DaJMasta

I've had two firefish in my tank for just under two months and they have gotten along great, until three days ago. They always stuck together, slept in the same hole, etc. and I had assumed they had paired up. In the last couple days they've stayed further apart, and yesterday one was hiding close to a powerhead with both fish missing chunks of fins. I caught one and isolated one, and they seem to both be okay, but I'm wondering if there's still a chance they could get along if reintroduced. Basically, my question is whether anyone has seen this sort of behavior as part of pairing up, or if they were just tolerating each other until now and now are squabbling for dominance (and therefore probably aren't male and female)? My assumption for now is that they were tolerating each other because another fish was keeping them a little on edge, and since it's been a couple of weeks since that fish died, maybe the external pressure was the thing keeping them together, but if there was a chance they could be reintroduced and get along, that would of course be preferable.

It's a lonely looking coral but congrats on getting it started! Is there a whole startup method for the zeovit system? Does it involve livestock as well? I sort of expected the media and stuff would only really get going when there was a regular source of ammonia and nutrients from fish or regular feeding or both.

A follow up and literal post-mortem of using this cyano removal treatment. I used Blue Life's Red Cyano Rx, but as I understand, Chemiclean and other treatments are probably exactly the same stuff, so I think this should generally apply. I didn't loose any further fish, thankfully. The male cardinal went back to eating a couple days after the accident, so I presume the eggs were lost in the low oxygen environment. The corals took a little damage in specific cases, but are basically back to normal, and the treatment did remove the cyanobacteria, there is very little remaining. First off, my own recommendations for using this product or similar ones to be safer than it was following the directions on the package: Use a smaller dosage initially. Even with a 50% water change within 12 hours of my initial full strength dose, it had the desired effect. This should help keep oxygen levels higher and lower the overall risk of treatment. Leave your skimmer on instead of turning it off. The extra bubbles go a long way, but it will overflow, so turn the water level all the way down (not air) and remove the cup if it's still overflowing, but keep it on to oxygenate. If for some reason you decide you need to have the skimmer off, make sure there is AT LEAST one airstone dropped in the tank to keep oxygenation up in addition to whatever is normally in there (the bubbler running through my algae scrubber was not sufficient aeration in my tank for the treatment) Unless you have a full macroalgae tank during the height of your photoperiod, it's unlikely any algae in your tank will make much of a difference in oxygen levels. It is still worth adding aeration for the dark period as the reduced oxygen environment should be expected through the treatment's duration. Aiming your powerheads at the surface does very, very little to increase oxygenation unless you have very slow flow in your tank. In any tank with moderate to high flow and normal surface agitation, it would take pumps making the surface of the water break and generate bubbles to get any notable improvement in oxygenation, and it's not a huge amount in any case. You want to be especially careful in systems without a sump or back chamber waterfall, as the lower noise, shorter falling water means less air ingestion and less oxygenation. My AIO is an example of tanks where the return pump does very little overall for oxygenation on its own. I did not carbon dose during the treatment, as I knew it reduced oxygen levels when the bacterial count rises, but residual from that could have exacerbated the problem. If you carbon dose, it's probably good to dial down the dosage in the days prior to treatment and make absolutely certain you're doing extra to aerate during the treatment. It's also worth describing some of the behaviors I saw in the low oxygen environment. They were different from what I would have thought to expect, and they were more subtle than I had expected as well, but there are some telling ones that could be critically important to spotting it quickly if it happens in your tank. For the fish, I basically didn't get to see the flame angel's behavior before it died, as it died first. I found it face down in the sand under the rockwork where it normally slept, so presumably it went into hiding in the lower oxygen environment and the lower flow, larger fish size, and relatively high metabolism meant that it was the first to go. The basslet went under an overhang where it hung out regularly and sort of laid against the rock, panting. Later on, even