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 State of the Tank: (cont.) |
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and Relatives Tour while hopefully planning to ‘sponge’ off some reef keeping acquaintances and sneak in a little cherry pickin’ on the side. And for those of you wondering, yes I did drive out. I took a more northerly route this time where I stopped to see one of the greatest man-made wonders of the world: Bike Week in Sturgis, SD. Saw Mount Rushmore and Yellowstone National Park too, but for a while at least, when I think of America, I’m thinkin’ of Sturgis during Bike Week! Wow.
Anyway, for such a short month (I was only in CT two and a half weeks), this was one of the busier ones regarding the tank in quite some time. YES, THE NEW SUMP IS IN!!! SO IS THE NEW SKIMMER!!! But before I get into the details and pics, I want to spend a little time going over what went on inside the tank first, as it was quite an active month in that regard too.
Quite frankly, I didn’t begin the month very happy with the overall appearance of the tank and was at a loss as to understanding why  . Yeah, I realize there was still some ‘fill-in’ work to do where we removed the Hydrophora last month but I’m not sure that was it. Perhaps it was the overcrowding that was bothering me, or more specifically the placement of many of the pieces. There just didn’t seem to be the ‘rhythm’ I’ve seen in some of the other so-called
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mature reeftanks. Of course, I had to keep this feeling to myself because of both the upcoming sump swap and because I wasn’t sure how to go about fixing it. Besides, Ray already had enough to worry about.
One thing’s for sure though; I can certainly understand how some reef keepers spend so much time and effort into setting up their tanks, only to go about tearing them down and starting all over again (“Hi, Ali.”). Then, maybe it’s just the plain old summertime reef keeper’s doldrums.
The truth of the matter is the tank IS overcrowded in many places. Therefore, much more attention will have to be placed on growing room when we put things back together this time. Of course, it’s never my intention to disturb things in the tank whenever a project like the sump is ahead of me. I don’t mind doing a little fragging and rearranging, but too much house cleaning is far too stressing…particularly to me, as the big day approaches. So keeping that in mind, we decided to do a tiny bit of tank work…just what had to be done.
It goes without saying this plan lasted all of ten minutes.
The four Frogspawns at the lower left, for example, have bothered me since I first arranged them that way.
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