Got a blue hamlet today, which the guy at Gills said was an Indigo hamlet. It seems to have acclimated okay. Also got a 2.5lbs chunk of decent live rock and a small bunch of blade caulerpa.
The TDS meter arrived and I've tested several sources. These are sources and TDS readings in ppm:
Tap: 105
Pur Filter: 114
Poland Springs: 90
Reef water: 390
Fresh water tank: 900
Office tap: 365
Office RO filter: 97
Typhoon: 1
My tap water is pretty good in this measurement, which is surprising. The water from the Typhoon actually reads 1ppm which is pretty amazing. I also received the pH calibration solution and I've been testing pH with the newly calibrated device. It is not as precise as the TDS meter.
I replaced another 7.5g of water today, so far a total of about 20g. Elephant skin seems to be suffering from the same symptoms as the brain before it disintegrated.
www.tdsmeter.com
www.airwaterice.com
I'm slowly doing more water changes to replace all the existing water with RO/DI water. I did another 5.5 gallon change yesterday with no adverse effects and no algae build up so far. The brown slime algae which usually appears within 24 hours of a 5 gallon water change has yet to appear, which is a good sign. The RO/DI filter is really slow, I guess from a combination of cold and dirty water. Apparantly each degree Farenheit below 72 is a 1.2% decrease in production and my tap water is about 56 degrees right now so I guess that means about 20% less production which equates to 2.5 gallons per hour (filter is 75 gal/day). I am definitely not getting 2.5 g/hr so my water must be dirty or something, I got a TDS tester that will tell me for sure when it arrives.
Also, I flushed the anthia, he never made it.
Bought a new RO/DI filter from Living Sea today. It's an AirWaterIce Typhoon 5 stage filter with a fancy membrane from Dow. The filter is pretty slow (about 1.2 gallons per hour), but seems to work great. I did a 5 1/2 gallon water change and things seem good. I also got some Kent Tech CB 2 part ionic calcium solution which creates some cloudy kalkwasser looking cacium clumps. I added that after the water change.
Well I think the anthia is dead. He's not floating but he is motionless on the bottom of the bucket. I've been slowly dropping the salinity, but it doesn't seem to be helping. The water is starting to smell a little too.
The anthia has some white cauliflower fungus on it's head, most likely due to stress from the other fish in the tank that aren't very nice to him since he got here. I called tropic isle and asked them about it, they told me to isolate him for 10 days, reducing the saliniity to 1.010 over the first 3 days. He is now in a 5 gallon bucket with a heater and power head and I'm slowly adding fresh water. I hope he makes it.
The meat brain finally died for some unknown reason. It slowly dissolved into a light brown slime and now only the skeleton is left. I removed the skeleton because I saw the annoying aiptasia return. Everything else seems to be growing like crazy.