Adam's 29 Gallon build

Bubble algae is easy to pick off. Be careful of adding food to a 29g tank. There is not enough water/rock to handle extra food. A lot of foods say they don't mess with water quality but I beg to differ.

Newest addition. ORA red gonipora from CR;

These things aren't much use if you don't post your failures as well as your progress I guess. I've lost four corals since I started this system even though everything seems to be doing well. The first loss was a forest glow zoa polyp from CR. I was having trouble getting my lighting dialed in and had gone to an extended acclimation protocol and it never recovered. The tank was still relatively young at that point(3 or 4 months) Next I lost some green people eaters and armor of god polyps that I got from Dennis. Something strange was going on with the tank at that point and a lot of things were unhappy with extended periods of little or no polyp extension. Fixing a malfunctioning skimmer and time seemed to stabilize things and it has been clear sailing since then.

Until last month . During that heat wave I noticed my red and green acro started bleaching at the tips. Checking my apex the temps had gone high(83.4) but not terribly high. From what I've read this should be well within the tolerance for corals. The bleaching was very slow to spread but got slightly worse day by day. About two days after this started I lost a fish(sailfin molly). I should have removed her because she was constantly being harassed by the other sailfin female. They were as bad as cichlids really . I'm not sure what actually was the cause as she was still looking healthy and eating well the day before. Perhaps she was chased into the mini maxi and she was too big of a meal and it let her go after trying to eat her.(that seems most likely). I removed her as soon as I spotted her, so she was dead in tank for no more than 1 day. I should've done a large WC at this point but was working late every night and nothing else in the tank seemed to care. The acro continued to bleach from the tips slowly for the net couple of days. I still had hopes it would come out of it as it looked good from it base up to the branches. Then it just went south and the "flesh" started sloughing off like RTN just backwards(tips to the base). So my first attempt at an acro was a crash and burn. The purple pocillopora that's placed near it looks fine and is growing.

Otherwise the tank seems to be fairly happy. The tiny bit of lingering GHA is slowly disappearing from the one rock which must have been leaching a little phosphate. The mini maxi seems to have healed up from the foot tear it got when they were bagging it for me at Easy. It now readily accepts freeze dried krill(gonna try something fresher this week). I do need to move the sunburst palys to another spot as the tube anemone is giving them some grief when it fully extends at night.

The new red mini carpet seemed to be shrinking back from my lighting a little(still was looking good and eating but looked like it wanted less light). Apparently my BML strips are putting out a bit more par than I anticipated. So I'm tweaking them some. The bluer strip got a longer ramp schedule so it's at 100% for 6 hours and spends 3 hours on either end ramping up or down. The 12000K strip is only on for 8 hours and ramping up and down for 3 and peaks for 2 hours at 20%. This schedule actually ups my peak output a bit but for it's duration is much shorter before things start ramping down. We'll see how it goes. So far nothing seems upset by it.

All part of the learning curve I guess.

#1 No new nutrient export.  Just water changes(5 gallons about every two weeks) and occasionally lopping off a bunch of halimeda if it starts to shadow any frags.

#2 Haven't checked in awhile.  Using IO reef crystals and relying on the WC to keep things stable.

#3 it may be.  Everything I had read indicated they liked high light and BML puts one strip for my tank at just medium light.  The mini maxi is on the upper rockwork which is a little more than halfway up the tank.  It moved off of the top of the rock and has settled onto the vertical face of it.  Whether it was motivated by flow or light I'm not sure.  The mini carpet hasn't moved much just seems like it's a bit more retracted than the second day it was in the tank.  The rock flower was low in the tank but moved under an overhang anyways so maybe my lights are brighter than anticipated.  And yet the golden yuma which I placed under an overhang because they are supposed to be lower light inflates and reaches to get exposed to more light ?

#4 I appreciate the offer, that's really kind of you. But there wasn't anything wrong with the original frag so it shouldn't be on you to replace it.  I will however buy one from you the next time we cross paths.

I do need to set down and run a fresh battery of tests to see if something has gotten out of wack.

For sure I'd up the feedings and try to allow those nitrates to get up. I like my No3 to be around 5 if possible.

Checked my calcium while waiting for the shrimp to temperature acclimate.

Ca=480