The Last Few Fish
Last Friday, half of a zoanthid colony crashed without warning in the 30g and slimed the tank, so all of the soft corals went NO! WHY BOB, WHY? HE WAS SO YOUNG*sob* and threatened to up and die in mourning. I spent a good bit of the weekend cleaning the water and doing iodine dips and all but one of the sea mats will probably come through okay. Strangly, I’m thinking it was a fungus that killed the zoos and not a water quality issue, as the SPS corals look fantastic (the one that had bleached is regrowing new mass over its dead areas) and they are usually the first to go when there’s even the slightest change. But how would a fungus would get into the tank in the first place? The only new addition in the month, coral or otherwise, was Carlos the Royal Gramma. I doubt Carlos could have brought anything in on him as he had passed through quarentine; besides, fish are much more likely to carry fish diseases than coral diseases.
The Bartlett Anthias is made of Pretty
It could just be summer, though. Even though the water temperature is stable at 80 degrees, external heat can screw with the tank. Hell if I know why this happens… all I know is that my tank could be 80 degrees in January and 80 degrees in July, but I’ll always get an algae outbreak every July.
As for the 65g, I’m now in the final planning stages for fish. It’s getting rather crowded in there, what with the baby clownfish, Slime-atron, Smithers, and the juvenile aquacultured Fridmani pseudochromis that was added last week. I can see why people love pseudochromis… she’s my first and she’s always curious and exploring. With overcrowding issues in mind, there should only be another three – maybe four, depending on the species – fish added to the tank. One of those will be the mandarin goby, the other will be a pygmy angel. The third? How about that Bartlett Anthias up there? I’ve done a lot of reading on them and while anthias love to be in schools, the Bartlett Anthias does extremely well as a solitary fish. They don’t require too much swimming room and are generally reef-safe. And the colors, man! The colors!
The Digital Clownfish 
It could just be summer, though. Even though the water temperature is stable at 80 degrees, external heat can screw with the tank. Hell if I know why this happens… all I know is that my tank could be 80 degrees in January and 80 degrees in July, but I’ll always get an algae outbreak every July.
Could it be light rather than heat?
Lets see… effects of ambient heat on a thermostatic aqueous solution…
…nope, I can’t explain algae. Although “light” could be it. More radiation at “sun” frequencies getting through the glass?
You are more likely to get algae or fungus outbrakes in the summer b/c that’s when they reproduce in volume. Any algae or fungus that can survive in a salt-filled environment can adapt to feed on the delicious pretties in your tank in no time. The spore could have been airborne, or carried by you, or almost anything else. Not much you can do to avoid it, just comes with the territory. Sorry.
Huh. Okay, that makes perfect sense. Thanks for this!