Lula Mae's Sooper Sekret, just for fun, experimental GSP garden

[GregEmmitte]

Following

[Lula_Mae]

20 hours ago, Mariaface said:

Following!   

Yay!

12 hours ago, Thunder Goose said:

Got my branching GSP from https://www.archetypeaquariums.com/. It's listed under "new arrivals,"  their website hasn't been updated regularly (the owner emailed me and apologized - some sort of crisis [storm damage, I think] caused major damage to the facility but I was still able to get this one and it looked really nice!). Mine's not big enough to frag yet or I'd be happy to share.

 

I had some PSP - the purple only shows up when the polyps are closed. Otherwise it's tan. Yawn. It may look ok if you have it mixed with other GSPs.

Ah, I've seen it on ebay too but I don't really want to pay for overnight shipping on a single frag or two lol.  I think it depends on the PSP, just like with GSP, there's likely different shades of it.

11 hours ago, cfaye@Delaware said:

Yep I'm here. Glad you chose a 3g, you will give me some excellent ideas and help along the way.....will be following. 

Well, I think it more chose me than anything, but thanks for the follow!

8 hours ago, GregEmmitte said:

Following

[teenyreef]

15 hours ago, Thunder Goose said:

Got my branching GSP from https://www.archetypeaquariums.com/. It's listed under "new arrivals,"  their website hasn't been updated regularly (the owner emailed me and apologized - some sort of crisis [storm damage, I think] caused major damage to the facility but I was still able to get this one and it looked really nice!). Mine's not big enough to frag yet or I'd be happy to share.

 

I had some PSP - the purple only shows up when the polyps are closed. Otherwise it's tan. Yawn. It may look ok if you have it mixed with other GSPs.

I know the owner, he lives in my area and is a great guy. He had to shut down for a while when his house was flooded in a storm due to a sewage line backing up when the city pump station lost power. He literally had to find people to take all his corals within hours after it happened,and he couldn't start up again until his house was pretty much rebuilt from the inside out. 

 

He runs the annual reef show here, MAMAS, and all the proceeds from the show go to various reefing conservation charities. 

 

I've always wanted some branching gsp, I'll probably see if I can get some from him. If you want to try to do some kind of coral swap maybe I could get one for you too!

[Thunder Goose]

8 hours ago, teenyreef said:

I know the owner, he lives in my area and is a great guy. He had to shut down for a while when his house was flooded in a storm due to a sewage line backing up when the city pump station lost power. He literally had to find people to take all his corals within hours after it happened,and he couldn't start up again until his house was pretty much rebuilt from the inside out. 

 

He runs the annual reef show here, MAMAS, and all the proceeds from the show go to various reefing conservation charities. 

 

I've always wanted some branching gsp, I'll probably see if I can get some from him. If you want to try to do some kind of coral swap maybe I could get one for you too!

I really hope he manages to recover the business - a lot of the corals on his site are ones I haven't seen elsewhere and lust after!

[Minidoll]

Following! 

[Lula_Mae]

17 hours ago, teenyreef said:

I know the owner, he lives in my area and is a great guy. He had to shut down for a while when his house was flooded in a storm due to a sewage line backing up when the city pump station lost power. He literally had to find people to take all his corals within hours after it happened,and he couldn't start up again until his house was pretty much rebuilt from the inside out. 

 

He runs the annual reef show here, MAMAS, and all the proceeds from the show go to various reefing conservation charities. 

 

I've always wanted some branching gsp, I'll probably see if I can get some from him. If you want to try to do some kind of coral swap maybe I could get one for you too!

Ooooh that stinks!  What a mess that would've been!  I may be interested, I've got a couple messages out to members so if I don't get any bites, maybe so!  I don't have much to swap just yet though lol.

 

8 hours ago, Thunder Goose said:

I really hope he manages to recover the business - a lot of the corals on his site are ones I haven't seen elsewhere and lust after!

I hope he can too, that's really rough.

 

7 hours ago, Minidoll said:

Following! 

[Lula_Mae]

I got two GSP frags, some C. barbata macro and some dragon's breath macro from @Weetabix7, and another GSP frag from @schgr.cube at the end of last week.  They've been slowly opening up and starting to perk up and look somewhat happy.  The hicksomella sp. gorgonian has nice polyp extension but the Grube's gorgonian is being shy, I suppose, as it's still not putting polyps out.  Both gorgs seemed to need to shed after arrival so I gently helped them out, hoping I wasn't going to cause issues lol.  The red sponge seems to be ok as well.  I've still got the 7w Reef Radiance light from my little pico over this as I had to put the light I was going to use back on my 5.5 for now.  I've also decided that the airline alone does not seem to be adequate for gorgonians which need to shed so I've ordered a Penguin Biowheel 150 filter to get some flow in here.  I chose it because it was $13 and change instead of $32 for the Aquaclear 30 which was my other choice lol.  I may add a powerhead too but the filter should allow me to get the bulky heater out of the tank.  Also realized the salinity was somehow 1.028 so I've been slowly diluting that.   Got a couple more things coming this week.