as the oxygen level was increasing and had been for hours, it started having trouble staying upright. For what is normally a perky and active fish, it was a characteristically bad sign, but I think some damage done from the initial event probably made it more difficult to get oxygen when it was more available. Extra bubblers or other methods may have been able to save it, but as things were improving and it was still seeming alright, I didn't take additional action that maybe could have saved it. The firefish gobies responded to the low oxygen by hiding. They're normally skittish and go and hide when working on the tank or other things, but they both just went into their hole and stayed there, panting. Not being chased around and not being out during the day was atypical behavior, and they hid the remainder of the day with few exceptions, and then took longer to emerge the next morning than usual. The orange spot goby seemed generally the least effected, and I think it was mostly his metabolism being slower so he didn't need as much oxygen. I did see him out in spots I don't usually see as much, with lower activity (not as quick to back away when I walk by the tank), and panting, but he seemed to act the most normally and was one of the first fish to act back to normal when oxygen levels started increasing again. The mandarin also was less effected, though at one point he stopped hunting and started panting, and then eventually raised his dorsal fin an kept it up. The dorsal fin usually only comes up when he's frightened or when it's trying to fight his reflection for territory, so him just sitting in one place with the fin up was certainly an unusual sight. The two cardinals were harder to tell a difference with, apart from the panting. They were in different parts of the tank than usual, but this also could have been that the fish keeping them in the front, the flame angel, was no longer chasing them out of more covered spots. They did seem to stay apart more than usual in the lowest oxygen periods, but not exclusively, and they were low activity, but this isn't uncommon for them during the day. None of the inverts seemed to care, at all. One of the cleaner shrimp was trying to clean my arm when I was trying to get the flame angel out of the rockwork to see if she was still alive, and they really didn't seem to act differently the entire time. The rock anemones shrunk slightly, but never completely closed up or anything. Most of the corals seemed pretty unaffected, but with a couple exceptions. The blasto frag had both polyps completely retract into the skeleton, the only time I've seen it like that. The bright green monti cap near the top had a small chunk of it totally bleach in a very short time period, and in the aftermath some of the bleached tissue on the underside of some of the acro frags seems to be gone rather than just pale. Some other polyps may have retracted slightly - the mushrooms, the birdsnest polyps, the acans.... but then some were unaffected, the gorgonians looked same as always. I suppose the leptoseris had pale dots on the top of it and slightly different coloration, but not much change overall. One of the things I would have expected to see was fish coming to the surface and gasping... but after not seeing it and thinking through it, I don't think that's a thing marine fish do. Basically, if your flow is enough, even though the gas exchange is happening at the surface, there's virtually no oxygen differential in the tank because of how quickly it gets mixed. There would be less in low flow areas (like those holes some fish fled to), but between not really having more oxygen near the surface and probably not having much access to the surface in nature, marine animals don't seem to go up when low on oxygen. Anyways, Tuesday wasn't a good day for the tank, but it has been ok since and shows signs of recovering well. I'm starting to get back into the normal rhythm of things again and hope I can avoid similar issues going forward - I'll certainly be more sensitive to them, and I'm trying to get a proper dissolved oxygen meter to get a better read on things. For now, enjoy this adorable picture of the two firefish sleeping in their cave for the night.

Unfortunately, today the male returned to eating, so I believe the first clutch is lost. If I had to put a cause on it, well that would be easy, after a treatment for cyano in the tank seemed to go terribly wrong, there was a while where I believe the dissolved oxygen level was very low, and I assume this would kill virtually any eggs in the tank at the time. He held onto them at least a day later, but for now we go back to waiting for another spawn. Since the fish that kept them in the front corner most of the time was lost, the environment may be more amenable for their spawning now, but I can't find information on how long the next one could take - just that it varies with diet and environment.

