DaJMasta

Buying the cheapest vodka you can find certainly helps make sure it ends up in the system and not in the glass

A little update for today: I can't say there's a huge amount of visible growth in the last couple weeks, but there is some and there are some improvements in coloration and such. Not a lot has changed except for adding some new fish! I ended up getting a couple of firefish gobies (always liked them, never had a screen top before), and a mandarin to replace the last one which jumped. Kept the mandarin in a box for a few days to try and verify that it was eating frozen, didn't hold it long enough to see it slurp a full mysis, but I saw him going for other foods and always with a feeding response to the frozen. May properly write up what I did, but basically by putting him in the basket first thing, he was sort of forced into being around the food added all the time, and since they are shy in new environments, it meant that I could watch him eat without being so visible and intimidating. I looked for the mandarin that was feeding at the store and saw a food response immediately, but he still isn't 100% on catching the bigger chunks in front of him. I think mandarins often looking on walls for food more than the ground, so if I had to do it again, I would probably make an inclined bit with ridges to hold falling food for him to forage on and then just add frozen to that. I've also read that in training them to eat frozen you want it to move like live, and that hasn't been the case at all with either of my mandarins. They want to hunt around in low (or no) flow and won't even bother with food drifting by their face in most cases - they will position themselves and strike the stationary stuff reliably, so low flow helps keep the food from getting away. The firefish are fun that they will immediately disappear when frightened, even when just using the algae magnet, but cuddle up together in a little hole under the rock where they sleep. The flame angel will sort of chase them just a bit, but I can't say it's any more aggression than before, and maybe having a bunch of potential targets lessens the stress on any individual. The orange spot goby has also made his own burrow under the rock front left and slept in it last night after staying in the back near one of the shrimp dens almost exclusively before. Not exactly sure why, maybe just being more adventurous, maybe something's up with one of the shrimp. I still hear clicks, but I haven't seen both of the shrimp clearly for a couple of days. Been gradually increasing my vodka dosing - originally by 0.5mL every other day, now by 1mL every other day, starting at 1mL and currently dosing 5mL a day. There's a bit more skimmate and it's darker, but I don't see a big impact on nitrates yet, so I'm still ramping it up slowly. I checked the algae scrubber last week and it had less algae than before.... I'm not going to bother pulling it until my vodka dosing is stabilized, but I'm not so impressed and it hasn't done much. Tried increasing the photoperiod for it to 22h (recommended for it by the manufacturer), we'll see if that makes a difference. In a week it will be four months old! Still no automation (aside from light timers and the pump drivers) but I've been slowly gathering parts and thinking about the design....

Had no problem with either, and BRS does seem to put some effort into getting better products and educating people about them, so while it's really not bad news, I can't bring myself to think it's good news. No hate to them, I'm still happy enough to shop there, but we're loosing major dry goods suppliers every few years and that reduces competition and makes it even harder for new businesses to break in and compete with the ever more dominant force.

I certainly would not want to run a tank at a very low salinity with inverts, and changing it suddenly down is a recipe for problems, but I doubt a knee-jerk increase would be helpful either, so I suppose you'll see. What does the treatment on the container say in terms of timing? Most medications available for parasites are only really effective on one main developmental stage of the parasite, so even if three hours of exposure at normal concentration is enough to deal with it, it likely will only be a temporary treatment as parasites in other life cycle stages will mature and then be able to grow again on the fish. Most treatments are either prolonged and continuous or several treatments at fixed intervals to deal with the maturing stages of new parasites to kill each stage as the medication becomes effective against it. A common way to aerate QT or hospital tanks is an air stone and bubbler or a hang on back filter with some biological media (as the tank itself usually does not have any other filtration. I'd strongly encourage you to catch seemingly effected fish and treat them outside of the tank, both to minimize negative interactions with other creatures and your tank's biological filter, as well as to dose proper amounts for controlled durations. A small QT tank, a HOB filter, and some basic filtration media is all you need aside from some water and the treatment to treat them externally, and if you are having trouble catching fish you can try a trap or even just draining the water level to just a few inches above the substrate... I don't know of almost any effective and safe whole tank treatments for a mixed reef.

ICP analysis is basically laboratory testing for your water samples, you take the sample and mail it away, then they run the tests and tell you what's in the sample. Not a quick option, but it can find more hidden long term problems, there are a few companies that offer it, but will readout something like 20+ different elements and quantities of each down to much higher precision than home test kits can manage.

