I decided that the clean-up-crew needed a bit of a boost. Whilst I still have two original Ceriths introduced in November 2016, the pair I added 6 months later are no longer with me. I don't get to see these snails very much as they only come out to play when the lights go out but I find they are hard workers and (in a very, very small way) useful keeping the sand turned. So I introduced 6 more. In addition to which I added 5 more teeny-tiny Blue Leg hermits (complement the two already present) and, after much deliberation, an Emerald crab. I have wanted to keep an Emerald crab for ages but have always wimped out of adding one at the very last minute, this time however I actually went ahead and did the deed. I had hoped that it would deal with an ever growing number of Valonia (bubble algae) that were popping up on one particular piece of the rockwork.

On day one the Emerald crab (Bruce, as he is now named) picked at the rockwork (good) and sampled the Superman Montipora and Seriatopora hystrix (not good!). On day two some of the small fan worms that I'd been carefully nurturing disappeared but I'd kinda expected this, what I didn't expect however was to wake up to 3 complete branches of Seriatopora stripped of flesh. Alarm bells were definitely ringing. Day 3, things looked worse for the Seriatopora, losing fans worms is one thing but eating corals is a no-no so a quick herding with a pipette into a glass cup (not too bright this crab) and down into the refugium he went. Now Bruce spends his days in bliss and munching on the veggies like he's supposed to. Sadly he never got the chance to deal with growing number of Valonia​ in the DT.

Here's a quick pic from day 1 before he blotted his copy book:

And now here's a quick video of him living it up in the veg paradise that is the refugium, those grapes are oh so tasty (but maybe not so much as coral, rofl). Apologies for the freaky red lighting, it's not great for videos but the algae seems OK to grow under it.

Many apologies for the lack of updates, I've been busy with work, plus we went on holiday for two blissful weeks (reefy videos to follow).

So the tank is 17+ months old and has made it through my first holiday, although not without a couple of losses.  Up until our holiday everything had been plodding along nicely with nothing particularly spectacular to report but generally slow and steady growth all round. Space was getting very tight and corals were encroaching on each other, there had been no new additions for ages. Then we go away and a week into our holiday I get a text from my son saying that one of the corals looks a bit odd. A quick photo later and sure enough the Acropora loripes was stripping fast. We ran through all the obvious parameters but nothing seemed obviously off and since there was not much more to do half way round the world I recommended for him to just leave it and not to worry about it. Needless to say I did worry about it a bit, lol. When we got back a week later the Acro was but a white skeleton which was such a shame as it was finally starting to look less like a frag and more like an actual colony *sigh*. I checked everything else over and found the Red Dragon Acro also looking a bit dodgy (but then it was being attacked nightly by the sun coral) it also stripped a couple of days later. I think it's fair to say the Red Dragon was probably stressed. At that point I feared the rest of the tank would follow suit domino fashion but no those two Acros were the only losses. It's been 3 weeks now and everything else seems fine needless to say I won't be replacing the Acros, there's nowhere for new corals to go really.

Rei the yellow wrasse has grown considerably over the 9 months since I got her, scarily fast actually. She has lost the third black spot to the rear of her dorsal fin and developed some really lovely markings on her face. She's transitioning into a male or is in fact already male.

​Now for a few photos....