Testing 123

[BdaSquid]

Happy New Year! May all your aquaria dreams come true.
Q4 for the 30G tank was quite productive. From curing to establishment, there's a wonderful balance in the tank now. 3 strong critters remain - blue tang, "doctorfish," and pudding wife.

Just beginning to test with additives. Salt water from the Atlantic Ocean for water changes is rich in nutrients already. But "tweaks r us" tests begin with trace elements, iron and other stuff. Keeping additions to a minimum so as not to shock the tank or ruin a good thing.

Update: The green/red/brown algae "salad" is almost annihilated by less lighting hours, a couple of snails and the two herbivores. The coralline algae now has opportunity to grow freely.

[BdaSquid]

It's been almost two weeks of adding filter feeding, trace elements, liquid calcium, kalkwasser and other additives. Discusomas and mini carpets are loving it! May back off just a bit as it seems to promote undesired algae in smaller setups. Prolific outbreaks of those white little thingys crawling all over the glass in the last week as well, more now than ever. Can you say copepods? Timing and balance....hope the 30G continues to thrive.

[BdaSquid]

It's going well. Kalkwasser dosing is causing more purple, pink and green calcerous growth on the reef and the glass. It seems ChromaPlex is helping the discusomas and carpets. One downside (as expected) is that some unwanted algae growth is occurring on the sand-bed. So I cut back on the addtives just a little.
One aside:
The 30G has been established for about 6 months now. After cleaning my Red Sea Prizm skimmer, it still extracts quite a bit of "gunk" and I noticed that it even runs much quieter now! That unnerving swishing sound is gone!