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Unread 10/21/2017, 06:10 PM   #27
clownfish4
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Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Arlington, VA
Posts: 743
Thank you RedGabino. It is very disappointing to see EcoTech moving away from a partnership with Neptune. Ever since I removed the loc-line check valves the flow from my return has been much better. I'll stick to my current pump until the COR comes out and wait to see how it does before upgrading. The only reason to upgrade is the controllability.

And with that, update time! Last weekend I picked up an ORA chalice frag, a blue acro frag, some margarita snails, and some cerith snails. I picked these up to test my tank's stability and see if I could keep them alive. So far so good, though I'm pretty sure I shocked the snails when I acclimated them. They've been very slow to start moving, but are alive and seem okay now. That said, I really didn't want the margaritas, but the store I went to didn't get a shipment in last week, so it was slim pickins. Now that my tank is stable, I will place an order with ReefCleaners.

My phyto culture is doing awesome! Today was the fourth cutting and the diluted culture is so dark you can't see through it. For the Tisbe pods, I dumped them into the half of the culture left over from the split two cuts ago. Last week I sieved them out and moved them to the left overs of last weeks split. However, this method doesn't work well as it's impossible to see them in the dark green culture to manage. Today I sieved them out and put them in their own containers with fresh saltwater. The sieve carried some of the phtyo gunk with it and I added half an ounce of phyto to each container. Now the culture is very light green and I can see the pods, several of which are carrying eggs. Now I just need to find the right amount of phyto to keep them producing.

I also changed my lighting schedule today. Before I brought every color up to 100% at 4 PM, but had the blues come on earlier and stay on later. Now I'm running 20k at 100% with a 3 hour ramp up and ramp down period.

Now some pictures to finish it off. However, 20k lights with an iPhone camera doesn't result in very good photos :/ The chalice is reddish/pink and the acro is bright blue, but you can't really tell in the pics.

Chalice - It has 4 eyes.

Untitled by Mike Burns, on Flickr

Acro

Untitled by Mike Burns, on Flickr


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