Belated 3rd birthday update

A couple of weeks ago the tank passed its 3rd birthday and I celebrated (not!) by getting the coral cutters out, I had put it off for far too long. I haven't been able to clean the left hand glass for ages and the coralline algae was having a field day. I also took the opportunity to really reduce the over large gorgonian in the middle and trim a few branch tips of the Red Planet. I hate having to cut corals and always manage to accidentally damage other stuff at the same time plus the fish really hate the disruption.

After I had finished chopping I found it hard to even look at the tank, to me it looked rather sad even though I knew it really needed doing. The Stylophora looks an odd shape and by reducing the size of the gorgonian I exposed an area of bare rock that I knew would provide a perfect breeding ground for algae. Also there is always a knock on effect when fragging corals, I knew that the alkalinity/calcium uptake would lower (because I'd made that mistake in the past) so I turned down the doser. However I vastly underestimated the difference and the KH level still crept up over the following days. Duh!

I think I finally have the dosing level dialled in again after days of testing and retesting. I also took the opportunity to add a few more money cowries to keep the growth of algae on the rocks under control.

The Stylophora has recovered well, the photo below shows a couple of the branches 7 days post fragging. After 9 days the cut tips were fully covered and the tips had developed polyps after 14 days.

Kandinsky the Mandarin is doing well and is fat as a sausage. He hasn't managed to eat all the copepods in the tank...yet! When the glass has not been cleaned for a few days I can still see them scampering around (during the day too) which makes me very happy. Admittedly they are located more towards the top of the tank where Kandinsky does not venture much but if they get a chance to reproduce and spread elsewhere that's got to be a good thing.

Spike has proved to be a bit more frustrating in the feeding department. He loves lobster eggs and live copepods but isn't much interested in anything else. I hope that this will change in the future. Firefish have a reputation of being shy and hiding but not this fish, he's out in the open all day long.

A few coral shots.

Lastly the requisite FTS. I must have taken in excess of 300 photos in an effort to get all the fish in view at the same time, this was the best of the bunch. There is still one fish not on show but I'll save that update for the next blog posting.

FTS, 30th October 2019.