Ugly phase is now underway. Tank has been up and running for 3.5 weeks now. Added bottled "live" coralline algae last week, so I've been running lights for 4 hours a day. Haven't been home for 2 days, and came back to the ugly phase. 3 days ago, I did see 3-4 diatom splotches, so added 1 of the absolute smallest blue legged hermits I could find that had a little coralline on it as well. Ordered 2 bottles of
live copepods last week, not paying attention to the fact that they won't get here until next week.