Great reef, I love it!

I'm hoping to be able to make it into town to pick up a wrasse for this tank tomorrow, hope I find a good one!

I'm not sure what to think about my clownfish.
He's pretty and he seems healthy, but he also seems quite stupid.
He can't seem to make up his mind whether to eat his food or be afraid of it and run away.
DoDo head.
I've been feeding him Prime Reef flakes and frozen mysis. He seems to like the taste of it just fine when he's not running away from it.

I've found what I think are snail eggs on the side of the tank. I really wish I could post a pic of them, but I have no way to do that right now. There are these tiny white dots that I think are the eggs, and they're kinda covered in this translucent round "covering" that holds them up agains the side of the tank.
My first eggs,cool!
I think they might be eggs from the snails I got from tashayar, I don't know of anything else they could be.

1. sounds good can't wait to see wht kind of wrasse you get.

2. your clown is just like my brother's! He's reeftarded, he constantly bumps into the glass for no reason.

3. no clue about your eggs, Diane might know. Sounds cool though.

Have a read here. Hope it helps.
http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-02/rs/index.php

Wow, really cool, thanks!
It's definitely sounding like I have snail eggs.
If I do manage to get that wrasse today, it'll probably eat them.

Just stoppin by to say nice job Weetie!

Thanks, it's always nice to have you stop by!
Maybe next time I'll have cookies.

Well I got me a Yellow Coris Wrasse!!
He looks SO cool in the aquarium.
They actually had a pretty good wrasse selection at the store, including some Flasher Wrasses, and I checked them all out and ended up going with my original choice.
I really liked some of the Flasher Wrasses, but the LFS dude said they weren't as good at eating pods as this guy.
He was in a little cubicle w/3 other clownfish the size of mine, so I'm hoping he won't bother my little ocellaris.
They said that he'd been there a while and he looked very vigorous and healthy.
He looks like a little banana colored torpedo and very actively swims around the entire aquarium. He seems very inquisitive, he's really cool to watch. He definitely adds something to the aquarium.
Now I just gotta hope he doesn't bully clownfish and he likes the taste of Devil Pods!
I'll try to post a pic when I'm able to, but it will probably be a couple of days.

Sweet can't wait to see the wrasse weetie!

That's great L. I'm sure he'll love the pods.

Coris are known jumpers, feather duster eaters, and small crab and shrimp eaters.
Keep an eye on him, and if you don't see him at any given time be surer to immediately look around the floor near the tank LOL!
They are very very pretty. Ha done in my wifes 29g. Two of the actually. They both did the same thing.
Ate all the small hermits and shrimp they could then committed death by carpet. LOL!

Thanks for the input Prop, but I'm actually okay with all of that.
The tank already has a good cover on it, and the only feather-dusters in there came as hitchhikers on the LR. I don't have any shrimp and I only have 1 blue-leg hermit. I'm not really that fond of hermits actually, the only reason I put this one in there was to clean up after the food that my "blonde" clownfish sometimes runs away from instead of eating. It's actually not a problem for me to move the hermit to another tank or donate him to BibleSue or something.
I'm actually perfectly willing to put up with the downsides of having a Yellow Coris Wrasse as long as he'll gobble up my paly-eating amphipods, and from everything I've read and heard, he should be the best candidate for the job.
Now you wanna hear something funny?
I think my clownfish has paired up with him. I was fairly certain the clownfish was lonely, and no I'm not just anthropomorphosizing here. I'm perfectly aware that fish see and react to their world quite differently than humans.
But when I got him he had been in a tank with quite a few other ocellaris, and he just seemed really lost by himself in my tank. I think that's why he was so timid and would get spooked by food being put in the aquarium sometimes.
The two fish slept together in the same area the clownfish always sleeps in last night, and they spend most of their time in close proximity to each other. I've even seen the clownfish do what I'm pretty sure is "displaying" at the wrasse sometimes. The wrasse doesn't seem to mind at all and shows absolutely no aggression toward the clownfish. It probably helped that wrasse was in a tank with three other clownfish when I bought him, so he was accustomed to having them around.
They both look really nice swimming all around the tank, and everyone is happy!
Except the pods I hope, may they meet a swift end in the tummy of the wrasse!!!

