Alright, it's picture time, but be warned, iPhone's just can't seem to cope with LED lighting. Like seriously, after you take the photo you look at it, then the tank, and wonder if it somehow took a picture of someone else's tank.
The algae issue continues to abate. Most of the algae on the sand-bed died, but I was tired of waiting for the conches to eat all the dead stuff (which was basically a magnet for detritus) so yesterday I put one end of a hose in the filter sock and then vacuumed the heck out of the sand to get all the clumps of dead algae up. The tank looks SO much better. I also added another 2 cups of biopellets to my re-circulating reactor, increased the flow rate, and decreased the tumble rate slightly. I've also cut back on my feedings as I'm no longer trying to get my fish to eat all the different kinds of foods I was feeding. I know now what they'll eat and what they won't, so there's far less uneaten waste entering the tank. It's still not pristine, but I'm really pleased with where I'm at at this stage.
I'm still amazed at how different the live rock looks from the marco rock. But since I study biological succession (though from a terrestrial point of view) I'm not entirely surprised. The types of algae growing on the marco rock seems to be very opportunistic and aren't invested in the long term, it's easy to remove with my fingers, and seems less robust in general, with a focus on rapid colonization. The species diversity is clearly really low (some marco rocks have only one or two species on them), and under the algae that's grown the rock is still bright white. The live rock from Fiji is covered with a dark bio-film that clearly represents the 'climax' community of rock covering organisms, and it will be interesting to watch how the Marco rock progresses toward this type of community over time.
But enough talk! I only took pictures from the dining room tonight as there's just not that much to see.
FTS:
North end:
South End:
Marked difference between Marco and live rock. Note how the Marco rock is covered with stringy, early succession filamentous algae. There's also a little nub of coral that hitchhiked in from Fiji in this shot (though you probably can't see it):
My first little collection of corals. The pictures are so bad you can barely see tell that there are two SPS frags in this pic
The next two are horrible shots of the spa that hitchhiked in on the rock from Fiji. In full light it's a very light pink with white polyps, and in the shade it's a dark brown with almost green polyps. It's literally everywhere in the tank.
The only other thing to note is that so far, I'm using my frag chamber in the sump as a place to house marco rock that I had to pull out of the display after I added the live rock, and all the rubble from the live rock box that I didn't want in the display. It's slowly turning out to be a crypto-fugium of sorts as tiny little non-photosynthetic tunicates are popping up all over the place in there. Pretty cool.