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 State of the Tank: (cont.) |
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that will take some time,
if it's possible at all. But right now, many of the larger polyped corals are understandably unhappy, though thankfully, not receding. So perhaps there's hope.
And finally with regard to livestock, I'd like to mention one more addition: Three of these guys  . Yep, Sea Urchins! This is the first time I've ever had urchins in the tank before, always concerned about their propensity to 'bulldoze' over frags and my propensity to get stung by them when working in the tank. Well, apparently these guys are little different in that their relatively small size and 'polite' nature makes bulldozing a rarity and their spines are fairly compact...nothing like those black, long spined urchins of Death I've seen in other tanks. I've had run ins with those guys in live rock bins at LFS's, believe it or not, so I know what it's like to be impaled by them. The ones I have are much less dangerous.
But the reason I have them is because they came recommended as quite simply some of the best algae eaters available to the hobbyist today...better than hermit crabs, better than Cerinth Snails, better than Astreas or Turbos.
So once I determined that they would, at least, do no harm, I figured I'd try a few just to see for myself. Unfortunately, given that I just introduced them, I'm afraid you'll have to wait until next month for results.
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This is just as well because I don't yet know the name of these guys anyway. But given that they are supposedly long lived (my Cerinths seem to go in about a week), I'm already feeling better about this experiment. I hope it works out.
And that's about it for livestock. The only other news that I have to briefly touch upon is the round-table discussion I was invited to attend at Absolutely Fish with Greg Scheimer and Joe Yaiullo this past month. We touched on such varied topics as phosphates, red bug treatments, feeding 'SPS' corals, artificial sea salts, and additives. There were about a dozen people there, not including store staff, and there was quite a lot of information to be gleaned. In fact, based on some of this information, I'm in the process of trying out a new Phosphate test kit. Again, as I just started using it, I'd rather hold my opinion until next month.
Absolutely Fish really does have an amazing selection of fish (though no Olive Anthias at the time) and after we finished up, it was nice to peruse the tanks at our leisure.
Now I'll get back to what's turning into a complete overhaul of the website and the growth shots a few of you have been asking for since the beginning of the year. Let's hope I'll have no distractions this month and I'll wish the same for you...unless you want them.
Till next time then. Michael
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