Baby steps toward success

[BMW Rider]

A couple of positive things to report.

I got my calcium reactor built and running, and it works. I have been struggling to keep up my ca and alk levels despite running a kalk reactor. I was dosing turbo calcium and buffer to keep my levels up, but it seemed they would be down more than up. I did readings on Monday when I set up the reactor: CA=330, alk=6.4. I have added no other suppliments other than the kalk which was running before. Todays levels are: CA=360, alk=7.4. once the levels reach what I want, I will tune in the reactor to just maintain them.

The second battle I've been having is with some nasty bryopsis algae. I have been pulling it out regularly for the past three months, and just couldn't get ahead of it. It has been choking out some of my corals and zoos with its rapid growth. I have been reducing my feeding, checking for nitrates (always less than 0.5) and phosphates (no detectable amounts), improved the flow in my refugium and added chaeto along with the calurpa I had, added more turbo snails, running chemipure, increased skimming, and even pulled the rock out to scrub it off all to no effect on the bryopsis growth. Niether my yellow tang nor my foxface will eat it, nor do the snails and hermit crabs seem to show much interest in it. So after much debate with my own conscience, I went and got a sea hare. All ready it has made a few noticible bare spots where once only algae could be seen before. I see him regularly munching mouthfuls of the stuff It will likely take him a few months to mow through this stuff, but there is some help and hope at least in the battle. After that I will have deal with the feeding reqirements to keep it alive. Small price to pay.

Now if I can just figure out how to save a whack of money on my electricity bill....