December 2000 December 1st, 2000 / Friday / 5:00 PM Tank is going well, except I found a dead chromis this morning. Levels look ok: 1.023 salinity, 77.6 temp, 7.93 pH, 381 ORP, 350 calcium, 0 ammonia, 0 nitrite, and 10 nitrate. I had to raise the level of the protein skimmer using egg crate in order to generate more foam. As a result of the daily evening feeding, I have noticed the sun coral polyps now open in the early morning and late evening for more tasty brine shrimp (even though I only feed them in the evening). December 2nd, 2000 / Saturday / 5:00 PM Added another blue green chromis and a Red Sea purple tang, Zebrasoma Xanthurus from Sixth Avenue Aquarium in San Francisco, CA. I now have three chromis, two tangs, and one dragonet in the tank. Plus two corals, two starfish, three cucumbers, six shrimp, 50 crabs, 100 snails, and one nudibranch. December 3rd, 2000 / Sunday / 5:00 PM Performed a 20% water change today. The purple tang I just added may have ich - he has about 10 tiny white spots on his left side. I will run the temperature up to 82 degrees and the salinity down to 1.020 for the next 2-3 days. December 7th, 2000 / Thursday / 7:00 PM Temperature and salinity back to normal. The ich looks like it is gone. Added some new fish and exciting corals today. These were all purchased in person at Jeff's Exotic Fish in Los Angeles, CA. I won't get into the transportation headache it caused me! Purple linkia starfish, Linkia laevigata 2 golden head sleeper gobies, Valenciennea strigata A royal gramma basslet, Gramma loreto Strawberry coral, Dendronephthya sp., this is a very colorful reddish-orange soft coral Yellow polyp colony, Parazoanthus sp. The only issues I am currently experiencing are (a) the skimmer still needs proper tweaking to run perfectly and (b) there is an outgrowth of algae on a few of the rocks. I imagine that as the nutrient level is decreased by the skimmer that the algae will also disappear. Update to this: I believe the ich was introduced by the purple tang - it was purchased at Sixth Avenue Aquariums in San Francisco. I also used Kyolic garlic extract mixed with the food for a few weeks, and the ich has not reappeared. Also, after doing some reading, I think the dendro from Jeff's Exotic Fish is actually a scleronephthya. December 13th, 2000 / Wednesday / 5:00 PM Received order from Garf today. It included: Sinularia frag, a form of leather coral Pink creeping xenia frag Pom-pom xenia frags Mixed gorgonians, I believe them to be Diodogorgia nodulifera, Plexaura flexuosa, and Plexaura grandiflora Acropora frag, tri-color from Tonga Acropora millepora frag, this one is a very blue strain! Acropora frag, pink-tip from Bali Pieces of black sponge Two additional lbs of Garf Grunge December 16th, 2000 / Saturday / 5:00 PM Made purchase at Aquarium Concepts. It included: Dendronephthya, a nice one with white stalk and pink tips Brown-colored sun coral, Tubastrea aurea Green brittlestar December 26th, 2000 / Tuesday / 1:00 PM Performed 25% water change today. Calcium down to 300 ppm, so I added a 3mL of Reef Calcium from SeaChem. The skimmer is finally starting to run properly; the ETSS is a real challenge to calibrate.

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