Alright, it has been awhile, so I will update everybody with a short read.
Things have been going pretty good. We have reached our bio-load for fish, and now have:
3 anthias
3 blue-green chromis
1 Randles Goby
1 Midas Blenny
2 Percula Clownfish
1 Foxface Rabbitfish
1 Blue Jaw Trigger
1 Blonde Naso Tang
1 Sailfin Tang
1 Copperbanded Butterfly
1 Lemark Anglefish
Since setting up the tank, I have always wanted a copperbanded. We got one early on, and it suffered an infection of ick and passed within a couple of weeks. We were leary to try again, but picked up one that was eating in the store almost a month ago. A bit smaller than the first one and has been doing and eating beautifully in the tank.
We also tried a few SPS corals which didn't do too well. Both were birdnest, one pink and one green. They both died mysteriously within just a few days and bleeched completely. Ironically, our montipora is doing great. They were in opposite sides of the tank, so it is unknown what happened.
We have picked up a couple of small candy cane corals, a trumpet, finger coral, a lobo, acan frag, and an open brain coral. Our zooanthids are all doing well as well as our large leather, galaxia, favia, frogspawn, and GSPs.
The wife decieded that she didn't like the 14K metal halide bulbs because of the blueness. We ended up changing them out with 10K after about 8 months. The lower kelvin rating makes everything brown out to a degree. We are hoping that either the color of the coral adjusts for the lower spectrum of lighting and looks less brown.
Recently, I made the mistake of lightly stiring up my sandbed. I really like the bright white, and after several months with some finely crushed coral on top growing coraline, the sand looked dirty. So I lightly mixed the fine crushed coral in with the other sand. Looked great for about a day, and then the stupid diatoms made a return. Stupid diatoms. You can see it in the pictures below.
Lastely, we accidently bought regular salt for water changes, and not the reef kind from coralife. I think it might have contributed to a little bit of algae growth since we changed water with it for about a month before realizing. That and we were having some trouble keeping our calcium and alk up. Finally we realized that the salt was incorrect and we plan a 25 gallon water change tomorrow with the reef salt. Hopefully this helps to keep our perameters better in check and reduce so minor algae.
I feel like I have been talking mostly about bad things. Overall though, the tank has been going very well. The coral are growing and spreading out, there have been a few minor and unknown deaths in the coral but all of the fish have been happy and healthy for some time now.
Here are just a couple of pictures I just snapped off. (Sorry about the diatoms. Patience is a virtue)