DEATH TO THE EVIL PODS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

One of my oldest NR friends, knoxvegas stopped by tonight and after much concentrated effort (that bugger is FAST!) he managed to get a couple of decent pics of the new wrasse on BibleSue's camera that she left behind.
However, the cord to download the pics to the computer is still at BibleSue's house so I won't be able to post pics til she gets the camera back and downloads them for me.

I'm glad you're liking the new fish. Your clownfish isn't trying to be friends so much as he's trying to keep an eye on the new guy to make sure he's behaving himself. It does look like they enjoy each other, when in fact it's the opposite. At least the clown is acting normal.

FINALLY, here are pics of my newest addition!
Many thanks to knoxvegas and BibleSue for their help in getting these pics.

That wrasse is sweet!

Awesome Wrasse!

-Prof

What a great new addition!

Wow, you guys are FAST!
Here's my clown, while I'm at it:

He's so cute, my lfs has a pair of nakeds, picassos, and black & whites. They were all calling my name.

She got this clown for $10 at the Frag Swap! She shared her jacket with it all the way home since it was a cold night! I'm sorry I didn't get one for my grandkids tank I will be setting up!

GASP! Killer pods! I had a few of them in my tank at one point and they decimated my nice zoa colony.

This is what they looked like:


Now there's probably only about two or three polyps left on that branching coral rock. I had pods the size of cockroaches constantly hanging around them. But they tell you, "pods are good," and "pods are your friends!" so I never suspected them to be the culprit. Instead I was endlessly chasing this elusive mystery crab that I still haven't caught.

BTW I love the custom tank! How do I find this acrylicman you speak of?

The wrasse is beautiful. Does it seem like he's doing his job??

+1!!

Wow Weetie, now I really want one too!

And that clown is quite the handsome fellow as well.

Good luck with both of them.

Thank you!!!
And yes, he seems to be performing his job quite well!
I don't see any pods or flatworms, and he's constantly trying to nibble at the little temporary soapdish fuge I have cause he KNOWS that's the last remaining pod refuge!
I really do like him, he's awesome to watch, and I would definitely recommend the Yellow Coris Wrasse as a cool nano-reef fish.

Beautiful fish, Weetie!

LOL, my female gbg used to camp out under the soap dish fuge I used to have...They really know where the food is coming from!

--Diane

Nice!!

Everyone looks pretty happy Weetie!


Good for you!

I'm seeing these stringy strands of some kind of brown film algae show up in various spots in the aquarium.
It's showing up on the LR in some places and actually draped across the edges of corals in some places.
You guys familiar with this, is it similar to cyano?
Never had it before.
I'm guessing it's from increased nutrients due to the fact that I am now feeding 2 fish in there where I never had any fish to feed before.
I can't have any hermits or shrimp due to the fact that the wrasse would probably eat them, so I'm thinking of getting a purple serpent star to help with cleaning up any food that gets past the fish.
I would appreciate hearing any input you guys have on this.

I had a bit of this about two weeks after adding a six line to my cube Weetie. Never really saw a spike in params or anything though. It only lasted a week or two and basically went away on its own with the help of water changes and turkey baster. I hope this is the case for you as well.

Well that's interesting, and it kinda maybe confirms something I was thinking about last night.
The pods that were in this aquarium constantly grazed on algae, and I also had flatworms in here that grazed on the algae as well. They weren't the bad red planaria flatworms, they were brown and never grew to plague proportions or really caused any problems. I always saw them on the glass where there was the strongest concentration of algae.
As I was thinking about it last night, I realized that because I've added the wrasse, who has eaten the pods and flatworms, I no longer have those critters in there munching on algae, so I'm probably seeing a growth of film algae because they're not there to eat it.
It's interesting to see the cause and effect from a scientific, biological standpoint, but it's annoying to be dealing with yet another issue from a practical standpoint.
I'll be doing manual removal and WC's and hopefully my experiences with this will mirror yours, R.

