The waiting is the hardest part...

Its been over two weeks now that everything was moved to the big tank. In that time, I also added 5 green chromis to the tank. I started with 6 but unfortunately one didn't make it. The remaining 5 seem to be doing really well and have a very healthy appetite.

Over the weekend I added to PhosBan reactors to the plumbing system. One is running carbon, the other phosban. Hopefully this will polish up the water real nice and help get rid of the cyanobacteria that has been showing up. ( the purplish / red stuff in the picture ).

Chemistry has remained stable and the SPS corals seem to be doing well with their new lighting arrangement. Shouldn't be too long now until the AquaIllumination units are released. Hope to have some super high tech LED lighting soon!

Happy in his new home

Everyone is doing great in their new home. Here's a picture of 'Spunky', the yellow tailed blue damsel who seems to be having a lot of fun exploring all the new cracks and crevices of the new rock formation.

All the corals and shrimp seem to be doing well too. One of the cleaner shrimp even molted last night.

And against all odds, I spotted 'Wilson' the black crab going about his business stuffing his pie hole yesterday afternoon so the only unaccounted for inhabitant is a nassirus snail.

Since the old tank was just sitting there doing nothing, I've decided to make it into a temporary quarantine tank. At least for the first set of fish I'm going to add. And they are already in there, 6 green reef chromis. Individually they are nothing too special, but their schooling behavior is very fun to watch. In a few weeks I'll add them to the big tank.

Move In Day

After looking at the chemistry and getting some second opinions on Reef Central, I decided today would be a good moving day for the occupants of the 50 gallon tank. And it would be easy to remember the date too :) Happy 4th of July.

So it took a few hours, and caused a lot of stress to me and the fish, but everything was moved over fairly quickly. The only thing not moved is the open brain coral because he just wont shrink down a bit and I have heard you shouldn't remove them from the water when they are full of water like that, could tear their fleshy parts up. Oh, and one more nassirus snail unaccounted for too, and Wilson the black crap. I'm betting he made it into the new tank, just haven't seen him yet.

It took the fish a while to feel safe enough to come out of hiding. At first it was just the firefish, but then he found the damsel and they started swimming together and the damsel seemed fine. Then they found the royal gramma and he came out of hiding and all three started exploring. It was fun to watch them get used to their new surroundings and explore.

I checked the chemistry again a few hours after the move and everything seems to be in spec. Hopefully it won't take long for the coraline algae to start growing on the new rock. Right now it looks pretty silly with some deep purple rock and some stark white rock right next to each other. All in good time.