A big water change is probably good, but given the age, it could be worth getting an ICP test done for elements you can't normally measure for. There's some chance that something (damaged equipment, trace elements in top off, something that settled out of the air) has just built up over time to a level that is toxic. Worth checking ammonia and nitrite as well as the normal ones to see if there's something dead in there that is just causing an issue. Otherwise the only thing that I can think of is some kind of parasite, but I think the treatments are generally not full tank safe, so it would be a hospital tank and treatment kind of thing for fish showing signs of issues. Maybe someone else can recommend specific things to check, but when it's all very unknown and mysterious, getting the best picture of the problem possible is probably the most reliable way forward.

Have you checked your parameters? Are they all eating normally? Have you checked your dosing systems to verify the right amount and concentration is being dosed? If nothing's visible on the outside, maybe some kind of internal parasite? Are there any signs of damaged on the dead fish?

I've heard of people using xenia as nutrient export in the refugium, so if you're willing to do the removal it may be improving your water quality Not personal experience but what I've read: scrubbing or picking off the bits of flesh is really the way to do it. There may be some chemical means, but which would also damage other things living on the rock, and it seems like, similar to mushrooms, any bit of the flesh holding on to the rock has at least a chance of healing and fully regrowing.

Some videos: For some reason, the twilight hours seem to be the ones when the fish are the most out and about, and when you start seeing the extra polyp extension for the evening start. If it weren't for the low light conditions, it would be ideal, and I think I'm slowly figuring out the equipment/software I've got to make reasonable quality videos, albeit ones with a single camera position and no audio.

Some things stay the same, some things start anew, some things go wrong... let's start with the bad news: early last week my mandarin jumped. She was rarely in the top half of the tank and I never saw her move fast enough in reaction to anything to be able to jump far enough to get over the lid at the top, but it happened sometime over the night and I found her hours later. Bad way to start the week, but it wasn't long before I decided I really liked that fish, I want to keep one, and that I needed to find a lid. So after looking around at some DIY options (the leader was a polycarbonate sheet with some small printed parts to be a lip just inside the glass so that it could sit flush with the current surface), but I ended up getting the Red Sea DIY mesh lid kit instead. Basically, I hadn't realized it used aluminum extrusions and it seemed more durable than expected, it was around the same price as the DIY route, and I wouldn't have to worry about salt creep, algae growth, or potential increase of heat or reduction of gas exchange. Assembly of the lid was pretty simple and while I can tell there's a little more of a static-y look (the grid of edges means you see just a tiny bit of the color fringing on edges from multiple LEDs), and you get this bright layer at the top of the tank when looking from the side, it's been less obtrusive than I had expected, and I am looking forward to getting fish that apparently can jump again. I also remade the mounts for my Ice Cap K1-50 skimmer, one for the silencer to put it lower down and keep it from being attached to the cup that needs to come off for cleaning, and one for the skimmer itself - it came with one that did work, but the mount can't actually hold itself to the side, it relies on the grip on the skimmer body and some adjustment screws to hold it in place and it just seemed like a really lackluster/potentially problematic way to hold the skimmer. On the off-chance you have the same skimmer, here are the parts: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4884583 The skimmer does seem to be a little weaker than I had hoped, but I did go from a 900lph pump to a 200lph pump. With the mount changing and adding some extra silicone tubing on the input side of the silencer, the skimmer is effectively silent, though, which is fantastic. I've seen gradually elevating nitrate levels (to about 40ppm, whereas with the previous skimmer it settled around 25ppm), and just a hint of that brown diatom stuff on the sand bed again. The flame angel is still a tad aggressive, but the other fish seem to be ok, and I've watched some cleaning behavior from the shrimp with the orange spot goby, which was particularly neat. The rock flower nems have moved around a bit (they definitely like the rock better than the sand, and they definitely like the shade), but not blowing around, so they disappear into the rockwork for a couple days and then reappear a few inches away. I'm seeing slightly more growth around, including coralline, and I decided to try and start a dosing regimen going. I started with 50mL of kalkwasser every other day, and after a bit of trying that with almost no impact on alkalinity and pH in the long term, I upped it to 100mL every day. Today I did a more complete survey of parameters and mixed up my two part chemicals for the first time, adding a chunk of magnesium, a little alkalinity, and some calcium, as well as picking out target parameters for the tank. My goals are: 8.2-8.3 pH 5-20ppm Nitrate 0.1-0.25ppm Phosphate 10 dKH Alkalinity 450ppm Calcium 1360ppm Magnesium These are roughly in line with my chosen salt (Red Sea Coral Pro), and are slightly elevated over normal seawater, but they seem like good choices for growth and possibility of maintaining them there without being drastically outside of the normal range. I swapped all the filters and the DI resin on my RODI as it was producing maybe 6-7ppm TDS water on the output - it wasn't really configured for chloramines so I think it went through the media faster than usual, but I want to keep out the excess stuff added in the top off water especially, so glad to have it done. Also finally finished my first box of salt, breaking open the second with the intention of doing about a 5g water change weekly, so it should last a while. I went to clean out the Drop 1.2x after waiting a bit and was sort of underwhelmed... it's been like a month with the high flow pump and with an 18h a day light cycle, it really doesn't have much filamentous algae, just a sort of dark mat on the sides. While I do hope it can do better in the long run, even if not as a huge nutrient soak, I figured I would start something else I've done before to increase skimmate production/thickness on the smaller skimmer and get those nitrates down - carbon dosing. So I bought a fifth of the cheapest vodka I could find ($7), and dropped in the first milliliter today. It's a larger starting dose than most recommend, but I remember using several mL a day on a lower volume system the last time I used it, and I added it early enough in the day cycle that cloudyness could be reacted to or offset by photosynthesis, though I observed none. Will probably stay at 1mL a day for a few days and monitor skimmate, then start raising it maybe 0.5mL every two days until the nitrates are in the right place or I otherwise observe a problem. I've also been maintaining the KZ Flatworm Stop 1mL a day dose for general coral health (the gradual death of those hitchhiker corals does not seem to have been flatworms, after more observation), so my total dosing chemical set looks something like this now: Kalkwasser, Flatwormstop, and Vodka daily, with magnesium, calcium, and alkalinity supplements probably weekly or so as tested for. So despite my desire for things to be more or less constant, they are slowly continuing to change. At least I think I understand the causes and reasons for the change, and it is more gradual than the past couple of months, for sure. I'm testing every other day for some basic parameters, but by next month may be testing only (ha) twice a week.

