Yup, it's all about the vesicles.

eta: Jamie, where are you getting your info regarding flow conditions for the strawberries? Do you have a link?

I have no flow info on strawberries. In fact, I have no info at all. I've just been going by what you guys tell me. My book does mention that they're found in high current areas, but other than that, I have nothing.

o m g .

i <3 u .

lol, gotcha. I thought you mentioned an actual source a while back, sorry.

Jamie, nice to see you are back on track!!!I was worried there for a while. I like the idea of having multiple tanks, I only wish I had the space. Good for you though because now when I send you stuff, you'll have a quarantine tank. I don't know if you guys saw my pot in my personal coldwater thread, but I will copy it here just in case.

Things are doing well. The berries for the most part have looked really good. They have been open and closed at various times, but the closing seems to be more frequent when they have had too much light. I did have some die off of various critters and polyps do to transfer from the ocean to the tank, but that was to be expected. There were a couple tube worms and brittle stars who survived as well as other things I have not yet identified. For the most part I am very impressed with what survived and how hardy coldwater species appear to be. I’m sure If I would have taken better care of the scallop when I removed it from the rig rather then throw it in my game bag with all the others, it would have proved more rewarding. It was much more of a task then I though it would be.
Once I started to submerge the berry encrusted scallop shells into the tank, there has been some settling of the rocks and a few fragments and polyps have broken off and been distributed to different areas of the tank. Some with higher or lower light and water flow rates. It will be interesting to see which area thrives more. The berries are definitely sensitive to light and I have cut mine back to about 7 hours of daylight. I’m even thinking of diffusing my canopy daylight bulb to simulate the lighting conditions they come from. I have my lights on a three tier system with nightlights coming on before and after the daylights and moon lights during the late night.
(1) 36 watt True Actinic 03 Blue straight pin
(1) 36 watt 10,000K Daylight straight pin
(3) 0.75 watt Lunar Blue-Moon-Glow LED
When we dove the rig, after we got through the first layer/thermocline (about 30') to where the visibility cleared up, it was about 50’ depth. There was not very much direct light down at that depth. There was also little ambient light. I'm sure there are days when the light is more intense, but most of the time....not ton's of light. It's also interesting to note that you don't see this species start to flourish untill you reach the 40'-50' range and then they extend to over 100' where....you guessed it.....even less light. The water temp was about 58 degrees at that depth and got warmer as you ascended. which tells me they like cooler water On that particular day, the current wasn’t moving real hard, but I could feel and see the water and food flowing through the structure. This leads me two my next two thoughts. Water flow rate and feeding schedule. In general the flow rate and available food source is high and constant. For this reason, I have been feeding them everyday. I think it would be better if I split up their food portion and give them a morning and evening feeding…..any thoughts? Yesterday, along with a complete filter cleaning and 2 gal water change, I added a Hydor Koralia power head to my tank. I already had the stock pump that came with the Biocube 29 system, and have added a Renna 600 power head. I also have a Renna XP2 filter/pump running my chiller, so with the addition of the Hydor……the flow rate is awesome. The berries really seem to like the increased flow.
Yesterday when I removed my skimmer located in the middle chamber of my filtration system, I found my giant starfish attached to the bottom of it. When I removed him to place him into the main tank, I noticed he had a death grip on my blue ringed top snail. Dam that was a cool shell.

So The other guy who went with me diving that day (who is not yet involved with this website) has a 50gal coldwater tank with a spotted octopus in it. He wrote this little snippet to me yesterday about the progress of his tank:

I added two Koralia pumps, and the anemone immediately got happier (more open) and my gorgonians liked the flow too. The Koralias are big and ugly though, and I’d love to find a way to get the flow that is less conspicuous. I grabbed a bunch of rocks yesterday from the marina, and some underwater epoxy. I plan to glue together a reef that my octopus will never be able to destroy. Maybe I can hide a big powerhead inside of it and pipe the output to create more flow. My plan is to epoxy the scallop shells to my new reef and free up a lot of space for my octopus where he won’t get stung.

