Polarcollision's Nuvo 24: March FTS

[Polarcollision]

All clean! First time the glass has been completely clean in months! The bones of the scape are in, frags and rubble are littered everywhere until I'm sure every single baby aptasia is dead, dead, dead.

 

Here's another short video of all but the yellow watchman. Sorry about the iPhone potato...

 

[markalot]

Looks good, and still looks mature even though a lot of rock was removed.

[Polarcollision]

It's been a while since I updated. I almost won the aptasia battle by replacing rockwork. BUT a few spawn--what do you call aptasia 'seeds' anyway?--made it into the tank. Every month or so there's a new crop of pinhead size aptasia to kill off. I think I see a few mature aptasia living in the back chambers that spawn from time to time. Anyway, it's making me super weary. I haven't wanted to glue down acro or zoas permanently in case they have to be moved to kill off another aptasia. Which means the tank isn't even able to be scaped or allowed to mature.

 

So, I broke down and bought 3 pepermint shrimp today. They're from the carribean. Two went in the display side, one went into the back chamber. Wish them luck. about 7 years ago I fought this same battle in my very first tank. Peppermint shrimp mostly made them spawn until they covered every single free space in the rocks. This time though, there aren't any large aptasia. Hopefully that means the shrimp will eat them before they can overtake everything.

 

If you're reading this far, I'll give fair warning to anyone else placing a rainbow poccilopora next to a birdsnest: it is a really, really bad idea. They grew into each other, but rather than killing each other off at the battle line, they ended up 100% nuking each other. poof! took 2 days and they were gone. Not crying too much over the 2 years of stylophora growth, I could never get it to fully color up. But the green bird was my baby, one of my favorite corals. That one I'm crying over. Plus, it sheltered one of the little trimma gobies.

 

Some good news now! Bought 3 emerald crabs to munch on bubble algae that's taken over all exposed rockwork. They're really making progress and it's only been a few hours. Yay!

 

While at the LSF, I happened to see a wild brownish acro that shows promise of becoming a yellow base with pink tips. Plus! It came with a little reddish acro crab!!! How cool is that! I took it out of it's acro while it was dipped so it's got it's pinchers at the ready in this pic.

 

Saltwater City in Redmond/Bellevue is really turning around. They're able to get in just about any fish I ask for, plus they still treat them for about a week before selling. They were able to find a yellowtail fang blenny! What a cool fish! It's fearless and goofy like a tailspot blenny. My phone just died taking it's picture so here's one from the web.

[vlangel]

Sorry about your birds nest, its always tough to lose a favorite. Good luck with the war on aiptasia and bubble algae!

[ninjamyst]

I am having a bubble algae outbreak and considering either emerald crabs or rabbit....hope yours do good!

[Polarcollision]

Sorry about your birds nest, its always tough to lose a favorite. Good luck with the war on aiptasia and bubble algae!

It should be easy enough to track down another frag. It grows so fast, someone around here needs to get rid of some. :-)

 

I am having a bubble algae outbreak and considering either emerald crabs or rabbit....hope yours do good!

So the emerald crab idea was solid. They're cleaning house! LFS says the larger ones are more likely to eat bubble.

 

Aptasia still in the house, no shrimp to be found. Did my fairy wrasse eat them while I was at work? Are they excellent hiders? Did my extreme dislike of shrimp warp the fabric of space, sending them to another dimension?

[Polarcollision]

Nighttime on the reef. The first acro is a maricultured brown turd that has potential to become a strawberry shortcake. It came with a crab. A few of the newer additions. trimma tevegae shares Joe the Coral with an acro crab. Looking for a fish with miles of personality, try a forktail fang blenny. Not only does she wear the most dramatic mascara of all the fishes, but she is happy-go-lucky and also likes to sleep suctioned to the glass curve.

 

[Polarcollision]

Tonight is the first time in 2+ years that I cannot find a single aptasia in the tank. Credit to the peppermint shrimp for taking out the last holdouts.

