This month of May 2014 is both exhilarating yet full of tribulations. It is exhilarating because there are so many opportunities with a 3 feet aquarium when it comes to stocking of fishes, corals and so on but it is also a month when I lost some previously beautiful corals when I shifted them to the new tank and after I came back from a 4 days trip to Malaysia a few days ago.
I shall also start to refer to tanks 1 and 3 as aquariums 1 and 3 respectively instead because a tank somehow refers to an empty container whereas an aquarium does contain inhabitants such as plants and animals. So technically, an aquarium seems more appropriate than a tank in the naming.
Aquarium 1 (1 ft cube - 27 litres)
I vacuumed out two bucket loads of base sand after I shifted most of the corals etc to the new aquarium and it was full of detritus. It would probably need another one or two more water change sessions to clear all the accumulated debris. It was really nasty and I decided not to have a deep sand bed for this small aquarium because the water change should suffice.
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| pair of Black Clowns and a Flameback Angel |
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| the Zoas are not recovering well |
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| the non-pulsing Xenia |
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| the recovering Acans |
Aquarium 3 (3 x 1.5 x 1.5 feet and sump - 250 litres)
In the first few days, there was the appearance of some brown diatoms but it disappeared.
I decided to throw away a number of the bleached corals which had no colour or anymore polyps extension. Some of the remaining corals such as Monti Caps on the sand bed became a bit washed out before they were bleached. Nevertheless, I have switched the lighting intensity down and will gradually bring it up over the weeks to come and reduced the lighting hours to around 12 and to keep the remaining as just moonlight to give these corals some rest time.
Strangely, I have 9 fishes in the aquarium but somehow it looks overcrowded to me. I really have to be more selective now although I am still contemplating whether to transfer the 2 black Clowns from aquarium 1 to here.
The MP25 wavemaker also kicked up a big sandstorm with the fine aragonite sand that I used and buried a number of my corals. I am quite sad that my Sympodium polyps that grew so well in aquarium 2 previously was a victim of this and have mostly melted in this aquarium. I guess I have to buy new ones to try again.
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| this was the Sympodium before it perished |
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| this shrimp and 2 other Skunk Shrimps perished after introduction |
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| the brown Montipora digitata |
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| clown was hosting on feather duster worm |
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| these two Skunk Shrimps were alright for about 10 days before they died |
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| this unknown sps suffered slow tissue necrosis (stn) |
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| brown Monti Cap |
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| another supposedly green Monti Cap |
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| the melting Sympodium |
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| the twin False Percula Clowns |
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| the stn that eventually killed this fella |
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