And you're sure it's not any additives or test kit solutions that have spilled? Are there any corals that are particularly pissed off looking? Maybe it's a result of something excreting something in the tank. Other than the tank smelling like something that was in the air previously (and most concentrated in the skimmate), I can't say I've smelled something similar from a tank of mine.

So long as you had a barrier between it and the skimmer and you had strategically laid out pieces so that you could fully remove it for dumping the cup, maintenance, and other things, it could possibly help by just making a complete cover for it, but I'd be hesitant to let the foam near saltwater - even if it's inert and not chemically a problem, that foam is really porous (sort of like really stiff bread?) and would be a nightmare to try and dry out if it got wet. There's also potentially a heatrisk to enclosing the motor in foam - some is mitigated by the waterflow, but some pump designs have a lot of waste heat come out from the pump body, so enclosing that would be a bad idea. My line of reasoning would to try to pinpoint it more specifically, or if that can't be done, try to use a sound treatment all around the sump or wherever it is in your setup. My skimmer seems to have most of its noise come from the air intake, out of the silencer, so I'm still thinking about adding a cloth tube coming out of it - damping some of the sound spilling out from the spot while not restricting airflow. If it's coming from the pump or fittings, maybe cleaning the pump could help, maybe rubber mounting or gaskets could help reduce vibration, etc. If you can lessen or remove the noise by tuning the skimmer or adjusting flowrate or similar, you could try to find that optimal point for noise and then adjust the rest of the setup around trying to leave it there. Then finally, if you've got a sump for it, you could just line all the interior panels with acoustic foam and probably get reasonable results without getting too on top of the hardware. At the very least, if you go the 'encase in foam' route, make sure you pull it out of the system and do the actual work outside of the system. Even if the foam is 'reef safe' and you can mitigate the other risks, the chemicals before the solvent evaporates may not be, the solvent probably won't be, and even the propellant in the can may not be.

