It has been a week now since we started the rebuilding of the aquarium. And how are things now?

The fish are doing fine, none of them seem to have any problems adapting to the new build, only the Angelfish that we suspected to be dead…is gone without a trace. But all the other fish are enjoying themselves, swimming through the newly build cave’s and caverns.

The corals where something I misjudged in my plan, leaving them without light and water flow for 3 days was something most of them couldn’t handle. Of course the Xenia already died before, so that was our first loss. Then the small fragment from the Toadstool that we couldn’t get out between the rocks…also considered dead. The Colony Polyps still haven’t opened up and are becoming less each day…not dead yet but don’t expect anything from them anymore. The Kenya tree, still looks very sad and small, don’t have much hope for him anymore…but who knows. Not going to remove either of them, if they have a chance of recovering it’s in this aquarium, and if they die the aquarium can handle it already. Then there is the Toadstool and Cabbage leather corals, both still in quarantine. The toadstool lost his crown now, and is falling apart. We decided to give up on him to save the Cabbage coral, but we have doubts that there is any chance of saving him too. I still don’t want to believe it, but I’m afraid my girlfriend is right.
But it’s not all bad for the corals, both mushrooms are looking great, the buttons are slowly recovering and best of all, the star polyps are becoming more and bigger than they ever where in our aquarium (only in the store they where fuller). So there is also good news fortunately.

Then we have the invertebrates. No trace of any of the missing creatures, so many of them died before we started rebuilding. We also killed all of the Sea Anemones, at least I think we did. On one of the new rocks we found a huge Sea Anemone, which I killed today…and I think I did a great job at it, didn’t take any chance at all, but more on that later. The cleaner shrimp is doing fine, as is the Hermit Crab. The tube worm was something I was worried about, but even he seems to be doing fine, his new crowns are growing nicely and he is becoming more visible each day.

And algae, well, that was all destroyed during the rebuilding.

So shortly after everything was placed we bought some new life rock, where we found a big Sea Anemone on the next day. Today I took it out, and found some new Sea Pearls forming on that rock also. I injected the Sea Anemone with boiling water, removed the Sea Pearls carefully. Poured boiling water over each spot Sea Pearls where located. Cleaned the spot the Sea Anemone was located and washed it all clean with some fresh salt water. Like I said, didn’t take any chance of any of them returning so quickly.
And after doing that I took measurements for the water values, and everything seems to be back the way it was before we rebuild. The PH is now from 7,7 to 8, the KH is still at 7, which is still a bit low unfortunately. Nitrite dropped from 0,1 to 0,05 which we always had and the nitrate dropped from 2,5 to 0. Ammonia levels dropped from 0,023 to 0,0145 and Phosphate dropped from 0,1 to 0,03. The last two values still need to drop a bit, but it’s ok now.

A couple of things are now running, first we ordered a new Urchin and Sand shifting sea star.
I have contacted someone on a forum for a new mushroom and maybe more…but that is taking a lot of time. Asked him for some pictures but it looks like he doesn’t want to sell them or anything. He has some Ricordea Florida Diskanemones, which are very beautiful, but I read also very difficult to keep. Then there is the blue/purple mushroom, which I’m interested in for the mushroom rock. But also a new Kenya tree, Star Polyps and some other nice corals. So I hope to get the pictures, I will show them here also…give an impression
Then my girlfriend wants a new bulb anemone, and I saw another very nice looking anemone at the store. We are going to take the bulb anemone when we find a nice one, but I’m hoping I can get her to agree with me on the other one too :p
And then less good news, the toadstool will be removed from the rock, for as far as that is still necessary of course. And probably the Cabbage will also be removed and the rock will just be rock again…wait and see.