Ok so I've done several things this last week.
First I performed several water changes probably totaling up to about 20 gallons in water changes. (My RO/DI unit is broken but I am just waiting for 1 more part in the male so I will do more changes then). Following these I took out many of the rocks and scrubbed them off. Then, I rearranged all of the rock hoping to get better flow, I think it has helped a lot. I also rearranged the powerheads. I flipped the background on the aquarium too blue (from black) cause I thought it would look better, it does. I propped one of the big pieces up with pieces of PVC so it won't sit directly on the sand:
I also got one of those loc-line things off of ebay, came from hong kong so it was only $5, works great. I'm probably going to cut the PVC pipe at the top (not the loc-line stuff, the white stuff) up a little because I originally just had it down farther because it was the return line itself.
As far as my livestock, fish seem very healthy, clownfish seems to be very very active with the new arrangement. I have a goby and angelfish also but they always hide when I'm right near the glass:
The button polyps that came with my live rock (well it was just 1) are doing quite well:
And here are some that my friend gave me that have multiplied quite a bit:
Here is one of the kenya trees, probably gonna leave it in the corner to prevent it from spreading too easily or harming other future corals:
And a small mushroom coral my friend gave me a while ago, came detached from the original rock so I glued it back to another rock. Not sure what type it is, it's purple with green lines. How much light do these things need? Should I leave it down near the buttom on that rock like it is?
These are the star polyps, the rock wasn't glued in place and when I was on vacation it fell off and when I got back I couldn't find it, but I found it when rearranging the rock. I'm not sure if it's completely dead though so I'm gonna watch it for a week or so. No $ lost though, I got it from a friend:
The story with this xenia is kind of funny, my friend gave me one cut off his rock and I attached it to a rock in my aquarium however it came loose and I had not idea where it went, I thought it got sucked up by the sump or something and died. However, 2 months later, one day I noticed it had landed on one of the rocks and attached itself and was thriving lol. Now that a lot of the algae has been eaten away it seems to be thriving more:
I'm hoping to keep the algae back with the water changes and I purchased more turbo snails last week. I also ordered 20 Nass snails off of ebay, so those should be coming soon and that should help with the sand aeration.
