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The cyphastrea is sort of mid way. Do they need more light or less light? What kills me is that I grew it like crazy under my halides, LOL...

Thanks Nikki, maybe after the holidays! I keep thinking you guys should see what I did with your beautiful branch rock. So if you're up this way and would like to stop by, give us a shout. In the mean time, I'll put up some new pix soon.

Everything still going well. Went to set up my old MRC calcium reactor and found the CO2 regulator had issues, waiting on a replacement part. My switch to my other calcium reactor, one I never set up. In the mean time, dosing a little two-part. In honor of my Hawaii trip I added a Kole tang. A...

I'll host September, the system should be getting somewhere by then.

Now that I'm back, it's time for a big water change and to set up the calcium reactor, although the growth from my current kalk-only setup has been very good. It will not be able to keep up with demand long-term.

Added a bunch of trochus snails, and a couple cleaner shrimp.

If you can, go to Hawaii. I did some scuba diving, but even snorkeling off the beach you can see tons of live coral, bounties of tangs and butterfly fish and moorish idols, all the familiar fish from the LFS in their natural habitat. The Puako tidepools in the big island were great, as were some...

Back from Hawaii! Left the reef for 12 days, but able to check it with my Apex system and my son's iPhone doing video calls. FUNCTIONALLY everything did fine. All the corals and fish were fine when I got back. But here is a cautionary tale: After a week or so, temps in the system started to drop...

One thing that has me tickled is the appearance of large numbers of copepods and other micro life. My rock was 100% dead, and while I did seed the setup with stuff from two other reefs, I didn't think it would happen so fast. The rocks are full of pods, and I see the skeletons of larger pods...

And a full tank shot.

A few new pics...

I insulated the sump with pink styrofoam ("Foamular") from HD. Much better, temps are holding. Additionally insulated the back door to the garage with several sheets of the same stuff. I won't be using that door until spring anyway. The big sheets cut easily with a stanley knife. The small...

So, interesting problem. As part of my rebuild, I switchged from some pretty big external AC pumps to submersible DC pumps. Now, it's starting to get cold in the garage where my sump is and my heaters are having trouble keeping up. Guess what those AC pumps were also doing? Throwing off a lot of...

With the frags I added, I figured I would soon need calcium supplementation so I brought my Kalk Reactor back on line. Then I modified my drain intakes, which made the level in my overflow rise and the level in my sump drop. That caused my topup water to be added, and since that is now 100%...

I failed twice and finally grew Red Planet to a good size the last time 'round. I grew Joe the Coral big enough to frag too. Never had the famous Shortcake, maybe when things are going well I'll buy a wild colony!

Gave in to the temptation of a flash sale and bought a pack of five ORA frags for about $200 shipped. A couple of them were on my mandatory list for corals. I hope the tank is ready for them, I don't have any calcium supplementaion going on. Not much using calcium, either, however. I can always...

I had a great time. In retrospect, I wish I had added another day to wander around Las Vegas and ride the monorail, although the way my gambling luck runs, it coulda cost $1,000s!

All the fish are doing well, except one $6 chromis went missing! The yellow tangs are getting fat from eating algae. I bought a couple of good gizmos from Bulk Reef Supply to hold filter socks. The CPR Sock-it has two hose connections feeding into a filter sock. I am going to feed the output...