I think you have a lot of options, just make sure if you're going the bleach route that it's regular old bleach and not scented or otherwise different. Some people seem to like acids and things, but that will likely give you less rock at the end, and to make sure you don't accidentally scrub some palys or something, I would do any scrubbing post treatment. Personally I'd probably go with the sun method, especially with the heat available, and just let it cook and fully dry. Once everything's dead, anything left on it is just organics, so if you can wait a few months, you can just throw it in some saltwater with a pump and let it simmer for a couple months. You'd be back to regular cycled live rock after that and it should be ready to go.

That's sort of my main concern as well. I still think the leadership in both companies are both competent and have the right goals at heart, and I have little doubt the extra resources can lead to some interesting stuff in the more short term, but I too am concerned that this ultimately means still less competition and the potential for a major vendor pulling or denying distribution deals for less than fair reasons. Not that it will happen in a year or two, not that it's automatic, but a company's goal - by definition - is to make money, and this is especially true when they have big investors. BRS was already one of the biggest (the biggest?) player in the market before buying Marine Depot, and Neptune has been the biggest player when it comes to controllers... the combination means they have even stronger footholds to leverage in the markets they are already dominant in, and leveraging that in consumer-unfriendly means is in the best interest of their bottom line/shareholders. I hope anything we see of that is minimal, that there is community pushback if it comes to that, and that the leadership of the companies can keep those moves in check, but I think the reality is that it's only a matter of time until we see it.

I doubt it will be a huge problem, but if you wanted to test, you could run it for a bit in a bucket of RO and see if you get any bubbles rising up the column. You could also try using some RO and dechlorinator like prime or similar to try to lock up any residual harmful metals or whatnot that could have been part of the detergent. My understanding is basically that soap surrounds dirt particles to loosen and remove them, so with exposure to enough grime, a given quantity of soap will basically be used up and can just be removed as a rinse. This probably isn't the case for all detergents, but I think that means with comprehensive rinsing it is likely to be fine again in time.

Lost the basslet. She was having trouble keeping upright so I got her into a breeder net to be more out of the flow and higher in the tank, but it was too late even if it would have been effective. The gobies are breathing slower when they peek out, but it's dark enough that I don't expect to see them until tomorrow in any case. 10 more gallons of water change, so a total of 20G since the red cyano rx, skimming wet at full strength for aeration and to remove this crud from the tank, still have the bubbler going and will for the next couple of days, for sure. No carbon dosing today or tomorrow at least, didn't feed anything today either. The new water was cooler than the water in the tank, so I'm down 0.7C or so from normal temperature. I'm sure it's not helping, but I figured it was better to do the water change now (and before everything's asleep) than wait a couple hours for the temperature and risk whatever in the water killing something else. I really hope that it's done, but I just have to keep watch. I can't believe this stuff seems to be widely considered safe, definitely the worst thing to happen to the tank so far, and if I wasn't as quick in reacting as I was, it easily could have nuked the whole thing. I hope it doesn't still do that.

Yeah, air stone has been in the rear chamber since I pulled the flame angel. Left for about 30 mins to get dinner and despite higher oxygenation rate and the water change, the basslet looked like she was having more trouble than before and the gobies still aren't venturing out. Corals look a bit better. Second 5G water change, 10 more gallons are going through the RODI so I can be around 45% changed at the end of the night. Also, skimmer is on normal level with a drier setting. Don't care if it pulls the stuff that should be doing the work, that's probably actually a good thing given my results and the extra bubbles are welcome. These water changes are bringing down the tank temp a bit each time as they're not sitting in the buckets long enough to get to temperature fully...

And it may not yet be over... Things looked like they were improving and one of the firefish popped out of the den a couple of times to take a look around, but the other never did, then the mandarin stopped hunting and the cardinals started acting a little erratic. I've got the skimmer on now, but at a lower level (15% then, now 25%) for oxygenation rather than skimming. The whole back chamber is full of coarse foam and there are microbubbles everywhere (hopefully a positive for oxygenation?), but I tried another dose of prime because I had thought overall oxygenation had been improving. I've done a 5G water change (>10%) and will see if any difference comes along with it, the second bucket is mixing up now and the fish behavior of the ones who are out seems to be normal. I hadn't caught it before, but the blastos really did not like whatever happened, but they are slowly extending slightly and while the rock anemones aren't full size, they certainly look more open than the low point. I've got to keep my eyes on this until I go to sleep tonight, I think, I still don't really know what happened and I don't have a means to check the dissolved oxygen levels.

