Haven’t spent much time working on our travel blog or Flickr photos over the past month! One of the reasons is a new 90 gallon reef that I am in the process of setting up. Had to compress the set-up cycle pretty drastically but everything seems to have transitioned okay except for one cleaner shrimp, that died in transit, and some small mushroom corals that didn’t like the brighter light. Will be adding to the display over the next few weeks as I take stuff from the older reef and add it to the newer reef in anticipation of closing down the older one. Also looking for some new things to add too so checking with friends who have coral frags that they don’t need and visiting the local fish stores and scanning the “coral frags for sale” pages.
For fellow aquarists: Photo was taken as the diatom stage turned most surfaces brown!!! Something like 200lbs of LR in tank+sump from from combining LR from previous owner and my own LR supply. Able to transport about 40 gallons of SW from previous owner so ended up with about 50% new SW. Crossed my fingers for a few days!!!
For newbie-aquarists: Never try adding coral and fish to a newly created reef until the nitrogen cycle has completed and water parameters have stabilized! In other words, don’t do what I did unless you know what you are doing. Otherwise, you will likely have plenty of dead fish and dead coral by the end of week two! In this instance, I couldn’t practice what I preach.
I haven’t added too much to our website over the Christmas holiday period but should be getting back to some retroactive postings in the early weeks of 2013.
