Today's Experiment

[Danyal]

it

WOULD be a little risky to put uncured, shipped rock into an established tank, for the reasons spanko said. it can be arranged though, if you don't have corals or other sensitive things already in there. don't forget that even though my rock was excellent qualilty, i still saw some ammonia, albeit very little. it wasn't enough to kill anything off that i could see, but it WOULD be a bit of a gamble to do it, unless you could soft cycle the rock in a separate tank or container - that would work well i think.

 

at this point, i've only got about 15lbs of rock in the tank, 20lbs of super fine inert white sand(looks amazing) a stripe legged hermit crab, a couple blue leg hermit crabs, a cerith snail, a small un-id snail and a nassarius snail. my orginal plan was to create a super high ammonia spike to build up bacteria and then add the uncured rock but my red stipe leg hermit crab(the size of a golfball) decided to first attack my nassarius snail and then my new zoa frag in 5min so he went into the uncycled 29g and has been doing great ever since, i've even been feeding fairly heavy. he almost redeemed himself when he striped a 6~8lb piece of nice looking rock bare of all the bubble algae on it(there was a ton and he took it out in one night) but kinda ruined it when he went after the nassarius again. i'm planning to do basically what you did and do water changes to keep down the ammonia until it finishes cycling. i'm not adding any fish, inverts(other than what i have to) corals etc until i've got at least 95% of my rock in the tank and it cycled.

so why was the "thing" killed?

[Caesar777]

You don't NEED a huge ammonia spike for bacteria; if you want to do that, then throw in a dead thing but if you do it with live rock you'll be killing EVERYTHING on it except the bacteria. Not to mention your cleanup critters.

 

The "thing" would sting corals and even eat small critters. Then it would reproduce, creating more things to hurt corals. BOO @ THING.

[adinsxq]

too much rock A

[Caesar777]

BLASPHEMY! YOU CAN NEVER HAVE TOO MUCH ROCK! FTW!

[spanko]

So Mr. A, you have chosen the Kaelini uncured rock for your tank. You have cycled very soft to aid in the retention of any and all (if possible) life contained therein. You now speak of adding a coral. Your aquascape resembles a small island or cove, I am not sure which look for sure. Have you investigated what type of coral in this type of scape reside in the area where Kaelini rock comes from and are you going to try to create the biotope as exact as you can?

[MrAnderson]

So Mr. A, you have chosen the Kaelini uncured rock for your tank. You have cycled very soft to aid in the retention of any and all (if possible) life contained therein. You now speak of adding a coral. Your aquascape resembles a small island or cove, I am not sure which look for sure. Have you investigated what type of coral in this type of scape reside in the area where Kaelini rock comes from and are you going to try to create the biotope as exact as you can?

 

i'm not sure if one could really find that out, down to the immediate locale where that rock came from. maybe if i called premium aquatics they could provide more info, either knowledge from the collectors (they apparently are direct shippers from collection) or seeing what frags come in on the rock, like my Sinularia.

 

but although i'm thinking about it, i don't think i'm going to get too crazy about it. Odds are that most Pacific common corals are somewhere nearby. it's a big ocean and i think it's hard to go completely wrong just sticking to Montipora, zoanthids, mushrooms, rics, etc. what i'm thinking is to get 2 monti caps, and mount them on the sides of the canyon getting the edge of light, to encourage them to plate. i think it would look dope to have a couple big dish-formed caps in the center. downside is they grow fast and in this small volume suck Ca and carbonate like mad, hard to keep up with dosing, end up mixing in a teaspoon of baking soda every day.

 

adin: i know it's really packed, but i ordered more than i probably needed, tossed 2 rocks already, and really nothing beats having capacity in the n-cycle department - especially since i'm not gettting fish. i love never ever ever ever having any nitrate. also, the acrylic makes it look so FLAT, like the tank has no width.the upper left rock is actually the barest, and i'm contemplating removing it, it would get rid of the top-front wrap-around look, and the rock under is really colorful too. maybe i'll take it out and take a pic.

[Danyal]

You don't NEED a huge ammonia spike for bacteria; if you want to do that, then throw in a dead thing but if you do it with live rock you'll be killing EVERYTHING on it except the bacteria. Not to mention your cleanup critters.

only thing i orginally thought was on my rock was coraline algae, now i've seen a few pods and a bristle worm. my plan has changed, i just wanted to have a good biofilter built up to really shorten the cycle from the un-cured rock, i'm going to pretty much follow your method.

 

The "thing" would sting corals and even eat small critters. Then it would reproduce, creating more things to hurt corals. BOO @ THING.

you identified it? what was it? why not move it to a fuge or other small tank?

[MrAnderson]

oh i didn't really kill it.

