Nothings Changed....................

Hi there !!!!

Things are still looking good on the tank front and not much to report at this point.

I have added a gorgonian to the main tank and guess that's about it.

I am back from Capetown !!!

Boy am I pleased to be back :)

It was a very enjoyable trip and we had good weather for most of our time there. Thanx to 1time for an excellent flight there and back. I have added an extra Capetown page to record our trip. I have also included another of my experiences of the Two Oceans aquarium.

The tanks have been humming along nicely whilst in my other halves's care and I am pleased to say that nothing untoward has happened in my absence. I did small water-changes on both tanks when I returned and obviously had to do a bit of a clean of the viewing glass. I also fed my sun coral as he did not get anything to eat.

There seems to be a slight(sarcastic) bryopsis outbreak on the sps cube - will have to start removing manually - I am also thinking about adding ozone to this tank in an attempt to boost redox above 450 mv. This will hopefully combat spores and I have used this with good results in my other display.Another option would be uv but I will only consider this if the ozone does not produce results.I am also using Prodibio on both tanks .

I will update you on the progress.

May the ZEN be with you.

No longterm effects ?

I am quite relieved as the extended power outages of the past week has not seemed to have had any longterm effects on either of the two tanks. I plan on doing a bit of maintenance tonight as we will be away for a week or so and my parents will be left to take care of feeding the tank etc...

I found it quite laughable when I started explaining everything that required doing on the tanks. Made me realize just how involved it can get at times. I will be leaving the food in little bite sized bits to ensure that the tank is not overfed in any way with clear instructions as to what goes where. I am confident that the systems will run on their own without major intervention for the 5 days that we will be away.

Be talking again when I am back .

Happy reefing.

New skimmer pump.

Hallo there.

It would seem that it was the Hailea pump I was using to drive my skimmer that had decided to give up the ghost . It was in-fact this pump that was causing the tripping of the rcbo.I went to Petmasters on saturday and bought a King5 to use in it's place. There is however a slight concern as the impeller looks like this:

The pump is being sold as saltwater safe so will be keeping an eye on it. This pump is not quite as powerful as the hailea so skimate production has altered. I will continue running it as it is now and then make a decision on it's continued use.

Power out again !!!!

I got home late last night to find that the power had been switched off during the day.The rcbo had tripped again when power was restored. This meant that the tank was - again - without movement trough the sump for more than half of the day. Temperature had dropped to 24 deg C. I wasn't a happy camper - after much plugging in and out of equipment it seems the main return pump is at fault - it does not seem to leak to earth immediately but instead insulation breakdown after a period of running. I did not have a replacement pump to run so was forced to keep this one in service. I will be going home a little earlier today - so will try and get this sorted out.

It is also time for a water change on both tanks and this I will do on the coming weekend.

I haven't added a pic of the cube as yet and do so now :

This picture was taken shortly after the tank was set up - I have moved some of the inhabitants around since then and I have also added a Tomini Tang.

Where has the time gone

Hallo everyone - already another month has passed since my last post.

Things are going pretty well as far as the tanks are concerned.

There have been some power failures recently due to "Power Shedding" and I got home yesterday to find that the rcbo had tripped and the sump had been isolated from the display. The reason for this is unknown I immediately turned it back on and found that the main tank temperature had dropped to 23.6 degrees C. I hope that this wont have any long term effects.

I am Back !!!!!!!!!

I have changed many things on my tanks since I have been on here. EEK !!!!!! 7 months have passed all ready since the last post.

I will update the stock list shortly as I had a bit of a meltdown in the main tank due to a neighbour creosoting wood whilst we were on vacation.

I have also started a small cubish SPS tank and the main in-wall has now become a Softcoral/LPS and non-photosynthetic (Gorgonians& Tubestrae) species tank. This is after having seen this Dante's Inferno.

Ron Shimek does not appreciate the general terminologies of LPS, SPS as in this quote from his blog :

One of the things Eric and I had to do at RK as part of our monthly task as editors of RK was to review the banal offerings of the endless “Tank of the Month” articles. These articles were/are an endless repetition of technical drivel - nobody ever started their narrative with a phrase similar to…”I wanted to create an environment that was optimal for such and such an organism or group of organisms, and here’s how I set out to do that biologically.” Instead they continually went into useless technobabble and compounded this up with use of meaningless filler terms such as “LPS” and “SPS.”

Whilst I agree with his view that it is more about the physiological and biological needs of the corals,the common terms as used above is still a fair representation of what the biotope aims to be and provides an easy comparison for others. I will thus continue using these terms for the time being. You can find some more reading on Ron's site by following the link.

Ron has also been doing research regarding laminar/turbulent flow and the effect this has on certain gorgonian species(I think he has evaluated 3 species) .I hope to e-mail him soon and attempt to glean some of this information from him.I think it could be useful in providing the gorgonians in my tank with the correct environment for them to thrive in. I will let you know how this pans out.

I will add some more info on these tanks soon.

A Bit of an update

I haven't posted here for a while - so thought it is about time !!!