My water change article has been released at last. It'll be added to my site in the near future, but for now you can enjoy it the November Issue of Reefkeeping Online.
Over the weekend, I had the opportunity to visit several reefkeeper's homes in South Dakota. It was very interesting and I'll be adding that information to my site once I get the images edited and linked to some new pages.
A new page has been added: How to set up a Calcium Reactor There are many articles available on the web, so this one covers the basics and explains how mine is set up.
Other pages recently updated:
LFS page - Site Map - RO/DI filter changes
Today, I was in the garage and found water where it should not be. I thought maybe it was from the window a/c unit, but that wasn't it. So I kind of hoped my water heater needed replacing (rusted out), but that wasn't it. Next I went in the fishroom and saw a decent puddle in the very spot where I put the new waterproofed wiring conduit. 
I completely drained and cleaned out the refugium yesterday, washed all the sand, shook off the macro and LR in rinse saltwater, and set it up anew. The cyano in that zone was so out of control, I figured I needed to reduce the nutrient level trapped in that compartment. It looks much better, but I'm very sore after working on that for over three hours. That would be the one drawback to a huge sump, when trying to reach the back portion.
My site has a few more pages updated.
In the past week, a few changes have occured. I added six blue chromis, which look great under VHO lighting. Of course, as of today I only see 5 for some reason...
I talked with Keys Critters, and they suggested I keep them away from the Harlequins. I'll try to retrieve the starfish and put them in a different tank.
Tonight I polished off the rest of a Costco-sized jar of pretzels. While looking at it, I thought how it would make a cool tank. :D After peeling off the label (which is aggravating and takes far too long), I cleaned it up well and filled it up with water to see how much it could hold. That would be two gallons. So what to do?
I decided to test the water for the last day of the year.
At the same time, I did some dosings. So let me start off with that. I've had cyano slowly spreading in my tank for the past couple of weeks, and I finally decided to use my final batch of ChemiClean in my tank. As I've mentioned before, I believe it drops the oxygen level in the water rapidly. Before adding:
Temp 81.6F
Salinity 1.025 sg
pH 8.15
ORP 456
A couple of days ago, I tried to take a few pictures of rotifers. Rotifers are needed when you want to feed newly born fry (baby fish), and some reef keepers pour rotifers in their tank to feed their corals. I'll go more into what rotifers are in the future, but for now, here are the pictures. While not as good as I'd hoped, it is better than nothing at all, in case you just wanted to see what they are. A microscope might be better in the future.
Phosphate.
My PO4 levels have been elevating for a couple of months. If you refer to this page, you'll see they were going down, but rose up again for a few simple reasons. http://www.melevsreef.com/parms.html
Oceanic salt issues, lack of water changes, running out of PO4 media remover, skimmer not built for the system's bioload....
