bitwise's Red Sea Reefer 170

[syd]

There is a nice color on the corals. I agree with you that these little aquariums are sensitive when you change something. How much live rock do you have? Might try to have some more to increase the filtering.
Kind regards

[bitwise]

Thanks syd.

25 lbs of rock.

[bitwise]

I picked up a diamond goby today. So far so good, the fish is getting along with the other inhabitants and is already sifting through sand. It's a really active fish.

This weekend I ran into a couple of breakdowns. The older of my two vortechs (has the old school controller box) stopped running and the pump to my reactor stopped running. I'll have to debug those tonight or tomorrow, hopefully it's super simple.

[bitwise]

I ended up having to buy a new wet side for my vortech. I think the one that failed was very old, so no real concern there.

The impeller on my Cobalt MJ became locked to the shaft that it spins on, but I was able to free it so that's cool. No money spent there.

[syd]

Sad when the technology breaks, my pump to skimmer is breaking down. Thinking now if I'm buying a new pump and control unit or a brand new skimmer. How is the war going with the algae?
Best regards Bosse

[bitwise]

I'm still working on the algae. Having my reactor offline for about a week didn't help (impeller problem).

My new goby has been in the tank for a week now and is doing a magnificent job cleaning up the sand. It's giving me hope for this tank. The sand looks great now. The fish is also very fun to watch as he bulldozers sand constantly.

Also, I have egg crate siliconed to the bottom of my tank so I'm not worried about the goby digging.

[bitwise]

Yesterday I started dosing Microbacter7 again. I had been dosing it in the summer but I stopped because my bottle was expired. The product is supposed to aid the nitrogen cycle and help breakdown organics, among other things. People have reported positive results. I’ll follow up after a few weeks.