Happy New Year Readers!

Some updates on the Seaweeds…

Since the addition of the chiller the nuisance green cyanoabcteria is nearly gone and red microalgea are going back drastically. The sand is also staying perfectly clean 🙂 Finally! Also following the current daylight times and adjusting the controller every week might also have had a big impact since days are getting shorter.

The local sea water temperature is now down to 10 degree and the Chiller is set at 13 degrees at the moment. Cant go lower while heating the living room as condensation start to build on glass and pipes. Not only does that look very bad but also the condensate could then potentially be dripping down onto the floor behind the aquarium which I obviously dont want. Had it on 12 degrees when I was away for three weeks over Xmas, more to that later.

Added about 30 periwinkles a few months ago that surely have an impact on cleaning things up but they obviously also feed on new macro shoots that I want so its a fine line between having too much of them and keeping the micros in check. Periwinkles seem to die like flies as they come out of the water and then just dry out if I dont put them back in time, weird behaviour…but its food for hermits and cushion stars etc.

Here below pictures from Now with a lot less of the red microalgea and the the green one nearly completely vanished. starting to look nice and clean again.

A couple of weeks ago when the days got a lot shorter there was a big change for sure. Seaweeds start to shoot up from bare places in many places. Mainly Brown Fan Weed (Dictyota dichotoma) , Carrageen, Coral Weed and the invasive Wire Weed (Sargassum Muticum) are starting to grow again.

Also the Rainbow Wrack seems to be growing veeeery slowly which is fantastic and it still has the iridescence if looked upon from the right angle. The flash on the camera exposes a lot of it in the last pic 🙂

This is extremely nice to see. Also these red ones I cant identify yet have just appeared a few weeks ago. One of them looks like brown fan weed but its red and fairly thin. To see red seaweeds or any other seaweeds show up on a previously barren rock is so exciting, I think only fellow aquarists can understand 😉

For the moment this is aIl the species I am aware of in the Tank but I have to start again collecting some more seaweeds to see how they will fair now when the tide of battle between epiphytes and proper macro seaweeds seems to turn. Honestly not very inviting at the moment with severe storms and hail 😉

More updates coming soon, lots to catch up…

BTW: Gallery, Technical Setup and Videos Pages updated since early November…