Well, things are much better in the reef these days. I’ve fallen behind logging changes, so I hope I get the run of things right. The day before yesterday the skimmer started working mostly normally again. This was about a week after the cyano treatment, which still didn’t quite get everything out. Yesterday I did a 1 gal. water change, removed the tiny pink patches of substrate and a lot of algae. Kyo is eating and acting normally, most of the time, though he still goes under ledge rock a bit mroe than he used to. He may be just getting cleaned. The shrimp, hermits, mushrooms and featherduster are all well. I may have a new variety of macroalgae coming up on the Tonga rock. Will have to wait and see.

A few days ago it seem to me that the population of amphipods had dipped so I tested at the end of the daylight cycle and got Ph 8.1. I added 1 tsp superbuffer two days in a row, but haven’t retested yet. (Things have been kinda busy around here, preparing for friends coming in from out of town and going to be here any minute, hence the hurried nature of this post.)

In the picoreef, I’m having a little trouble feeding the new sun coral. They open when I feed them in the sense that a half hour or so after I target feed them they open up, which means I’m not sure who much of the food they are actually getting. I’ve attempted feeding them every night except last night. I’ll try again tonight. My current method is to put in microvert to get them to open, then drop some mysis on the polyps after they have opened. But I have to say I haven’t actually seen any mysis go into their mouths. I don’t know what a real coral eating actually looks like. I did a 1 qt water change the day after the first feeding and another 1 qt a couple of days later. Though the snails and bristleworms are enthusiastic about cleaning up after the feedings, I’m still concerned about overloading the tank, so will do water changes a bit more often than usual.

The light on the picoreef is synched with the daylight on the minireef and it seems to be sufficient for the Caulerpa sprig I got recently. It has sprouted a few small new leaves. Despite the extra nutrient going into the tank, it’s not sprouting a lot of nuisance algae. The snails prefer sifting the substrate to eating algae, so it’s good that microalgae is still miniscule.

Aiptasia Island: I’ve still got the Aiptasia in the little bottle. It’s an experiment. From everything I’ve read they will survive with only minimal food and light, so I’m giving them minimal food and light to see what are the limits of their survival. They get a bit of light from sitting on the egg crate top of the mini-reef and the first day I had them in the bottle I added 2 drops of microvert. The next day I changed out half the water. I haven’t added any food since. If there was any doubt whether I was a mad scientist, this ought to confirm it: I’m feeding teeny tiny Aiptasia in a teeny tiny bottle.

I hope I’m not forgetting to document too much in this hasty note of things I should have logged sooner.