It's been awhile since I've posted...which I guess is a good thing because my tank has made it past the 6 month mark with no fish casualties...Lots of thanks to everyone here who has helped me make it this far.
I'm sure there are plenty of other people who have come and gone so I'll recap my setup before I get into my questions
question 1
Quote: -35 Gallon Salt
-Live Sand & Live Rock..don't know how much.
-Fluval 305 Filter
-Red Sea Protein Skimmer
-Orbit Compact Flourescent Lighting..think it's 100 watt.
livestock
-2 Clowns
-1 Blue Damsel
-1 "Convict" Damsel
-1 Algea Blenny
-1 Goby
-1 Hermit crab
-1 Spider Crab
-1 sand sifting starfish
-some snails
How often should it be necessary to scrape the algae off of the inside of the tank? I've been doing either weekly or bi-weekly changes of about 5 gallons of water and sometimes it seems like the algea accumlates pretty quickly. I suspect I may have an imbalance of some sort causing it.
note: over time I've grown a little complascent with taking the levels on the tank because whenever I do, everything seems to be pretty well in-check...so no further data at the moment
question 2
How do mushrooms propogate? I purchased a live rock that came with this very short and small mushroom that was rather purple. Over time it grew to have quite an impressive cap...the stem didn't seem to get very large. The mushroom was actually quite short.
Then recently, it appeared that another very small mushroom was growing next to it. Not long after, the large impressive mushroom shrunk to a very small size and detached itself from the rock. I then noticed another small mushroom in its place. I figured the large mushroom was dead...the cap floated around on the bottom of the tank for a day and then it seems like it found a new home. I *think* it's still alive in its new home as it doesn't look shriveled up...but I don't really know...any insight on this would be cool.
I think that's about it for a moment. Everything is going pretty well. I've got a good amount of coralline algea throughout the tank which is cool. There was one very porous rock that I purchased off of a shelf at PetCo or something and that thing is riddled with coralline algea now too. I think the tank looks pretty great, but I'm not an expert...maybe I'll shoot some pictures of it for everyone to see and comment on whether it's good/bad/ugly.
thanks.