 

Do I celebrate now, or later-- just in case there's a crop of baby aptasia ready to spring up? Sooooooo ready to finally scape and glue down corals.

 

Emeralds have eaten about a quarter of the bubbles.

 

AND I fixed the skimmer. It's blowing foam again! :-)

[teenyreef]

Tonight is the first time in 2+ years that I cannot find a single aptasia in the tank. Credit to the peppermint shrimp for taking out the last holdouts.

 

Do I celebrate now, or later-- just in case there's a crop of baby aptasia ready to spring up? Sooooooo ready to finally scape and glue down corals.

 

Emeralds have eaten about a quarter of the bubbles.

 

AND I fixed the skimmer. It's blowing foam again! :-)

Woo hoo!

[Polarcollision]

Woo hoo!

 

Wooooo hoooo!!!! Feels so good

 

(please, please, please let all the aptasia be gone)

[FlowerMama]

That's a an excellent short read right there. Aptasia not visibly seen, plus that you have the right peppermints eating it, and your bubble algae gone by 3/4, nice to read posts like that!!!

[Polarcollision]

That's a an excellent short read right there. Aptasia not visibly seen, plus that you have the right peppermints eating it, and your bubble algae gone by 3/4, nice to read posts like that!!!

I've been burned before thinking it was all gone, but I'm partying now anyway. Have TUES and WED off with plans to SCAPE!!! Oh yeah. Awkward/ugly tank phase might be ending soon! Yah!!

[Polarcollision]

Spent last night scaping and gluing down frags littered on the sand and frag rack. I love the potential of this new scape! The mistake I made before was creating a long tube of rock, which limited the horizontal surface area. It also limited fish hiding places. This time I bought a bunch of long skinny rocks that I glued together to make small collarbones, caves, and overhangs.

 

They're also staggered height-wise to give the illusion of a deeper reef. It also maximizes views of each coral without looking like a rock wall/slope. The other change I plan to make is filling in some of the sand with flat rock so that zoas, rics, encrusting corals, and pipe organ can spread out. Picture a japanese garden with moses, rocks and patches of sand. That's the inspiration.

 

I really struggled with the zoa garden in the last tank. Some zoas just grow faster (I'm looking at you pink zippers) and shade out smaller zoas (miss you, rastas). This time palys will have their own garden on the sand and zoas will have their separate garden in the rockwork.

 

When I moved rock to scape, I found a teenager aptasia. It's not showing itself this morning though. crossing fingers the shrimp feasted last night.

[vlangel]

When do we get a glimpse of this new scape?

[teenyreef]

I'm glad things are going well now! Having time to rescape must feel really good after all the stress you've been through with pets and family

[FlowerMama]

Sounds awesome!!! Looking forward to your Japanese inspired garden!

[Polarcollision]

Well, scape is not completely finished yet but I made a little video tonight to share. Kinda have to live with it for a week or so as things get fine tuned. I know <sarcasm> it's not typical Deborah </sarcasm> but I just might have too many types of corals to fit in the scape. Anyway, the right side rockwork is finished. SPS are mostly where I want them. I think. The orange forest fire digi might move. And there's still rockwork overrun with bubble algae so I havent glued down all the zoa frags until emerald crabs have cleaned house. No need to teach them to eat zoas. I helped them out yesterday by removing over 1 cup of bubbles. ugh.

 

The left side of the scape is still just a bunch of piled rock and the giant chalice that needs to be fragged and sent to new homes. Any takers?

 

Nighttime on the reef. It's just an iphone video so recommend watching full screen to see all the nooks and crannies fish pop out of. They're very peaceful now. Pretty sure they feel more secure from Jasper jumping at the tank.

 

 

 

 

Also, since I'm a zoa fanatic, I wanted to share the stars of the future zoa gardens.

 

SunnyDs and their very happy clownfish

 

Pink zippers and mindblowing paly

 

Seduction

 

Name? like LALakers but yellow

 

Dragon eyes and the prettiest green zoas ever

 

Blonde Blue-eyed B****s and a small peach speckled pinwheel zoa.

