Well..if you hearken back to a couple of days ago I posted a query on this board about my "retarded Anemone". The good news is that My tomato clown decided the retarded anemone is a happy place and I caught him all nestled in it. Very, very cute....the anemone is still a bit retarded...I put him in a moderate light low current corner for awhile so he can adjust...but he's still all white and hasn't decided what to do with is foot.
That's the good news
The bad news is my Coral Beauty (Centropyge Bispinosa sp. right?) died tonight
. I couldn't find him at feeding time tonight, so I whipped out the old trusty mag-lite and started looking...he was wedged up under some rocks!!! I had to disassemble that part of the reef to get at him...when I finally did he was bent up like a question mark
. I am guessing that the part of the reef he was in settled a bit last night/this morning and trapped him (likely hurting him badly) by the time I got him out he was near death...netted him and tried to get him into a high current area to see if it revived him with no success...he passed about an hour ago.
Also, I had to turn the main lights on after they'd been out for about 1 hour tonight to get the fish out and noticed 1. the Chili coral had opened larger than ever before (guess they really like NO light, rather than low light) 2. there are skads of tiny little white creatures runing around the substrate and lower part of the glass...too small to make a determination on what they are. Would any of the experts hazard a guess? whitish creatures about 1/2 mm long seem to be swimming/crawling all over the substrate.
Well that's my success and failure for today...
BTW I added an Achilles tang to the tank about 2 days ago and it seems to be doing very well. In retrospect I wish I had gone with the
Yellow Eye Tang, but this Achilles is so darn happy I can't regret it too much.
So I am back down to 3 fish (1 blasted blue damsel that is dumb as a box of rocks, but smart enough to evade my netting techniques, 1 tomato clown, and 1 Achilles Tang), 1 Bubble coral seems to be maintaining without tremendous growth or contraction, 1 Chili Coral (found out tonight it is very happy after the lights go out), 1 Leather (
Sarcophyton sp., right?), 1 Frogspawn (Euphyllia Divisa sp.) 2 types of mushrooms, 1 open brain showing some good growth. 1 retarded Long Tentacled Anemone, 1 8" green LTA that dug in immediately and looks awesome....15 or so turbos that are cleaning the diatoms so fast taht they are going after the nori and red macro faster than the tang notices I've put it in. and 1 green brittle-star....
One lingering problem remains...nitrates are building fairly rapidly. I did a 30% water change about 1 week ago (R/O water) and the nitrates are still going up....>40ppm...I've got another 30 gallons heating right now (will change it tomorrow night) but it doesn't seem my substrate/live rock combo is getting the job done...any suggestions on how to encourage the anaerobic bacteria in these areas to stimulate the denitrification cycle that I've read so much about????
Thanks all, your advice...while not always directed at me, has been invaluable....
- Chris
