Mark's 40B and 46 bow

[markalot]

Well,

 

mine seems to calibrate if I wait 60 seconds or so. When I measure cold mixed SW it usually change from initial reading to 60 seconds later. I've even used my finger to warm the refractometer. The temp compensation is done via a simple piece of metal connected to the prism, so it's not very good anyway, IMO

 

In the end I think this is yet another reason why calibrating to a known 35ppt liquid is so important. Refractometer are not the super accurate devices some say they are.

[markalot]

Time for an update.

 

Tonight I added some new coral, tomorrow I get a shipment from LiveAquaria containign the final additions, which will also finish plugging all the holes in my fraggle rock.

 

First off, the latest FTS

 

 

Now let's cover what's left after the incident.

 

Here's the test acro, mounted sideways on my rocks. I tried to kill it with superglue but failed.

 

 

My birdsnest died, it had started to recover and was looking more and more and more pink, and then nothing. A week before the crash I had accidentally broken a few very small branches and had simply dropped them into my 20 to see what would happen. They grew, so I glued this small piece to a rock using my extensive superglue expertise.

 

 

 

Now here's something cool. This was a rock with blue Anthelia on it. The Blue Anthelia did fine for a few weeks then shrank down and has lived in some kind of mad dwarf state for 6 months. My pink Anthelia, most of which I lost in the accident, is coming back strong so I glued a piece to this rock, which can be seen in the upper right. Funny, the blue is now starting to perk up as well.

 

Anyway, about this rock. This favia looking coral was just a small little glowing spot when I first put it in the tank 6 months ago. Many had guessed it might be a cup coral, but it looks more and more like some kind of brain and in the last few weeks has been showing more and more color. If anyone has a guess as to what it is I'd like to hear it.

 

[markalot]

Ok,

 

now for the new corals. I visited a newly open LFS in the area that specializes in reef corals and fish. I could barely think they had so many cool corals. An entire tank was full, wall to wall, of Ricordea frags, $15 a piece. Acro and Montipora frags, ORA frags, mushrooms, acans, clams, I mean good grief, I had never seen so many corals in one location. I was lucky to get out of there without blowing my entire life savings on corals.

 

I bought two Montiporas; Superman and ORA supernatural.

 

 

 

I didn't want to buy any unnamed Acro's but one of the store employees convinced me to spend $15 on this next locally grown frag. He's kept this coral for years without issue but soesn't know what it is. Similar to a tri-color but not as bright. Old polyps are a nice green, newer polyps tend to be white or yellow.

 

 

Tomorrow I have 2 birdsnests, a ORA green polyp Stylophora, and ORA Montipora Digitata (orange) coming in from Live Aquaria.

[metrokat]

Nice new additions. You could give classes on the proper super glue technique.

[markalot]

Thanks.

LiveAquaria order arrived today, all in good shape. This time I used a stick of the two part plus superglue. Apparently if you use enough two part at once the skimmer will go bonkers ... it did, but no damage just a ton of micro bubbles int he tank. The Flame Hawkfish loves micro bubbles.

No pictures yet.

I mixed my first batch of Red Sea Salt (the regular version). My goal is to use a salt that mixes closest to my tanks readings and this one fit the bill.

 

I use Red Sea Pro test kits.

My readings:

SG 34
Alk 7.3
Calc 390


Red Sea Salt:

note: I calibrated my refractometer prior to testing to 35ppt, then tested mix, then checked calibration and the reading was 36ppt, so I recalibrated, remeasured, then checked calibration again and it was 34ppt. Obviously amateur equipment is not super accurate. I recalibrated to 35 and tested a final time, making adjustments as needed.

SG 35
Alk 7.8

Calc 380

 

This is lower than spec, but spec required 35.5 ppt and I am assuming my refractometer reads a tad high because I want it too.

[markalot]

So tonight I tested a new batch of Reef Crystals.