The cardinals are out in the tank and swimming together again, the firefish are still hiding but I see both and their tails move in and out as they reposition in their hole, the mandarin has gone back to hunting in the tank, the orange spot goby seems to be one of the more normal acting ones of the bunch, and the basslet has been hiding under a ledge the whole time, but seems to be breathing slower. I had noticed prior to the last event that one of the rock flower anemones had moved a bit, but they're all a bit shrunk now. I don't see any new coral damage and no progress on the white patch on the monti cap. I've got 10g of saltwater mixing up but I don't think I need it imminently. I checked the tank for 'stray voltage' but measured none and saw no spikes turning on and off equipment. I think it was a dissolved oxygen level crash. I can't think of something else and with the skimmer off and the red cyano rx added, I think whatever it does just started going and used up oxygen quickly enough that the bubbler in the algae scrubber, the turbulent flow at the top of the tank, and the plethora of green algae on the rocks wasn't enough production. Disadvantage of an AIO design I guess unless you run your back chamber low enough that you get a waterfall out of the overflow. In any case, I think the worst has past, nearly as quickly as it started. That poor flame angel, she had been a bit of a bully but never nipped at any coral.

Something is suddenly wrong. Everything seemed fine this morning and I dosed the red cyano Rx as expected around 11am to the tank, just below recommended concentration. Everything seemed fine. A couple hours in, the zoas were slightly closed and the polyp extension on the montis was slightly less, but again, otherwise fine. Fast forward to around 3:30, and the fish seem to be acting strange - the ones that usually hang out in the front because of the flame angel are dispersed in the tank... so I look for the flame angel. She's nose first in the sand under a rock in the center of the tank. It takes a couple minutes to get her out and I stir up some sand, she has already died. As I'm trying to make sure I'm not seeing any movement at all with the flame angel, the mandarin hasn't moved for a bit and has his dorsal fin raised (usually perks up when he's defending his territory or is scared), one of the firefish isn't seen, one comes out and dashes back under, but they don't come out in the usual amount of time. The male cardinal seems to be breathing very heavily. I quickly check ammonia - nothing - temperature is fine, water is very slightly cloudy (stirred up sand from earlier), the invertebrates all seem fine (the cleaner shrimp even tried to clean me as I was getting the flame angel out). Not knowing what was going on I start a new bucket of RODI for a water change, I drop an airstone in the back chamber since the skimmer is off for the treatment, and I add almost a capful of seachem prime to make sure it's not toxic stuff in the water. About 15 minutes later and the mandarin has moved only a little and is still panting (the dorsal fin slightly down). I saw a firefish looking around but neither has come out, the cardinal is still panting, and I think I see some tissue loss on the monti cap at the top - suddenly the frontmost portion is bleached white. What the H-E-double hockey sticks is going on?

