Dawn's shrimp chalet & 5.5 AIO !

[vlangel]

11 hours ago, pj86 said:

Never tried  opae ula Hawaiian red shrimp, but I do know they are brackish shrimp. I did a lot of research on them about 4 years ago. 

I have never tried them either.  Ocean Rider sent some with my first pair of seahorses to help settle in the ponies so I did not have them very long.

 

I have read material written by Pete Giwonja on them.  They are basically brackish but are quite tolerant of a wide range of water conditions.  Since they live in volcanic caves their enviroment is ever changing with rain water and ocean spray and surf.  They have long life spans and are quite hardy.  They eat algae as a food source in volcanic caves in Hawaii.  They breed easily but not often and have small broods.  I think I will give them a try in my jar and see if I can't propagate them through breeding.  If I buy 20 the jar should be large enough with their slow breeding to be their home for many many years.

[vlangel]

8 hours ago, seabass said:

Supposedly you can acclimate them to full saltwater.  I'm not sure if there is a specific gravity limit.

They are quite tolerant in a wide range of salinities.  I think from like .008 to .025, because where they naturally live it is always changing.

[Lula_Mae]

On 11/7/2017 at 8:06 PM, vlangel said:

So I have been looking on the internet for ideas on inverts for my Pico jar.  Does anyone know if opae ula Hawaiian red shrimp are reef safe?  I know that they are a hardy little shrimp and long lived.  Maybe they are hardy because they will eat anything :-(.

From what I have read, people have found that full salt tends to drastically shorten the lifespan. I do believe the algae is their primary source of food though, the Petshrimp website recommends not even feeding them more than like one pellet of something a month, and preferably not at all.

 

[vlangel]

54 minutes ago, Lula_Mae said:

From what I have read, people have found that full salt tends to drastically shorten the lifespan. I do believe the algae is their primary source of food though, the Petshrimp website recommends not even feeding them more than like one pellet of something a month, and preferably not at all.

 

I had read that when they are put in the ecoSpheres that their lifespan was only about 2 years.  I had not read that it was high salinity that drastically shortened it.  Hhmmm, maybe I wont try it because that is not what I want.  I also saw bumble bee shrimp on KP Aquatics which I thought might be cute.  They are currently out of stalk right now but I am not ready for inhabitants yet anyhow.

[Rene]

Bumblebee shrimp are adorable. I have no experience with them...but I support you trying them!

[Lula_Mae]

7 hours ago, vlangel said:

I had read that when they are put in the ecoSpheres that their lifespan was only about 2 years.  I had not read that it was high salinity that drastically shortened it.  Hhmmm, maybe I wont try it because that is not what I want.  I also saw bumble bee shrimp on KP Aquatics which I thought might be cute.  They are currently out of stalk right now but I am not ready for inhabitants yet anyhow.

Yeah the ecospheres kill them due to a combination of lack of food and waste buildup.  I can't remember where I read that about shortened lifespan, probably on the Petshrimp forums.

[pj86]

23 minutes ago, Lula_Mae said:

Yeah the ecospheres kill them due to a combination of lack of food and waste buildup.  I can't remember where I read that about shortened lifespan, probably on the Petshrimp forums.

This is true. Their lifespan is supposed to be 12-20 years. They do have a very slow metabolism and also fecundity. I looked into aquaculturing them, but they didn't fit a good model for it. 

[Lula_Mae]

4 minutes ago, pj86 said:

This is true. Their lifespan is supposed to be 12-20 years. They do have a very slow metabolism and also fecundity. I looked into aquaculturing them, but they didn't fit a good model for it. 

Yeah the guy who runs the Petshrimp forum aquacultures them, which I think is great so they're not taken from the wild any longer.

[vlangel]

I epoxied most of the coral in the pico jar yesterday and when they had set I did a 100% WC to offset any residue that was released from the epoxy.  Everything seems pretty good this morning although not as happy as usual from the man handling.  I am pleased that I still have room for a few more coral.

[seabass]

44 minutes ago, vlangel said:

I am pleased that I still have room for a few more coral.

  Give them, a little, room to grow.

[vlangel]

5 hours ago, seabass said:

  Give them, a little, room to grow.

I know, I hear ya!  I am trying to apply brandon's jar experience and mount the bulk of my coral up front and hopefully deal with the new tank problems early.  The as the coral grow into each other, hopefully there will not be as much room for algae to get a foothold.  It's tricky knowing the balance.

 

From the pic, you can see I still have 4 or 5 good spots left.

 

FTS

[Rene]

Glad to see things look OK after shipping. That Cyphastrea may get more colorful for you, looks pretty brown ATM. 

