Fishybadmike’s NC12dx - new pics 12/6!

[bluesky]

My blue zoas are still a lot smaller than all my other zoas so I think that they'll still grow and develop a bit more, changing from the way they look now. When they do I'll be sure to put up some new pictures. In the mean time...time for more pictures! Ricordia today...

 

 

These are all top-down shots so unfortunately you can see a camera reflection in a couple of them that pretty much ruins the photo. In order to avoid the reflection, I'm forced to zoom a certain distance or angle the camera a certain way which is sometimes not the kind of shot I want, but oh well. I can't seem to get a decent photo of my blue ric - maybe I can get one later.

 

seriously ... after seeing your pics ... I think I need a new camera and go take some photography lessons ... awesome pics ...

[fishybadmike]

Thanks for the compliment bluesky. Don't worry...it took me a while to figure out how to take decent pictures. Here are some more:

 

 

The first 3 are pics of my red & green open brain. The zoas are "Fire in the Sky" and the lase one is an orange montipora digitata. It's been in my tank for 2 weeks now directly under my stock 48W of PCs. So far there hasn't been any color fading and comparing it to pictures I took 2 weeks ago, it actually looks like it's starting to grow another branch. But, it's still too early to declare success.

[fishybadmike]

Time for some more pics. Red mushroom macros today:

 

 

Candy-Cane:

[Lalani]

Nice details of the shroom.

[fishybadmike]

Here's the last bunch of pics that I have so far.

 

The 1st frogspawn pic was taken when the tentacles were retracted from the lights being off. The last 3 were taken when it was fully expanded.

 

Pink Panther Zoas:

...and yes, under the right lighting, the pink on these zoas really is naturally that bright!

[Reef507]

Great photos. You have some awesome macros of your corals. I want to see a FTS. I bet your tank is looking great with all of those colorful corals.

[Bigwavedave]

Awesome picture taking.

 

What lens are you using and at what settings. Flash?

 

Keep up the great job!

 

Dave

[fishybadmike]

Great photos. You have some awesome macros of your corals. I want to see a FTS. I bet your tank is looking great with all of those colorful corals.

 

Thanks. FTS is coming soon.

 

Awesome picture taking.

 

What lens are you using and at what settings. Flash?

 

Keep up the great job!

 

Dave

 

Thank you. I'm just using a Canon PowerShot SD400. It's just a simply point-and-shoot about the size of a credit card. No flash. It just took me a while to find all the right settings on the camera and get the right setup to take good pictures.

[cfeist]

Wow, you're finding some amazing corals and your tank is looking great. Nice job.

[silverdust]

Fabulous picutures. We need a drool emoticon

[fishybadmike]

Unfortunately, I don't think my open brain is going to make it. When I received it, it had 2 open sores in it's outer tissue that appeared to housing a couple of hitchhikers. I contacted the online seller as soon as I received it to let them know and they said it should heal up and be fine. Well the coral appeared very healthy for a while and ate when I fed it. But for the last week it wouldn't eat anything I offered it and the dead tissue around the sores continued to spread. I tried dipping it to see if it was a bacterial infection that could be stopped but unfortunately that didn't worked. The dead tissue has continued to spread and now a significant portion of it's skeleton is exposed. I'm almost certain that it isn't going to live - and there's nothing that can be done at this point to save it. I've contacted the seller and because I contacted them immediately after receiving it to notify them of its injured/sick state of health they agreed to refund my money even if it dies outside of the 14-day guarantee (I've had it for almost 3 weeks now). I think it's very good customer service on their part for offering to extend the guarantee but it was a mistake on their part to send an unhealthy coral to begin with. I think I'll probably be sending them photos verifying its death in the next few days. This should serve as a reminder to everyone (including myself) that you take a risk when you by a coral online sight-unseen.

 

All my other corals and fish are doing very well. I'm keeping a close eye on my water parameters while the brain deteriorates. So far everything looks fine.

