Lids solved the humidity issue, and I've actually been leaving a window open as well. Interestingly the pH took a pretty good drop when I got home despite this. Currently the skimmer is pulling from the hallway, but perhaps routing it out a window would be more appropriate.
Got home late Sunday night after being gone 11 days. The good news is that the brown slime that was covering the rocks is completely gone. The bad news is that there are little tufts of hair algae on the floor and some of the equipment, enough that I'm not going to be able to manually trim it off. I'll need to hunt down some snails as I missed the last group buy. I suppose I could also grab a few urchins, although then I would definitely need to glue down all of my frags. Knowing that I'll be moving at some point I am starting to wish that I had drilled the rocks for faster teardown/rebuild, and because urchins are bulldozers of a special sort. Thinking about it, I could probably catch one or two next time I'm home, but seeing as that will be at least 3 weeks out and they are still needed there that might not be the best idea.
No pictures yet, but I did grab one of my duncans (estimate 50-100 heads, non branching) and a few other corals that like to eat on my last trip home. Why that's important below.
The alk dropped from 10.8 before I left to 8.4 when I returned, so I manually put in 1 dKH of alk and also upped the alk doser a bit. I'll have to keep an eye on it and see how it does.
The other interesting thing is that my nitrates remain high. For a while the tank was pulling them down from ~5 to 0 in just a few days. Between an inexact test kit (API) and not testing often enough when it stopped I ended up pushing the nitrates up towards 40 perhaps a month ago. Not a big deal I figured, the chaeto will pull it out. Oddly they haven't really moved in the last 3-4 weeks, so I'm curious if I've zeroed out my phosphate, which would explain some coral issues I've been having. Unfortunately no phosphate test. The appropriate thing is probably to pick up some cubes of mysis and start feeding the duncans. I'd still like to add some fish, but I'm realizing that my tendency to be occasionally gone for 10 days is a bit of a liability there. My fish back in Dallas are healthy enough, and the natural grazing in the tank large enough, that a week at a time here and there is a non-issue, but in a smaller tank with fish that I haven't had time to fatten up I could see it being an issue, and I don't want to impose on anyone.
Some coral dead, sadly including one from the frags from the swap and I think I have an efflo frag that's not going to make it, but more where the parent colony came from. Other things obviously growing (that alk went somewhere).
Also on the bad front, the water is REALLY cloudy/white. I'm about to change the skimmer, so I figure between that and the macro being trimmed recently and finally having room to grow it might clear its self up. While it's sort of annoying to look at the zoas seem really happy about it, so I'm not going to worry about it until its my biggest issue. Pretty is a benefit, but the real goal is just keeping things alive/established as I slowly move across the country. Wife is still job hunting, so no real date yet.
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