For the past nine months, my tank has slipped into survival mode as I've been really busy. I wound up buying two more Turbo Snails that died in a week. I bought a new protein skimmer that stopped working after a few months. The chaetomorpha in my refugium was getting covered up by green hair and slime algae, which had also started taking over my display tank. The algae outbreak happened as I provided more light in trying to bring some color back to my bleached anemone, which eventually perished with the algae outbreak. At that point, things were anything but auspicious.
Yesterday, I finally got an afternoon to clean up the tank, do a much needed water change, and get things back on track. I fixed the problem with the skimmer -- salt creep had simply blocked the air intake tube. I bought another Turbo Snail that I properly acclimated this time -- it's eaten quite a bit already. The chaetomorpha has actually turned back the slime algae in the refugium and has grown quite a bit. And through it all, my four fish have miraculously been hanging in there, doing fine. Things are starting to look a little better already.
