opy01 Posted August 4, 2009 Author Share Posted August 4, 2009 Thanks! Well what could be better than getting a free hitch hiker? Getting 2 of them! It is official, my rock-o-shrooms came with 2 striped brittle stars. I was hoping one would relocate and I could just move the new rock to the other tank and have one star for each tank. It could not have gone more perfect. I didn't see the arms of the second star so I started looking around and sure enough in the back of my rocks I see these little arms waving around. Then I looked up and saw a stupid aptasia on the back of my overflow! I will be removing the inner half tonight and desposing of it easily thanks to my new star. I thought I saw it on the rock with the anthelias but I wasnt too sure. I guess Bulldozer knocked him off and he relocated onto the overflow. Thank goodness it is on something that is easily cleaned lol. Link to comment
BlueAbyss Posted August 4, 2009 Share Posted August 4, 2009 Wow, how cool... I just found a starfish hitchhiker today! Sweet find man. Link to comment
opy01 Posted August 4, 2009 Author Share Posted August 4, 2009 Dont you love uninvited guests? lol Then again one of my uninvited guests screwed my tank up last night. Well I may have done that but I blame the aptasia. I went to pull the aptasia off the back of the inside part of the overflow and I put it all back together without insident. This morning I wolk up around 9am and my ATO would pump then stop then pump then stop over and over. When I put my overflow back together last night I nocked the ATO hose into the water in the sump and the first time it pumped it sucked water back out into the ATO bucket. I was plenty pissed off but I fixed it quick. Unfortunately my SG dropped to 1.022 (not too bad but still bad enough) so I had to get it back up. Over a half hour time I managed to get it back up to 1.023 and it was over filled so as water evaporates it will slowly rise again. I will check it when I got home for lunch today and see how it is. The last time this happened I had some macro die off and release crap into the tank that caused a ciano outbreak. Hopefully that wont happen this time. I think the minimum for most of these guys is 1.023 so hopefully a short time of 1.022 wont hurt them. Link to comment
opy01 Posted August 6, 2009 Author Share Posted August 6, 2009 Well everything still looks good after Monday nights fiasco. Tonight I feed the brain coral again. I am going to set my camera up for a time laps over about a 30 minute period to try to get a cool movie. I also finally got everything glued down so bulldozer cant nock all my frag rocks over and stuff. This weekend I will be testing my new overflow that I made so I can get rid of the stupid big black box in my tank. The Eshopps was nice but too big for my 10G. I am going with a home made version of the Continuous Siphon. I like the design and the fact that it only goes about 3-4 inches in the water instead of 7, not to mension it is clear. The glue should be all set by the time I get home, I just need to make a couple of simple cuts to it and it will be time for testing. I need to get a pic but my anthelias are doing much better now. I have them in a small hatchery to keep the red crab out just to be on the safe side. Their are 7 of them left but they seem to all be opening up nicely. I am torn because I cannot put them back in my main tank because of my emerald crab but I am scared to put them in the other tank outside the hatchery because my red crab. Well I guess I will just have to see what happens. Maybe I will keep them in there till they reproduce a few more. Link to comment
opy01 Posted August 6, 2009 Author Share Posted August 6, 2009 Well I went home for lunch today to play with my camera again. I decided since I can only take the same 4 pictures so mnay times I would go to the other tank and take some of my poor plucked anthelia. When I looked though the lense I couldnt believe what I saw, babies! Looks like they will make a comeback. I am scared to just put them in the tank though outside of the hatchery because of my red crab. I cant keep them in the hatchery the entire time so once they get big enough I will have to just go ahead and put them in. Link to comment
opy01 Posted August 7, 2009 Author Share Posted August 7, 2009 Ok guys, I said I was going to do it and I did. I got pictures of my brain coral eating. I took 175 pictures total but ended up removing the first 31 due to the mysis shrimp not cooperating and my turkey baister getting in there. It took about 1.5 hours to do this and I pissed off several hermits that were trying to get to the shrimp. When you see the front left mouth eating the shrimp there is anothershrimp head and body clinging on. One of the hermits managed to grab the back end of the shrimp that was stuck to the shrimp that I was feeding to the coral. If you watch the top right you will see the shimp get completely swallowed. Then a crab looking for leftovers lol. Link to comment
Rocker Posted August 9, 2009 Share Posted August 9, 2009 That was cool!!! Didn't know those things take a while to devour their meal. You did a great job at capturing it though! Thanks for sharing it with us. Link to comment
opy01 Posted August 9, 2009 Author Share Posted August 9, 2009 Thanks! It was one of the funnest things I've done lately. I didnt know till last week that they ate stuff that big lol. Too bad my house is old peer and beam or the time lapse would have been smoother but every time I went to nock a hermit away so it wouldnt steel the shrimp the camera moved slightly in my direction as the floor gave to my weight. Link to comment
latteslave Posted August 11, 2009 Share Posted August 11, 2009 NICE! picture show was great, and I love the zoa... BTW - yoour sump is EXACTLY what I want to do. I like the design and the way I see it - if you are going to have a sump, you might as well show it off. Looks GREAT! Link to comment
opy01 Posted August 11, 2009 Author Share Posted August 11, 2009 NICE! picture show was great, and I love the zoa... BTW - yoour sump is EXACTLY what I want to do. I like the design and the way I see it - if you are going to have a sump, you might as well show it off. Looks GREAT! Thanks, the sump was fun to do. Here are the plans I made from about 3 different designs that I liked, feel free to use them. I had bio-balls where the cheato is now but it wasnt working for me. I am just waiting on my skimmer now and it will be complete. Well my anthelias were coming back great so I put them in my other tank on the bottom and sure enough the red crab in that tank goes over and starts cleaning it. 30 minutes later I am missing a small patch of anthelias. Now I have them back in the hatchery but I cant keep them in there forever. Anyone have any advice on what to do? Is there any way to remove them without killing them? Link to comment