An update! Basically, I haven't been taking many pictures or making updates as cyano has gradually become more of a nuisance, and after a couple weeks of adjusting carbon dosing and dialing in skimming and returning to a normal feeding schedule and whatnot without much improvement... I realized I could just siphon some out and see what happened. Well I did a few days back, then a small amount the next day, and while I plan on using Red Cyano Rx to clear up the problem fully, it looks a heck of a lot more normal and I'm seeing some positive turnaround already. Partly because of the instability and partly because of the cyano, I think, the coral growth has been pretty limited this month. A couple corals seem unphased, like the spongodes monti on the front rock, the mushrooms, the stylophora, and some of the gonis, but I can't say there's dramatic growth on any of them even if their polyp extension and color has been pretty constant. The acros and zoas, oddly, have both seemed a little bothered but basically stable, and the one coral that seems to have been unhappy the whole time has been a sunset month that came as a decent sized chunk. Haven't seen polyps extended on that one for weeks, and there is some skeleton showing. The rate it seems to be looking worse is going down, but it almost started closer to when I started carbon dosing (or maybe shortly after when the nutrients started to drop), so the plan for now is to try to be stable, get rid of the cyano, and see if it decides to come back. Other montis seem basically unaffected. My vodka dosing is now a constant 5mL daily, but I've moved to dosing near or after lights out instead of first thing in the morning - I think the timing of the dosing contributed somewhat to the cyano, but I had been adding then with the hopes that it would deplete the tank oxygen less. Though nitrate and phosphate have stayed low and detectable, I'm also seeing more green algae on the rocks and on the back again - something the carbon dosing originally took care of. The urchins are hard at work and with the cyano I am hesitant to do anything yet, but I will do some more manual removal as needed and then maybe tweak up the carbon dosing in the coming weeks if it persists. Since the skimmer will be off for a few days for the cyano treatment, I'm hoping the algae scrubber will take up some of the slack - it's had moments of seeing growth, but it seems like changes in the carbon dosing has also depleted it somewhat. I cleaned the powerheads around a week ago and the return pump a couple days ago and while there was some expected flow increase (and a lot of grime removed), the temperature is also down about one degree F. I think the extra friction of the gunk was requiring more power or generating more heat (or both) and since my tank has been thermally limited by the equipment running with the heaters mostly off recently, the change was noticeable. Otherwise, the fish seem happy and healthy - the mandarin is starting to fill out again and really goes for the frozen foods (least reliably the fish eggs, for some reason, I think because he doesn't recognize them visually as food yet), and as another thread I started a few days back, my cardinals have spawned for the first time and the male has a mouthful of eggs (and hasn't eaten anything since). I've acquired MTS since the last update and have a small tank made for the intention of rearing fry and larvae, so I look forward to the hatching and trying to get some tiny baby cardinals. The tank earlier today, and the day before the cyano treatment, hopefully in a week or so a bunch of the red will be gone and the polyps will be more extended (the acans especially, I don't think they like the cyano).

That sounds maybe under capacity, but no, that's not understocked or underfed to a point where I'd think it would interfere with general nutrient availability. I think many will agree that some detectable level of nitrate and phosphate is preferable to zero, but I don't know how big an effect it will have and depending on the range of the test kits, may not be all that different from zero readings (for example, kits that read to much higher overall values will have larger margins of error near the bottom of the scale which may mean a 'zero' reading is actually enough). Waiting a bit on the water change is also probably a good diagnostic tool - if you just wait an extra few days or a week and then recheck alkalinity, any loss could be a direct indicator of stony coral skeleton growth, since alkalinity is generally the first parameter to deplete because of coral growth. To my knowledge, 500ppm calcium should not cause a problem specifically. It is not that dramatically elevated from normal suggested levels, and while it being high without magnesium or alkalinity may be a problem - it would generally just start to precipitate and sort of solve itself. High alkalinity, especially in low nutrient environments, can cause sort of burns/bleaching, high magnesium can negatively impact snail health, but I think calcium would have to be a fair bit higher before it was really the direct cause of problems on its own.

What is your stocking and feeding like? It could be that nutrient levels are a bit too low (usually detectable but low is what people are shooting for and actually zero comes with some potential problems), and from the photo, there are not too many fish. In the same sort of way that feeding contributes to coral growth, the presence of fish and the mess they leave generally helps things grow. Otherwise, the missing parameter to check would be Magnesium - the Ca and Alk are pretty high for what most people run, but if the magnesium isn't similar, there could be a deficiency that's preventing growth despite plenty of the others. I would think with those numbers that 1350-1400ppm magnesium would probably be about right (elevated, but by a similar amount as the calcium and alkalinity). Also worth saying that corals often do just take a bit to settle in before really starting to grow - adapting to their new environment and whatnot. A couple months is generally what I'd expect for that, but I've heard people say it can take longer, so as long as they're happy, there's at least not automatically something wrong.

