Moving Day

Whelp, the moving day is finally here and the stress of moving the tank has come. With the help of a couple friends from work, I was able to get the tank transported to the new office fairly quickly. I've got the tank setup and performed a small water change because it was a normal water change day but also since I was taking it down anyway. Pictures of the new office will be posted below.

I found some red legs detached and floating at the bottom of the tank when I went in today. Thought my hermit may have died and got eaten but he was still in his shell. Perhaps he molted? I thought their molt would be translucent...

Anyway, the tank has been re-setup at the new office and the inhabitants seem to be doing OK. The snails are a bit active and Gumball is swimming around.I hope I didn't accidentally injure anyone in the process of moving and placing the rocks back in. The plate coral is a bit inflated and looks as if he wants to move himself a bit. The Zoa's have opened up but the Hammer and the Duncan are still closed up tightly.

Unfortunately, I no longer have access to the tank in the new building during weekends. This causes me quite a bother, especially since the tank just moved and tomorrow the building is closed. It's going to be going 3 days without any sort of monitoring, which worries me.

I'm hoping for the best but I'll have to see what Monday brings me.

~Keep on Swimming~

Moving buildings...

The office has finally determined the date of the office move and it is currently under way and it's been a roller coaster of changes. The status of the move would change daily and at one point it looked liked we'd be moved into the new building before we had to be out of the current building. That would have been perfect because moving the tank would have been simple and immediate. Now, the move is happening and we are made to work from home for about a week and a half... and hope the new area is set up when we are called back into work... So I have to go into the office to check on the tank, feed the critters and perform any maintenance that needs to be done. Then I have to worry about actually getting the tank to the new office when the new office is deemed "ready" Apparently, some cubes may not have power and we probably won't be able to move in until after the date we are not allowed back into the old building -.- 

Not looking forward to what's ahead with the tank and I'm worried it may crash or cause critter death. 

~Keep on Swimming~

Not sure if tank is going through a life-cycle phase or what...

Came in this morning and the Spiny Star Astraea Snail was out of the water. He was there on Friday so I'm thinking he must have been there all weekend. No smell so he's not dead but he could be on the verge... Although he did do this "not moving" thing for a few days in the past. What worried me was I barely touched him and he came right off the glass and fell into the aquarium. Pulled him out and his foot was hanging out. Touched it and didn't really recoil. I've placed him back into the tank under close observation. 10 minutes later and I see his eyes and antennae moving about but that's it. Doesn't really seem to be latching onto a rock. I checked my nitrates because I removed my Algone filter pack as it is meant for preventative maintenance and I wanted to know if my tank would be ok without it for a bit. My Specific Gravity (note: I've been calling it Salinity this whole time and, while related, are not the same thing) was a little low today so I'll have to add a little more salt.

I also came in to the right side of the tank covered in Pileolaria. Thankfully, these guys are beneficial and are a sign of a healthy tank.

I found the Pom Pom Crab, finally. I hadn't seen him for a week and he's right in the front of the tank in a cave. Phew, was getting worried that he may have passed.

~Keep on Swimming~

Little critters and moving update

The coral haven't been too happy lately for some reason. The Hammer is barely opening up, the Duncan is closed in the morning when I get in and opens about 3/4 of it's usual size and the plate coral is a little closed. The Zoas seem to be doing fine and the Scarlace actually seems to be doing really well. A snail or something seems to have bumped it into a shaded area and it looks like it prefers it there. I may have to re-situate it though since it looks a bit out of place.

The hammer has been knocked over a few times in the last week so that could be the reason for it's distress. However, I wonder if the rock it is situated on has moved somewhat. It seems more at an angle and I moved the light fixture a bit and the Hammer responded by opening up because it got more direct light. It was happy with it's placement all this time until recently...

We also (finally) just got word on when we're moving offices. I'm kinda freaking out about the move because when the cubes (and power!) will be available to us... So I can't plan on quickly transporting the tank and having it set up quickly to reduce the chance of tank death. But, with little information available to us, I can't really plan on anything. I may just try and take the tank hope, fully set it back up and let it hang out at home for a month before transporting it back to the new office... We'll see. Hopefully we'll get more information as the move date approaches...

I got a video of those weird bug-shrimp like critters running all over the rocks.

I also got a picture of that bivalve I had found in my tank. He decided to finally show up again. He's just to the upper right of the plate coral in this picture:

Some sort of Bivalve?

I also got some fun photos of the CUC eating off each other

Scarelet Hermit eating off the Spiny Star Astraea Snail

Nerite Snail eating off the Astraea Turbo Snail

Here's hoping for a successful future!

Overdue update

Been hectic for awhile with the holidays coming up but I need to post some sort of update on the reef.

First of all, Gumdrop seems to be thriving. He should be long dead if he hasn't been eating but it seems he has. So, good news. He could just be small enough to where it doesn't look like he's really eating. I had gotten some different food in flake form for him and he didn't seem to spit it out but the piece he 'ate' were minuscule. Maybe that's all he needs? I'm feeding the tank Mondays and Thursdays although I may cut back on the coral feeding because...

I'm having a big algae problem. I got a scraper to get rid of the snail eggs on the side of the glass and some of the algae that the snails can't keep up. Took care of all this a week or more ago and the snail has laid more eggs -.- The algae is exploding as well; it's all over the rocks and starting to grow on the sand bed. The snails can't keep up. I check my water parameters and everything is 0 so I'm not sure where the nutrients for the algae to thrive off are coming from. Hence why I'm going to cut back the coral feeding because it may be getting it from that. I should really test the drinking water I get from Walmart to actually see if it is RO water like it says it is...

I'll probably have to perform another manual scraping of the walls of the tank to clear the snail eggs and algae sometime this week and maybe get another nerite snail to help with the hair algae growing everywhere. This all good be because of the mini cycle I caused a while back and the tank is just re-stabilizing again.

Time will tell and I'm hoping for the best!