Down to just one turbo snail left... One died last week and a second one kept flipping over even after I kept flipping it back over but saw this crime scene this morning
Started to upgrade the lights for the Phyto set up. I lost the Rhodomonas Salina culture but I think I know why after doing a little research (likes actual 2 part F2 and it doesn't like anything longer than overnight shipping) and I might actually go with a different red phyto strand that is supposed to be easier to culture and has almost the same nutritional value but time will tell...
For the new LED lights these were a 4 pack and U got 4 of them. I have one more on order and I also bought 4 all blue strips and I plan to put the same setup between the cultures with the blue LEDs on the inside bracket.
The Tisochrysis Lutea culture is going well. For this latest batch I boiled the saltwater in a lobster pot and let it cool overnight. I noticed after I was done making the cultures that there was a nice layer of rust on the bottom and I thought I would loose everything but so far so good!
I also switched back the the Mercer of Montana F2 and the Nanno and Tetra cultures looked darker on day 2/3 than they had been on day 7 with the old F2! I also got an bottle of their Nanno and I started another culture of that since I was already buying their F2 might as well make the shipping worth it!
I also upgraded my Paul B brine shrimp feeder with a kit from an online reef 3D printing company as I saw they had a decent promotion going on and I finally installed it today. It came with blue see-through airline and I swapped it out for black airline as I didnt like the look. It comes with an adapter to use a syringe to put the BBS in and I will just do an extra 2 or 3 rounds with tank water to push them towards the round area.
Got suckered into an ebay coral store and bought a bunch of small frags that added up! Coolest thing I got was a pair of Walking Denrdos! They walk all around the sand bed!
Also got an elegance, a few more alveoporas, some zoas and 3 different kinds of blastos and a helmet coral... Notice the walking dendro's handywork knocking a frag over
Work gave me a "broken" UPS and I gladly snatched it up and spent maybe $75 on a new 12 volt 12ah LiFePO4 battery and case and rewired the UPS this morning! I could have saved even more money if I didn't opt for the fancy SAE exterior connector but I wanted future flexibility.
I plan to add a second battery hopefully 50ah worth in the future as it should fit in the battery case.
Biota mandarin "couple" came in today after Biota reached out to me about not being able to ship for Thur/Fri due to the storm. They said to just temperature acclimate and no drip so placed them in a new acclimation box and shut off the lights!
Well think I lost the female Mandarin haven't seen her in over a week. Took the rockwork out of the sump yesterday hoping she was down there but couldn't see anything. Maybe I'll get lucky and she's in some of the rockwork but I don't have much rockwork so who knows.
But the male is doing well! Fat and active and eating the fresh BBS and frozen and pellets! There are still tons of pods on the glass and my pod cultures are still pumping out pods!
He decided to come out when I was feeding the fresh BBS and also some frozen BBS!
Also picked up some gorgonians and some scallops from @frank180reef the other day and the gorgs already have their polyps out! The scallops are rascals and keep swimming everywhere. One is hunkered down in the rockwork and two are on the left side. Put 2 in the sump...