I've had this pair of cardinals for a few months (the second was added two months ago) and hoping for the magic to happen, on Thursday the 22nd they were pretty obviously doing the dance (though the male was not as into it), and on Friday at about 7:15pm, they spawned. Didn't see it, but saw the wiggling before and then a full mouth later. Today the male didn't go after food, and while dark in there, I think I can make out a bit of red/orange in his mouth when he opens it to aerate the eggs. From my understanding of the baby's development, I should be expecting the fry to start coming from the father's mouth in around 20 days, so I figure around the 8th or 9th of August I'll try catching the male in a trap and transferring him to a small tank to get as many fry as I can. I've been hoping to get into raising some fish and shrimp, and had seen them hanging around together for a while, so I'm at least somewhat prepared. I've got a couple of small tanks with some ceramic media and now a CUC for raising fry as well as a newly started phytoplankton, rotifer, and artemia culture, plus a couple of useful extras (breeder box made of net, vossen larva trap, some smaller size TDO). While I know the first few spawns probably have fewer fry than they eventually will have, and I'm pretty new to all of this, I'm hoping I can find some success with these easier to raise fry and then move on to whatever spawns next in the tank! The plan for now is to make a log here of notable events as things progress, so while the next week may be quiet as the eggs develop, I hope to have more news and maybe some pics I can snag as it comes closer to hatch.

Can you convert the drain in the external box to something quieter? Drilling could certainly be an option but I imagine changing the overflow plumbing would be a lot less invasive. Is the noise coming from the drain itself, or from the splashdown in the sump?

Got some deals from the marinedepot liquidation sale and substantially upgraded my RODI into this monstrosity: But now I can check input pressure, TDS at input, membrane output, and output line, and get around 140GPD with less waste water than before, well worth the price of the upgrade bits. Also found a pump from SR Aquaristatik to replace the DCAIR-200 pump the K1-50 came with, and while it didn't come with a venturi attachment, they sent one along after asking and I hooked it up yesterday. Almost a full 24h of break in, but the bubbles I'm seeing are much, much more numerous (even at 40% output), the pump is fully variable, and it's been pretty quiet so far. Looking forward to darker skimmate and more gas exchange as my pH has been a hair below 8 recently and I think it's related to the previous skimmer pump's air performance. Grafting the pump on the bottom sure looks goofy, but suspended in the back chamber it fits all the same. Noticed a little bump that looked very slightly like a parasite on one of the firefish today, so I pulled out the camera to get a better shot: ...then I noticed a bit of the same on the other firefish, both swimming and eating fine just before, and gave it a google... that's just some mysis working its way through their system. For fish with tiny little mouths, they certainly go for big chunks of food. But the tank is going on, things seem a bit unhappy and there is more cyanoalgae than before, but I'm attributing it both to the heavy feeding to get the dragonet to eat, the slightly decreased vodka dosing (down to 6mL a day), and the skimmer performance issues. Nitrates are at 5ppm and phosphate is at 0.03ppm and both are plenty low, so the plan is to keep the current dosing and dial it back if it drops any farther, but I suspect it will take some time yet to settle. Otherwise, got some fun related projects in the works to expand the addiction a bit, but the goal in the short term is to get this tank fully happy again. I've actually dialed back my kalkwasser dosing slightly as the alkalinity was slowly increasing, and I think this is because the corals are a bit pissed, though at least the fish and inverts seem to be pigging out happily.