It's been a bit, more things have happened, and the tank is now two months old, as of today! What a difference from the first day with water, and it's sort of surprising even to me how much has happened and how much now lives here in such a short time, but I'm looking forward to a much less active pace of changing things - it's basically fully stocked in my eyes, so the priority now turns to regular maintenance, monitoring, and watching the whole thing grow out. From the left: From the right: And a bit of video from the front with the creatures doing their respective things: And a little close up of the acan garden which is still just frags The water is a tad dirtier than I'd like (last measured at 40ppm Nitrate, 0.3ppm Phosphate), but I am still getting the skimmer dialed in somewhat and that's slightly higher than the average over the last couple weeks. I'd like to make a new mount for the skimmer - the one it comes with does work, but having a bracket to hold on the side that is only a bent piece of acrylic and a couple of adjustment screws still weirds me out from a stability perspective (it effectively clamps against the skimmer body, but only using the force of the mount clipping to the body). Should get it a bit lower in the water to what it claims the ideal depth is, but it has been substantially quieter and lower power than the stock MSK-900. The water has been clear the whole time, and a few weeks ago the brown in the sand and on things basically just went away on its own. Since then most of the green algae has been mowed back by inverts or the flame angel, and there's both spreading coralline and just more of the coverage visible. The fish seem to be getting along, though over the last three weeks or so the flame angel has definitely decided it's the boss. It will occasionally jump a bit towards one of the cardinals, but mostly just chases the basslet from time to time - which is somewhat entertaining to watch and hasn't yet resulted in a real problem or either seeming particularly stressed. I've even seen the flame angel turn perpendicular to the orange spot goby when it sticks out of a hole and then slide sideways into it, which seems like bullying in a very unusual way to me. The rock flower nems are no longer moving around and seem to be growing, so while it still looks bare where they are, when they double in size or so, they should fill in the underside of the rockwork really well. I see some bumps and changes in color on the SPS corals, but nothing has taken off with growth yet. The acros still have meh polyp extension, I think somewhat because of the nitrate level, but they are slowly changing color and I've seen some branches start to extend. I think I had one of the hitchhiker corals die (center, slightly up in the right hand shot), and I'm seeing a little similar bleaching on the little colony on the top. Not a huge concern, but I was wondering what would do it... I could have spilled some kalk paste when removing anemones, but I'm actually suspecting flatworms. The healthiest looking colony of it (smaller, top center right in the right hand pic) is just fine, but honestly looks like its covered in flatworms at times - darker, thicker looking flesh. In any case, I've also heard that some of the antiflatworm products actually just try to make the coral tissue healthier so its natural defenses can work better, and it was on sale this past week, so today is day two of dosing 1mL of KZ's FlatwormStop. Less than recommended dosage, but it seems like most dose that when as a supplement, and the 500mL bottle will last me almost a year and a half. Hoping it can beef up the corals a bit and improve the growout of these frags. I look forward to the last bits of superglue and clean frag plug to start matching the rest of the decor and then get covered with corals!

Lots of color to be seen.... but did you actually somehow fit all of those corals into half the amount of water? I'm surprised there are so many coming from much smaller tanks!

Even if you can't buy them, if you can ID the type of threads you at least have a chance of finding a large enough nut for it to work - or print one, as I mentioned. With some basic dimensions and the type of thread, I could probably have a model made and three printed in a few hours, and given the coarse threads used, it should fit pretty smoothly. Now I wouldn't have any trouble trusting them given the application, but I know not everyone has the experience with printed parts to feel the same way. This image is an M30x3.5 nut I designed and printed for a different project, while probably too wide a collar for your application (and maybe too wide an opening?), I can say from experience that it does print durably.

Took a look under my e170 and your is definitely missing the nuts. Looks like someone used the tank with a sump and didn't replace them afterward. It's tough to get measurements off it directly, but if you look into what fittings should fit to it in the manual you should be able to get a thread size/pipe diameter/etc. and it may be metric given that Red Sea is an EU based company (if I remember right). Anyone with an E series tank that converted to a sump should have them spare if they can find them, but if you can figure out the thread size, you can likely get replacement nylon nuts or similar at a hardware store. If you can get the measurements and thread type, there's also the chance to 3d print replacements - since the nut just tightens the rubber gasket on the other side, it doesn't have to be fully waterproof in itself, it just has to be plastic and has to stay tight.

