Hi guys,
Things are still going well. Maintenance is manageable again and touch wood the tank is healthy. Nitrates went up suddenly right before the puffer went in. Up to 20ppm. Not sure exactly what happened there but they're back down to zero again. I've learned about ionic balance and all the parameters are being kept right spot on what I want without problems. One help was using kalkwasser for top ups, this maintained the KH and PH. Another was the TMC calcium, possibly because it also contains organic carbon which I don't really understand very much but read something about it when I looked up "vodka dosing" and seems to be to do with redox.... whatever it is, since the TMC Calcium and the kalkwasser things have been a lot stabler between water changes. oh, I also swapped the 80W T5 on the sump for 11W and the algae is growing properly now.

Behaviour wise there have been a few surprises, first Lenny the Algae Blennie has quite an attitude. Often biting my hand when I reach in to refresh the algae on the clip but also taking the occasional peck at the puffer. The puffer doesn't appear to notice or mind and that's another surprise. I was expecting a little bit of carnage when he went in there. Realising that my corals, crabs and snails where all at risk but also being advised by LHG that the puffer may turn on the fish was a bit of a worry. I know its early days but currently he's not showing any signs of being a threat. Quite the opposite in fact which is a little concerning. I noticed the night before last that his tail was a little frayed. Nothing severe but not right.
Several hours of tank watching later and eventually last night I see the culprit. While the puffer hides in a cave most of the day he is looking out the front of the tank in the evenings and early mornings and occasionally Dory (the cowardly regal tang) will bite his tail.
This is a problem, partly because its stressing and damaging the puffer although he seems not to worry too much but also because if he does decide to retaliate it would probably be the end of Dory. Not sure what to do about this but if it doesn't stop then I guess one of them is going to have to be rehomed.
Another surprise was the puffers swimming ability, daft really seeing as its a fish but I've always read they're such poor swimmers that flow should be kept down at least for part of the tank. Looking at him, well to put it delicately he's not the most streamlined of creatures is he? Yet, I've held his food directly in front of a 3000lph powerhead and he wasn't phased by it in the slightest. Watching him he swims ... well, like a fish, more or less. Actually its more like some sort of mutant underwater hummingbird but effective enough that he can keep pace with dory when there is food at the far end of the tank.

As for being messy eaters... wow, aren't they just. He'll take half a North Atlantic prawn in one and then clouds bellow out his gills making the entire tank into a snow storm. It's an unbelievably quick and effective way of getting shredded prawn into every corner of the tank.



Devil's Fingers, relocated after being attacked one night - before puffers arrival. Was that Dory the regal tang or Fozzie the teddy bear crab? Fozzie got the blame but since then I've placed a new peice of live rock where it was and seen dory smack the rock around with her tail obviously very offended at its existence.




Still like the mushrooms, cant get over how much they flouress under the moonlights. They've grown well... will they spread off their rock naturally, or is this as far as they go without human interferance?



Decided to try a Xenia, thought it might have been a huge mistake as it was going in only days before the puffer. It's doing quite well though and I'm hoping it will start to spread up the rock its next to.



Dory and "the puffer", I've been calling him "the puffer" in this post because we are still arguing about a name. My wife wants to call him Beaky, the kids want to call him Porky or Bloat and I've started calling him Puffy which we all think is a really bad name, but it seems to have stuck.



An overview of the tank, a little too much algae but I did say there was a small nitrate spike and I wanted to keep Lenny well fed, now he seems to only want to eat from the clip so its not going down very quickly!

So what where my targets... fish only tank with live rock and all for under £100. I've probably spent closer to £4000 over the last year and I've got a reef tank all be it a light on corals. I've had lots of bright ideas and most of them have cost me a considerable amount of time and money. I've learned loads and love my tank, not because its the best (obviously its not) but because its all mine, mistakes and all.

That brings this series of blogs to a close. No doubt I'll post more about my tanks development but from initial half-baked design through complete failure of budget and finally to half-baked completion this is my tank.

So, what's the next plan? Well, actually I want to put a 5' tank in the living room to replace this one but the sump will stay in the dining room. That's some way off though as I need to recover my credit , with the bank and the wife!