Everything is going great with my 20 gallon long aquarium. My ammonia and nitrites didn’t see any huge spikes and were only elevated for two days after switching. It made me nervous but I’m glad it didn’t last long. Through the use of my refugium, one saltwater plant, denitrator filter media, and biweekly water changes, I have managed to reduce my nitrates to below 5 ppm.

My mandarinfish and clarkii clownfish are both doing great. My current livestock is as follows:

• (1) Clarkii clownfish
• (1) Mandarinfish
• (2) Narcissus snails
• (3) Cerith snails
• (1) Turbo snail
• (4) to (6) Blue-legged hermit crabs

I also have some coral in the tank now:

• Pulsing xenia
• Blue/green mushrooms
• Clove polyps [grew off initial live rock]
• Brown button polyps (some with neon green center)

I am still having trouble with the ammonia levels, but levels have certainly improved since yesterday.  Today ammonia clocked in between 0.25 and 0.35 ppm, which is still high, but is to be expected at this point in time.  I didn’t treat the water with anything, but I did skipped the fish feeding and attempted to feed the anemone.

This was the first time I have successfully fed the anemone.  Every single day, I have been trying to get it to eat frozen silverside that I purchased from Captain Nemo’s, but always end up throwing it out.  It was pretty cool watching the anemone slowly wrap its tentacles around its food.  I was worried the the clownfish might end up pulling the silverside away, but the clown tried to no avail!

In other news, I have been trying to track this starfish I saw on the first day I got the Fiji live rock, and I finally found it again.  If anyone has any ideas on what it may be, please let me know!

Below is a list of all the equipment I have so far:

• Tank:  10 gallons of fun
• Lighting:  (2) Coralife Mini Aqualight Deluxe Series
  • Each fixture contains:
    • (1) 9 watt True Actinic 03 Blue
    • (1) 9 watt 10,000K daylight compact fluorescent
  • Total wattage:  36 watts
• Heater:  Marineland Visi-Therm Stealth Submersible Heater (50 watts)
• Filtration:  AquaClear Power Filter 20
• Water Flow:  AquaClear Powerhead 20
• Protein Skimmer:  Oceanic BioCube Protein Skimmer (Fits 14/29)
• Live Sand:  10 lbs. Nature’s Ocean Bio-Activ Aragonite Live Sand
• Live Rock:  6 1/2 lbs. Fiji Live Rock
• Fish:  (1) Clarkii Clownfish
• Anemone:  (1) Sebae Anemone