Christopher Marks Posted January 25, 2017 Share Posted January 25, 2017 I love these growth progress shots! How about a fresh FTS? Quote Link to comment
Ebn Posted January 25, 2017 Author Share Posted January 25, 2017 I love these growth progress shots! How about a fresh FTS? Not much to look at currently. It needs a cleaning (maintenance is tomorrow) but here's what it looks like this morning during one of the feedings. A mess of a tank overall, but stuff is healthy and needs to be weaned out over time. There's also a lot of empty space up top for growth (check back in like 3 years ). Left side is brighter lighted in the pic due to some cloud cover. Lighting cycle is Fiji, offset by 2 hours, with weather effects. Zoas are growing pretty steady and I'm trading some off. Got a four polyp of some blue hornet morphs from AquaSD awhile back. They've since grown into a golf ball of sorts with 50+ polyps (some polyps not showing since I moved the frag to take the shot). Trading that to a buddy for a polyp of PE seduction paly. 1 Quote Link to comment
Ebn Posted March 6, 2017 Author Share Posted March 6, 2017 Tank is doing well, even though it's still not much to look at. Finally picked up a Hanna ULR egg to see where phosphates were at since I'm getting some bleaching at the bases with certain corals (e.g. bali shortcake with the upper left in the comp) which I suspect is from an inbalance between the nitrates and phosphates. Phosphates as measured was at 0.15 ppm. Picked up and added a chaeto reactor and finally got it plumbed in on its own DCT-4000 pump with reverse light cycle. I want to see if this thing really grows chaeto so I only added 3 golfballs of chaeto (appoximately 30g) after picking some up from the LFS. The chaeto came from one of their sumps with aiptasias and other types of algaes as well so I didn't want to use too much of it from fear of contamination. I dipped it like I would corals with Bayer and FW exit, and inspected it with my geek glasses. I'll be measuring phosphates and dosing nitrates as needed to be inline with lowering the phosphates. 1 Quote Link to comment
Christopher Marks Posted March 6, 2017 Share Posted March 6, 2017 The frag collection is looking good so far! Snap a pic of your chaeto reactor with the new algae all lit up, it will be interesting to see how quickly it fills in with new growth. Quote Link to comment
Ebn Posted March 6, 2017 Author Share Posted March 6, 2017 2 hours ago, Christopher Marks said: The frag collection is looking good so far! Snap a pic of your chaeto reactor with the new algae all lit up, it will be interesting to see how quickly it fills in with new growth. Approximately 10 grams (golf ball size portion teased apart) in between each of the plates so it'll take a long while to fill up, assuming that I didn't kill it when going through the extreme dipping (went hypo with it at 1.010). Quote Link to comment
Ebn Posted May 11, 2017 Author Share Posted May 11, 2017 Haven't updated in awhile so here goes. I wasn't really happy with the scape in the tank and was out of room to mount sps to, so I decided to make the change from the BRS reefsaver that I've had in the tank for since the tank was set up over to Tonga branch rock. The swap was done over the course of two rounds with the right side being done first, where approximately 40% of the rocks were. Once things had settled down a bit (once I saw coralline start to encrust the new Tonga), I did the entire left side. Here's the new rockwork as of today. I still need to clean up the odd frags on the sandbed and then just let things grow in from there. I also need to get in and scrape the back walls on my next monthly scrub down. Wild frag from one of the LFS. Grew into a decent looking mini so far. Another LFS wild frag. This one is starting to look decent. It's got a pretty blue base with pink tips from what I see so far. Wild millie. Pink axial tips and a rainbow of colors in the base polyps. Can't wait to see what happens to this one as it grows. Went to the same LFS with a buddy and his wife awhile back. They were window shopping and were going back between a couple of frags and couldn't decide on whether they wanted them or not. I picked both of them up and growing them out. This one was picked up by his wife and has receded quite a bit after my alk issues earlier in the year. It's rebounding and it looks like it's on the mend. Tierra del Fuego Sunset monti. Requires very little light and actually sits right below one of the Tonga branches in the shade. Orenji danae. Sits above some of the cluster of zoas (from left to right: RR banana boat, RR fruit loops, rastas, PPEs) Garf bonsai. Decent grower and mini colony in size now. Becker tort One of the only deepwater in the tank. This was sold to me by the same person that sold me the RR pink floyd. He didn't remember what it was at the time and gave me a great deal on it. He's since ID this one as the WT mother of pearl. RR pink floyd. Got ugly when I was messing with nitrate dosing. Nub of the POTO rise and shine. ASD rainbow table Pretty wicked wild piece that's colored up well. Also grows relatively quick. It competes with my Oregon torts as the centerpiece in the tank. Speaking of Oregon tort. These two pieces were at one point one frag. I accidentally broke the tip off the one on the right near the center and reglued it back on. The snails knocked it off afterwards and I decided to glue that tip on a plug instead. That tip grew like steroids for some reason and became what you see on the left piece there. I'm sticking them next to each other so that they can fuse and regrow back into one larger piece. ORA pearlberry. This one transitioned for me and has stayed this color for awhile now. CRC purple cadillac. Purple with red polyps. One of my favorites even though it's such a slow grower. TCK lightning bolt PC Rainbow RR Canada orange passion This frag being worked on by one of my ginormous turbos is none other than the homewrecker itself. Probably won't wreck any homes under my lighting haha. Last but not least, one of the slower growers in the tank. Purple monster. 5 Quote Link to comment