The light thing is interesting. I have medium intensity light because my octopus doesn’t like super bright light. I have a single 20 watt 10K fluorescent tube (T12), but it’s on for 12 hours per day. I’ll try knocking that down to about five hours to see what happens. I only feed every two days because I have trouble keeping the water quality right. I think I’ll go to once or even twice per day, and just use much smaller quantities.
You and I seem to have a similar guiding principal: “when in doubt, try to do whatever nature does.”

mmmmm...not bad. still like my triangle army better

Well, it was better, so that makes sense. giant smiley face = lame.

it coulda been cool...just all those extra lines kinda screw with ya


o...and just in case it hasnt been said enough:

indeed. I'm having some luck feeding the nems, some readily accept cyclopeez and some not so much, I think they still need some time to recover, but I think they'll all start eating soon.

The surge tank is finally surging again! And the nems love it. Even though they're not directly effected by it, all the berries in the top tank opened way up, more than I've ever seen. I'm guessing it was in response to higher oxygen levels, but not sure. I also put two berries in the bottom tank to see how they liked the surge-type flow, and they're happy as can be. I fed everyone some cyclopeez, and they all ate well. So glad my tank is back to normal.

oh, and I took the filter pad out of the filter, because it was filtering out the food too quickly, but it's still running on the top tank, just for flow.

Take some pics, silly boy

So, what's the total flow you have running over the strawberries now?

And how's the feeding going? Cyclopeeze, right?

I gotta do a Marine Depot order so you can send me my share, lol.

Total flow is outflow of chiller (mj 1200, but it slows down a lot going through the chiller) plus HOB filter. It's not a ton of flow, but everyone seems quite happy with it.
Feeding is going well, all the nems are taking food now, and they open up more every day!


Really? Bleh, I thought I was done shipping for a while, but if you insist. When? You have to wait at least until next week, this week is literally impossible. Sorry!



I did!

Berries:








Surge:








-Jamie

Hmm, ok, so an MJ1200 + the Mag5 return should be sufficient on a 10g. That means I don't have to order a powerhead, woo hoo!


lol, next week is fine, I won't get a chance to set the tank up proper until this weekend anyway.

You STILL dont have a tank?! bad etiquette Jeremai. tsk tsk.

I can't fit the giant sheet of foam in my car! I have all the duct tape, though.

dats okay...we're about to move...you can hold off

Can't you cut it up? It's for insulation?



You get the house?
Excellent, all the more time for me to grow more polyps. Now all I need is a couple Catalina gobies! (which I plan on getting, by the way, just as soon as I have time to make a mesh thing to cover the overfloe so they don't take a ride to the sump).

DAMN YOU AND YOUR LOGIC!

DUCT TAPE + FOAM = FUN TIMES

we think so...just waiting on a home inspection. closing on the 15th if all goes to plan.








last time I had that combination, i ended up sticky and covered in foam bits

Ooh, something to look forward to!

Beautiful set up... have you noticed the anemone trying to eat any of the fish? what's the flow like in your system?

Anthopleuras are quite sticky, but I don't think they can catch fish (at least, not A. elegantissima). They can't even catch live mysis. I occasionally catch live mysids to feed the tank, and the shrimp swim right into the tentacles, bounce off, then swim away. I also occasionally see a sculpin perching on the oral disk of an anemone, with no apperent affect, but it's possible sculpins are immune, since they live in tidepools in close proximity to these anemones. As far as the urticinas go, I've never tried keeping them with fish, but they are much stickier, and have much quicker reaction times than the Anthopleuras, so I suspect that they could catch fish, at least the bigger ones. I do know that painted greenling (Oxylebius pictus) are symbiotic with Urticinas, like clownfish, so at least they are immune.

Thank you for the detailed reply Jamie. Are these anemones dependent at all on light?

Well, they seem to react to it, in that they open during the day and close at night, but they're generally not photosynthetic. A. elegantissima and A. xanthogrammica can be, but even whene the zooxanthellae are present, the anemones still need lots of food.

