Mobile Bay Reef Keepers

ouch... yea that was pink when you got it. It was mid tank under overdriven T5's.

I wish I had a PAR meter to make sure of these things. I honestly thought that if the fixture was ~26" away from the coral it would've been fine. Apparently not. The XM bulb is just a lot brighter than I expected.

Well, a little update with good news. It seems that despite the fact that I've been neglecting the tank, I officially have a new Thalassia plantlet as of a few days ago. It sprouted right next to the other two, giving me a whopping total of three. Man, these things are slow. The leaf growth for me is pretty fast, with turnover being every week or so, but actual rhizome growth is at a snail's pace. I'm noticing the Halophila slowing as the Thalassia begins to take off more, so it seems like the species succession is proceeding toward natural maturation of the bed. Kinda cool when something that normally only occurs in the wild is happening right here.

How about a new pic ? I love the look of a naturally planted tank.

I'd snap a new one, but the tank is in a blackout to stall the cyanobacteria. The Halophila in one part of the bed reached its life expectancy, so to speak. Individual rhizomes only live so long and this one was older than most at about 8 months. It will grow back, but it creates a sludge of a mess until it completely goes away. The bad thing is that it also amplifies cyanobacteria like mad when it happens, so the whole right side of the tank is a sludge pit, unfortunately. I'm going to do some water changes while the lights are out and siphon as much as I can. Should get back in order afterwards, as it was looking pretty good for a while until the die-off. Because of the massive amount of organic matter flooding the tank, I've also dusted off my skimmer for this tank and fired it up. I will probably run it for a few weeks to get this back under control and then run it intermittently afterward.

Updates!

Okay, updated pics. This is after a hefty water change, some trimming of leaves (I didn't remove any rhizomes this time) and a die-off on the right side. Makes it look more sparse, but not bad, IMHO:







The cyanobacteria is pretty much gone. There is a green species surfacing from the sand bed a bit, but it stays pretty isolated. I'll be keeping an eye out. I also fired the protein skimmer back up hoping to remove some of the heavy organics from the grasses. I may or may not remove it later. If I decide to start some light kalkwasser dosing again, I'll leave the skimmer running, since it helps with the pH quite a bit. Sorry if it is still cloudy. I rearranged the water motion a bit to optimize it, so it stirred some gunk for a while. Hopefully I can keep the tank looking reasonably close to this.

Also note how long the Thalassia/turtlegrass blades have gotten. They've easily added another 5" and I also have a new plantlet.