MGDMIRAGE Posted May 12, 2017 Share Posted May 12, 2017 Love the new scape! looks very unique! I can't wait to see everything grow in more now Quote Link to comment
Ebn Posted June 20, 2017 Author Share Posted June 20, 2017 Went down to visit a buddy and his wife in SoCal over the weekend and picked up some frags. Ended up with the following: RR Crazy T Monti, JF Beach Bum Monti, RR Canada Pink Cadillac, OG Pink Panther, GC efflo, another RR creamsicle looking stick (forgot the name) and a gift (another Monti that I forgot the name of). Also, picked up the most fragile SPS that I've dealt with to date. Frag was split between the buddy and I and we're both trying to keep it alive. Keeping my fingers crossed that at least one of them makes it considering how much it was. 1 Quote Link to comment
dpoltsdsu Posted June 21, 2017 Share Posted June 21, 2017 Great looking SPS. Can't wait to see how they grow in. I'll be following Quote Link to comment
Ebn Posted July 17, 2017 Author Share Posted July 17, 2017 Picked up a non-photosynthetic red gorgonian with yellow polyps yesterday. Polyps are quite large and it seems to be happy so far. Let's see if it can survive in the tank with the heavy amount of feeding to the fish. Here's a closeup with it capturing some of the snow. 3 Quote Link to comment
GregEmmitte Posted July 17, 2017 Share Posted July 17, 2017 39 minutes ago, Ebn said: Picked up a non-photosynthetic red gorgonian with yellow polyps yesterday. Polyps are quite large and it seems to be happy so far. Let's see if it can survive in the tank with the heavy amount of feeding to the fish. Here's a closeup with it capturing some of the snow. I have two of these. One in purple as well. Marine snow should be fine. Daily feedings? Quote Link to comment
Ebn Posted July 17, 2017 Author Share Posted July 17, 2017 7 minutes ago, GregEmmitte said: I have two of these. One in purple as well. Marine snow should be fine. Daily feedings? 5 days a week when I'm in the office. I feed throughout the day, so like 6-8 daily feedings with various frozen foods. 1 Quote Link to comment
GregEmmitte Posted July 17, 2017 Share Posted July 17, 2017 16 minutes ago, Ebn said: 5 days a week when I'm in the office. I feed throughout the day, so like 6-8 daily feedings with various frozen foods. It should do well then. I find these kind don't get cluttered with detritus or algae like the red and yellow finger gorgs Quote Link to comment
gogeta Posted July 17, 2017 Share Posted July 17, 2017 When those corals grow in! Great selection and obviously doing something damn right with the growth so fsr Quote Link to comment
Ebn Posted July 17, 2017 Author Share Posted July 17, 2017 So in other news, I'm also nursing a couple of pieces back to health. First is the Vivid confetti which I alluded to earlier. The two pieces that my buddy and I took home are alive, but half of it STN over the first few days for us. This piece was picked up directly from Vivid when I was down there and it was dropped into his sump within half an hour of acquiring it. His tank is mature (7 years+ SPS dominant) so it shouldn't have behaved like so. Next time that we're there, I'm gonna see if I can test the water that the tank came from. By the time that I got back to Norcal the frag didn't look so hot. I noticed 3-4 polyps that had already bailed out from the skeleton. The piece was dipped prior so I didn't subject it to more stress. It went directly down to the sandbed as in all my frags as they acclimate to the LEDs before I figure out where to put them. Here it is on day 2 when I came into the office to check it out. As you can see, half of the piece was already lost. The tissue was still beginning to peel at this point. At this point, I decided to use IC Gel to try to stop the recession and see if it pulls through. Here it is at day 3. 1 week into the tank. STN stopped but only the underside of the frag survived. It's been in the tank for about a month now and I finally moved it. The frag was snapped at the point where there was live tissue and then the side with tissue under the coral was flipped towards the light. It was glued back on the plug and glued onto the rock yesterday. It got moved from ~130 PAR to ~400-500 PAR. Here it is this morning. The second piece that I'm dealing with is the Wet Thumbs fireball, with confirmed lineage, which was available at CRC, one of the LFS that brings in high end frags (this was the old NorCal location of ReefRaft). One of the owners had broken down his tank and moved his collection to the store and was selling pieces from it. Three separate brown mini colonies were in the raceway and a few brown frags were available. One of those frags was an encrusted piece that was brought back by a customer since it wasn't doing too well, which I decided to pick up. As usual, I do my Bayer dip and found out what caused it. This AEFW was found in the dipping cup. Closeups of the frag itself showing the damage already done and the tell tale bite marks. Called