Well .. I think you guys are too kind, I've seen both your tanks and they're nicer.
(And I'm not just saying that.)
Here are some FTS I was able to get tonight. Nothing too special, just what I was able to get before the camera battery died, and it turns out I forgot to charge the other battery so tonight's photo sessions ended early. Hopefully better luck tomorrow.
I find my FTS shots are always out of focus and lack any kind of detail. So I tried two things: The first is a standard "darken room, stand back from the tank, take a picture, crop the top and bottom." The second and third are stitching attempts. I think this technique shows some promise but a little more trial and error is needed. Of course being darker the exposures are longer so the fish are nothing but blurs and in one it looks like i have 3 pyramid butterflyfish (there are only 2 for real
).
I knew I had let this thread slide a little but I didn't realize it was since May already that the real troubles began. It has been, well, .. an interesting journey with lots of little (and maybe some not-so-little) frustrations along the way.
Essentially once the "newness" of the tank wore off, things started going downhill pretty bad. Sand was slimy all the time, cyano was taking hold, corals started receding. By the time summer came around, the tank was a disgusting mess and it was very discouraging. Algae over all the rock, many lost corals (mainly SPS and the gorgs).
I lived in denial about the cause for a long time because I really wanted to believe in the zeovit system and its ability to reduce phosphate. However, for whatever reason(s), in this tank, there are phosphates present in high levels. Back in November-ish timeframe I reached to the zeovit.com community for advice and was given some dosing advice by some of the more experienced members there.
What was suggested was to discontinue any secondary dosing of zeovit products and focus on Zeobak, Zeostart3, Biomate and Zeozym. Zeobak is dosed in at 12 drops every other day, Biomate is dosed in at 20 drops in the alternating days, Zeostart3 is 1ml twice per day, and Zeozym is dissolved in a tub tank water on the Zeobak dosing days but ledt to stand overnight and dosed in the morning.
Also in the fall a diamond goby was added to sift sand, and I've added some urchins. Snails don't seem to last very long, if I buy 10, I can expect 7 to be goners within a week or two. I don't know if this is par for the course or if I'm unlucky but at least the urchins seem to do a nice job of working the rock.
Following these changes, the slow transformation has been very encouraging. After a long time of nongrowing corals, I see new growth once again. The algae has been slowly retreating and exists only in a few isolated spots.
The downer of course however is that phosphate continues to read high levels for now. Tonight I did 3 tests, 2 with the Hanna checker, and the result is 0.18ppm. I have an older D-D/Merck low-range PO4 test kit so used that as well and got a reading of 0.06ppm (middle of the colour chart). Despite the wildly different numbers, the one inescapable conclusion is that PO4 is still too high. So .. this continues to frustrate me for now. I don't know how much longer I can mentally withstand the phosphate before I want to try something new. (Prodibio, GFO, pellets, or an algae scrubber come to mind as possible alternatives. Or Foz-Down or some other lanthanum dosing based solution.)
Despite the frustrations however, some hardy corals are doing well, for example and strangely enough, the Red Planet. The LPS seem to thrive as well (Acans, bubble, blastos, duncans.) I'll try to get some daytime shots tomorrow.