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Today's Experiment


MrAnderson

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I've been keeping some non-photosynthesis corals and feed them with the Salifert Coral Food. (I got no sun coral though, so no hassle... basically dripping the food into the water, that's all about it.)

 

I don't know how effective it is, but my corals (non-photosynthesis) are still alive... They claimed this on the bottle:

Coral Food gives (directly or indirectly) highly nutritional particles ranging in size from 5 - 150 micron and dissolved natural polymeric and monomeric nutrients.

http://www.salifert.com/

 

My filtration consists only of live rocks and I'm dosing the amount recommended on the bottle. Water quality is still good, I supposed. My xenia, the natural testkit, is doing great and my algae growth is very minimum. I haven't clean my glass for 4 weeks and there is only a slight coat of algae on it.

 

Hope it helps... keep your options open. Those are really some sexy rocks you got there. :lol:

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Looks great Mr. A. I had no idea that rock looked THAT good! The pic of day 8 is absolutely stunning with the colors.

 

I'm interested in what your planning on stocking. Is this going to be a biotope of sorts? Indo, I'm presuming, if so.

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Looks great Mr. A. I had no idea that rock looked THAT good! The pic of day 8 is absolutely stunning with the colors.

 

I'm interested in what your planning on stocking. Is this going to be a biotope of sorts? Indo, I'm presuming, if so.

 

This may sound weird, but what I'm most interested in regarding setting up a "biotope" for this tank is to see what grows from the rock. Last time I got rock from Premium Aquatics things grew out after a couple months that I had never seen before, cool little fanworms and odd slow-growing macroalgae. Last time I didn't take the care I did this time around with preserving the organisms so I'm really curious to see how it grows out this time.

 

Here's an example from my last tank of what I mean, an odd little fanworm with a cool red and yellow "trumpet". It eventually grew to be about 3/4" around at the head. Something you can't really go to a store and buy, ya know?:

 

tube_worm.jpg

 

Another thing I'm reluctant to do is "contaminate" the culture. I felt it necessary to seed the sand with LS, but so far that's the only source of competing organisms and I figured it should only be things like pods and small snails. However I'm reluctant to add rock or frags from other sources, and when I do add SPS it will be in glued-to-my-own-rock form, not adding frags already attached to rock (not to mention the fact that I really have plenty of rock already). Forget natural hitch-hikers, last time my biggest problems along those lines were hitch-hikers from LFS tanks, nasty algaes and majanos. Talk about contamination!

 

So I consider this biotope "seeded" and am willing to be patient to let it grow out. I'm thinking of trying to restore the rock a bit by adding the coral which didn't make it through shipping, the encrusting Montipora, since I know directly that it is a natural resident of the biotope from which this was collected... and YEP Ray, you read my mind, adding other Indo-ish corals.

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I had to remove th pics of coral reefs, in an attempt to see what had been written on page 1, but to no avail. If I go to page one my computer crashes, at home and at work. Weird.

I really like your idea of cultivating what's on the rock already. Delbeek and Sprung talk about that kind of development in their 3rd volume of "The Reef Aquarium", I think.

Main predators in a reef tank are fishes, so I'd suggest delaying any introductions of them until a long time has past, if ever.

Bottom line is I think your tank is going great and I can't wait to see how it develops.

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Mr. Anderson, you picked a great time of year for starting a project like this! You have picked what looks like a great plan of action. From an old salt, one word of advice..........

 

Never miss your 10% water changes each week!!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

NEVER

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Mr. Anderson, you picked a great time of year for starting a project like this! You have picked what looks like a great plan of action. From an old salt, one word of advice..........

 

Never miss your 10% water changes each week!!!!!

NEVER

so true

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THERE'S GOLD IN THEM THAR ROCKS!

 

well, not really, but there is some unexpected and previously unseen life!

 

i threw in a filter pad yesterday to catch all the crap and started blowing the rocks off with a turkey baster and i've seen what's under - a lot of plating, scaly coraline. i've got the typical pink, purple, red, green and white, but also some very dark velvety red and some very neon-ish dark blue. there are some crazy colors under there. i've also got 3 forms of red-pink macroalgae i hadn't known about, not Gracillaria, but something with stems and feathery leaves.

 

the biggest surprise was last night. i threw on the light after it was off for a few hours to do the turkey baster thing, and i see something which i wondered if it was there the whole time... i'm thinking "are those tentacles?" and as i'm focusing on the thing, it snaps closed. it looks like i have a red anemone (maybe a cuke? not 100% sure) of some sort, the closed bulb is fairly large for a hitch-hiker, about the size of a dime around is showing in the sand at the juncture of sand and rock. i haven't been able to see it open again, i really want to try and snap a pic.