them up to tell them about the issue and got the whole thanks, but we dip once a week procedure. I also asked about taking the frag back for something else from one of their other tanks and was told that the best that they can do is 50% credit for it since they didn't know if it'll survive. I told them to inspect the brown colonies in the raceway and switch the dipping to twice a week instead due to the life cycle and then got off the phone with them a couple of minutes afterwards. Since I already have the piece in my possession, I decided to place the frag into the 3.5 gallon tank that I had sitting around. The frag was unmounted from the disk, inspected under 4x magnification to see if there were any flatworms or eggs present and then mounted on a marinepure sphere. Flow was provided by an AC70 and a LED fixture was placed over it. Frag bleached within the next two days and after a week in the QT, it got moved into the DT as a skeleton. That was 5 days ago and I would have chucked it by now, but as you can see there are hints of tiny polyp tips at the corallites. Here it is this morning. Polyps are still definitely alive and while the frag is fully bleached, there's a very thin layer of tissue over the skeleton. It's managed to keep algae from growing on its skeleton so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that it makes it. 1 Quote Link to comment
Lingwendil Posted July 24, 2017 Share Posted July 24, 2017 Good looking setup, lots of Acro! That's a nasty looking flatworm. Hey, bay area huh? I live over in Oakley, and other than Brentwood reef supply and Diablo corals I don't make it to many shops that often. You think it's worth the trip out to the Hayward/Newark are to check out Cali reef and Aquatic collection? Any other shops you can recommend I check out? I work in Mountain View and San Francisco so don't mind a bit of a drive, or checking out a few shops after work... Quote Link to comment
Ebn Posted July 24, 2017 Author Share Posted July 24, 2017 13 hours ago, Lingwendil said: Good looking setup, lots of Acro! That's a nasty looking flatworm. Hey, bay area huh? I live over in Oakley, and other than Brentwood reef supply and Diablo corals I don't make it to many shops that often. You think it's worth the trip out to the Hayward/Newark are to check out Cali reef and Aquatic collection? Any other shops you can recommend I check out? I work in Mountain View and San Francisco so don't mind a bit of a drive, or checking out a few shops after work... Definitely worth checking out if those are the only two that you frequent (I've been to Brentwood before and I've seen Jess' stock from Diablo when he was at CFM). CaliReef is where the flatworm came from so I'd be cautious about picking something up from them. Just make sure that whatever you do pick up that you verify that it has colors and then obviously inspect and dip once you get home (dip everything from any foreign tanks). Aquatic Collection probably has the best fish selection out of all the shops (gem tangs, koi tangs, candy basslets, etc.) and there are some decent wild corals that they bring in weekly. Legendary Corals actually goes through AC's tank and cherry picks from them. I'm actually working on coloring up one of AC's wild tenuis colony at the moment. Lastly, if you don't mind driving a bit further down, then check out Neptune Aquatics. It's near the exit off 880 and they have the best display tanks in the area as well as a nice collection of frags. 1 Quote Link to comment
Christopher Marks Posted July 24, 2017 Share Posted July 24, 2017 Nice work nursing it back to health, I bet it will survive! It's fighting off algae growth and the polyps are promising. Great shot of the flatworm too, little devil. Quote Link to comment
Ebn Posted August 3, 2017 Author Share Posted August 3, 2017 It's slowly regaining its zooanthellae. This shot was from the 29th, which was a few days ago. It's slowly recovering and no longer white. I lost my golden dwarf moray after owning it for a bit over a year. Came in at a hefty 11" and stopped eating about a week ago. It was on its backside and getting blown around by the current with very shallow breathing. I pulled it out and euthanized it in the freezer before it had to suffer any more. Silversides will no longer be fed in the tank since I don't plan on picking up another. Speaking of food, here's what goes into the tank daily. Also, noticed that I didn't provide an update on the chaeto reactor. It works well as you can see the amount of growth in the chaeto after my last reset on the 22nd. 2 Quote Link to comment
Christopher Marks Posted August 3, 2017 Share Posted August 3, 2017 Sorry to hear about the moray eel @Ebn That's good progress on the SPS frag though! I'm looking forward to your mid August SPS frag growth update 1 Quote Link to comment
Ebn Posted August 7, 2017 Author Share Posted August 7, 2017 Kind of a cool shot taken earlier today. This is the base of the RR pink floyd. You can see the white mesenterial filaments on the edge there as it clears the coralline algae for the encrusting edge. 1 Quote Link to comment
Ebn Posted August 13, 2017 Author Share Posted August 13, 2017 Not a lot of actual growth as far as visible from the pics. It's more along the lines of thickening on lots of the frags and tiering on the mini colonies. Quote Link to comment
Ebn Posted August 15, 2017 Author Share Posted August 15, 2017 Stunners under RB only. The confetti needs to grow out to truly show its colors. Quote Link to comment
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.