 

The frags on the left are from Weetie and the one on the right is from schgr.cube. Dragon's breath is on the left.

 

Sort of FTS, on the right you can see the big rubble pieces I tossed in just in case I have to isolate the hermit I wound up with in my 5.5 (since my two ceriths turned out to be one cerith and one hermit lol).

 

[schgr.cube]

Yayyy! Mine looks happy as can be already. Can't wait to see what else you get for this.

[Kerber13]

What an awesome idea! Definitely following along. Cant wait until this tank is absolutely covered in GSP, it'll be so cool to see the different kinds growing alongside each other! 

[Lula_Mae]

5 hours ago, schgr.cube said:

Yayyy! Mine looks happy as can be already. Can't wait to see what else you get for this.

It does look happy!  Need to find a spot for mounting it but I think I'll wait till I've got some more of my frags in place.  There's a couple that'll be coming from the 5.5 too after it's been semi-fallow a few more weeks.

 

4 minutes ago, Kerber13 said:

What an awesome idea! Definitely following along. Cant wait until this tank is absolutely covered in GSP, it'll be so cool to see the different kinds growing alongside each other! 

Thanks!  I hope it turns out as nicely as I want it to, I thought it would be a fun idea to play around with.

[Weetabix7]

27 minutes ago, Kerber13 said:

What an awesome idea! Definitely following along. Cant wait until this tank is absolutely covered in GSP, it'll be so cool to see the different kinds growing alongside each other! 

 

I completely agree!!!

I like the look of the C. Barbata with the Gorgonians and hope the Dragon's Breath finally decides to cooperate with you. 

Have you thought about getting something with a unique shape to get the GSP to grow over?

That might be fun to play with.

[Lula_Mae]

5 minutes ago, Weetabix7 said:

 

I completely agree!!!

I like the look of the C. Barbata with the Gorgonians and hope the Dragon's Breath finally decides to cooperate with you. 

Have you thought about getting something with a unique shape to get the GSP to grow over?

That might be fun to play with.

Me too, this is the fourth time I've tried so finger's crossed the dragon's breath likes it here!  I hadn't thought about it but that would be kind of fun.  I may keep it simple though since this will likely be absorbed into my bigger tank when it gets put together.

[gena]

Once you get a good amount of flow in there, the gorgonians should open up .

[Lula_Mae]

5 minutes ago, gena said:

Once you get a good amount of flow in there, the gorgonians should open up .

Oh, good.  The Biowheel just arrived so I'm off to rinse it so it can go on the tank later!

[Lula_Mae]

Diatoms!  We have diatoms!  And some new goodies. @SeaFurn send me a few teensy pieces of the GSP from his pico vase reef, which sadly broke into smaller pieces in transit.  I've glued them to a piece of rubble and fingers crossed they wake up and come out to play!  Side note, I'd put a note in the mailbox asking the mailman not to leave the package in the mailbox but put it on the porch in the shade so it wouldn't get damaged.  Good thing I woke up early as the note was gone and the box in the mailbox. I also ordered a few things from ebay, I placed the order for a striped green mushroom but of course it went MIA when the guy went to bag it up.  After some back and forth, he sent a pretty blue-green ricordea in its stead, and also sent the "green goblin" mushroom that was a hitchhiker on the original mushroom's frag plug.  I also got a frag of pink cabbage leather, and a cool red-purple-blue speckled macro that I think would look rad under a better light.  Thankfully, this package was too big for the mailbox, but it was on the porch...upside down.

 

I'm concerned about the Grube's gorgonian.  It still hasn't put polyps out and algae has grown on parts (well, diatoms anyway).  I gently rubbed the algae off, but then a couple of branches were spewing brown stuff that looked like stomatella spawning but it was brown and coming from the tip of the branch.   I've put it directly in the path of flow from the Biowheel filter so hopefully it'll be ok.  Speaking of which, the Biowheel was making splashes everywhere so it's come out (was thinking to leave it in for a bit to give some nitrates for the macros but no more!).  I also glued down @schgr.cube's GSP since it didn't appreciate its tumble around the tank when I put the filter on lol.  Also, the photosynthetic sponge is not doing well.  I've moved it into the big tank since the purple one is happy there and hopefully it will recover, but it's lost most of its color and is going transparent in spots.   My guess is that it was exposed to air when being packaged, as I was very careful not to do so. @thespinningsadhu lost his as well, though much more quickly.

