It's been nearly six months since my last update, so figured it was about time! Probably stopped posting because things got ugly for a bit, and not as fun to post about things not going well. Cyano hit pretty hard, as well as some hair and turf algae. Got the ReefMat installed, got skimmer tuned, a good number of pods, and a PhytoTank chaeto reactor. After a while (a month or two?), the nastiness mostly subsided.
A number of my "easy" corals also started losing tissue or bleaching at that point. Managed to kill the bird's nest and green slimer, and two of the three acros. Montis were also looking pretty bad, as was the purple stylo. Played with flow a bit, their placement, and adjusted color temp on the AIs (less cool white). After a while, those that hadn't already died recovered and are doing very well now. Not sure if it was a what I adjusted, just a maturing of the tank, or what.
Been continually adding acros (mostly from
@dz6t at AcroGarden, along w/ great info and tips!), and they all seem to be doing quite well and getting some good growth. The Banggai's have had two broods so far (turned into food for the others, I guess), and fish healthy for the most part (Yellow Coris Wrasse looking pretty beat up most of the time, but has been like that for over a month and eating fine... not sure what's going on).
Still have some hair algae going on, but I think that's largely under control and dying back. Had a bad outbreak of valonia, too, as you can see in the pics. That too seems to have peaked... hoping it dies back as the corals outcompete it. My nitrates were at 0 so I started dosing NeoNitro, but have cut that out til the algae gets under better control.
I mounted all the corals on reef rubble pieces with the intention of cementing those rubble pieces onto the rock work (sticking them on the sides and whatnot). But that's not working well, the cement can't seem to hold it in place long enough to harden (and I'm not going to sit there for a half hour waiting). Any tips on that appreciated... maybe I just need smaller rubble pieces, the FragZone stuff is kind large. I'm doing the superglue-Tunze Coral Gum-superglue sandwich thing that BRS did videos on. Worked well for coral to frag out of water, but not for mounting to rock work in the water.