davidncbrown Posted July 5, 2010 Author Share Posted July 5, 2010 We stopped by our LFS today to pick up some freshwater fish for my Grandma's aquarium and stumbled on a couple of things.....we didn't get any freshwater stuff! Our 1st purchase was a purple w/green center aussie blasto. Only a single head but we have no doubt that it will grow well. 2nd was another dragonface pipefish. We lost one of our original pipefish a few weeks after we brought him home, he never switched over to frozen. Our other original pipefish (ironically the smaller of the two) doesn't eat red bugs. He switched over to frozen right away and refuses to touch red bugs needless to say it is getting a little rough on the corals dipping them all the time. Hopefully the new guy will take care of the never ending red bug battle. We also said goodbye to a few of our corals that we've had since the beginning last week. We had a hammer coral that started out as one head approx two years ago (the beginning of the nano-cube) that we sold back to the LFS with over 30 heads. It was sad when we went in there today to see it in all 5 head frags. Also our doughnut coral. We got it around the same time as the hammer coral. It came to us with a diameter of maybe a 1 1/2", now it is 7" in diameter. It also went back to the LFS. Link to comment
animalmaster6 Posted July 6, 2010 Share Posted July 6, 2010 Nice new additions! How is the original dragonface? Link to comment
davidncbrown Posted July 6, 2010 Author Share Posted July 6, 2010 Nice new additions! How is the original dragonface? The original is doing good. He eats frozen cyclopeze, frozen nutramar ova and pods. He will only eat red bugs if we blow them off the acro, then he will pick them off the rock. He has grown a little, looks skinny compared to the new one but I think it is because he is half as long and a quarter in diameter. Link to comment
animalmaster6 Posted July 6, 2010 Share Posted July 6, 2010 I'm very glad to hear he's eating well. Link to comment
davidncbrown Posted July 23, 2010 Author Share Posted July 23, 2010 We have some new additions to share with everyone. We placed an order through LiveAquaria. David has wanted a porcelain crab for some time (our LFS never gets them in), so we got a pair. Katie has wanted a Starry Blenny since our algae blenny passed away, so we got one. David also has a theory on acropora crabs......he thinks they might help with the red bugs, so we got two. Here are a few pics of the porcelain crabs and blenny, the acro crabs are hiding. Sorry for the bad blackberry pics Link to comment
animalmaster6 Posted July 23, 2010 Share Posted July 23, 2010 I love the new additions. I think the acro crabs might help red bugs too. FTS? Link to comment
davidncbrown Posted July 23, 2010 Author Share Posted July 23, 2010 Thank you very much, we like them too. The porcelain crabs have found their home in our ricordea garden. It is pretty neat. Link to comment
animalmaster6 Posted July 23, 2010 Share Posted July 23, 2010 Yea Porcelain Crabs are really cool! Link to comment
davidncbrown Posted August 2, 2010 Author Share Posted August 2, 2010 Went to the LFS for DI like we always do... And these plates caught our eye. Supposidly they all came in super bleached and were starting to color up. At $25 we couldn't pass this one up! We really hope it ends up a cool color. What do you guys think it'll end up looking like? This pic is taken at night with the camera flash... Ill take a better one later with the tank lights. Link to comment
animalmaster6 Posted August 3, 2010 Share Posted August 3, 2010 Cool new plate! It looks like it gets purple. Link to comment
davidncbrown Posted August 4, 2010 Author Share Posted August 4, 2010 Well I don't know how stuff like this keeps happening but we went to a different LFS to pick up live rock for Katie's aquarium (well both aquariums) and stumbled on this scoly..... The ballast went bad in the tank they had it in so it has been without light for over a week. Think he will recover? For $35 we thought it was worth a gamble. Edit: It looks better than this picture makes it look. Lights are off and it was taken with a flashlight and phone camera Edit #2: And it was eating mysis in this pic Link to comment
animalmaster6 Posted August 4, 2010 Share Posted August 4, 2010 I think it'll do better. Nice Finds lately! Link to comment
davidncbrown Posted August 4, 2010 Author Share Posted August 4, 2010 I think it'll do better. Nice Finds lately! They had another one too. Kinda regretting not getting it now that we are home and how good it looks in the tank. Link to comment
davidncbrown Posted August 4, 2010 Author Share Posted August 4, 2010 Go Back They are closed now and our schedule for the rest of the week is not too conducive to their schedule. Maybe over the weekend we will see if they still have it...... Link to comment
