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The other day I realized I had zero algae in the 75g tank and that I hadn’t seen any for a couple of weeks. It had been quite minimal before that, basically only in the plants that grown to float across the surface, but in thinking about it, the algae pretty much vanished when I fixed the timer situation.

It turns out, much to my shock and horror, that the analog timers I was using were not accurate when used for the short durations necessary to run my dosing pumps. This testing came about when I had one of the timers fail, so I wanted to make sure that the new one would be working properly. It’s also one of those things when there’s a problem, when everything you’ve checked is fine then it’s time to find new things to check. Once I resolved the timer situation, by moving the lights to the analog timers and the CO2 system and dosing pumps to the old coralife digital timer strips the dosing pumps were once again accurate.

It would appear, that after all my trouble, it was ultimately a matter of not enough fertilization. Only about half of the required dose was making it into the tank. Changing the CO2 to mist and removing the reactor definitely helped, but it was fixing the dosing, as usual, that fixed the problem.

Just a bit ago I saw the sand moving in the reef tank, then saw this elephant trunk looking thing retracting and extending to show tentacles at the end. It was definitely a “wtf is that?!” moment with a strong side of freaked out a little. A little research and it appears to be a peanut worm, kind of neat, first non-algae hitchhiker.

There are several more of the neat little green cup macro algae shown before, lots of sargassum has popped up, and the neomeris continues to be awesome neon green. Unfortunately I’m still seeing little green bubbles. I think an emerald crab is in order, it should also help with the hair algae that the little hermits don’t seem to be making much of a dent in. I’m going to do a manual removal session tomorrow prior to the weekly water change.

I also saw my first pods today, took long enough! My chaetomorpha algae was allegedly seeded with them, but perhaps I had an unreasonable expectation of just how many there would be.

Still no micro brittle stars, I think it would be great if I had those pop up though.

I just realized I never created a Youtube account, turns out that imeridian, indigomeridian, and indiboi are all taken, wtf?! All this came about after reading an article about online identities and how people register others’ names just for fun and profit. There are plenty of services that I don’t particularly want to use now, but may in the future, so I better start registering everywhere, huh? …except for Youtube, fuck that, I want my own damned name, not some bullshit because someone else registered my name first.

Sagittaria Flower

This is one of the few flowers that managed to bloom completely above the water line. Usually they’re partially submerged and more translucent. That’s “mini” water lettuce there in the foreground.

I’ve been waiting for this light for more than a month now, but it finally arrived! It’s the Current USA Nova Extreme 18″ SLR fixture with 2×18/20 watt T5HO lamps. One actinic, and one 10kK. It’s very nice to have a fixture that doesn’t overhang the tank by crazy lengths. It’s not nearly as apparently bright as the 65w PC fixture was though, but thankfully runs much cooler.

5.5 Gallon Reef 5-27-09

I still need to arrange the rock, but I want to wait until the algae is more under control. This waiting period also allows me to watch for both good and bad new algae, I discovered this really interesting green one earlier today:

Unidentified Macro Algae

75 Gallon Aquarium 5-27-09

I didn’t actually remove any plants though, just rearranged them. It’s a slow process, but I don’t think I’ll ever shun the Jungle style. Those interested in following this aquarium progress can do so via the 75g Planted Tank category.

I still need to do some major work on the right side, especially in the front.