Time for an update
So it has been 1 month of the tank running with little to no hiccup.
Few problems that I encountered until now:
1. Overfeeding: since the clowns weren't eating initially and I am not a very patient guy, I tried to put as many types of food as I can, leading to over feeding syndrome. Thankfully, small tank = small water change = big impact so I could address this very quickly.
2. Brown hair algae: instead of the green variant, I somehow go the brown hair algae bloom. 5 gallon WC every few days + 3 maxican turbos (will need to get ride of two shortly; these buggers are poop machine and instead of coraline, my rocks are covered in snail poops) took care of it. There are still some here and there but will run its course.
Maintenance:
I think I have pretty much nailed down the maintenance for now. 3 gallon water change every Saturday (takes about 30 minutes starting from mixing to putting the water in the tank). Aquaforest salt mix is ready within 15 minutes and that alone is very convenient. No need to "plan" for water change.
I removed filter floss for a day or two to see how that impacts the tank but all the floating stuffs were eye sore so I started using it again. Will change every 2 - 3 days. This is going to be an LPS tank anyways so some nitrate/phosphate is welcome.
I am doing prodibio program for the fun of it and have completed 2 cycles of dose. Not expecting any result until for another month or two. Phosphate is below 0.1 so not concerned about that. Nitrate is below 1 so overall, the nutrients seem to be in check.
Inhabitants
The clowns are clowning around and the lawnmower blenny is mowing down the algae and pooping like a beast. Seriously, the poops are half the size in left of the fish itself. DAMN!
I have added a royal gramma but it is still timid and stays inside a cave. Only comes out when the lights are out. Will have to wait few more days before I can take a decent picture.
The brain coral seems to be getting fleshier day by day which is a good thing. I will probably have to start looking into snake oils to see which ones promise more vibrate coloration. The brain is quite colorful by itself but I would the color to be more bright.
Now to the show stopper: the flame anemone. Been waiting for over a month to get my hand on this bad boy but had hard time finding it anywhere in Calgary. Finally, Dave at Concept Aquarium put in a special order for me and here I am, a proud owner of the flame anemone. It bubbled up nicely, moved few inches and stayed there over the weekend and the mama clown has already started hosting it. A wonderful sight
Few pics:
About an hour in:
After few hours:
And on Sunday (has been at the same spot since Friday):
New gadgets:
1. Another RW04 in the tank: wasn't happy with the amount of flow I was getting for an RW04 in the tank and being a cube, it wasn't helping much. Instead of getting a bigger pump, i decided to get another RW04. Each of them run for an hour during the photo period. This resulted in the tank having more floating objects in the water. Although this bugs me, I think this will all be trapped in the filter floss within few days. Will get ride of the pooping snails which should help a lot too.
2. Aquatronica controller: thanks to Eric from ocean enterprise, I got a sweet deal on an aquatronica ACQ115 kit that includes temp, pH, salinity, ethernet, float switch and pc interface, 8 bars and the non-touch controller. Didn't have the budget to get the touch and ACQ115 has more than what I need for the tank. Did some basic setup and calibrated the probes to get the controller going. Need to get a ethernet switch (I use powerline) for the ethernet module and waiting to receive some more stuffs that Eric shipped out. This is my first "real" controller (my last one was a reef keeper light which was basically a glorious power bar).
Some pictures of how things looks right now under the cabinet:
Not the prettiest cable management but not a snake of wires either.
And lastly, some tank shots:
Sorry for the crappy pictures. My brother took away the DSLR and my good camera phone is in for repair so all I have is a crappy loaner phone right now.