davidncbrown Posted September 8, 2010 Author Share Posted September 8, 2010 sorry for the lack of updates to anyone who is tagging along. I'm sad to say the beautiful scoly didn't make it one night after feeding it a hermit crab must have tried to pull the food mysis from its mouth and injured it. Tissue started receding from the mouth outward and soon you could see the entire inside was hollow Our CUC eventually cleaned up all the dead tissue except for a small piece around the size of a marble that fell off. This was a few weeks ago, and the piece still has color and has come around to form a sort of ring! I'm really hoping it'll come back! . On another note, we got about 5 emerald and one red mithrax crab and they seemed to eat almost all of the gelidium algae we were plauged with . It is still growing on the back wall however and on the koralias... We have chaeto in the sump and gracilaria and I can't seem to get the nitrates down even with twice a week water changes. Been running a bag of carbon and a bag of phosban trying to help with the algae growth but nothing happens nitrates hover around 10ppm and phosphates come back around or at zero. Sooooo... I've been doing a lot of research and decided to take the plunge and get a sulfur denitrator . I set it up yesterday and it needs to run for a couple weeks for the anoxic bacteria to start colonizing the sulfur media, but when they do... Bye bye nitrates, and hello heavier feeding of the corals . Ill try to keep posting updates on how its working and I swear to get new pics up soon. Oh and animalmaster, the candy cane is still for sale Link to comment
animalmaster6 Posted September 9, 2010 Share Posted September 9, 2010 And my 125 is still not ready It should be ready for corals by October/November. Link to comment
davidncbrown Posted January 3, 2011 Author Share Posted January 3, 2011 So here is a little mini update. New SPS - too many to list (Garf Bonsai and Pink Lemonade included). We also said goodbye to a few old friends. Our purple firefish died. He was our second fish in the old nano-cube. Also the pipefish have all died. The last one - which was the 1st one - finally passed away. Also the porcelain crabs died. Don't know what happened to them but they both passed away within a week of each other. Its been a sad couple months for fish, but the corals are doing well. Some of our favorites are growing like weeds. Think we are going to make a trip to the store to replace some fish today. P.S. If anybody is looking for corals we still have a bunch of stuff we can sell. Rics, blasto, candy cane, should frag the duncan and a couple chalices. Hopefully we will update the pictures someday soon. Happy late new year Katie and David Link to comment
animalmaster6 Posted January 3, 2011 Share Posted January 3, 2011 Hope to see some new pics! Link to comment
davidncbrown Posted January 5, 2011 Author Share Posted January 5, 2011 Hope to see some new pics! I'll be posting some pics today. Nothing too fancy. Most of the new SPS are adapting to our lights... they came from a tank with 4x400W Radiums and they were up near the top.... ya, we don't have that kind of light So they browned out a little, now they're coming back, just taking their time. Also the check valve on the aqua-doser failed over the Christmas weekend, so instead of dosing calcium 4 times a day like its supposed to... it didn't dose for almost 3 days before I caught it. Needless to say the Alk was fine (the check valve on that side was fine thank God) but the calcium was at like 280... Our pipe organ doesn't like the low calcium so its been closed for a while. Today is the first day its back open! And the SPS weren't too happy either... Sulfur denitrator seems to be working well. We had another Gelidium algae bloom after the firefish died (it died where I couldn't remove it), but its starting to go away again. Red mithrax crabs do a great job keeping it off of the rockwork, they just need a little help getting it off of the back wall. Needless to say our chaeto and ulva in the sump isn't growing very fast because the denitrator and the bag of rowaphos is taking all of its food . Oh and a few months ago our metal halide bulbs were swapped out: Phoenix 24K's for Radium 20K's. The radiums are actually 175W not 150W so we got a new external Galaxy fixture (which gets a lot of heat out of the fixture). The lighting is whiter, brighter, and everything has responded very well! Link to comment
davidncbrown Posted January 5, 2011 Author Share Posted January 5, 2011 PICS!!! tube anemone candy cane neon green Candy cane ORA green duncan, and orange crush acan Yay pipe organ finally opened! blue polyp monti capricornis between green slimer and orange digitata idaho grape cap, neon green cap huge orange cap laserbeam chalice true undata, miami hurricane acan echinata ORA blue/green paly's baby orange ric baby green ric hollywood stunner chalice (its on the frag rack cuz it has long sweepers...) wow! our crocea clam got big! aussie blasto colony ric garden Link to comment
animalmaster6 Posted January 6, 2011 Share Posted January 6, 2011 I love those aussie blastos and the candy canes. Link to comment
davidncbrown Posted January 6, 2011 Author Share Posted January 6, 2011 Well, are you ready for the candy cane yet?!?!? Link to comment
nebthet Posted January 7, 2011 Share Posted January 7, 2011 Your clam isn't a crocea. It is a Deresa and very nice looking. Your laserbeam chalice and red blastos are sooo pretty. Link to comment
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