Well this is my first update since coming runer up in the comp! Thanks very much for your encouraging words guys! Pretty much as soon as the competition was over, I went on a spending spree and bought alot of equipment. I replaced the old skimmer, which was effectively pulling our next to no skimmate. I thought this was a sign of such a small bioload on a small system. It wasn't until I replaced it with a new skimmer (a Tunze Comline 9004), that I realized that it was the skimmer that was useless. The Tunze is silent, and pulling out half a cup of tea coloured skimmate a week! The only downside is the microbubbles it seems to produce. I have added a filter layer at the bottom like suggested in the instructions, but you still have the occasional release of thousands of bubbles!
Next on the list, and what I thought might have been responsible for the ridiculous amount of microalgae my tank would grow, was the lights. Basically meant for freshwater aquariums, I thought I would experience better colour and growth with a Marine focused LED. So I bought and installed the fabulously built MicMol Nano Colour. Its a great unit. I originally used 5% lights as "moon" lighting overnight. It wasn't until several nights after installation I realized 5% was quite a significant amount of light, and my fish hadn't slept for 3 days!

But instead of creating a coral garden, I seem to have created a cyano-garden.
I bought these corals with recession already, but you can see these the cyano attaching to every surface it can!



To combat this, I have added more LR rubble, more live sand from my local LFS and reduced lighting intensity (but not hours, yet), siphoning cyano as I do my weekly water change. I have monitored alkalinity regularly, and it seems to swing alot. I have since then added an Tunze Auto-top up, adding Randys Alk recipe. Hoping this will stabalize the alkalinity, which might control the cyano. Any advice would be gratefully appreciated. Im pretty over it.
I found by chance a large female chequered cardinal to go with my small, presumed male. To add/compound the comedy of my BonsaiBox, after getting randy for several weeks, the female jumped clear from the marine aquarium, over 30cm and landed in the nearby freshwater planted nano. I cant win.

The only thing I can say that has honestly worked for me in the last 3 months is this beauty:
I have recently picked up some beautiful Favites and Echinophyllia. I will post more photos when I am actually happy with the tank and they are doing okay.