 

On the brighter side of things, I think my cyano slime is just about completely gone. At the initial onset of the problem, I turned the tank lights off for 2 days and covered it with a towel. That killed off all the slime but was only a temporary fix because it grew back right away. I think that modifying my feeding practices (better food choices and feeding less often) really made the difference becasue I did nothing to change the flow. Also, I'm sure a dose of API "Algaefix" helped too.

[fishybadmike]

Well, I was right about my open brain...it basically got to a point that was beyond saveable so I removed it yesterday. The skeleton is kinda cool so I boiled it to sterilize it so I can keep it. Other than that, there isn't a lot of new stuff happening. Some of my zoa colonies are starting to show significant growth compared to the pictures I took when I first purchased them. Some of the polyps have grown larger and I've noticed a lot of newly budding polyps on a few colonies.

 

I thought I'd include some more pictures with this post. The top-down shots were taken a while ago when the open brain was still looking very healthy and before the addition of the blasto merletti and blue zoas.

With and without the flash

[

 

The FTS's were taken about a week ago.

 

Blastomussa merletti polyp

 

Xenia polyps

 

Yellow Fiji Leather

[fishybadmike]

Here's one more close up on a xenia polyp:

 

Radioactive Dragon Eye Zoa:

 

Also, a closeup of some nemastoma I entered into the macro algae photo contest:

 

A friend took this one of Lucy, my royal gramma.

 

She also took this one of Charles hosting my frogspawn.

[fishybadmike]

So I introduced a new zoa colony a couple hours ago. They appear to be a strain of radioactive dragon eyes, but they are slightly different from the dragon eyes I already have. For this reason, as well as the great price, I picked them up on impulse. Of course...here are pics:

 

I managed to get some decent pictures of my yellow polyps:

 

Here's a night-time shot (blue LED's) of my wham'n watermelons:

 

And here's a couple pics of a blue hermit:

[fishybadmike]

Big news for my tank! This Friday, I will be moving it 300 miles home for the summer. I'm a college student living in an apartment, but every summer I move home to my parent's house because that's where my summer job is. I've thought about this upcoming move a lot and I think I've got a pretty good plan so I'm not super worried about it. But, I'm still a little nervous. Wish me luck everyone!

[fishybadmike]

I'm moving the 300 miles today! I hope everything goes well. I've got 3 big coolers and an extra 5 gallons of saltwater on hand.

[smoknta]

Well your tank is amazing to say the least. Are you still running the stock lighting? I've also got a NC12DX and its been setup for about 2 1/2 weeks now.

 

Well your tank is amazing to say the least. Are you still running the stock lighting? I've also got a NC12DX and its been setup for about 2 1/2 weeks now.

[fishybadmike]

Well your tank is amazing to say the least. Are you still running the stock lighting? I've also got a NC12DX and its been setup for about 2 1/2 weeks now.

 

Thanks. Ya my tank is running with stock lighting. As of now, I have no plans to upgrade the lighting.

 

My tank move was successful! It took almost 2.5 hours to pack everything up. I was on the road for about 5 hours. It's a very turn-filled two-lane highway that I had to drive on for 300 miles. But, it was more the bumps as well as stopping and going that I was concerned about. When I finally got to my destination, it took even longer to set back up than to take down. Setting up the rocks with the same aquascape was the most difficult part. I'm kinda OCD about my aquascape so I had to have it just exactly the same as it was before. But really, it was difficult to figure out the same layout and balance the rocks just the way they were before so that all my glued down corals wouldn't tip over or get squished. Referring back to old pictures helped a lot.

 

As of now, everything is a live and looks great so I'm calling it a success! I'm not gonna lie though, the whole move was very stressful and time-consuming so I'm glad I won't have to do this a lot. It seems like a lot people are always asking how to transport a nano-reef. Since my move appears to be a success, I'll probably be putting up a post later this week detailing exactly how I did it. I hope it will help some other people.

