blocked, scurry on the surface of the sand for a short distance and then rebury himself. |
Deaths/Specimen Problems
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The large A. microphthalma noted above can be seen in better times in the upper left corner of this picture. Since it looks like I was able to save a frag of the coral, I prefer to think of it more as a size reduction than an actual death. |
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This Alevopora was a beautiful specimen which I had for 3-4 years. It started in my 70 gallon, got moved to my prop tank and then finally to the 225. It had originally bleached in the 70 under the 400W lights, but recovered in the low 175W lighting of the prop tank. In the 225, I was careful to put it on one end of the tank where it got bright, but not intense lighting. It grew and probably tripled in size over time. The cause of it's loss is not known. I noticed a dead branch closest to the purple Goniopora it sits near, so I thought perhaps there was a territorial war going on. I separated them a little more, but the decline continued and over the course of about 2 weeks, the coral died. The other possible factor is that I was also using Phosgard for about 1 week prior in order to reduce silicates and diatom growth on the glass. I have seen this irritate Sarcophytons, but perhaps there was a connection to the demise of this specimen. |
Tank problems and opportunities for improvement.
I have neglected calibrating the pH meter. When I finally bought some calibration fluid, I found it was reading high by about 0.2. This meant my pH wasn't 8.0 night and 8.3 day like I thought it was but rather 7.8 night and 8.1 day. This is low enough to stress the corals and I am starting a program to increase it. I am adding some Kent pH buffer as noted below, plus I am now running the effluent from my calcium reactor into an old counter-current airstone skimmer I had. This allows the CO2 to be blown off and the pH of the effluent is raised from 6.6 coming out of the reactor to about 7.6 before it is added to the tank.
Maintenance
Doing normal maintenance at this time. 12-16 gallon water change each week or two. I was dripping some Kalk, but it tended to depress my alkalinity, so I have discontinued it. Instead I am dripping some Kent pH buffer in my makeup water. The LOA 65W compact fluorescent that I was using over my sump gave up the ghost. I put a 75W incandescent bulb over the macro algae in the sump and they seemed to grow even faster than under the compact fluorescent. I kept the incandescent bulb over the sump for 2 months and had to prune the macro algae each month.