I've been having some problems with this tank for the last 3 days or so.
Basically, the corals have just been looking really unhappy.
I've done a 1 1/2g WC and a 1g WC but it hasn't seemed to help.
I've still got the brown string algae all over the place too, even though I've cut the photo period down to about 3.5 hrs.
I did an ammonia test yesterday, and I THINK it said the ammonia is .5 in there. I'm not totally sure I read it right cause it's really hard to interpret the colors on this particular test kit. It's the API ammonia test kit, btw.
I'm thinking it's possible that the Berghia Nudi ran out of aiptasia earlier than expected and died and is polluting the tank.
I'm planning on doing a largeish WC as soon as I can.
Unfortunately I've been having a hard time getting ahold of the supplies to be able to mix the water. I'm expecting to have them for sure tomorrow though, so right now I'm kinda just hanging in there.

The WC should definitely help, regardless of the issue. I hope you can get things figured out in both tanks ASAP L.

Are you sure the corals aren't just reacting to the short photoperiod?

--Diane

Yes, I'm QUITE sure, since they were acting this way before I reduced the photoperiod.

It turns out that my Berghia nudi is alive and well.
I had a heart attack just now when I saw him crawling around on the walls of the sump. If he had crawled down to the bottom he could very easily have become nudi soup as he got sucked into the return pump!
He would only have been crawling around like that if he ran out of food and was ranging far in search of more.
I got him out and have him floating in a bag in the sump.

Here's a pic of my Berghia Nudi floating in his bag in the sump:

Isn't he cool looking?!!

I moved him into my 5.5g quarantine tank, which is my only healthy tank at the moment. I made sure to put him in right next to 3 aiptasia. He must have been hungry, cause I swear he immediately POUNCED on one of them!!! It was the coolest thing to see, like something out of a nature documentary.
These pics aren't quite as clear, but here's pics of him munching his dinner:

cool, i has a lettuce nudi in my 26-then GHA mower

These are all from my quarantine tank as well, but it would be too silly to start a quarantine tank thread so I'm posting them here.


Tasha's babies!


I wish this pic had come out clearer, this brittlestar has the coolest banding and coloration on him.


Some zoas that I'm hoping to add to this 16g tank soon.

Some cool red macroalgaes that I'm hoping to move out of the quarantine tank and into a real tank soon:

Whew! You found him! That's awesome!!! Just go to Coral Reef & get some more Aptasia for him!

^^^^^


Weetie, what cool pics! I love them all! Very nice Berghia sequence--glad it showed up.

That 5.5 looks pretty sweet.

--Diane

Great pics L. The nudi is super cool and those Zoanthids and Macros will be nice additions once you get everything straightened out.

I have some good news for a change!
It looks like this tank may be rounding the corner.
It's looking better today.
It's not all the way back yet, but many of the corals are looking happier and almost back to their old selves, including my clove polyps that haven't opened for a week and a half or so.
I don't have the brown, stringy algae all over my corals anymore, the only place it's showing up is on the front and sides of the aquarium. Guess it's time to do some cleaning!
I'm gonna give it a couple more days and if it keeps improving I'm hoping to finish moving over all of the frags that I had planned on keeping in this tank.
Yay for me!!!

Nice to see some positives come up for ya. Hope it continues, in both your tanks.

Bill

That's good to hear. I hope it continues to improve.

The nudi lives!!! Question: will they eat any size aiptasia? Even ginormous ones?

I hope your tanks get better.

Yeah, they will, it's pretty wild to see!!!
Why, you need one?

I do. My two aiptasias have gotten huge and are starting to scare me. I also have a HUGE "curly-cue anemone" (that's what the LFS guy tried to pass it off) hitchhiker that won't stay in one place. I'm thinking about juicing them but to see a nudi eat them might be more fun to watch!

Think you might start a craze with that nudi!

Glad to see things are improving.