Monday, January 18, 2010

Scrubbed and clean

I spent the morning scrubbing salt and cleaning tanks. The mysterious algae in the newest tank seems very persistent. I scrubbed it off the front, so it moved to the back. I scrubbed the back, it moved to the front. And so on. It leaves small green thread-like strands on the tank when I scrub and there is a brown substance that aggregates onto the strands in a few minutes. I scrubbed what I could, hopefully the filters will get some of it. I dropped the light duration in hopes it will starve the algae. We still need to get plexiglass cut for the tops and to work on getting more flow through both compartments.

Friday, January 15, 2010

A new year

It's been a while since our last post! Since the last time we got another stock of jellyfish. There was an algae bloom that I suspect was releasing toxins into the water because even the snails died on that end of the water. The side with the other critters seems okay, so I'm not sure what the difference is. We put another filter on that side and I'm hoping it will clear up.

In the meanwhile, there is one jellyfish from the previous batch that is still kicking, so I'm feeding him and hoping he'll bounce back. All of the other organisms are okay it seems. We switched to a broader spectrum flake food after the arrow crab died, and I think everyone is happier. Apparently we are very good at keeping everything EXCEPT jellyfish alive.....

I'm planning on switching to submersible heaters exclusively as they are easier to maintain. Water loss is still a problem. I've been a little remiss in getting the plexiglass tops cut. We're waiting to hear about labspace and it's been very cold outside, so experimentally the jellies are on hold until we can care for them better and be able to take them back and forth to Wilson for dissection, etc.