Well after a day of sun the algae started to grow! But the not the nasty stringy green stuff we did have! We did rig a sun shade Monday night but Tuesday when we got home it had fallen partially into the pond. It wasn't supported real well and the birds were using it for perching. It was really ghetto rigged and well, can you say I told him so! lol! So last night we're out there at 10pm setting up a much sturdier canopy. Girl Scout lessons on setting up a dining fly and years of experience in working with what you have come in handy now and again! We attached one end directly to the house and the other we scavenged some tent stakes and heavy string and staked the other end. It covers about 90% of the pond, now it still gets some sun just not that glaring noon time on sun. AND today it rained .. a lot! as anticipated we don't have to worry about evaporation in fact I spent most of today hoping I wouldn't find my tang swimming in the yard because it over flowed! The canopy kept most of the rain out, though it did drip off the end. The tang was swimming in and out of the rain drops. I was LMAO watching him shoot in between the bigger run off drips. And the pond is now way full! all the way up to the rocks! The salinity is about 1.020 a little light but we are going to do a water change prolly in the next day or so. That should be fun!

The heaters seem to have finally caught up with the night temps, Last night because we used the cover for the canopy, and because the water was still pretty warm, we left it uncovered. This am the air temp was about 64 and the pond was about 76. (right now 11:15pm, air 64 pond 77) All the levels are darn near perfect too!
nitrate, nitrite = 0, calcium tested, with really old test kit, about 400 low but not unacceptible concidering we don't have any SPS (right now any way! ),
PH =8.4, Alk= 300ppm. So other than the brown algae, prolly due to combo of sun and a touch of new tank syndrome, which the snails and fish are eating things are looking good. :D

Getting back to the SPS we do have 2 small frags of our torch and frogspawn that survived the crash but we haven't gotten brave enough to put them out there yet. But were still thinking on it! Ron says the $10 sps frags at Salty Critter are looking more and more appealing! I'll let you know! lol

We also have been thinkin on the green house idea!! Unfortunately we don't have the $$ who does? need a rich uncle with grant$$! I found some plans for DIY ones using PVC but they would never stand up to snow. Living in the "snow belt" we get the wet heavy stuff in mass quantities! Not your Idaho powder ski stuff! and can get pretty cold here too! Few years back we had 32 below at night Broke all kinds of records! "Blame Canada, Blame Canada!" (I blame them for all our crappy weather! lol) 4 season sun room came to mind too! But since we started this we have been planning next year and the location is top on the list! Starting sooner, building better, deeper and new location all are going to be planned a lot more carefully The location now was so we could keep an eye on it even from inside. I think it would be way cool to get a web cam on it so we could watch it ALL the time!!

Well thats it for now! I'll get more pics and post this weekend, keep that link cuz I'm prolly going to post more there too! lol BTW if you click on the red word "albums" next to my name above the pictures you can see all the pictures I have posted at Web Shots! lol I think I have something like 46 different albums of all kinds of pictures!! from fish and flowers to fast cars and fireworks! lol If you check any out let me know what you think.. IMHO I got lucky on a few and they're darn good! lol
Till next time!
sarah