I'm not sure I have a full gauge on your system, but I think there could be some benefit, though probably not a pronounced one, to adding a DI stage for your reef tank. On well water, you're not worried about excess chlorine or chloramine getting through the RO stage, and since your TDS output is low, the DI stage is probably less important than on other systems, but reducing TDS to "0" means a lot less buildup in the system from ATO additions, in particular, and especially if you don't do frequent water changes. If you're doing weekly water changes, don't top off a huge amount, and aren't seeing nuisance algae or other problems, then the different may not be tangible. If you do add a DI stage, yes definitely before or around any remineralization stages, and if you're going to use the output for drinking or cooking, I've heard the taste is not great unless you have that final carbon polishing stage (which you have, so maybe is fine?) I would probably leave it on the reef line specifically just because you're going to use it up a lot less quickly with less flow through it and it probably will be no benefit to the other applications - which I think is the proposed setup you mentioned. With that level of TDS, though, I would say it's probably not worth it unless you rarely do water changes (<1 per month or so), you need lots of ATO water added, or you are seeing some algae or similar that has stubbornly persisted and you think it could be nutrient adding through water.

I've actually used that basket for trying to get a rock nem to finally latch onto something, but instead of grabbing the rock I put in, it grabbed onto the basket. Not too hard to remove, but since it has some texture from being printed, it's not perhaps as easy as it could be. In the long term the baskets do attract some algae for the same texture reason, but they offer some flow (more in the more recent one), and either alone or for very low flow by putting a lid in diagonally as a baffle, you can get very low flow in them even a straight shot from a powerhead. Things continue and are fairly stable in the tank, but no proper FTS as I've still got one of the baskets hanging on the front blocking the view (at least somewhat). I've caught the larger cardinal and listed him (pretty sure it's two males) in the for sale forum, but with the cardinals separated everything seems like its getting along. The swissguard basslet gets chased a little by the flame angel, but it seems playful and it always seems to dart away through the rocks and then settle into its new little spot. I ran into a problem after adding the second powerhead which I didn't forsee.... the tank started warming up. It stabilized around 81.5F in the warmer room temp for these warmer days and I deemed it too high - but how to reduce the heat in the tank when the heaters aren't even on? I checked the bottom compartment and it's not coming from there (the thermal camera actually shows the area below the sandbed as being cooler), so it's the combined heat from the powerheads, sump circulation pump, skimmer, and light that are enough to heat the tank more than I want with the elevated ambient (mid 70s vs. low 70s before). My temporary solution is a 12V computer fan run at 5V across the surface - increasing evaporation quietly means about double the top off water per day, but also drops the temperature a full degree. In the long term, I think the most savings will come from the skimmer - the default RSK-900 skimmer works well but is a bit noisy and uses a Sicce AC pump that is rated for something like 25W. Not a giant amount of power, but as AC it's all dumped directly into the tank, so I'm hoping I can get a DC skimmer with a lower power rating to replace it (and reduce my noise). The Tunze 9004 DC seems perfect for the job and fits in the sump, but it's extremely hard to find stock around, so I'll have my eyes out. The AC version would still be much lower power, but since the DC version should be quieter and is slightly more powerful and the AC version is rated a little low for this size tank, I'll hold out for it (or go for a Bubble Magus Z6 if someone can confirm that it fits the chamber). A smaller skimmer, or sliding it over more to the left side, also means I can center my XR15! The clamp for it has some thickness that bumps into the side of the skimmer cup, so going with a narrower one should let me move it the remaining half inch or so. I've also confirmed that I have two good size pistol shrimp - confirming the two volumes of snaps I generally hear. The bigger burrow on the right side is actually a mostly white, larger pistol which I finally got a proper view of today while feeding the tank, and the night before I spotted the blue legged one with orange/red body segments around on the left side of the tank under the rocks. That millepora that the yellow goby was snacking on hasn't regained much tissue, if any, but the polyps are extending (actually quite a bit more than the other acro frags) and I'm starting to see it color up somewhat, so it appears to still be healthy. While I see very few of them around after dark (and try to remove the ones I spot), I caught one of those isopods and got it under the microscope. These things are full of energy and it took a good 15-20 mins to tire itself out running circles in a tiny beaker, but I got some good shots of it despite not knowing what it really is. I also spotted what looked like a polyclad flatworm marching around the tank (for a second time, couldn't catch it the first time), and got it under the microscope too. I actually dropped in a nerite and cerith and it took no interest, and I haven't seen any damage to corals, sessile inverts, or snails, so I ended up dropping it back in the tank.... but I have a guess as to what it eats - feather dusters. It actually struck me the day before I caught it that there had been a lot of feather dusters (and a couple spionids) that were entirely absent in the last few days - and this kind of critter could definitely explain it. It has an amazingly quick and interesting way of moving that looks like liquid just flowing over or around whatever it comes in contact to, and you get the telltale folds sticking up in front as a well as a couple of eyespots. Again no real ID, but some good video. Finally, I was hoping to do daily parameter measurements for the whole first two months, coming up in a week and a half or so.... but my pH test kit ran out a couple days ago. Only 50 tests and I had used a few getting the freshwater dip to the right place, so I've got a couple days until I can measure it again and I've already missed my first day of parameter measurements. Still plenty frequent, but it broke my streak. Next up is a new banggai cardinal (and a female this time if I can at all determine the sex of the one I get) to try to make a pair, a small cucumber for the sand bed if I can find one locally, and maybe a cleaner shrimp or two - I like them and it seems like they would be safe to add and easy to accommodate. Somewhere down the line I'd love to get another fish for the water column, and I'm leaning a little towards either a few blue chromis or a few zebra dartfish - though I see some reports of the zebra dartfish being jumpers, like other dartfish, though this isn't universal. A little extra movement in the water and some fish that aren't as timid I think will help encourage the others to be out more and give me something nice to admire from a distance while the corals start to grow in.