 

Classic red hornets

 

Magicians who were just walked on by the crab, so you'll have to use your imagination

 

Another classic Tubbs blue

 

Unknown. Big like seduction and salted agave but orange w/ green skirt.

 

Tangerines

 

Laser lemons. Sorry about the glass diffraction.

 

Utter chaos and fire&ice

 

King midas

 

 

Not pictured are new rasta frag! yay! Mary Janes, and something like goblin's fire.

[Polarcollision]

Daytime on the reef!

 

 

http://i.imgur.com/ZM2wQlw.jpg

[vlangel]

Ha ha, daytime on the reef is a lot louder than night time on the reef!

[FlowerMama]

Your colors on your zoas, pretty!!!!!

[Polarcollision]

Ha ha, daytime on the reef is a lot louder than night time on the reef!

As it should be. :-)

 

Your colors on your zoas, pretty!!!!!

looorve me some colors!

[Narzyzz_12]

I feel your pain i've been trying to keep my darn aptasia on check, but they just seem to pop out of nowhere. I have used the Red Sea paste, epoxy and recently even taking the rock out and super gluing them, but somehow life finds a way and they mimic the Lernaean Hydra.Your zoa garden is going to be gorgeous can't wait to see it fill out.When you frag your chalice put me down on the list.

[Polarcollision]

I feel your pain i've been trying to keep my darn aptasia on check, but they just seem to pop out of nowhere. I have used the Red Sea paste, epoxy and recently even taking the rock out and super gluing them, but somehow life finds a way and they mimic the Lernaean Hydra.Your zoa garden is going to be gorgeous can't wait to see it fill out.When you frag your chalice put me down on the list.

Yep. They just grow around the glues and epoxy. Aptasia-x kills 1 in 10. The rest come back in a week or so and most of them spawn in fear of death, which means a few weeks later there are 30 more tiny ones everywhere. I tried lemon juice injections, kalk injections, vinegar and salt injections, boiling water works if they're smaller than a pencil eraser. Replacing the rock made the most difference. The ones that popped up afterward, I used bone cutters to nip out the rock they were attached to... at first I tried to save zoas if aptasia grew among them, but eventually I'd just sacrifice half a colony just to cut out any remaining cells... for 3 months this went on. For a while they were confined to zoas I'd fragged from the old scape and left on the sand. But I think aptasia are growing in the back chamber and spawning from there because little ones would start showing up on the new rock work. Can't get nudis because of the wrasses, so I bought 3 peppermint shrimp from Florida. One is in the back chamber and two are in the display side. I only know of the one aptasia in the display ATM. Didn't see it today... fingers crossed. Though I'm not calling it a success until there are no aptasia for another 45 days.

 

Sorry about the rant. Aptasia are more difficult than Dino's to eradicate in my experience. Worst thing ever.

 

Try an army of peppermint shrimp--the Caribbean species. 5 or so per 25 gallons if your problem is bad. Don't feed the tank for 3-5 days after getting them in so they're hungry. Sure hope you have some luck killing every last one.

 

Thanks! I've seen some gorgeous zoa gardens and just have to do it too! I have 25 varieties ATM and our local frag swap is on 2/20. Things should start to fill in by 6 months. Can't wait!

 

You're on the chalice frag list. PM your zip code for shipping estimate. It will have to go overnight.

[Polarcollision]

More coral for the new scape! A neighbor likes to buy fancy pants corals for hundreds of dollars per frag and then sell them (to me) for $5 for an itty bitty pinky-nail size frag. I dropped by tonight to add to the zoa collection. Replaced a few that I'd lost along the way in the aptasia battle.

 

Not sure what happened, but I fell in love with favias tonight and bought 3. Where am I going to put them??? Oh. Right. They're pinky sized boogers. It will be months before size is an issue. Whew!

 

[teenyreef]

Nice corals! I'd like to have neighbors like yours!

 

The favia looks a lot like the Reefgen Poinsettia favia I have:

 

RG Poinsettia Favia by TeenyReef, on Flickr

Here's a better picture from the Reefgen site: