Awpong's 50g Cube - Long Overdue Update

[picoreef78]

Contrats!!

[awpong]

Cardinal swallowed the eggs :'(

[CrazyCarl]

Really? Is that normal?

[awpong]

Very cool. Congrats. How's the tank doing as a whole? New FTS?

 

The tank is doing alright. It's not really thriving as much as I wished it would by now, but I have also been neglecting it. It's hard to manage medical school and a reef at the same time. I never really found out what was happening with my SPS, but it seems to have stopped for the most part (mainly because it killed 80% of my SPS frags).

 

Other than the SPS, everything is doing fine and growing. I'll clean the tank sometime in the near future, probably this weekend, and I'll try to get a new FTS up.

 

 

Contrats!!

 

Thanks, too bad they didn't make it. Hopefully the cardinals will try again in a few weeks with better results.

 

Really? Is that normal?

 

I'm not really sure with this particular species, because they're very uncommon. I know with Bangaii's that it frequently happens, but I was just shocked that they were gone in less than 24 hours.

[1.0reef]

Update?

[awpong]

So yea, med school has really been taking up a lot of time and this fish tank has been severely neglected. I'm thinking that it's finally time that I start to salvage what's left. I'll provide a more substantial update in the next few days, but here's the tank as it stands right now.

 

 

Unfortunately I lost almost all of my coral. I don't really know what the problem is, but I still haven't been able to control my pH. The Alk is around 8, but the pH is 8.4-8.6. My tap water is pH 7, but my RO/DI water is reading at 8.5. I just changed the filters prior to measuring it. I've heard that RO/DI water doesn't really provide a reliable pH due to essentially no ions, although fresh saltwater (ReefCrystals) is still measuring at 8.4-8.5 prior to water changes.

 

Anyways, I'm contemplating just adding some attractive and semi-invasive softies, such as blue clove polyps, to the tank to take over the rock work. I don't really have much for them to compete with other than my LPS which will sting any intruders.

 

Current fish in the tank are my pair of African Flameback Angels, one really large Black Cap Basslet, one remaining Central American Red Cardinal fish, one Blue-Green Chromis, and only one Black Photon Clownfish. I'm sad because the female was about to lay eggs, but I think she caught a parasite from the chromis (didn't QT, :'( ) and died a few days after they were introduced to the tank. She had been cleaning her rock for months and was getting really large. That being said, the Scarlet Shrimp spawn almost every week, and the angels are still spawning every night.

 

I'm also sad that over the summer I lost my favorite coral, a bright yellow torch. It fell onto the sand when I was in Europe for a month and it just wasted away. Here's a picture of it's beauty. You can see it in the corner.

 

 

 

[markalot]

An update, good to see. Sorry you lost the corals but right now the tank looks good.