Haven't done it, but with most kinds of paints that would count as marine safe (like epoxy coat), you likely just need to clean the surface, lightly sand it to rough it up and improve adhesion, and paint directly over it. So long as the paint can adhere to plastic and has a little bit of flex to it when dried, there are probably a bunch that will do a good job, and if not, you can do the same with a coat of primer under the top black.

Do you know what the ratings for the chiller are? Is that GPH for different target temperatures? Provided the chiller has the same duty cycle, there shouldn't be a substantial difference in performance between flow rates. Chillers will just cycle on and off as required to hit their thermostat goals, and provided you have enough flow through it to keep it from chilling the water around the sensor to the point of shutting off the chiller when there's still work to be done, the heat removed shouldn't be all that different in low but still to rating to moderate flow. There's likely an efficiency bonus to a higher temperature differential, so higher flow may be somewhat higher efficiency, but this will always drop as you approach your target temperature, so that's really only a factor after it's first switched on or if the chiller can't keep up with the target temperature.

Little update: At long last, I think I'm equipment complete (at least for stuff that stays in the tank). I had the idea to get a second circulation pump for more and more randomized flow some weeks ago, but the first arrived damaged and returning it took a while. Today I dropped in a second Reefbreeders RP-M on the other side of the tank, set to a similar random schedule as the first, and I'm hoping for: More flow More random flow Changing flow patterns over time Less suction at the pump heads (lower chance of sucking something important in) Otherwise, I've also designed some media baskets for the e170's media basket tower thing, and filled two of them with MarinePure gems (3 boxes of 90g for 2 baskets full). Hoping these add some extra filtration capacity and act as a mini fuge/pod breeding ground. They've actually been the tank for a couple weeks already, but only with one bag of gems, today they are filled. Model available here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4863924 Still having some trouble introducing the new cardinal, and I'm wondering if I just haven't been able to reliably sex them yet, will take some pictures and see. In the mean time, I made one of those hang on acclimation baskets that has bigger holes (more visibility) and a bit more size, and while I don't see a lot of recognition through it from the larger cardinal, it does swim out under it for a bit - it is at least easier to see through, even if not ideal. Model available here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4863927 Did a 5G water change yesterday too, a proper one, because while I've been doing some smaller ones as I've been removing water for acclimation and dips, I hadn't done a full on agitate-detrius-and-remove sort of water change, and I'll probably do another 5G in a few days to follow up on it. I'd still love to get my cardinal situation sorted, and I'd like a cleaner shrimp and a small cucumber at some point, but I've got fish and corals now and while there's minimal growth, I think I'm getting close to a really good stocking point in the long term. Let the grow in begin!