 

SG 35ppt

dKH 10.1

Ca 390

 

 

Isn't that interesting. Much higher KH than Red Sea but near the same Calcium. I think I've made the switch, I can't justify using something that is so far off in parameters compared to my tank. I need to do a mag test on both.

 

 

FTS with new corals. Are are well except the green stylo which is RTN'ing today. It looked horrible coming out of the bag, slime everywhere, polluted water, so i expected if I had any issues this would be the one.

 

 

I'm going to be adding some ricordia tomorrow. That new LFS has a tank full of them, $15 a piece. Perfect for my partly shaded spots. The green hairy mushrooms will be moved to the back, not a big fan but no reason to kill them.

 

Oh, and I broke off a small piece of the new green polyp birdsnest so I dumped it in my 20 and the little bugger is showing full polyp extension over there ... all 5 of them.

 

I also discovered a setting on my camera under special effects called WARM. With WARM on and K set to 10,000 I don't have to modify the pics to get natural color.

[markalot]

I have discovered the RAW format for my camera. A couple of uncorrected pixels, and a weird bit of curvature not found in the non raw images, but the color and detail are SO much better. After some experimenting I find that a JPG saved at 99% quality is extremely close in quality to a uncompressed PNG image, so I switched these to slightly smaller JPG files.

 

 

 

Fullsize image: http://imageshack.us/a/img51/7530/p1020397web.jpg

 

 

All 3 fish in the picture, can you find them?

[markalot]

I added my last Pukani rock to complete, I think, the base aquascape.

 

[markalot]

Time for another picture dump.

 

First the FTS for 1/12/2013:

 

Full size (giant): http://imageshack.us/a/img560/3710/2013011240fts.jpg

 

 

I've been slowly collecting Acans (lords), first mail order, and most recently some very healthy frags from that new LFS that's taking all my money. Here's a shot of what is becoming an Acan garden.

 

 

I like this view, from down low on the right side. I'm trying my best to give the tank some depth and personality.

 

 

A shot from the center I like, and Fred the Hawkfish even makes an appearance. What really sticks out here is the surely dead, no wait, coming back to life green stylophora.

 

 

 

And now the left side. That pipe organ coral continues to grow like crazy. My purple duncans are in a mood and will probably open back up in a day or so. Behind the Pipe organ is a "Toxic" hammer coral, and to the right of that is ORA "Supernatural" Montipora. The nice blue zoas that show up on the lower right are actually just drab purple.

 

 

I'll end this post with this:

 

[markalot]

Now about that Green Stylophora. That was from Live Aquaria and while the rest of the shipment was perfect this piece, which was huge, was stressed and started to RTN a day after I added it. You read about RTN and people will tell you that you must frag to save it. I fragged a small piece on day one, and two more pieces five days later. I'm leaving the rest to see what happens, and it appears something IS happening.

 

First, the RTN'ed areas turned ghost white dead and stayed that way for a week, and then started to brown. I figured the brown was algae but one of my more comical turbo snails climbed up the darn thing and cleaned it off, but the brown stayed. It was funny when he reached a live polyp, it must have stung because he reared up with that big mouth, turned around, and started on another branch.

 

Anyway, the first frag I made I simply cut and glued to a piece of rubble. The second and third frags I cut and covered the skeleton that looked dead with superglue up to the live polyps, then glued the mess to rock rubble. Took about 30 minutes to get all the glue off my hands.

 

Here's a closeup of the stylo. Notice the brown outlining the former polyps. These areas used to be bone white.

 

 

and here are my frags. The frag at the front left is the first one which is only glued at the base.

 

 

I'll end this with a shot from the right side of the tank.

 

[markalot]

A video

 

[markalot]

Well,

 

you can find a post I made somewhere on some thread bemoaning the ridiculous price of the MP10 ... and then I bought one.

 

 

And a video showing the short pulse wave I'm running and the noise it makes. The noise isn't too bad and seems to be coming from the wet side as I can remove the motor and it's silent. I'm figuring some break in will quiet it down.

