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 State
of the Tank: (cont.) |
| September
2004(cont.) SPS
Additions |
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Montipora
danae:  GO! One
of the frags acquired in trade for
a large piece of one of my Acanthatreas,
this particular ‘red/blue’ morph
seems to be on many reefers ‘most
wanted’ lists of late. It is
doing very well placed about midway
the tank under pretty good lighting
and moderate water flow. There is
not a lot of room around it however
so it may present a problem in the
future.”
The
only one that didn’t make
it was a ‘Rainbow Monti’ (my
favorite piece, of course) but
I consider the 4 I still have an
overly generous exchange for what
I gave up.
In
other September news was, first,
the installation of my new UV unit
from Aqua-Medic .
Now, I’m
not getting into the debatable
topic of the merits of UV on a
reeftank here because I realize
no one is going to change anyone’s mind at this point. I’ve always liked them and believe they do aid in water clarity and help keep instances of infectious disease down in fish. Again, I’m not pretending to be a scientist here, it just seems to make sense to me, that’s all. By the way, this unit puts out 120W of UV as opposed to the 80W of my old unit but that is NOT why I switched. I switched because with UV’s, the effect is only going to be as good as your husbandry and in reeftanks, UV sleeves and bulbs gets coated |
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| with residue (Calcium? Plaque?) really quickly. When that happens, its effectiveness would be similar to operating it without bothering to plug it in. Now, unfortunately, with my old unit, there was really no way of knowing when this build up would
occur AND when it did, cleaning
it meant it had to be opened and
somewhat taken apart. With the
Aqua-Medic, you simply clean by
utilizing its ‘wiper system’ whereby
just operating a ‘plunger’ at
the bottom of each canister once
a week keeps the unit clean without
even having to turn it off! Heck,
anything that makes this hobby
easier (as long as it works), you
can immediately sign me up for.
And this makes things much easier.
Secondly, September was the month that I joined a lot of you guys in the 21st century by putting a solenoid and a pH controller on my calcium reactor. Man, talk about making things easier! Because the controller now regulates the amount of CO2 going through the media, my alkalinity numbers are MUCH more stable and I don’t have to test nearly as much. This may just be the wisest purchase I’ve made for this tank since salt!.
Oh, I also added a ‘deluxe’ needle valve. Yeah, smells like a gimmick, I know. But it really makes it easier to make MINUTE changes to the system with confidence that the numbers really are what the dial says they are. |
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