It has been a very long time since I've posted an update (5 months) and since I have a lot of new developments lately I thought it was time to bring this reef log up to date.
I'd been struggling with my tank for a while and made a decision to upgrade some of my equipment, and also make a rather big purchase of SPS corals. I recently went to Bali, visited a coral farm and hand picked all my own coral -- 55 pieces to be exact. Maricultured corals have a reputation for losing color after transport, and that's exactly what happened to me, especially with pink and purple corals. I also had 10% die during or after transport which I'm told is normal (but still sucks as far as I'm concerned).
Anyway, with 50 new corals comes a totally brand new aquascape. I'm hoping that the third time is the charm here. It is a much more open layout, with lots of flow and open sand (instead of the cluttered look I had in the past). It seems especially good for the fish as they have a ton of swimming room and I have great visibility of them. There was one unfortunate problem during the aquascape -- 3 of my very large Bartlett's died and also my prize Scott's Wrasse. It appears that for a period of time there wasn't enough oxygen in the tank or something. I still don't really understand why because I've never had this happen before. Luckily the other fish were ok.
During this process I also upgraded my skimmer (to a JNS Cone) and added a new powerhead (in addition to the 2 MP40s I already had) to increase flow and create a wave effect. I also started using Chimipure Elite in the sump. I had been having a brown algae problem for many months and this combination of actions completely eliminated it within 24 hours. I am very impressed by that!
Last night I had a major scare that I hope none of you have to go through. One of my pumps (the one for the UV filter) burned out and sent a small electric current through my tank and blasted a huge amount of smoke into the water (making my tank cloudy). It was a pretty scary experience because it took me a little while to figure out what was going on and I didn't know if the whole tank would go up in flames and burn down my house or something. Fortunately it was just the one pump (a Chinese one) and the fish and corals seem to be ok. What did I learn from this? Don't use cheap Chinese pumps or hardware -- one day you might regret it.
Anyway, here are some photos of the new aquascape. It is going to evolve further over the next couple months as things settle in (or die) and I'll be making some other additions as well. Fingers crossed that everything settles in happily.
Here are some photos from the coral farm in Bali. The corals on the first tray are mine.
~Congratulations! Your tank is October 2013's TOTM!~ 