[smoknta]

Glad everything went ok. You've got some amazing colors in that tank for stock lighting. Makes things look promising for my tank.

[PilotX51]

That would be great if you could let us know how you did it. I'm starting my tank in a couple weeks, just doing the last of the saving...but i'm also going off to college at the end of teh summer and i am worried about how i'm going to move it. Luckily its just an hour away instead of 5!

[knoxvegas]

What happened to this tank?

[jokercykoe]

Great looking tank. Lets see the tank re-setup

[fishybadmike]

I've been extremely busy the last few months so it's been an extremely long time since I've posted on here or given any kind of an update. I apologize for the extremely long post - I just wanted to be very thorough in my update!

 

My tank lived at home during the summer months and did pretty decent despite the warm temperature inside the house. Water temps. regularly reached 85 degrees or higher during the daytime. To combat the heat (I didn't have a chiller), I adjusted my light schedule to avoid being on during the warmest parts of the day and I cracked the lid open a little to let some heat out when necessary. But, I somehow managed to make it through the summer with only one coral death - my orange montipora digita. However, it's possible that the lack of proper lighting for an SPS coral contributed to that loss as well. Either way, I've learned my lesson not to attempt SPS with stock PC lighting...even if the coral is within a couple inches of the lights.

 

About half way through the summer, my clownfish decided he would quit hosting the frogspawn and instead decided to host the green open brain that I had recently introduced. Well, the brain coral either didn't like this very much or it was very hungry because one evening, it swallowed up the clownfish!

 

My green-bay packer zoa colony had been reduced to only a couple of polyps. I have no idea why, but I'm sad about that since they were my favorites. The yellow fiji leather and orange ricordia were stung to death by my growing anchor tentacles. I would've moved things around, but this happened while I was out of town for about 10 days and my tank's babysitter only really knew how to feed the fish. My giant red mushroom began to smother my turquoise candy-cane and actually killed two of the heads. I relocated it to a lower light (to slow it's growth) and isolated are where it couldn't do anymore damage.

 

At the end of August, I had to transport the tank back to college (300 miles & 5-5.5 hours away). It was another pain in the a** but I think it went smoother this time because I knew what I was doing and what to expect. The tank is set back up in my college apartment just as it was before and you would never know it's been through two moves. All live-stock survived the move although I almost lost my xenia colony. It was reduced to a tiny spec about the size of a pin-head that didn't even have any polyps. It has since grown back very quickly. I've replaced the eaten clownfish with another, added a skunk cleaner shrimp, feather-duster worm, and a few corals - platygyra maze brain, RPE palythoas (correct name?), pink palythoas (not sure of the name), some green/brown speckled mushrooms, and a rather dull piece of GSP.

 

The last few months have been very interesting to watch the corals grow and fight for space. I'll leave you all with a FTS. There are more pics to come!...

 

[knoxvegas]

Still looks awesome considering all it went through.....excellent.

[fishybadmike]

Time for some more pics!

 

Platygyra Maze Brain

 

Open Brain

 

Red People Eater Paly's

 

Pink Paly's (anyone know the common name for these?)

 

Ugly GSP haha I sitll don't know why I bought this haha

 

Side shot - notice the huge red mushroom - it gets even bigger than that around mid-day!

 

Top-Down (no flash)

 

Some of you may notice from the pics that I have a flatworm infestation. I've been reading about how to get rid of them and it looks like I have two choices - neither of them sound very appealing. Treat with Flatworm Exit in a complicated and somewhat risky procedure or introduce a flatworm eating fish (scooter blenny or sixline wrasse). Anyone have any thoughts or first-hand experience with this? The flatworms have been in the tank for almost 5 months now and there haven't really been any problems with them other than they are really ugly and ruin the asthetics of the tank as they cover the glass and rocks. Occasionally they'll prevent a few zoa polyps from opening as they craw over them.