Day 23 - Friday 20th - Around 5pm
More news...
- I am not so happy with the cyano outbreak but many thanks to all who helped with ID the beast. I was expecting this a bit because of the massive amounts of nitrites I have had, and consequently nitrates now present in the tank. Today, nitrites test at almost zero and nitrates are way beyond 50. And still, this is after a 8 gallons water change, that is more than 20%!
- The first wave of my cleaning crew is doing a great job: Take a look at the picture below, you can see the trail of one of my newly introduced snails. This Astrea leaves nothing behind him (or her?)
- I decided to bring in a second wave of "slow" cleaners today. 14 more snails: Astrea, Ceriths and nassarius. After hesitating for a while, I have opted to pass on hermit crabs: They were eating each other in the LFS sale tank and that was kind of "unattractive" to say the least.
- Thanks all for your advice with dealing with cyano. I will syphoon as much as I can, be patient and make larger water changes in the next month, without introducing any new livestock, if I can resist the temptation to introduce my first zooanthids... I would prefer to avoid chemicals and try patience first.
- Skimmer is still skimming big time.
- Microbubbles are now very very present. Turning the skimmer off for a while helps a lot and seems to be the culprit for that matter. However, I certainly do not want not to skim...
- No new signs of life on the rocks - just my four little dusters.
- Very very few pods...
Obviously, the tank is still cycling... and I am a bit concerned for my cleanup crew... We'll see.