 

i guess that may be why i have no pods! so maybe it really SHOULD go... but then again, you could look at it as what naturally occurs with the other creatures on/in/around the rock, and came along with it's own food source - sort of a little abbreviated food-chain ecosystemish self-sustaining type thingy.

 

hm. i AM thinking about tossing it...

[spanko]

So do you think the fairly close, just about, almost so, dead nuts right on, I'm not entirely sure ID is a Cerianthid?

[MrAnderson]

So do you think the fairly close, just about, almost so, dead nuts right on, I'm not entirely sure ID is a Cerianthid?

 

i think so because the head is so anemone-ish. i think it's the closest i've gotten to a matching identification. the whole light sensitivity thing is soooo weird tho! i gotta take a movie of it, it just shrivels and closes in seconds. when i take a pic of it i literally have the camera in one hand, turn on the light with the other, and scramble to get the autofocus locked.... i get 3-4 pics at most before it closes, and 2-3 of them are of it shriveling. I DON'T KNOW WHAT THE HELL IT IS!

[spanko]

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/tubeanfa.htm

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/tubeanem.htm

 

Couple of discussions there^^^^

[Caesar777]

Cerianthids are fish-eaters.

[MrAnderson]

no plans on keeping fish.

[cmador]

KEEP IT (at least until you ID it)

[MrAnderson]

took the rock out for this pic.

 

[Caesar777]

They'd eat shrimp as well. JMO from my experience--Cerianthus, Aiptasia, and Majano are all total d!cks.

[Rene]

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/june2004/invert.htm

 

Good article on cerianthids, how they're totally different from anemones, and why Toonen thinks they probably don't eat fish. I have to tell ya, hearing that your "thing" was nocturnal, seeing the tube and tentacles, really makes me think cerianthid.

[spanko]

That is a great article Rene, thanx for finding it.

[MrAnderson]

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/june2004/invert.htm

 

Good article on cerianthids, how they're totally different from anemones, and why Toonen thinks they probably don't eat fish. I have to tell ya, hearing that your "thing" was nocturnal, seeing the tube and tentacles, really makes me think cerianthid.

 

Although some species are seen exposed during the day (and more so at depth), in general the species from shallow tropical waters are very stubborn in avoiding light, and rarely come out during daylight hours - even at night, the animals will retract as soon as the edge of a dive light beam passes across them.

 

u = winnar!

 

so what do you want for a prize?

[Caesar777]

Interesting article; however it's not based on empirical evidence, more theory than anything. Sounded biased BUT not any less biased than articles that say they sting.

[Rene]

Interesting article; however it's not based on empirical evidence, more theory than anything. Sounded biased BUT not any less biased than articles that say they sting.

 

 

Yeah, I'm not sure I buy it either, but he does make some good points and it generally seems pretty informative. It's a shame there doesn't seem to be much work done on the tropical species common in the aquarium trade. I'd like to believe they don't eat fish, but not so much that I would house gobies and seahorses with them

[MrAnderson]

so this is what i'm thinking. medium-light sps, preferably Montipora and documented collection of mother colonies from Indo-Pacific. since my rock came with encrusting Monti, and room is an issue since it's so packed with rock, i'm thinking another encrusting form... like... THIS ONE:

 

Montipora peltiformis

 

some of these are very nice, and the maricultured specimens are larger than just frags. that's one thing i really dislike about most corals for sale - they were obviously chopped into tiny bits for frag sales. it's so hard to find a growth-morphologically WHOLE coral for sale anymore. these are WYSIWYG, so i'm pondering these exact specimens for a centerpiece-type coral:

 

Montipora confusa

 

Montipora verrucosa

 

Montipora spumosa

 

Pocillopora verrucosa

 

Pocillopora damicornis

 

Two Monti samarensis' that were on there an hour ago are gone - they were gorgeous. I'm thinking of taking out the rock like i did in the pic above and using the space for a med sized coral.

[c est ma]

My favorites in order: #1, #4, #3. But they're all nice!

 

--Diane

[Caesar777]

All very nice. And yes, the benefit of truly maricultured corals is that the frags are grown out on plugs, so they're really like tiny colonies.

 

For the record, I don't think you have to jump on any of those right away; if they get away, no big deal, they're around often in those particular color patterns. The species themselves are of course less common, but not really hard to come by. Really, really nice ones, regardless. I really like the crazy corallites and growth forms of Montis like those.

[MrAnderson]

i'm definitely getting #1 (the M. peltiformis). it's cheap, really cool looking, and encrusts, good for a crowded tank. it's also a regular stock item.

 

but i want to pick one other. the diver den on dfs.com changes so frequently, i'm have to make sure i'm ready to order when i see something i want. i love that they have oddball species, not just color variants of stuff that everybody has. i definitely want to get something entertainingly different.