Just had a look at people's tanks online, and realised ... hmmm. My calcium reactor's probably overkill. Heck, but it allows more leeway anyway. No more standing at shops wondering, "I wonder if I have enough calcium in my tank for this clam/coral". Wait a minute ... that'd mean ... a huge shield over my wallet's gone. Cripes. Now relying on self-discipline, $ as the limiting factor and my QC manager only.

Anyway ... yx kindly did the titration for me yesterday, so far here are the results:

5/7/06 (Alkalinity titration)

Tank: 8 dKH
Calcium reactor effluent: 25 dKH

6/7/06

Tank: 9dKH
Calcium reactor effluent: 42dKH

WOW. Scary swings. What happened was, after the readings yesterday, I found that 8 dKH was way below my target of 11 dKH in the tank, so I upped the injection of C02 into the reactor chamber, which should, theoretically, also up the effluent carbonate hardness and hence the tank's carbonate hardness. Now, the tank's values increased to 9 dKH, while the reactor's was at 42 - a most formidable number, which left me wondering ... hey, isn't the upper limit possible only at 35?!? How the heck did my reactor do that?

One possible reason I could think of was that the conventional "maximum" alkalinity that a reactor can reach were all measured from the traditional calcium reactors, while mine's a different design that uses fluidised media - i.e., the aragonite sand inside is continuously churned and suspended, increasing contact time and area with carbonic acid.

Will measure values again tomorrow.

OOOOH, and while yx and my sisters were watching some weird Korean show called "Windstruck" (which, incidentally, was a really good show - you'll be hard-pressed to hear me wantonly praising korean flicks), I was doing something all reefers do that intrigue other people, which also makes us look like idiots - I spent 20 minutes with my head under the tank's cabinet, staring at an apparently-empty refugium tank, which is filled with only macroalgae. Now, my mom has questioned me more than once, why I find a tankful of seaweed so entertaining. Here's why -

I found shrimp!!!

OK, I have *absolutely* no idea where they popped up from. Judging from their anatomy, possibly mysid shrimp. But then again, most arthropod larvae resemble mysids, but these were huge. 5mm in length, of which a third was head and thorax while the tail area took up another two-thirds of the length. Hopefully, these will survive and I'll be able to see what the hell they are.

Anyway, something else that I neglected to log about (actually, not neglected. It's just that it's now so near the end-of-posting test, and everyone knows I waste time as a natural response to stress. Vicious cycle.). The other day, I bought this Papuan Toby as a surprise gift from yx, since she was looking wistfully at the fish and yet knowing that it could be destructive for my tank. Definitely not safe with annelids and crustaceans, with a small chance of coral-nibbling too.

Hell, I took the chance anyway. Tobies are actually members of the pufferfish family. The little cutie (who's now named Spotty) refused food for the last 3 days, till I tempted it with live brine shrimp - voila! Trying to wean it over to frozen mysis shrimp now. I think these things actually chew on shrimps and spit out their shells.

Here's a teaser pic, it's not my fish (found it on a Google search), but mine's exactly the same. Spotty's too shy to come out when I'm around, so I've been unable to get any good shots of him.