I guess they were right.
I was told many times that nothing good in marine happens quickly, and it's true!
I had a long, ugly battle with hair algae in this tank that I managed to resolve by lowering my lights from 100% (yes I know, I should know better 😅) to just 30%. I also started more regularly and accurately dosing phytoplankton and Tropica Specialised. Subsequently, the hair algae began weakening and what was once quite hard to get off, eventually started falling off quite easily. Now I'm happy to report there is ZERO visible nuisance algae. Even some of the more intricate species like blue ochtodes and red ogo that were smothered, (and I thought were toast) have recovered. It seems it's not exactly like plants in the sense that macroalgae can completely recover from an algae outbreak and the part that has been affected isn't down and out. Now every single blade, node and frilly bit is completely clean.
One thing lowering the light has down is heavily slowed the growth of the macroalgae. I'm not mad at that, in fact it was quite useful because I could focus on getting the tank stable as opposed to trimming, and it also gave me time to focus on other projects. Now we're in a good place, I'm very very slowly increasing the light (currently on 40%) to see how high I can go without inducing a microalgae outbreak. After all, I do want it to grow somewhat!
Urban Expansion
After fixing my phytoplankton dosing (10ml every other day) the pod population has exploded! There's also now a much greater variety of creatures going in and out of the holes in the rock, burying in the substrate and riding on the macroalgae. I've seen some creatures that I've never seen before, and I can feel the tank is maturing and becoming a rich ecosystem. There's even macroalgae growing, pods running around and mini fan worms popping in and out of the shells on the Trochus snails! They're like mini moving cities.
I've switched from the mini glass lily pipes to some Aquario acrylic pipes because the hose was leaking at the point where the adapter was. Although I liked the idea of organic waste being sucked into the filter, the acrylic looks much more clean, the flow is stronger because it's just one piece of hose and I no longer have to worry about small creatures being sucked into it. I've also FINALLY installed double taps. I always don't install them initially thinking it will be fine and then instantly regret it. They're just so... bulky.
Uncouth
A few days ago I managed to capture video footage of a brittle star spawning event. Normally you hardly see them, just their tentacles poking out of macroalgae. But this day, one of them decided to venture out and do a full on tank tour, whilst releasing this milky white fluid everywhere. I've linked the video so you can see!
A perfect impulse
Lastly, after the mini horror show that was my Clownfish pair, I decided it was ok to add some new inhabitants. Well, I only added one - A little clown goby who now goes by the name of Yellowman (zunguzunguguguzunguzeng).
