Not much is happening over the last three months except that the tank is looking fairly clean, apart from the cyano on the sand. Most Seaweeds and the red hair algea have been dying down with the shorter days as expected. Now since days are getting longer again a lot of small reds are shooting but growing extremely slow except for the Carrageen that is doing quite well. Also most rocks, pumps and the top of the overflow box are pretty much covered up with coraline algea.  Temperature is still sinking but I am close to the limit now of what I can do without condensation on the glass at 11 degrees.

I am excited to see whether the Kelps are coming back by themselves from spores or from their old stumps that are still in place from last year.

I am not adding anything to the tank or doing much with it as such as we are planning to move in the next few months. Also the weather has been just plain dreadful with serious storms all the way through since early November. I was actually planning on doing a bit of Rockpooling this winter but it just wasnt possible.

However I am planning a few revamps of the tank once we move since everything has to be taken apart anyway. A complete restart is planned. Probably everything will go out and back to the sea. The restart/revamp/service of the tank will probably take too long to keep things in buckets.

The overflow box definitely needs to be redesigned as its a bit flawed, hard to clean and takes away too much space. The stainless grid now after over two years has become engulved by coraline algea and hence the mesh size is now even smaller. It was originally 2mm but that was already on the small side. Once it gets badly cloggged with dying seaweeds the water level rises and because I mounted it about 5mm too high the level gets scarily close to the edge of the glass. Also for the same reason the cross brace is actually half submerged which doesnt look nice at all. So with the new overflowbox the water level will be 5mm lower, easier to clean, less clogging and more space. More on the design of the new overflowbox and replumbing will be in the next post…

Another thing I am working on is DIY Rock/”Liverock”. I am planning to make the two sides and the backwall out of DIY Liverock to give the tank more of a rockpool look and massively increase habitat for copepods, amphipods, mysis and delikes for a more sustainable food source. More to that in the next post soon…

Here now a few impressions from the last few months some of which still have a lot of hairalgea and codium in it.

Gem Anemone with Baby, she released another 10 or so later.

Below one of the babies that made it through the night. I guess most baby anemones get eaten by the Aeolidiella sanguinea over night.

This is a Beadlet with Offspring

The stunning but very unlucky Gurnard. Somebody made a comment on a Forum about it that “it looks like it could fly” and I said “well as long as it doesnt fly out of the tank…” you can guess the rest of the story… 😦 One day I came back from work to feed him. That week I decided to bring it back as it was getting too big and was a lot of work to feed. So there I go, couldnt find it anywhere in the tank, then I saw it beside the tank on the floor dried out. 😦 Was so sorry for it, felt really bad especially since i wanted to bring it back. I cannot imagine how the hell it could jump nearly 15cm out of the water through a 6cm gap and over the edge. Ah well it was a very interesting inhabitant…

Another Gem Anemone, I really like the pattern on the fangs

Strawberry Anemone, growing and growing 🙂

The dominant male Two Spot-Gobi always protecting its cave.