 

 

I also bought 2 new corals for this tank. I'm going to have to ban myself form the LFS, it's the only way I can stop getting new coral!

 

Forest Fire Montipora digitata

 

Not sure if this next one is a Porites, as it was labeled, or Montipora spongodes.

Some kind of Acropora.

[markalot]

My Superman Montipora is also coloring up well, and growing rather fast.

 

[markalot]

Cleaned up first post to better introduce the tank and specs.

[metrokat]

it's all looking good. I think the dead parts of the stylo are dead, the brown is algae but it can;t be eaten off, I've had snails on my dead corals but it never comes off. However I hope I am wrong, would be nice to have that thing come back to life.

[markalot]

it's all looking good. I think the dead parts of the stylo are dead, the brown is algae but it can;t be eaten off, I've had snails on my dead corals but it never comes off. However I hope I am wrong, would be nice to have that thing come back to life.

 

Thanks Kat. I beginning to think the same which is why I moved it down to the sandbed. I'll frag it up this weekend and end up with 6 of these guys. I was shocked to get a piece so big to begin with, I prefer to grow up from small frags.

 

[markalot]

One picture for today.

 

Camouflage. Arrow on the left pointing to a starfish I've been keeping my eye on. Seems to have a taste for Coraline and not much else, makes a purpose to avoid the acros. So far. Arrow on the right points to some encrusting going on where I shoved a stem of this acro into a hole in the rock. A test, since this was the test acro.

 

 

It's really starting to color up nicely. Even some green near the base and on a few branches.

[gena]

Your LFS sounds awesome! Did you ever buy some ricordeas????? I would love to go into a LFS and find a tank full of $15 rics

 

Tank looks great!!! Congrats on the new mp10. That chromis sure seems to enjoy swimming in the current. You're lucky to have such an active fish in your tank.

 

Oh...and I love your acan garden too!!!!

 

That starfish is an asterina. I think they only eat coralline algae.

[markalot]

Your LFS sounds awesome! Did you ever buy some ricordeas????? I would love to go into a LFS and find a tank full of $15 rics

 

Tank looks great!!! Congrats on the new mp10. That chromis sure seems to enjoy swimming in the current. You're lucky to have such an active fish in your tank.

 

Oh...and I love your acan garden too!!!!

 

That starfish is an asterina. I think they only eat coralline algae.

 

Hi Gina, thanks for visiting.

 

I bought a bunch of rics, put some in here and some in my 20.

 

This starfish seems bigger than an asterina and so far hasn't dropped any legs. You can see a piece of an asterina on the other side of the acro. Maybe some are just more prone to reproducing?

[metrokat]

Shouldn't you rename this thread to Mark's tester frag tank.

[markalot]

LOL,

 

hopefully I don't need anymore tests!

[gena]

 

Hi Gina, thanks for visiting.

 

I bought a bunch of rics, put some in here and some in my 20.

 

This starfish seems bigger than an asterina and so far hasn't dropped any legs. You can see a piece of an asterina on the other side of the acro. Maybe some are just more prone to reproducing?

What color rics did you end up getting? Did I miss the pictures????

 

I still think it's an asterina. Most of them do have missing legs, but I've had a few that were perfect like the one you have. 5 perfect legs. I've seen them with more than 5 legs before too.

[markalot]

What color rics did you end up getting? Did I miss the pictures????

 

I still think it's an asterina. Most of them do have missing legs, but I've had a few that were perfect like the one you have. 5 perfect legs. I've seen them with more than 5 legs before too.

 

I have some unposted pics somewhere. They look good where I placed them, but not the best spot for pictures. I'll see if I can come up with some.

[markalot]

Looks like I need to take some of this area again. Both of these are crappy and I had to push the brightness way up.

 

 

 

In that second shot you can see my older rics still showing injury from the salinity accident. The big yellow ones in the back really look good, but shadowed by that rock overhang. The bright green one floated behind blue/yellow clump and refuses to budge.

[metrokat]

<-----Needs those arrow pointy thingees.