A lot has been happening in the past 5 weeks!
Urchins
I’ve discovered that urchins are simply a no go in my tank. I ordered 2 different blue tuxedo urchins a couple weeks apart and neither survived more than 2 days. Standard acclimation (float bag until equal temp, 60 minute drip, put into tank with lights off). For the second one, I even sat him on top of a sheet of nori and nothing. I have other delicate animals such as my clam, SPS, mandarin, and they’re all happy, but not urchins apparently. If anyone has any ideas here I’m all ears.
Emerald Crabs
While battling a small amount of GHA and the evil vermetid snails (which apparently emeralds will occasionally eat), I contemplated an emerald. I’ve never owned one and I’ve heard reef myths of them eating small fish so I posted this poll to hear what other reefers have experienced:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/poll-are-emerald-crabs-fish-safe.357409/ After overwhelming support in favor of them, I ordered my first. Granted he was a big guy, but the first night I took out my flashlight and low and behold he was in my favorite acro colony. I’m sure he was eating detritus or something, but he was doing damage. I saw white areas forming where he was foraging so I made a quick judgment call. Instead of him doing it again and it being a chore to catch him, I yanked the colony out and held it upside down in sump until the green emerald fell off. The small damage healed up within a week or two and I decided to pursue another option to battle GHA/bryopsis while the emerald cruised his new chaeto world.
Reef Flux / Flucanazole
When I was getting started in reefing, I worked at a LFS with two marine biologists who taught me a lot. One thing that stuck with me through the years was that were no biological free lunches in reefing. If you over feed and don’t have proper nutrient export, there’s no quick fix. Everything takes time, discipline, and testing. When I looked into bryopsis / GHA solutions (granted they weren’t problems yet, just small patches here and there), I first researched my natural options. Sea hares (figured it would starve in my small tank), emerald crabs (see above), and even a baby Kole tang (I know I know, I do plan to upgrade in a year or two though). Then I read about Flucanazole. The results seemed too good to be true. I’m a software engineer and rarely are there ever silver bullets, but the more and more I read about it (and even watched YouTube videos of reefers talking through their experience) I decided I had to give it a try. All I can say is wow. So easy and one week in it’s almost all vanished. No damage to my chaeto, any corals, etc. I’m shocked it really is a silver bullet. My live rock is looking better than ever too as the film algae has gone away.
Dosing Nitrates
Chalk this one up as well in the “things I never thought I’d do” column. Dose nitrates into my tank? For real? Well my nitrates have been at zero for forever and my SPS has never really grown fast nor have the colors been deep/bold. Always a pastel/light coloration. I’m really hoping this will help. It was really weird creating a cocktail of stump remover and putting it in my tank, but I’m only doing 1ml per day at a 2 tbsp per 2 cup dilution and I’m testing nitrates every day until it’s at least detectable and then I’ll hold steady and see if there are any results.
Xenia
I have it sequestered to the corner of my tank because it grows to fast. I have xenia growing on crab shells and somehow on pieces of my main rock work even though it's not touching. I really think I need to toss it, but I really hate the idea of killing coral even if it's xeina..
Ugly frag mount
Some of my bigger colonies are mounted on frag rocks instead of plugs and with a small tank like mine, there's not an easy way to epoxy them to the rock work in a natural looking way. It's really starting to bother, but I think the only other option would be to snip the colony at its base and glue it in that way, which scares me. Any ideas here?
Here are two picks I took today while in a bit of a rush:
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that I bought from Algae Barn. She's so small and cute. Mandarins have always been my dream fish and I never thought I could responsibly own one until I came across Algae Barn's captive bred mandarins that eat prepared foods. She's been eating 