Mostly good news at the beginning of this week, parameters seem to be fairly stable (though the nitrates are a tad high at usually 25ppm), but signs are good towards things settling in. Still have some diatoms, especially on the sand, but the hair algae is starting to be mowed back and the growth is noticeably slower. Probably the biggest good sign - today I watched the mandarin slurp up two whole mysis shrimp! I'll still be feeding with the pumps off for a somewhat extended period for a while yet, but even though it's not looking as chubby as I would have hoped, those two mysis are probably an hour's worth of hunting pods around the place, and it's great to finally have a confirmation that it's eating prepared foods instead of just a feeding response behavior. As it was showing interest in food, I was just trying to feed the more active fish more directly, then leaving the pumps off, which meant the mandarin would come out farther in the central area and go up higher on the rocks to forage. I tried to take advantage of that by putting a little food directly on the rockwork, and it paid off. If anyone is trying the same with a mandarin that shows a feeding response when foods are added, I actually used a mix of a cube of mysis and half of a very small scoop of freeze dried phytoplankton and a similar amount of reef chili, no idea if it helped the food appear appetizing, but that's what was fed on the day I clearly saw eating. I seem to generally get the most feeding response from all the fish with Marine Cuisine cubes, but I think once they have some of whatever, they will mostly eat it. Another good sign: the basslet is out and about! It still very much sticks to the rockwork, but I can usually see its nose sticking out and it's regularly running circles through the cracks and crevices and poking at bits of food in the water column. After the scare when it arrived and then four days or so of sticking its nose vertically into a crack under the rocks, it's finally come out and looks spirited. It sort of reminds me of an eel in that it will poke it's head out, sometimes move out, and then retract again, and has a very smooth way of swimming through the turns in the rockwork. That baby urchin, then smaller than a pea, that I made a video of about four weeks ago is now probably larger than a dime including spines, and I know I've got several more (I think four in total), while the camera didn't want to focus with the algae swaying, it's been doing a pretty good cleanup job on the little rock island: Really the only troubling news is in my attempt to find the Banggai cardinal a buddy. I went to a shop that had several and after trying to determine the sex of mine (a male), I tried as best I could to pick out a female from the group. I brought it home, did the safety stop dips, and then introduced it, and initially it swam over to the existing one and tried to be buddies, but the bigger one wasn't having it. A bit of nipping and aggressive behavior and I saw what I thought was a bit of a damaged ventral fin, so I scooped it up and held it in one of those hang-on-the-side containers to give it a chance to rest and eat and try again tomorrow. Two more attempts later, I got it out before any injuries, but still no acceptance - though today they were in the tank for something like four hours before the aggression became really significant. You can tell the signs of it before they give chase, as the aggressor will do a bunch of quick, jumpy pulses of movement and will generally turn and face the other fish, which the other fish will definitely recognize as aggressive and react to. Sometimes they could swim close, but almost always with the new one trailing and the existing one in the front, and even when not nearby, the aggressor seems to be a little less tolerant of other fish and even nips at its reflection in the glass. I'm working on printing a slightly larger basket with more holes for visibility, in the hopes of getting something like an acrylic acclimation basket, but I'll try to introduce them at least a couple more times. I wonder if the problem is actually due to age/size. The new Banggai is substantially smaller, even though I don't think the existing one is fully grown, so I'm wondering that they may fight because of dissimilar size even if they are a male and a female.... and it's been very hard to try and even get a good guess from sexing them with the vent method. At the very least, the two I have now have opposite jaw and second dorsal fin characteristics, which are supposed to be signs of their sex as well. Cleaned some green slime out of the Drop 1.2x to let the hair algae grow in better, have a second Reefbreeders RP-M pump on order so I can get a little more flow without sucking things into the side (lower setting per pump) and to get the randomness associated with the two patterns meeting somewhere in the center, but I'll probably try out async pulses as well to see if I can get a nice wave action instead - I think a bit more flow would be a benefit, and while all the edges and back get fairly good flow now, it is very one directional, so the ability to switch that around will be nice. I've seen some tiny new heads on the star coral that's closest to the light just budding out of the side of existing ones, so while I haven't seen a lot of purple coralline (probably some green), I'm definitely getting calcification, which is again a good sign. The new rock nems have finally stopped moving around, but they're still small enough to be mostly buried in the sand during the day (and last night a mussel decided to drop on one of them, it will probably relocate again tonight), so I hope to have some proper pictures in the next week.

Even a relatively small vent in a lid can make a big difference, basically the heat rises but is held in pretty well by most built in hoods, I don't know if there's a convenient spot, but even something like half a dozen quarter inch holes drilled in the highest spot could drop it a full degree - just allowing something to escape through the relatively sealed barrier will keep as much of the light heat from staying in the tank and would even slightly increase evaporation.

