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J-Ranko's IM Drop-Off Panorama 20g - new pics


J-Ranko

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1 hour ago, Militant Jurist said:

That deep-ish turbinaria looks like it will be awesome! Rescue corals/frags are some of my favorite success stories in the hobby.

 

After reading some more into this species, it seems the few who've kept one observed slow growth rates.  Oh well, I'll be happy to see it grow by any amount. :)

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Militant Jurist
1 hour ago, J-Ranko said:

 

After reading some more into this species, it seems the few who've kept one observed slow growth rates.  Oh well, I'll be happy to see it grow by any amount. :)

Sounds like a challenge to me. ;)

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Whoa!  Just stumbled on a picture of these red elegance corals. 

 

red-elegance-coral-1.jpg

 

Too bad they're collected from Indonesia, so I don't imagine there's any chance of long-term survival in captivity. 

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Bella's Reef

Just curious as to how you fit the Sicce 1.5 in the middle chamber. It seems like a super tight fit and would maybe have to remove the adjustment flow part.

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5 hours ago, Bella's Reef said:

Just curious as to how you fit the Sicce 1.5 in the middle chamber. It seems like a super tight fit and would maybe have to remove the adjustment flow part.

 

That's exactly what I did. Luckily it comes off easy.  :) 

 

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Tonight I came home from my LFS with this pretty thing. A rock flower anemone with red tentacles and teal blue disk, with some striking stripes and dots pattern.  He opened up fairly quickly in the back corner of my tank.

 

nem2.jpg

 

Not sure about placement and I know he's gonna move, so for now he'll stay in the corner. 

 

 

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8 minutes ago, Lula_Mae said:

Nice find!  That RFA is gorgeous!

 

Thanks.  I hope I can find it spot it will stick to long-term. :happy:

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hedgeclipper2
Just now, J-Ranko said:

 

Thanks.  I hope I can find it spot it will stick to long-term. :happy:

What are the feeding requirements of RFAs?  I am quasi interested in one as well.

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3 minutes ago, hedgeclipper2 said:

What are the feeding requirements of RFAs?  I am quasi interested in one as well.

 

Nothing special from what I've read.  Any small-medium meaty stuff like mysis will do.

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34 minutes ago, Militant Jurist said:

Wow that's a great looking RFA! I don't know that I've seen that coloration before.

 

My LFS had dozens of them, all different variety too so it took a while to pick one out.  In some specimens the disk was red and the tentacles were green or a lighter color; in others the disk was yellow/green.  Heck, I might get a second one to complement this.  

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1 hour ago, teenyreef said:

Doooooooo itttttttttt! You can't stop with just one :D

 

LOL. I want to, but I should wait until this guy settles down.  One roaming nem is enough anxiety for me.

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8 hours ago, J-Ranko said:

Tonight I came home from my LFS with this pretty thing. A rock flower anemone with red tentacles and teal blue disk, with some striking stripes and dots pattern.  He opened up fairly quickly in the back corner of my tank.

 

nem2.jpg

 

Not sure about placement and I know he's gonna move, so for now he'll stay in the corner. 

 

 

 

 

Oooh, very nice!!

My RFA is one of my favorite things in my tank right now, has been super easy to care for from the start.

I feed mine frozen Mysis. 

With mine, I placed it on top of a very small piece of LR in a cup overnight in the tank. 

It attached to that overnight and has stayed on it since I've put it in the tank. Mine hasn't moved from that rock in the 3 weeks or so I've had it. 

I almost got one in the same coloration as yours, but I settle one one with a yellowish green disc and orange tentacles. 

I definitely plan on getting at least one more cause I've really loved the one I have. 

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9 hours ago, J-Ranko said:

 

LOL. I want to, but I should wait until this guy settles down.  One roaming nem is enough anxiety for me.

That's probably smart. I've never had much luck with anemones so I live vicariously  through others :lol:

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5 hours ago, Weetabix7 said:

 

 

Oooh, very nice!!

My RFA is one of my favorite things in my tank right now, has been super easy to care for from the start.

I feed mine frozen Mysis. 

With mine, I placed it on top of a very small piece of LR in a cup overnight in the tank. 

It attached to that overnight and has stayed on it since I've put it in the tank. Mine hasn't moved from that rock in the 3 weeks or so I've had it. 