Interesting - I determined a while ago that mysis are not sufficient food for these anemones. I don't know why, but when fed mysis, even if fed every day, the anemones slowly decline. I after I determined that I started feeding them frozen shrimp that I had grated into small peices with a cheese grater. This worked, but was time consuming and messy. The first time I fed the berries some cyclops, I had some extra, so I offered it to the anthopleuras, even though I didn't think they'd be able to eat it because it was so small. They really liked it, however, so I've kept feeding it. Much to my surpirse they are much happier now than they have been with any other food. Smaller seems to be better, in this case. So, feed your anemones cyclopeez! I'd like to see if other people find this to be the case, too.

I figured Cyclopeeze would be the best bet for the Corynactus, but I'm a little surprised at the way your other anemones responded regarding food size. I fed my Urticinas cubes of Formula One, they wouldn't even respond to anything smaller. I think that any mixed food would be better accepted than a single source, no matter how nutritionally dense.

That's true, the urticinas don't react at all to the cyclopeez. I think they're designed for catching bigger foods. I was surprised that the A elegantissimas liked cyclopeez so much though, they seem like they'd like bigger food better. But yeah, I think mixed is the way to go.

Well, whatever works, keep it up - I want my orange ones nice and plump for their trip next week!

There aren't very many orange ones, unfortunately. think we each get two polyps. The "white" ones look a lot like the orange ones though, just paler. The orange ones still have that crusty stuff on their feet, and, hence, cannot attach. I have had a couple nems move though, so that answers my question about that. They just climb over eachother.

omg, I just realized we have two smileys with the exact same code! closedeyes and -_ - (I added a space) are the same! (I realize I am probably the last one to know this, but I'm telling you anyway!)

Sorry, that was random...

anemonees....

GROW EM FASTER!!!

I'll gladly hold onto them and grow them for you.

there's still lots of pink one though right??

I found a couple links that may be of use to the group. There is lot's of technical reading here that will shed some light on Corynactis Californica.
http://www.biolbull.org/cgi/reprint/173/1/110
http://www.springerlink.com/content/k42222...61/fulltext.pdf
http://www.springerlink.com/content/8281u4...7t/fulltext.pdf

I have this really cool Anthopleura Sola that I picked up off the East end of Santa Cruz Island. This specimen was collected in 35' of water.

Click to view attachment

He will grab hold of mysis if he's hungry enough. But here is what he really likes.
Go to the local fish market and buy a couple pieces of fresh dead squid. Take it home and cut it up into smaller pieces (like 1" X 1"). Spread out the pieces inside a zip-loc baggie and freeze. When your ready the feed, just pull the bag out of the freezor, break off a small piece and float it inside a cup of tank water to defrost. Wait for the squid to soften up a bit then give it to them. They will love it!!! I feed every other day.

Thanks for the links, mike. I'll put them in the resource thread, too.

Nice nem mike. How big is it? I won't hav time to read the articles until the weekend, but the abstract of the first one says that there is no aggression amongst different morphs of the same species, correct? So I shouldn't need to worry about letting the colonies touch?

EDIT: Oh, and Daniel, yes, there are plenty of pink ones and white ones left.

He's about 4" in diameter.

I would have to agree with that observation. You have seen the pictures I have posted on my page right?
In the wild all different morphs live side by side in peace & harmony.

YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Well, relative peace and harmony:

http://www.biolbull.org/cgi/content/full/201/3/385

http://www.springerlink.com/content/h6kp46r68460663p/

Well, none of them are directly touching, so I think they should be okay. That study also mentions A. elegantissima, and I've never had problems with thim, within the species, but they do attack anything else near them.

I thought the modified 'warrior' polyps at the edge of the A. elegantissima colonies was an interesting phenomenon. I wish I had a tank large enough to test that theory - the elegants on one side, the strawberries on another...

10 gal isn't large enough? Just pack it with anemones!

On another note, I started my dive certification today!

Cool beans

I am very envious. Goodluck with it.

Thanks! I can't wait.

this thread needs more photos