"Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning..." Sir Winston Churchill
Churchill's quote felt fitting - Still a ways to go, but it feels great to finally have corals in this tank
The photos look rough as they were taken literally minutes after adding the second batch of Frags. The last of a cycle hair algae bloom are still visible.
There are 77 frags of Chalice, Acan, Milli, Acro, Favia and Rics added so far. The corals aren't in their their permanent locations, Most will be removed from the plugs and affixed directly to the aquascape.
It beats looking at an empty tank
A few things I've learned on this build...
I've avoided adding any clean up crew to this tank, instead just waiting for the cycle algae to dissipate on it's own. It's a pleasure to place a Frag in a location and have stay there without having to worry about an snail, crab or fish moving it.
The space is so tight (especially in the bottom of the tank) it requires the use of forceps, a lot of time and patience (not my strong suit) to manuever Frags into the desired locations. It's so tedious, I find my patience lasts only about 30 minutes before I need to take a break.
I'm still undecided about the dosing plan. I have BRS dosing and top off pumps that can be used for 2-part, but in a tank this small (7.5 gallons actual), salinity creep will be problem. I had believed that daily water changes equalling about 100% per month would be enough, but I just found an article on water change by Randy Holmes-Farley that demonstrates if using water changes alone, it would take daily changes of greater than 50% to maintain CA/Alk and MAG levels in a high demand tank.
Based on this, in addition to the daily water changes equaling 100% per month, I'll start with Kalkwasser dosing using a BRS top-off pump and a Tunze 5074 Kalk dispenser (I can't use the Osmolator as it runs for a minimum of 10 seconds and would overdose the Kalk causing pH spikes.) Then depending on demand, I'll add 2-part pumps later.
Thanks for tagging along - I'll shoot more photo's once the rest of the livestock has been added.
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