I almost got one in the same coloration as yours, but I settle one one with a yellowish green disc and orange tentacles. 

I definitely plan on getting at least one more cause I've really loved the one I have. 

 

Last night after the lights were off, I noticed it started to wander off its rock, so before it started climbing the back wall or roaming the bare bottom, I put it in a cup like yours.  I hope it settles back onto the small rock it came with and then I can place it somewhere on the rock work.  My LFS had several RFAs with yellow green discs that I liked, but I had to pick one so I got this.  

 

1 hour ago, teenyreef said:

That's probably smart. I've never had much luck with anemones so I live vicariously  through others :lol:

 

RFAs are supposed to be easier than those larger ones like bubble tip anemones that clowns like to host on.   But they are still nems so they wander around and bother other corals and can get stung by more aggressive LPS too.

 

My elegance coral and the scolymia both have fairly potent stings, and I've read of some cases where the anemone loses out against those two kinds of LPS.  So that's really my biggest worry.

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Some more updates.

 

1.  FTS 3-11-2017, my new RFA is in solitary confinement in that plastic cup in the back corner. :)  He'll be released once I figure out the best placement.

FTS_03112017.jpg

 

2. Some good and bad news. My green acropora with purple tips STN'ed so slowly I hardly noticed it until it got higher up the base. However, after taking it off the plug and fragging off the base, it seems to have stopped.  The polyps are also showing better extension now.  The frag plug used to sit on that purple putty on the rock.

tricolo_acro_3112017.jpg

 

3. My LPS on the upper shelf, with the RFA in the "jail" cup. You can see my orange dendro partially out, too.

LPS_3112017.jpg

 

4. The turbinaria heronensis frag I added last week is showing better polyp extension and so far seems to be stable.  All signs good so far. 

turbinaria_3112017.jpg

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47 minutes ago, J-Ranko said:

Some more updates.

 

1.  FTS 3-11-2017, my new RFA is in solitary confinement in that plastic cup in the back corner. :)  He'll be released once I figure out the best placement.

FTS_03112017.jpg

 

2. Some good and bad news. My green acropora with purple tips STN'ed so slowly I hardly noticed it until it got higher up the base. However, after taking it off the plug and fragging off the base, it seems to have stopped.  The polyps are also showing better extension now.  The frag plug used to sit on that purple putty on the rock.

tricolo_acro_3112017.jpg

 

3. My LPS on the upper shelf, with the RFA in the "jail" cup. You can see my orange dendro partially out, too.

LPS_3112017.jpg

 

4. The turbinaria heronensis frag I added last week is showing better polyp extension and so far seems to be stable.  All signs good so far. 

turbinaria_3112017.jpg

 

This is looking soooo good. 

Hope you get things straightened out with the Acro. 

That Turbinaria is looking good. 

I really like the way you have the Gorgonian in here, it looks perfect in that spot. 

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27 minutes ago, Weetabix7 said:

 

This is looking soooo good. 

Hope you get things straightened out with the Acro. 

That Turbinaria is looking good. 

I really like the way you have the Gorgonian in here, it looks perfect in that spot. 

 

Thanks!  This acro was experimental to see if my lighting and water conditions might be good enough for these finicky corals. I guess not quite yet.  No big deal, though, I'm pretty happy with LPS and easier SPS pieces. 

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Militant Jurist
1 hour ago, J-Ranko said:

 

Thanks!  This acro was experimental to see if my lighting and water conditions might be good enough for these finicky corals. I guess not quite yet.  No big deal, though, I'm pretty happy with LPS and easier SPS pieces. 

Sometimes dipping a toe in the water with an experimental frag is the best way to know for sure if your tank is ready for the next step. Obviously, it has the be done only when appropriate, which you certainly did. Any idea on what the culprit might be?

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9 minutes ago, Militant Jurist said:

Sometimes dipping a toe in the water with an experimental frag is the best way to know for sure if your tank is ready for the next step. Obviously, it has the be done only when appropriate, which you certainly did. Any idea on what the culprit might be?

