Last weekend I celebrated my birthday for my family, even though originally my birthday was last Tuesday. My father wanted to buy me something for the aquarium so he asked if I wanted to go with him on Saturday to look for something nice and new. Of course I didn’t object to that .
After a long and hard decision I left with new coral, new button/polyps, some extra food for corals and inverts and a tube worm. Both the polyps and the tube worm where installed the same day, and are currently doing great.



Sunday morning we cleaned the aquarium, making sure it would look its best when the family arrived. And it did, everyone loved it and couldn’t stop looking at it…its things like this that makes all effort and time even more worth while. Of course seeing everything run smoothly is already worth while, but hearing compliments about it always helps .

An update on some of the things mentioned in the previous blog:
The Star Polyps wont open anymore, it might have something to do with the algae grow we now have, covering the corals. I’m trying to clean them as often as possible, but I’m afraid its too late for the star polyps .


The mushroom has now found its place and is slowly unfolding and growing. Both mushrooms (red and green) are growing next to each other and give the rock some nice colour, even thought the rock is strangely shaped giving the mushrooms a weird shape as well.


The blue sea star was last located before the cleaning Sunday, he looked ok, but now he has disappeared somewhere underneath/behind the rocks. Hopefully we will see him soon again and see that he is doing fine.
His leg/arm will not bring new life, even if it was possible in captivity the other life forms made an end to it by having it for dinner.

The bulb anemone has been seen again, close to where he used to be we saw a cocoon type of things hanging underneath a rock. Close to the evening it slowly unfolded showing some tentacles, making us realize this was our anemone. Curious how he gets light where he now is, but we will see how this evolves.

I have tried something new that should enhance the growth of corals. Its two products actually, both from Salifert. One is called Soft Trace, a supplement for certain trace elements that are used by soft/leather corals and coralline algae. The other is called Coral Food, which is basically nothing more then extra food for corals. Both have been first added yesterday, so we have to wait and see how the corals react and if it helps the growth of the buttons, xenia and star polyps that are slowly becoming less.

The toadstool is now missing one of his small parts, it detached when cleaning. I found it underneath the rock of the toadstool itself and I moved it to another location, see if it grows from there. Hope the fish didn’t blow it away already since it is very small and lite.


The Xenia is becoming thinner, however it has roots running through and around the rock which attached themselves to the rock below it. So it looks really firm, not sure why it stopped growing all of a sudden. Hopefully the extra supplements and food help grow it more.


The algae next to the Xenia is growing rapidly, I removed the parts that grow towards the Xenia, but let it grow in the other directions (until it becomes to much of course). It gives more life to the aquarium this way, and now grows over the rear wall covering the black background.


Also noticed two sea anemones growing, just when we thought we got rid of them. This weekend I’m hoping to have an attempt to kill these two. They are easier to reach then the ones we had before, since they are on the top of rocks that have no cover over it.



And last but not least I have found some weird balloon like algae? Still have to find out what it is exactly, but if anyone has any idea, let me know.


The rebuild plans are still ongoing, I hope to start it pretty soon. Still any tips or suggestions are most welcome

And finally a new overview picture