 

i can't believe an anemone (or whatever the heck it is) of that size made it through dry shipping. i'm so glad now that i didn't go the traditional "kill it all and let god sort it out"-type curing process, where you leave the rock in a stinky pail with no light. no way would an anemone have made it though that. maybe that's the point for those who do that, but i want to see some real-life reef life!!

 

i'm really trying to get a pic of it, and i'm going to look for my old crappy dig camera instead of using my cameraphone... updates to follow.

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i think it's a sea cucumber:

 

DSC00039.jpg

 

what the heck do i feed it? sorry for the blurry pic, i was about to snap another when it snapped shut.

 

more shots of the rock.

 

the dark blue coraline

 

DSC00026.jpg

 

the dark velvet-red:

 

DSC000382.jpg

 

FTS:

 

DSC000311.jpg

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this is what the cucumber looks like closed:

 

DSC000301.jpg

 

a better crappy pic of it open:

 

DSC000431.jpg

 

here's the Sinularia, with the pink macroalgae above it, one type to the left, another to the right:

 

DSC00029.jpg

 

on day 12, i did a 50% water change. although all the N-cycle parameters tested zero, i have yet to test for phosphates and i was worried about a buildup of that.

 

today is day 13. again, everything reads zero. added 2 more Nassarius and 2 small Astrea.

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Tank is looking very sweet at just under two weeks Mr. A, congrats!

 

The rock is incredible.

 

I hope all continues to go well, good luck.

 

Curious to see what develops next , I'll be tagging along from here. :)

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This is SO cool! I love your goals--I, too, cringe at the usual killing off of so much that comes in on the LR (sort of makes the "L" part ironic) and am fascinated by what comes in naturally.

 

What a sweet cuke (or whatever...). Hope it survives for you--must be pretty hardy to have gotten this far.

 

--Diane

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leaning toward sea apple:

 

SeaApplethumb.jpg

 

the body has longitudinal rows of "feet", and although the... thing... in my tank has longitudinal ridges (more obvious in the part that comes out in the pic), i can't tell if they're actually "feet". additionally, according to an article i read by Toonen, the feet are always yellow. however, mine seems to be coated in reef detritus, which not only covers the feet making coloration hard to discern, but also seems strange since all pics of sea apples i've seen have nice smooth bodies. the good news is that they don't get bigger than 4" apparently.

 

we'll see!

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leaning toward sea apple:

 

SeaApplethumb.jpg

 

the body has longitudinal rows of "feet", and although the... thing... in my tank has longitudinal ridges (more obvious in the part that comes out in the pic), i can't tell if they're actually "feet". additionally, according to an article i read by Toonen, the feet are always yellow. however, mine seems to be coated in reef detritus, which not only covers the feet making coloration hard to discern, but also seems strange since all pics of sea apples i've seen have nice smooth bodies. the good news is that they don't get bigger than 4" apparently.

 

we'll see!

 

If it is, I would say get rid of it right away, from everything that I have read, only bad can come from a Sea Apple.

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nah, check this article:

 

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/mar2003/invert.htm

 

the author Toonen says they're fine for home reefs and keeps one himself. the only concern is that they don't get stuck in a powerhead; even when they die from non-physical-injury type causes they don't release their toxin. i have a comb-style overflow as an intake, and even if it crawled over it somehow it'd end up in the skimmer compartment.

 

since i don't plan on eating it i'm keeping it!

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nah, check this article:

 

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/mar2003/invert.htm

 

the author Toonen says they're fine for home reefs and keeps one himself. the only concern is that they don't get stuck in a powerhead; even when they die from non-physical-injury type causes they don't release their toxin. i have a comb-style overflow as an intake, and even if it crawled over it somehow it'd end up in the skimmer compartment.

 

since i don't plan on eating it i'm keeping it!

 

good read, very informative, thanks for the link.

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nah, check this article:

 

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/mar2003/invert.htm

 

the author Toonen says they're fine for home reefs and keeps one himself. the only concern is that they don't get stuck in a powerhead; even when they die from non-physical-injury type causes they don't release their toxin. i have a comb-style overflow as an intake, and even if it crawled over it somehow it'd end up in the skimmer compartment.

 

since i don't plan on eating it i'm keeping it!

 

They are very cool creatures, I had one for awhile. Watch and make sure it is not a female, because females will lay eggs, the eggs are toxic, thus if any of your fish eat the eggs, they are done for.

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