Since they're made of aerated ceramic, I don't think that can be the case, but at least in the case of the marinepure ones, maybe if you had a bunch rattling around next to each other they would eventually grind themselves down - the physical structure isn't as strong as live rock and weighs a lot less.

+1 I've been using Marinepure branded ones, but it's the same stuff, an inert substrate for bacterial growth and not a lot more. The pore size has been optimized and the flow through the brick is pretty good, so a brick is going to be worth 10x its size or more worth of live rock in terms of bacterial capacity, but unless you have it in a particularly low flow area, I doubt there will be much actual conversion of nitrate to nitrogen gas, as that will require anaerobic zones and these blocks may actually be too easy for water to pass through. I would consider it like adding live rock to a system more than for denitrification, but you are effectively increasing the capacity of the tank to break down ammonia and nitrite when they're fully colonized. As for safe to add - when I added mine there was a little bit of ceramic dust that was in the water for a couple hours, no adverse effects. Like live rock, it will take a few months before its fully colonized and operating at peak effectiveness.

Where do you even get NPS corals, even tropical ones? In years past I remember seeing them occasionally from the major vendors, but all I really know about are some coldwater biotope specific suppliers really, and I don't see as many around otherwise.

He eats! Now it's time to release the dragonet!

The tank passed four months old on the 4th, so an update is in order! I've been steadily increasing my vodka dosing until 8mL, where I've been at for a few days, as I started seeing my nitrate drop to better levels (10ppm today). Oddly, my phosphate dropped first (down to 0.03ppm and holding) - a full week before I saw any change in nitrate. Been battling adjustment of this skimmer, which has probably delayed the nitrate dropping, and things are slightly pissed by that (most notably the monti on the central inside face of the right rock). While I was initially impressed with the quiet.... it hasn't stayed quiet. It also hasn't pulled much darker than oversteeped tea color skimmate, and it's sort of prone to overflowing with slight water level changes. It's more built down to a price than I had realized, and while the original mount was a good example of that, the pump is too. It's a 200lph airflow pump which is on the low side for the rating, but it's held on to the bottom with a barbed fitting with a silicone sleeve, so it's pretty easy for it to come off when trying to move things around. I've had louder times, I've had times where there was way lower airflow in the body of the skimmer itself, I've had intermittent loud grinding noises from the pump.... I am not counting on it to hold on, so I have a different one on its way by SR Aquaristatik. May need some conversion to mount, but a bit higher air and flow rate and variable, so I should be able to tune it down sufficiently to work. We'll see. The box is in the FTS shot because about a week ago I was looking at the new mandarin and he was looking a little slim and while he was on the hunt when I fed, he didn't seem to know what to actually go after. So I caught him to train him more fully and I'm starting to see some good results. This was earlier today, where he decided to go after the biggest chunk of krill in the marine cuisine block I fed, so his mouth was wide open and he was trying to chomp it for a good few minutes - but at least it's a big chunk. I will write up the method I used in the next few days when I verify that he will go after more, I think it's pretty well thought out and it does seem to be working without too many extra bits. I did have to feed extra to the tank to make sure there was plenty of food, and I think that's contributing to the prolonged nitrates and probably means I will have to dial back the carbon dosing when that ends, if not sooner. Otherwise, I am still seeing some growth, am seeing some new diatoms and cyanoalgae both, and have seen a bit of actual hair algae growing in the scrubber, so we'll see how things settle in the coming weeks. Got some new corals coming in and rearranging things a bit, but I'm hoping to keep my hands mostly out and get going on the controller - got some more parts on order and some more details congealing in my head...

Looks like coralline algae to me, nothing needs to be done unless you like the clean look of the back of the tank, in which case you can scrape it off. Same stuff that grows on the rocks and make things look generally purple, but comes in a few different shades.

My XR15 G5 power brick is a Meanwell GST90A24-ET and measures 5 5/8" x 2 3/8" x 1 1/4", of course with clearance on opposite ends for the cables into and out of the brick.