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Lately, my tank has gone untouched. Due to work being hectic I have largely neglected it, and I have let the glass algae build up longer than I should have. I scape it off about once a a week now, it makes it look all that much better when its clean.

A few weeks ago I was having a few people over and I decided to spiff up the looks of the tank by picking up a few items while on a water run. I picked up 4 green chromis, a nice little crocea clam, an a pistol shrimp and a tiny little goby.

After dissapearing for weeks, I saw the shrimp and boby paired up in the back of the tank for the first time yesterday. The goby is litterally 1/2 inch long, its really neat to watch them interact. My other pair has relocated their home out-of-sight so I only get to hear them, as opposed to see them. So I am glad that this pair ended up in a place that I can see them.

The chromis and clams are doing fine, schooling as expected.

Also, my green BTA split! One morning I woke up and there were two! On an unrelated, and slighty dissapointing note, one of the green-mojano’s in my tank split, so now I have 3. I haven’t busted out the Kalkwasser to kill them just yet, they are pretty neon green.

Until next time!

So I found some cool dudes on craigslist that wanted to do some trades. I traded some nice pink pulsing Xenia for a huge two-head purple-tipped green frogspawn, and a 4-headed green candy-cane and a few mushroom frags. The guy I met had a 20k 250w DE halide that he wasn’t going to ever use. I went ahead and installed it today. I am not sure that I like the look, with the actinic supplementation the tank is VERY VERY blue! I am going to leave it in for a few days and see how the color looks then.

My Bicolor Blennie has been picking at my new clam. He was banished to the fuge. I chased him into a piece of live rock an d put it into the fuge until he swam out. I additionally banished 4 of the aggressive Snails – I saw one of them crawling on the clam.

With all the new light I am getting a slight diatom bloom on the glass – to be expected. Additionally, some of the coral is a bit freaked out by all of the light. Specifically the Xenia sp. and the Toadstool leather. The new SPS and Zoo’s are doing great.

So with my new metal halide confidence I went to the LFS today on a mission, and ended up with the following:

•  5″ purple and blue Crocea Clam. This was the smallest, and best looking of the 4 Crocea clams that my LFS had. They have had them in stock for like 6 months and came out of a local tank. I am confident that it will do well under my new lighting. After being in the tank for about 10 minutes it has already opened up a bit and is moving water.
•  Tiny Green  branching Acopora frag. It doesn’t look too good but I’m told that the parent colony was bright green. We will see how it turns out.
•  Tiny purple Montipora frag. This postage stamp sized frag is alread molding over a tiny piece of rock. I selected it over a few other ‘floating’ pieces. It is bright purple, matching the Crocea.
•  5x Zoonathid Polyps frag. These polyps look great, they are green red and blue. I shoved them into a crevice in some live rock

I suppose I have to start checking my calcium levels to keep these guys moving. Although with the tiny frags, I suspect they aren’t going to be much of a load on the calcium. I want to get a realtime digital PH gauge so that I can dose more confidently with Kalkwaser to alleviate any calcium problems, and keep AK in line.