I decided to see what would happen if I went a couple of days without a filter sock to allow nitrates to come up slightly. I haven’t stirred the sand or blown the mulm off of either rocks or sand for about a week. This is how the DT looks as of last night.
The green algae looks like it’s on the sand in the images but it’s actually on the glass. Diatoms are forming on the sand though. I’m going to stir the sand and get as much crud as I can out of the display but I don’t want to crash my nitrates either.
One thing I noticed is that my cabbage leather has awesome PE.
The devil’s hand coral looks pretty good as well.
For a while after I started deep cleaning the rock and sand some of my sponges died back a bit. They’ve been holding their own though. A couple look a little better now and some new ones are forming too. I really want to get some rubble and place it so it just touches the healthiest sponge. It would block some more light and hopefully the sponge would start growing on it. Then I could seed the cryptic zone in the sump. I’ll add that to my list of tank goals for today. Come to think about it I wonder if sponges can be fragged. I’ll have to research that. If I could do that it would be a huge help.
Despite the diatoms, it looks like my corals are happier and that’s huge. Now that I have my salinity where it needs to be and my new hermit crabs are doing well I’m planning on getting some CUC in the display.
I want to do more to seed the cryptic sump too. Come to think of it, it’s the perfect place for vermetid snails to actually be of benefit. I don’t think their mucous webs bother my sponges because one sponge completely grew over several tubes in close proximity to each other. It’s my biggest and healthiest sponge.
I need to get some brittle stars in not just the cryptic sump but in the display as well. I’ve got a rock in the cryptic sump with micro dusters on it. There are plenty of pods in there as well. I still have the chaeto ball on top of the rock in the sump which I left in there to seed the rock. I also want to get some asterinas going in there too. I believe a couple of the seed rocks had some spaghetti worms in them as well. I’m not sure yet what else would be of benefit in my sump o’ rocks but ideas are certainly welcome.
There is one thing that worries me though. I need to figure out how to keep the sump sludge from causing problems in the cryptic zone. If my sponges get clogged by the sludge that would undo all the work I’m doing.
I know I’ll eventually be able to go without filter socks, carbon, or flocculant once the cryptic sump and the cryptic zones in the DT get going full throttle. In the meantime I want to keep pest algae to a minimum but I also want all my animals to thrive.
My plan is to keep a filter sock on for a couple of days after the water starts overflowing. This would allow for some nitrates to stick around but not spiral out of control. Every so often I’ll reevaluate my nitrate levels and consumption. Based on that I’ll adjust the amount of time I keep the sock on. The more nitrate consumption the less I’ll keep the sock on.
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