Despite the fact that I used well established sand and rock that was all transported underwater, I opted to let the tank sit empty for about 3 weeks. I never detected any signs of a cycle, but I wanted t make sure things were good and stable before I started adding anything. This is a small volume of water, and I was going to be breaking one of my own rules by adding an anemone to an 'unestablished' tank, so I wanted things to be as stable as they could be. While I was waiting things out, I picked up what was to be the tank centerpiece. A very unusual purple with green tips BTA. Here it is right after I got it home. it had to stay in a specimen container in my tank at home so I could easily remove it when the time came.
Finally, after 3 weeks of waiting, the nem made the move to it's new home.
The anemone wandered for a full 24 hours before finding it's happy spot, which is not the spot it's in in the above picture. After a few days, I picked up a pair of percs from a fellow club member, and in they went, along with a modest cleanup crew of 1 nassarius, 1 trochus and 1 margherita snail and 3 blue leg hermits, as well as a cleaner shrimp picked up from yet another fellow club member who was breaking down his tank.
Depending on how you look at it, and what your opinion of them is, my new office is about 1/2 a mile from a PetCo. This particular PetCo isn't too bad, and in fact, the aquatics section is managed by a good friend of mine, and a fellow reef club member. I pop over there every once in a while at lunch to see what they have. I was there one day and they had managed to get a nice mini-maxi carpet. it was clearly unhappy under their single T12 lighting, so I picked it up.
It took it well over a week to begin fully expanding again due to the massive light increase over the conditions at the store.
As things seemed to be going well, I decided to start picking stuff up from fellow reefers at meets, and bringing in a few things from home as well. Some of it is just extra stuff i had in the tank at home, and some of it is particularly nice, like this really nice pair of pink ricordea.
And this poor, tiny maxima that was suffering in a fellow members tank, where it was being picked to death by his trigger.
The maxima is still slowly recovering. It stayed tightly shut for over a week once I got it. Above, it's just starting to open up, and is looking much better now.
Part 3 coming soon.
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