Sunday update

Its been awhile since I posted in here but its been sort of "calm" around the tank. Obviously its still alive and kicking - an how! Well for me its "and how" for others I'm sure this is routine and boring.

The largest news is the diatom bloom is here. There is brown stuff everywhere and its been increasing. I'm torn through. While its "normal" I read that it comes from high Nitrates (maybe they'll help lower em) and possibly dead spots in the water flow. I'm going to have to look into that.

I've taken to having some late nights as I sit up looking at the tank. I actually spent Thursday night sitting in the dark with a magnifying glass and flashlight peering into holes in the rock :) And it paid off. I found my "lost" baby brittle star. It's HUGE. It was so tiny before that you could hardly see it on the sand. Now it has found itself a nice little hole in one of my base rocks and its legs stick out into the flow. Each of those legs must be a bit over 1/4" apiece. So having found it we went out and got some shrimp pellets and I fed it Friday. Took my long feeding tongs (from the scorps) and put that shrimp pellet in the hole. It was neat watching the legs wrap up the pellet and pull food off of it.

So while finding my brittle star I also found a Nassarius snail "stuck" in the Mushroom rock. This has a frag plug jammed in such a way that the snail couldn't escape. So reading about diatoms referred me to the fact that these snails do well eating them in the sand bed. So Saturday I bought 5 of em and added them to the tank. I also freed the one from the Mushroom rock by pulling the frag plug out.

Once on the floor the snails buried themselves and I presume went to work eating the diatoms in the sand bed.

Going back to Friday night (when I fed my brittle star) I found THREE MORE. All about the same size and scatted in various holes. I have two in the same rock! While I haven't found anymore this is encouraging.

The rest of my critters are doing well. The Emerald Crab has the run of the tank. She is the fastest crab in the world I'm betting. I can see her on a rock to the right and then it seems likes minutes later she is all the way on the other side of the tank. The hermits are good hiders and I haven't seen them much in the last few days but every once in awhile I'll see one or more of them bumbling around.

I am convinced (well mostly) that I lost one of my Peppermits. Either that or they truly are playing games with my head on purpose. As the daylight lights go off the Peppermint comes out to play. And that is the ONLY way I can describe it is playtime. Now there is some contention on whether we are seeing the "same" shrimp day after day but we only see one at a time. It seems the favorite past time is surfing the currents. It starts on the left side and rides the current along the front of the tank to a rock - walks around and surfs around to the other side. Come back behind all the rockwork and repeat. Its like the tank is an amusment ride. Here is a quick video of it surfing. Last night this must have happened about 10-15 times before it got tired of it.

Lastly I am trying to arrange my rockwork to get currents/flow right and lighting for the Mushroom as well as plan where to put the elkhorn coral rock that is curing as I type. Hopefully this will be in the tank mid-week and I can just let it ride and sit back and wait for my parameters to stablilize.