Turbo Snail on its Back

After four months in my tank, my Turbo Snail finally fell on its back, as I had read can happen.  It's not exactly clear how he fell, but I did notice that he was grabbing on to something gooey with sand and algae stuck to it.  I wonder if that was waste from the anemone.

I just picked him up and flipped him back over and he seems fine.

Bleached Anemone?

I was looking at old pictures of my anemone and noticed how much color they had when I first got them.  Articles like this one and this one suggest that they my anemones could be bleached.

The anemone seem to be doing relatively well in that they've found places to settle and haven't moved in months -- and there are plenty of places they could move to for more or less light, and more or less flow.  Their bubbles are also quite prominent, even more so than when I first got them.  On the downside, while the tips still have a pinkish color, the rest of the anemone is fairly colorless, whereas before they had both red and green coloration.  Also, they've shrunk a little bit, though not that much.  I've been feeding them some krill once a week, and they eat it.

However, I'm beginning to suspect that my light might be too weak.  I've had my AI Sol's set at 20% intensity for white, blue, and royal blue colors.  Looks like folks on Reef Central set the intensity in the 50% range.  So for the past couple of days I dialed up the intensity of all three colors to 30%.  We'll see how it goes.

Adding 20 lbs More Live Rock

I've been thinking about getting some Mandarin fish and coral, which need more live rock.  So I bought about 20 lbs more live rock and another piece of bowl rock (~3 lbs) for the aquarium.  Previously, I had added 15 lbs of Fiji live rock and 15 lbs of bowl rock and 12 lbs of Totoku to the tank.  So I'm now up to roughly 47 lbs of live rock and 18 lbs of bowl rock, or 65 lbs of rock in total.

I found a fascinating article about aquascaping. This really got me thinking about trying to create something that looked natural, but was also functional.  I wound up with a design that is part bridge, mound, curved wall, and terrace.  The flat terrace rocks are hard to come by naturally, so I found a couple pieces of bowl rock that I used to give the tank a multilevel appearance.  I also wanted to leave some open space for the active swimmers, so the right side of the tank has less rock.  I wanted to cover up a bit the overflow in the back left corner, so I wrapped the mound around it.  Also, I wanted to have plenty of places to put coral at different elevations (and light intensities) and with various flow options in the tank.  Finally, I wanted to provide the fish with more tunnels and hiding places.  The new arrangement allows the fish to swim in a straight line almost the entire length of the tank either in the back, middle, or front of the tank.

So far, the Yellow Tang and Coral Beauty seem to love the new arrangement the most, exploring just about every nook and cranny already.  The fire shrimp has found a new home that, thankfully, is much easier to see.  But the Clownfish still spend a lot of time swimming near the return and top of the tank, pretty much ignoring the rearrangement.