Heh. Finally succumbed to momentum and finished drawing the Shadowchild story arc–it’s only two more pages, but it felt good to knock it out rather than wait another couple days to finish it.

Other than that, it’s Monday. It isn’t quite the crushing weight of normal Monday, but it’s definitely a weekday feeling. Blargh.

I have nothing useful to say. There are bugs and hummingbirds all over the garden, and I’m up in the studio staring out the window.

Since I haven’t updated for awhile on the topic, the tank of Bob is…well, not tanking, but it’s doing the thing that Brooke warned me about, which is to crash after six months. (Apparently all tanks do this.) I’ve got bloody digitate hydroids everywhere–I’m told they’ll go away eventually, and there’s not really a cure other than breaking down the tank. Every now and then I scrub a few off with a toothbrush, but they’re nearly impossible to get. The zooanthids all seem fine–I managed to catch and remove the predatory mini-starfish (curse you, Starfish Bob!)–the palys are happy as heck, the little blue clove polyps I got from Brooke are doing fabulous, Crab Bob comes out to worship the Great Chopstick God once a week.

No, the real problem is the torch coral, who is Not Happy. He isn’t coming out and waving around, he’s just sitting in his polyps and sulking. I can’t figure out why. I fed him, it didn’t seem to do much. I increased the temperature in the tank, which was on the low side, in hopes he was just cold. He didn’t seem to care. He’s just been sulking for a week or two now. One of the palys might have bitten him–I saw one grab one of his long sweeper tentacles once–but he seemed fine for days after that.  There aren’t any hydroids around him, the water parameters are the same as they always are, he’s just…unhappy about something.

Losing him would be heartbreaking, as he’s my very favorite coral and absolutely the centerpiece of the tank. I guess it’s time to try dipping him. I have no idea how to do it, but I’ll give it a try…