 

I've been testing my parameters frequently using two different test kits, and I can't pinpoint anything in particular, other than maybe my Alk.  I've not been dosing Alk, only monitoring it so far, but my test kits (API and Red Sea) disagree a bit on this parameter.  My API tests on the high end (10-11 dKH) and the Red Sea is telling me it's more 8.4 dKH.  They agree perfectly on Calcium, though.  All my other corals are not affected, but then it's the only acropora in the tank.  I've been thinking about getting another Alk test kit like the Hanna checker.  

 

Phosphates is a possibility. I don't have an algae problem and it's undetectable by my crude test kit, but it's precision is only 0.25 ppm, which is too high apparently because the ideal value is 0.03 ppm and below.  Nitrates are not likely a factor, as it's measuring < 5 ppm, and that's actually where it should be (closer to 5 ppm than 0 ppm is ideal for coloration).

 

The other major factor besides Alk and phosphates could be my lighting.  Moving an acropora frag to lower lighting should generally result in browning, but I suppose STN is also possible consequence.  The LFS tank it was originally in was a shallow tank lit by a large T5 fixture, so it was likely getting 500+ PAR.

 

 

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Polarcollision

I'd put money on the valida needing more light. Or an Alk swing. One of those two is usually what browns out my acros. HTH

 

On 2/23/2017 at 10:54 PM, J-Ranko said:

My elegance coral being its elegant self:

 

elegance.jpg

Supermodel. Always wanted one of these. I'm going to covet yours. How fast do they grow/how big do they get?

 

 

On 3/6/2017 at 10:27 PM, J-Ranko said:

Whoa!  Just stumbled on a picture of these red elegance corals. 

 

red-elegance-coral-1.jpg

 

Too bad they're collected from Indonesia, so I don't imagine there's any chance of long-term survival in captivity. 

Ohhh! Very pretty find. I hadn't known that before. What is it about indonesian corals than makes it hard to survive long term?

 

 

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Looking great! It's a promising sign that the frag of the frag is surviving so far.

 

I'd trust the Red Sea alk results over the API, but whichever one is right, you're still within acceptable levels. In general it's better to have lower alk with a low nutrient system, but it's even more important for it to be solid, not swinging up or down. The most aggravating thing about acros is they usually don't die until a few weeks after whatever made them mad, so it's hard to determine cause and effect.

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1 hour ago, Polarcollision said:

I'd put money on the valida needing more light. Or an Alk swing. One of those two is usually what browns out my acros. HTH

 

Supermodel. Always wanted one of these. I'm going to covet yours. How fast do they grow/how big do they get?

 

 

Ohhh! Very pretty find. I hadn't known that before. What is it about indonesian corals than makes it hard to survive long term?

 

 

 

Light and alk are my main suspects, too.  Insufficient lighting is expensive to remedy, though.  I will try ramping it up gradually first, before dropping $$ for serious lighting. Besides, the more acro-friendly I make the tank, the more I could end up making my LPS and softies unhappy.

 

When I first got the elegance coral I didn't pay much attention to or measure its skeleton, which is how you can tell how much it grows.  I would say it has grown roughly 25% more in skeletal mass since I got it 10 months ago.  They can get very big, like the large anemones. 

 

Most elegance corals are collected from Indonesia, and their track record of long-term survival has gone to near zero in roughly the last two decades.  It seems to be a combination of poor collection methods and deeper collection depths. They're normally a very hardy coral, but the more recent ones collected from Indonesia perish very quickly in captivity.

 

There are Australian specimens that have a much better survival rate, and this one I have is an Aussie variety. Of course, they're not as abundant in the trade, because of stricter regulations on collection from Australia.

 

1 hour ago, teenyreef said:

Looking great! It's a promising sign that the frag of the frag is surviving so far.

 

I'd trust the Red Sea alk results over the API, but whichever one is right, you're still within acceptable levels. In general it's better to have lower alk with a low nutrient system, but it's even more important for it to be solid, not swinging up or down. The most aggravating thing about acros is they usually don't die until a few weeks after whatever made them mad, so it's hard to determine cause and effect.

 

I've been assuming it's somewhere between the two measurement results, so about 9 dKH. I think my next step is to dose an Alk/Ca supplement, instead of just relying on frequent water changes.

 

In the past I've only tried acros briefly and had decent growth under a Metal Halide fixture, but then things quickly went south after a frag got AEFW. Haven't had much experience tweaking parameters to optimize acropora growth and color.

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