You can probably use a temperature controller for a fan pointed at the surface of the water, to increase evaporation and cooling that way. Would use up ATO water faster, and there is a limit to how cool that can make it, but it should give you at least a few degrees of headway. Depending on how long it's hot for, you can also probably work something out to turn off or dim the lights when it gets the hottest, or even just add a cooling fan to the hood of the tank if it has one. A lot of the heat coming in is going to be from lighting, so if the room ambient temperature isn't too high, just venting the excess may be sufficient.

Another equipment update for this week... a new light! The ReefLED 90 was a bit blue for my tastes and had a lot of shimmer - I remember liking 12k-15k metal halides, and the ReefLED has got to be more than 20k with both channels maxed. Found a good deal on a lightly used XR15 G5, so I swapped up. Much less shimmer by default, a bunch more white, and a more filled out overall spectrum, which should help color rendering and give me more of the look I'm hoping for. Overall output of the two is fairly comparable, and since the system is new enough that corals are mostly still acclimating anyways, I figure this is a better time to swap than later. A little comparison of shimmer levels: Otherwise, I got a couple overnight packages this week with some corals, some little rock anemones, and a fish. Most were fine and were slightly opening even in their acclimation/dip, but for some reason, everything in one package was alarmingly stressed. A couple of acans had a greyish look and barely had any polyp extension even after a couple hours in the tank, the rock nem had its mouth partially distended and it didn't otherwise look happy, and the fish - a swissguard basslet - was acting erratically and having trouble keeping itself rightside up in the bag. I was worried, so I did what i could - a faster than usual acclimation to tank water with an air stone in it for the duration. I had to pull the airstone partly out because the fish was so weak, it being all the way in created enough flow to pull it over to the airstone, but two doublings of volume in the bucket was maybe 15 minutes instead of the usual 30-45. Then I put the bubbler and a small heater in a larger bucket of plain tank water and scooped up the fish and moved it over, adding a bit of loc line for cover. Again I had to pull the bubbler partially, and it was lying mostly upside down for most of the first half an hour, but after a little longer in the bucket it was able to right itself, and eventually slowly move over to the loc line. I opted not to do the Safety Stop treatment I wanted to do for every fish given its condition. After a couple hours in this holding bucket, I saw enough activity to suggest that it may have gone through the worst of it (and I could lower the bubbler completely without pulling the fish into it), and since the tank lights were dimming and I had those baskets, I turned off the main flow (just the sump return), scooped up the fish, and transferred it into the basket in the tank with a hiding place, keeping tabs every so often. While it showed no interest in food, the next morning it seemed to be acting more normally - when I grabbed the loc line to see if it was hiding, I got it halfway out of the water before the fish couldn't hold itself inside anymore by swimming. So I tipped the basket over next to the rockwork and after a bit the new basslet swam out! It's been mostly hiding since, and when startled it seems to prefer wedging itself vertically in a crevice which looks quite odd, but I'm hoping it will venture out into the open at least a bit in the next day or two, it's a very pretty fish. The rock anemones all settled in with the flow being off fairly quickly (even the sick one), just placed in the sand at the base of some rockwork, but one stubbornly refused. I tried burying it in sand (it would dig out and then drift away), covering it with a rock (dig out and drift away), holding it down with a small glass beaker (actually worked overnight, decided to leave the next day), and eventually had success giving it some bits of rubble in the hang on basket while using its lid as a baffle to reduce flow, and in the morning just moving the gravel to the spot I was trying to get it to stay. So far, so good. All the anemones are pretty small, the biggest is maybe an inch and a half around, but I'm excited for when they grow in because I've got some great colors! Finally, I added a millepora frag that came as a 'mystery sps' frag in a package and while it started sticking out its polyps a bit quickly, the yellow goby, which had been using a rhodactis mushroom for a perch, decided to hang out next to it. It took me a few hours to catch it in the act and realize what was going on - but it managed to eat about 15% of the new frag! The yellow goby is fairly bold, so I didn't really worry that I wouldn't be able to catch it, but I wanted to act quickly as this shipping stressed frag which may actually want cleaner water than my tank currently offers was being consumed, so I came up with a somewhat unusual plan to catch the goby: It took less than 10 minutes to catch it