It occurred to me after my last update regarding the continuing red bug issue that there was one pest I hadn't actually seen in the tank for a while and that was pyramid snails. For months and months I religiously siphoned out as many of the tiny parasitic snails that I could find, I literally removed hundreds of them without any obvious dent in their population. Naturally this got old very fast and as the months went by and my hardworking clean-up crew (Trochus & Turbo snails etc) and clam looked fine I became less vigilant. I would still remove any that I saw attached to the snails but I no longer actively seeked them out. Today though I've searched the tank most thoroughly with a magnifying glass and cannot find any evidence of a single pyramid snail. That's not to say that they aren't still present in the tank but considering how many there were at one point I take it to be a positive sign. Perhaps one of the fish has finally found a taste for them, the most obvious candidate being the Yellow wrasse but I have never seen her (now him) show any interest in eating them even when faced with one crawling up the glass in front of her face.

So that's the step forward, now for the backward step. Since the demise of some of my Acropora I have been faced with the issue of what to do with their dead skeletons. I fragged off as much as I could but that still left a goodly amount of encrusted base on the rocks. Sadly these have now become a magnet for hair algae. Normally the snails would have made short work of this algae before it had chance to establish but they find it quite hard to navigate their way round the rockwork these days due to the fact that there are lots of other corals in the way, in fact I hardly ever see the Trochus/Turbo/Ceriths on the rocks at all now, they just spend all their time cruising round the glass. Since this algae is growing ever longer by the day and starting to spread I need to formulate a battle plan asap.

That's it for now I'll sign off with an updated video for your viewing pleasure.

Here are the rest of our snorkelling videos.

The only trips we did were to see the Whale shark and the Manta Ray, sadly both were somewhat disappointing. We were lucky enough to see them but they stayed deep and it was a rugby scrum to get to see them at all. Not ideal! I'm not surprised they stayed deep to be honest. The turtles however were fantastic, we saw them both on the house reef and at Turtle reef, they pretty much ignored us completely and went about their business.

That's the last of the footage, I hope you enjoyed watching the videos.

My husband and I recently spent 2 absolutely glorious weeks snorkelling the house reef at Vilamendhoo, Maldives. My reward for being married for 25 years, every cloud has a silver lining and all. 

It's only the second time I've ever visited a reef (the first being on our honeymoon in Eilat, Israel an age ago). I was expecting the reef to be in bad shape and yes, it was everything I had feared. It must have been amazing a few (10+?) years ago but now it's a wasteland of dead skeletons. However there were signs of recovery, lots of new mini colonies taking hold with the south side of the island leading the way. It could be good again if there isn't another bleaching event in the future years, we can only hope.

Anyway there was an abundance of fish and I (we) spent practically every waking moment snorkelling, no boring sunbathing for us! Why people go all that way just to lie in the sun I will never know. Thanks to our fabulous children (possibly the only time I've ever had cause to call them fabulous ) I had a shiny new GoPro to record our adventures on. I have lots and lots of footage to post and rather than have one incredibly long video I have decided to split it up into smaller, viewer friendly segments.

Don't hold your breath for BBC quality filming, the steadiness of the camera depended entirely on how choppy the sea was and how excited I was at seeing a fish I'd previously only ever viewed in a book. David Attenborough I am certainly not! If I've misidentified any of the fish please let me know and remember to view in 1080p for the best quality picture. I hope you enjoy the videos.

More to follow in the next post.

Not much new to report really, everything seems to be ticking along and there have been no new additions.

I harvested a load of macro algae from the refugium as the upper half was a completely solid mass. I think I might have been a bit over zealous with my pruning as the algae growth seems to have stalled somewhat since then. A knock on effect being that the nutrient levels within the tank have risen slightly. On the 9th January phosphate tested at around 0.046ppm and nitrate 0.35ppm using the Elos low range kits. When I tested again on the 10th January the phosphate level had crept up to 0.08ppm and nitrate to 1ppm. Hopefully once the algae growth picks up again the levels will stabilise as I don't really want the phosphate level to get any higher. I must get into the habit of harvesting smaller amounts of algae on a more regular basis.

I've also been chasing the male pintail wrasse round in the hopes of capturing a decent photo of him displaying to the female but boy, he's really fast! I have multiple shots of just his tail or the rear half of his body, lol. I am very persistent though, thank goodness for digital cameras or I would have probably given up by now.

I finally relented and moved the Balanophyllia to the sump, it was on the fast track to coral heaven if I left it in the DT thanks to the Pintail's attentions. It's so much easier to feed down there now, especially during the day as the refugium is reverse lit so it's nice and dark. The good news is whilst the flesh on one side has receded quite badly due to the earlier infection it doesn't appear to be getting any worse and it's certainly happy to start eating again. It's a pale shadow of what it once was, the photo below shows how far the tentacles currently expand (and the receded skeleton). I hope it improves and opens up fully again.

The green tentacled corallimorph was looking a little more extended than I usually see it during the day so I whipped out the camera for a quick snap of that too (with flash). It looks like an anemone (and is commonly called a ball anemone) but actually is a part of the mushroom family. It hitchhiked into my tank on a small piece of zoanthid rock and doesn't appear to have spread much in 8 months time, mind you neither have the zoas either, lol. I think it actually looks rather attractive. 

I'll sign off with another short video. It's not much different than the last one I posted tbh but hopefully still enjoyable to watch.

First attempt at a proper tank video, plenty of room for improvement. Note the male Pintail wrasse is displaying to the female in the beginning section. :o)

Another short video for today, time lapse this time. I recorded it just after the lunchtime fish feed when the lighting is whiter. The sun coral expands it's polyps a lot more in the early evening but the lighting is ramping down again (i.e. very blue) so difficult to capture. 

Early morning on the reef (so it's really, really blue).

Well my wonderful view of the Whitecap goby and pistol shrimp partner has been somewhat short-lived. Lurch the conch came bulldozing over their newly constructed burrow this morning and proceeded to fill it in whilst performing his routine clean-up duties. Normally I'm thrilled to see him cruising around keeping the sand clean looking but not today. Doesn't he realise that area is now off limits? I'm betting the shrimp will be burrowing somewhere else tonight, somewhere that I can't see I'm sure. :o(

Talking of clean-up duties my eldest recorded a time-lapse video of the tank with his GoPro Hero4. At that time the tank just contained snails and a couple of hermits. I feel exhausted just from watching how busy the 'crew' are, they work so hard.

youtu.be/irTPGGtr890