I bet you’re a lot warmer than I am at the moment, it’s cold here!

As you live in Fiji I take it you have a fish pond outside in which you’re building a reef. No problem generally.

The reef will have all of Nature’s light, that is the sun. It is very important that in a confined space such as the pond that the water quality is maintained at optimum, if not there could well be problems with algae.

I suggest that you do fit a protein skimmer because of the confined space. The usual suggestion is to obtain a skimmer of twice the capacity as the seawater volume it needs to service, However, a pond could contain a very large amount of seawater compared to an aquarium. Therefere obtain the largest skimmer you can that is as close as possible to the seawater volume.

It is likely that you will be using natural seawater, so perhaps in the first place try changing larger than usual amounts of seawater at your routine seawater changes. This will reduce pollutants in the water and may in fact dispense with the need for a skimmer. Worth a try.

Occupants of the pond reef should not be too large and should be compatible with each other and the corals kept. Small tangs and other small ‘friendly’ fish should do.

One other point is to ensure that you are not breaking the law by collecting stuff directly from the wild reef.

Best of luck!
.-= John´s last blog ..The Long Loud Silence =-.

I had a BTA once and unknown to me the intake of a powerhead had come off and the BTA ‘walked’ to near to it and unfortunately got sucked in. The water was a horrible milky colour and the skimmer was going into overtime.

Felt absolutely awful about that – taught me a lesson though.

As John says check your powerhead and check your water parameters.

Peter

One of the tricks of anemones – or some of them anyway – is to go walkabout as they don’t like the position they’re in within the aquarium. It may be a lack of light, or a lack of or too much water current, or they don’t feel secure within the rocks. Sometimes they have been known to let go of the substrate in the hope of landing somewhere more to their liking. I have experienced the former but never the latter.

Trouble is, they can be drawn into the intakes of pumps and powerheads, where they are well and truly mashed. Could this have happened to yours, causing cloudy water I wonder? Hopefully your intakes are well protected.

You’ve probably already done it, but water tests – ammonia, nitrite and pH – should be done to ensure all is well. The cloudiness should clear. Any problems, a water change is suggested.