opy01 Posted August 12, 2009 Author Share Posted August 12, 2009 I fed my brain coral again last night. The hardest part about that is getting the srimp to stay on the corral till it grabs them. I tried to feed the trumpet coral some mysis shrimp and I think one of them got some but it was a long hard struggle fighting off the hermits. I dropped a couple of shrimp for them to keep them occupied but they kept on with their full frontal assault sending a occassional ninja crab in the back. Both trumpets lost one entire shrimp each but one of them got some fragments. I had to start pulling the hermits off the rocks and throwing them to the other side of the tank. On a side note, Sunday is my birthday. I ordered myself a rainbow monti from Davis7 as a gift to myself. I am also considering getting a black clown or two for my tank now that I am getting a skimmer and have the nitrates under control. I may also have to see what other cool coral the lfs has on Friday as I am bringing my second tank up to my office and it only had some GSP, shrroms and a few zoa polyps. Oh and I cant forget about the anthelias in the hatchery since they are right at the front of the tank. I may move it to the back if I can make room. Link to comment
deepdvnarq Posted August 12, 2009 Share Posted August 12, 2009 funny Opy on the hermit throwing. it should be an olypmpic sport. Link to comment
opy01 Posted August 12, 2009 Author Share Posted August 12, 2009 funny Opy on the hermit throwing. it should be an olypmpic sport. Yea, I felt like I was fighting off a miniature army and I swear I heard war drums somewhere in the distance . The odd thing is I keep reading that they will extend tentacles (the coral, not the crab lol) but I have never seen my brain coral or my trumpet coral do that. I wonder if they are getting their fill of pods at night and not really needing to extend them. There are tons of large pods in my tank. The brain coral has eaten 5-7 mysis shrimp since I got it 10 days ago. Link to comment
opy01 Posted August 13, 2009 Author Share Posted August 13, 2009 Well quick update before bed. It is now confirmed that my trumpets are eating the amphipods (I think thats what they are lol). I was pulling some GHA out and the pods all over the stuff go swimming around until they either get stuck on something, go down the overflow or, as I now saw, get caught by the trumpet coral. I didnt see the extended tentacles I see in everyones pics but it was definately caught on something because it was swirling around on it and eventually ended up in the mouth then it was gone. That was cool! I will probably cut them back to once a week feedings now but I thing I am still going to feed the brain coral every 5 days or so. Link to comment
deepdvnarq Posted August 13, 2009 Share Posted August 13, 2009 becareful with bulldozer. my version of Bulldozer was eating my bicolor blenny last night. i don't know if the bicolor died and he was just cleaning up of if he trapped him in a hole and decided he wanted sushi! i don't know man but i really liked that fish. had lots of personality to him. Link to comment
opy01 Posted August 13, 2009 Author Share Posted August 13, 2009 yea I am actualy considering getting rid of Bulldozer and the red crab both because they destroyed my anthelias. They havent done any other damage yet but I dont want to spent alot of money on something to have them kill it. Link to comment
Rocker Posted August 14, 2009 Share Posted August 14, 2009 Hermits are totally determined little creatures that don't let anything get in their way of whatever food mission they got wired in their tiny brains! Maybe you might need to cover the trumpet & brain with a large enough bottle cut in half or use that bottle to trap the hooligans while you feed the corals. Link to comment
opy01 Posted August 14, 2009 Author Share Posted August 14, 2009 Hermits are totally determined little creatures that don't let anything get in their way of whatever food mission they got wired in their tiny brains! Maybe you might need to cover the trumpet & brain with a large enough bottle cut in half or use that bottle to trap the hooligans while you feed the corals. Thats a good idea, thanks. I didnt even think of that. I may just grab them up and put them in my drip aclimator thingy till I am done feeding the coral. Link to comment
opy01 Posted August 14, 2009 Author Share Posted August 14, 2009 Ok I got my birthday present to myself today in the mail. My monti from Davis7 today as scheduled. It seems to be happy. Just a quick pic to show off my new coral. Now to find a place for it and try to hide the frag plug that its on. Link to comment
Militant Jurist Posted August 14, 2009 Share Posted August 14, 2009 Nice coral! That's an awesome color, and a great photo. Link to comment
BlueAbyss Posted August 15, 2009 Share Posted August 15, 2009 That coral is a really nice color, hope it does well. Looking pretty great! Link to comment
opy01 Posted August 17, 2009 Author Share Posted August 17, 2009 Thanks guys! It seems to be doing great. I trimmed some of the plug it came on so now I just have to find a good place for it. I went to the Dallas World Aquarium this weekend for my birthday. That place is awesome! Got a few pics to share too Link to comment
deepdvnarq Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 real nice picks Opy. man i have to get me a camera Link to comment
opy01 Posted August 18, 2009 Author Share Posted August 18, 2009 Thanks! I had a blast and I take about 250-300 pics every time I go lol. The hardest part is going through and picking the good ones. The second to last turned out way better than I thought it would. That one was also to only one I edited and I only lightened it up some. The rest were only cropped and resized to make it easy to download. Now to pick out my birthday preasent from my wife. I am thinking about an onyx clown and couple of chalices or a ric. I havent seen many affordable chalices I like though. I am at work trying to restore a stupid server so while I wait for it to fail booting for a 10th time I was looking at this ric. What do you think? Link to comment
sjsoto Posted August 18, 2009 Share Posted August 18, 2009 The bio-balls are now removed and the cheato is in there. The caulerpa is doing awesome too. I dont recomend sea grass to a beginner. [/img] why dont you recommend sea grass to a beginner? Link to comment
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