[vlangel]

Thanks again rene.  Yeah, what color is it usually?  The green coral you sent is doing great, it had feeder tentacles out today.

[debbeach13]

I really like the rock stucture

[vlangel]

5 minutes ago, debbeach13 said:

I really like the rock stucture

Thanks Deb.  I was able to epoxy 2 rocks together to get the main structure and then add some rubble rock to make better coral placement areas.  Its nice and solid so I can move it around in the jar to access areas for cleaning.  Its large enough however that now with coral on it, I can not remove it from the jar.  I should be able to keep it clean by moving the rock, syphoning the water out and turkey basting the rockwork.

[Rene]

The rose coral loves to eat and will do great with feeding. It also does fine without. It pretty much always had feeding tentacles out for me and was fat and puffy and green under high to low light. 

 

The Cyphastrea had a blue-green to powder blue base with pink and yellow polyps. Here's a picture of the same morph from the vendor and it did look like this for me. 

[vlangel]

22 minutes ago, Rene said:

The rose coral loves to eat and will do great with feeding. It also does fine without. It pretty much always had feeding tentacles out for me and was fat and puffy and green under high to low light. 

 

The Cyphastrea had a blue-green to powder blue base with pink and yellow polyps. Here's a picture of the same morph from the vendor and it did look like this for me. 

O my, I never would have guessed it was that color.  Well, I definitely will be feeding it so we will see what happens.

[vlangel]

As I was looking in my pico jar to monitor how the coral were adjusting to being epoxied into place, I saw something that was very encouraging.  On the inside glass the jar was crawling with tiny copepods!  I had hoped that moving coral from the seahorse display and/or putting cheato in from the fuge of the seahorse tank would seed the new jar with much of the fauna and life from the older more established system.  Since I did not have sand or rock from the seahorse tank however, I figured it would take months before I would see any sizable population of pods.  It was heartening to see them crawling all over the glass.

[vlangel]

I am feeling kind of guilty and lazy but I do not go to any special trouble to deal with the temperature of my WC water.  My jar is not heated with a heater but only with the heat that the rio pump generates.  I use the same water for a WC in the pico as I use for the seahorse tank.  It is also not heated except from the circulating pump but it is in the basement where it is cooler.  Anyway, the coral and the cuc seem to be handling the temperature fluctuations just fine.

[vlangel]

I fed mysis to the 2 acans, the rose coral (I got from rene) and the 2 blastos.  The rest of the coral got a good healthy dose of Kent Microvert.  This is really the first time I have ever fed coral rather than relying on them to feed from whatever might happen to be in the water column.  (All my tanks are always so high and I did not want to get wet arms.)  It is very rewarding to see those feeding tentacles grab mysis or polyps close on tiny particulate!  I have been missing a neat part of reefing all these years.  Also I love how full and puffy they look after.

 

I did a 100% WC a few hours later and every coral looks great except the kenya tree.  I may have damaged it when I epoxied it to the rock.  Kenya trees are pretty resilient so I haven't given up on it yet.

[Lula_Mae]

6 hours ago, vlangel said:

I fed mysis to the 2 acans, the rose coral (I got from rene) and the 2 blastos.  The rest of the coral got a good healthy dose of Kent Microvert.  This is really the first time I have ever fed coral rather than relying on them to feed from whatever might happen to be in the water column.  (All my tanks are always so high and I did not want to get wet arms.)  It is very rewarding to see those feeding tentacles grab mysis or polyps close on tiny particulate!  I have been missing a neat part of reefing all these years.  Also I love how full and puffy they look after.

 

I did a 100% WC a few hours later and every coral looks great except the kenya tree.  I may have damaged it when I epoxied it to the rock.  Kenya trees are pretty resilient so I haven't given up on it yet.

I fed the 5.5 tonight and it was so funny to see everything poof up and close up.  My big St. Thomas looked like a huge balloon!  At one point Jacques the shrimp waited expectantly by the pipette-smart little booger!

[vlangel]

 

I tried to take pic of the pods all over the glass near the bottom of my jar but my cameras would not pick them up.  I decided to try the video since it magnifies everything and lo and behold you can see them.  Its about 15 seconds, long enough to see the little mites spirting this way and that.

[seabass]

Ew gross. 

 

Looking good Dawn!

[vlangel]

I noticed that my xenia in the pico jar are not pulsing. :-(  My past experience is when xenia stops pulsing a decline in coral health follows.  The mother colony is pulsing great in the seahorse tank.  I wonder if they need more flow?

[Orangutran]

I find that with the pico, since everything is so up close, I appreciate all the small critters more! This contest has made me feel like a noob again, in a good way!  Makes this hobby even more exciting!