 

Some pics!

The "green goblin" mushroom and Weetie's diatom covered GSP (after this pic I brushed them off and made them very mad lol).

 

Pink cabbage leather and ric:

 

The macro (which has a few holes in it---maybe from where it was attached to its rubble that it detached itself from) and schgr.cube's GSP:

 

Grube's spewing brown stuff from the two left branches:

 

FTS before I moved stuff around and made it all mad:

 

Photosynthetic sponge in the big tank.  You can see how much color it's lost.

 

[fishfreak0114]

It's looking good in there!  I hope the grube's gets happy.  I haven't had any luck with gorgonians, but I do love them.  I can't wait to see all the different GSP as they start to grow!

[schgr.cube]

Ugh oh, I hope the sponge recovers... tank is looking good so far though!!

[gena]

I don't see the brown spewing stuff, but the gorgonian still looks fine. 

[blizzardscout2]

Looking good! I'm sure the sponge will turn around. It will be interesting to see what you end up with in GSP. 

[Weetabix7]

8 hours ago, Lula_Mae said:

Diatoms!  We have diatoms!  And some new goodies. @SeaFurn send me a few teensy pieces of the GSP from his pico vase reef, which sadly broke into smaller pieces in transit.  I've glued them to a piece of rubble and fingers crossed they wake up and come out to play!  Side note, I'd put a note in the mailbox asking the mailman not to leave the package in the mailbox but put it on the porch in the shade so it wouldn't get damaged.  Good thing I woke up early as the note was gone and the box in the mailbox. I also ordered a few things from ebay, I placed the order for a striped green mushroom but of course it went MIA when the guy went to bag it up.  After some back and forth, he sent a pretty blue-green ricordea in its stead, and also sent the "green goblin" mushroom that was a hitchhiker on the original mushroom's frag plug.  I also got a frag of pink cabbage leather, and a cool red-purple-blue speckled macro that I think would look rad under a better light.  Thankfully, this package was too big for the mailbox, but it was on the porch...upside down.

 

I'm concerned about the Grube's gorgonian.  It still hasn't put polyps out and algae has grown on parts (well, diatoms anyway).  I gently rubbed the algae off, but then a couple of branches were spewing brown stuff that looked like stomatella spawning but it was brown and coming from the tip of the branch.   I've put it directly in the path of flow from the Biowheel filter so hopefully it'll be ok.  Speaking of which, the Biowheel was making splashes everywhere so it's come out (was thinking to leave it in for a bit to give some nitrates for the macros but no more!).  I also glued down @schgr.cube's GSP since it didn't appreciate its tumble around the tank when I put the filter on lol.  Also, the photosynthetic sponge is not doing well.  I've moved it into the big tank since the purple one is happy there and hopefully it will recover, but it's lost most of its color and is going transparent in spots.   My guess is that it was exposed to air when being packaged, as I was very careful not to do so. @thespinningsadhu lost his as well, though much more quickly.

 

Some pics!

The "green goblin" mushroom and Weetie's diatom covered GSP (after this pic I brushed them off and made them very mad lol).

 

Pink cabbage leather and ric:

 

The macro (which has a few holes in it---maybe from where it was attached to its rubble that it detached itself from) and schgr.cube's GSP:

 

Grube's spewing brown stuff from the two left branches:

 

FTS before I moved stuff around and made it all mad:

 

Photosynthetic sponge in the big tank.  You can see how much color it's lost.

 

 

It's fun watching this take shape. 

Is the GSP being difficult to open for you? 

I'm really hoping the Grubes settles in and opens up. Like you I have really loved it in gena's tank. 

I hope that more recent Macro addition settles in and grows, I'm curious to see what growth form and coloration it takes on. 

It looks like it has cool potential.

[SeaFurn]

FWIW - my GSP just reopened yesterday from its Sunday hacking. 

Now that your pieces are glued down I think they will open in a day or two. 

The rock my GSP is on isn't very big and has many nooks and crannies so it was hard to get you one big piece -hence smaller pieces.  It grows fast so those smaller pieces will grow together in no time. 

[cfaye@Delaware]

Goodness, looks very good already. How you do that ???

 

I just know the other pieces will come around in no time. 

