Sorry for the hyatius, This has not been a good spring on my reef perhaps the summer will mark a turnaround. After just feeling better about recovering from the prior issues, about a month ago my sump sprung a leak in the corner of the refugium in the middle of the night. This dropped the water level in the display and killed all surface agitation. I woke up to a lot of water on the floor and a dead venusta angel shortly later; a rude awakening forsure. I replaced the sump with a 40 breeder.
Some ups and downs in the new sump, overall the corals I care deeply about are benefiting, though a couple are having a rough go. Had to rearrange the Fimbriaphyllia garden a few times now. Didn't intervene fast enough to one of the hammers getting shaded, luckily the newest layout gives all the hammers and spawns plenty of room to grow for a while.
The Burgess Butterfly was acting funny for a couple days hiding out most of the time and breathing heavy. this was several weeks after the tank leak craziness so I was concerned that a flukes infection might be lingering. So I put the tank through a parzi treatment. I just finished the second dose a couple days ago. The burgess was immediately better the day after the first prazi dose so I think this was the right course of action. Hopefully this will finally put the infection to bed, I think the last time I treated I did not do the second dose at the right time for the tank temperature. I used the marine parasites calculator this time and the day was selected to account for possible error in my temperature measurements. To deal with the potential oxygenation issues from prazi, I added a second airline into the display in front of the vortech, and left the skimmer running but pulled the collection cup. Because of the altitude here oxygenation is always a constant battle, I have found a skimmer is essential for just that reason and I run an airstone in the sump incase the skimmer accidentally shuts down ever. The corals don't love the prazi, one of the two bird nests is quite unhappy, and the burgess is taking advantage of it for some quick polyp snacks. Hopefully recovers as this dose is being cleared from the water. Reinforces the adage of keeping with caution fish with corals, keep the corals healthy or they will become snacks.
On the other side of the tank the Mystic Sunset covering the monti cap skeleton experiment is progressing nicely. Had to trim the mother colony again and added a couple frags to the cap. Probably needed to do more trimming of the mother colony, may continue to fill in the empty areas. I am excited to see how this ends up, fingers crossed it stays on track.
So in summary the first half of 2020 has not been great for my tank. The ups and downs of reef keeping.
The modesta is reaching its final stages of quarantine, dose one of prazi is done a little over a week left and dose 2 before it can be moved to the display. I still need to figure out a acclimation box for it, as I dont want the aculeatus and burgess to gang up on it.
He is fantastically conditioned at this point super social, eats flakes and pellets with gusto. Real inquisitive always coming right up to the glass to check me out.
In other news the puppy is happy, did not like the constant fireworks of 4th of july this year, decided that he would like to just sleep instead of listen to the loud noises.
