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 State of the Tank: (cont.) |
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The other problem is a bit more annoying: Valonia or 'bubble algae'. It seems to be most prevalent underneath or between the rockwork and I first noticed it while doing some fragging. So I called Keys Critters www.keyscritters.com and asked for some Emerald Crabs. Connie, one of the owners and a wonderful person to deal with, told me that sometimes these bubbles are the reproductive version of hair algae and in that case, the Emeralds won't touch them. But I was pretty sure that this is real Valonia and, hit-or-miss as they are in general, I ordered a couple dozen to go with my usual clean-up package of Astrea and Cerinth snails. I should hopefully have some news by next month.
While we're on the subject of clean-up crews, I'd like to take a moment to complain about marine epoxy (I'm sure some of you know where I'm going with this). You know, I wouldn't be so annoyed if the 'snail-dozing' occasionally knocked over a frag that was mounted, say, a day or two ago. But I've had frags knocked over that have been in the tank a couple months! And these aren't the really big Astreas either. Talk about annoying; does this stuff ever really set or am I doing something wrong? Yes, I already know about the super-gel stuff and I do use it when I can but because I can't always take my rock out of the tank (where the gel works best) many times I'm forced to use epoxy. So if anyone out there has a secret way of using this stuff so that it really hardens, |
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shoot me an email. I promise I won't use your name unless you want me to...or if the idea doesn't work or something.
Okay, on to a couple new pieces of equipment, namely 2 more Tunze 6100s. These two are mounted magnetically against the back wall so that their flow can carom off the front glass and flow back underneath some of the shelf-like corals in front. That was the only place that I still noticed dead spots after mounting the first two. But now things seem to be working very well. So well, in fact, that instead of staring at the Tunzes like I was afraid I would, I'm watching the very natural behavior of my Anthias and Chromis as they hide underneath these corals, only to dart out to grab a morsel of food as it comes whipping by. The new Tunzes are driven with a separate controller, by the way. I am well aware that I could've opted to run all 4 with just one controller but I would not have had the flexibility in experimenting with flow patterns like I do now. Though I'm still experimenting with them, I'm favoring the Interval #1 setting on the L-R set and the Sequential setting on the new guys. Both sets are on short time intervals and this creates an endless variety of currents throughout the entire tank. Then, when you include all of the original returns and the wavemaker (which is on its own timer), it is doubtful that any given flow pattern can ever be exactly replicated. THAT, my friends, is random flow! |
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