 

I'm sorry about your little frogs. A couple of years ago I was thinking about starting a frog tank but changed my mind. They are almost impossible to keep, will starve very quickly if they don't eat almost over night and for years they have had some kind of disease that is deadly to them. Plus there is more info out there about them which makes them hard to keep. I was afraid to try them. Almost like the dragnets of salt water. Now you will hear about people with frog  tanks, larger frogs, different frogs. It was hard for me to put anything else in my Betta tank, Vince would kill everything snails, ect. So the snails I had left had own tank. Vince was ok alone, I would spend time with the tank and him he was ok. You could move the betta tank close to the salt water, just make sure not flaring all the time ( stress ). Then there are the mirrors, some people like them some don't a little flaring is some what good exercise. Also betta's like those little moss balls at least mine did, careful with them, they can carry fish pests. Oh yes I do like API stress coat for my fresh water fish, I don't use it for salt water. 

[Lula_Mae]

23 hours ago, fishfreak0114 said:

It's looking good in there!  I hope the grube's gets happy.  I haven't had any luck with gorgonians, but I do love them.  I can't wait to see all the different GSP as they start to grow!

Thanks, me too!  It's covered in diatoms at the moment lol.  I am still hoping to get a couple more GSP and maybe PSP and branching GSP, and I'd like a corky finger since they're supposed to be a species of briarium, which is related to GSP.  Just for the heck of it, you know?  The Hicksomella gorg already seems to be sprouting a little branch, or forking one of its existing ones (can't quite tell yet)!

 

21 hours ago, schgr.cube said:

Ugh oh, I hope the sponge recovers... tank is looking good so far though!!

Thanks!  I'm liking it a lot.

 

21 hours ago, gena said:

I don't see the brown spewing stuff, but the gorgonian still looks fine. 

It's hard to see and was hard to get a pic of, it's just a little brown wisp.  Guess I'll keep trying to keep the diatoms off till it decides to open on its own.

 

20 hours ago, blizzardscout2 said:

Looking good! I'm sure the sponge will turn around. It will be interesting to see what you end up with in GSP. 

I hope so, I think it's even paler today.

 

15 hours ago, Weetabix7 said:

 

It's fun watching this take shape. 

Is the GSP being difficult to open for you? 

I'm really hoping the Grubes settles in and opens up. Like you I have really loved it in gena's tank. 

I hope that more recent Macro addition settles in and grows, I'm curious to see what growth form and coloration it takes on. 

It looks like it has cool potential.

No, I don't think so.  Yours is coming out again after I brushed diatoms off yesterday.  I need to get a toothbrush dedicated to this tank so I can brush them off better.  Mostly it's mad right now because I messed with it and glued some of it down lol.  The macro's spots are already showing up and it looks really neat, kind of freckled.

 

11 hours ago, SeaFurn said:

FWIW - my GSP just reopened yesterday from its Sunday hacking. 

Now that your pieces are glued down I think they will open in a day or two. 

The rock my GSP is on isn't very big and has many nooks and crannies so it was hard to get you one big piece -hence smaller pieces.  It grows fast so those smaller pieces will grow together in no time. 

I hope so!  It ended up in at least 10 little pieces but I didn't have any trouble gluing them, they just need to get over being mad!

 

10 hours ago, cfaye@Delaware said:

Goodness, looks very good already. How you do that ???

 

I just know the other pieces will come around in no time. 

 

I'm sorry about your little frogs. A couple of years ago I was thinking about starting a frog tank but changed my mind. They are almost impossible to keep, will starve very quickly if they don't eat almost over night and for years they have had some kind of disease that is deadly to them. Plus there is more info out there about them which makes them hard to keep. I was afraid to try them. Almost like the dragnets of salt water. Now you will hear about people with frog  tanks, larger frogs, different frogs. It was hard for me to put anything else in my Betta tank, Vince would kill everything snails, ect. So the snails I had left had own tank. Vince was ok alone, I would spend time with the tank and him he was ok. You could move the betta tank close to the salt water, just make sure not flaring all the time ( stress ). Then there are the mirrors, some people like them some don't a little flaring is some what good exercise. Also betta's like those little moss balls at least mine did, careful with them, they can carry fish pests. Oh yes I do like API stress coat for my fresh water fish, I don't use it for salt water. 

Thanks!  Some bettas are much more violent than others lol.  I haven't noticed Bilbo flaring so I guess he got over that for now.  Some will tolerate tank mates and some definitely will not.  Just depends on the individual betta.

 

Tank looks so nice tonight, but my phone told me this afternoon that its memory was full and I can't even get texts until I clear some out.  Guess it's time to get rid of some pictures!

[1891Bro]

My fave lfs has an all gsp tank with some kinda maroon clown as it's only occupant. Remind me to snap a photo next time I'm there. It's a really nice little display. 

[Lula_Mae]

2 hours ago, 1891Bro said:

My fave lfs has an all gsp tank with some kinda maroon clown as it's only occupant. Remind me to snap a photo next time I'm there. It's a really nice little display. 

That would be pretty cool to see!