We’re seeing ongoing progress in the Lightning Maroon pairing.  More digging, more general surface cleaning, but no eggs yet.  Rod Buehler of Rod’s Food sent along an extra-special care package from Mama Percula to Mrs. Lightning this weekend…some of her secret recipe new “Breeder’s Blend”, aka. “No Candelight Needed”.  Some is getting tested out here, some has gone to another local breeder and we’re going to do an informal trial counting nest sizes to see how feeding this changes them over a few batches.

There’s been some coral issues…I have a couple areas of tissue loss on a few of the smaller Birdsnest frags, and the Aussie Pinks, and Green, Gonioporas, have stopped extending their polyps.  A water test didn’t reveal anything causative…
pH (Seachem) – 8.2
pH (Apex) – 8.38
Total Alkalinity (Seachem) – 2.5 meq/L
Nitrate (Salifert) – 2 ppm
Calcium (Salifert) – 350 ppm
Magnesium (Salifert) – 1155 ppm
Based on the pH descrepency, I recalibrated the pH probe on the Apex Lite…afterwards it came in around 8.25 so we were definitely riding a bit high.  I’d been holding back on the C-Balance 2 part dosing due to elevated pH again, but turns out that probably wasn’t necessary.
Still, a 5 gallon (25%-ish) water change was ordered up.  We’ll see if that doesn’t help just a wee bit.