sublunary Posted January 20, 2018 Author Share Posted January 20, 2018 The opposite half of fox coral is happy today. And Arthur has decided to snuggle up close to it. Quote Link to comment
sublunary Posted January 23, 2018 Author Share Posted January 23, 2018 I am several steps closer to making this tank the gorgonian forest of my dreams. Mwahahaha, In the meantime, I found some epoxy and got my turbinaria a bit better situated. (I hate frag plugs so much.) I'm super happy to see this much polyp extension after a couple of weeks of it being mostly closed. I really want an actual macro lens... 1 Quote Link to comment
Christopher Marks Posted January 23, 2018 Share Posted January 23, 2018 20 minutes ago, sublunary said: I am several steps closer to making this tank the gorgonian forest of my dreams. Mwahahaha Tell us more! Quote Link to comment
sublunary Posted January 26, 2018 Author Share Posted January 26, 2018 Earlier this week, I got the KP Aquatics shipment I've been wanting since I started this tank. I am super happy with everything! The frags were much more generous than I expected, everything was really well packaged. I cut QT very short because nothing was opening up and I got nervous. I think it was the right choice. I did make one of the stupider mistakes of my reefing career. This morning I went to throw out the shipping box and found a bag with another zoa frag that I somehow completely forgot I ordered and overlooked during the unpacking. I don't know how, but it's still alive, and 2 polyps are opening... I got lucky. I got a few Florida rics as well. I might pic up a few other colors if I find some locally, but the aim is to just let these multiply and take over this slope. Of course, I had to rescue one that my fish was determined to use as a doormat. So the tank looks a bit more filled in now. My goal is to let things settle and grow for a while. I'll probably fiddle with placement as I see how things adjust. (Each gorg is on it's own little rock for easy moving.) But I want to try and avoid adding anything for a couple of months and just let the things I have grow. (I know, I know, I can barely say that with a straight face...) 4 1 Quote Link to comment
rO.oster Posted January 26, 2018 Share Posted January 26, 2018 purple whips looks amaaaazing! Quote Link to comment
sublunary Posted January 30, 2018 Author Share Posted January 30, 2018 On 1/26/2018 at 4:38 PM, rO.oster said: purple whips looks amaaaazing! Thank you! I am totally in love with it. I have some concerns with the spiny orange gorg. It looks like it lost quite a bit of flesh very quickly. Hermits have been crawling on it, but I haven't seen them picking. Had to run to work, so didn't have time to test anything but salinity. Anyone have suggestions on what to check that could be causing it? Quote Link to comment
sublunary Posted February 6, 2018 Author Share Posted February 6, 2018 I ended up cutting the dying parts off the orange gorg to hopefully stop the tissue loss. The main piece went to the middle of the tank, and I left a small frag in the corner where it had been. (Another small piece was toppled by hermit crabs never to be seen again.) I thought I was getting good polyp extension before, but those things are twice as long as I thought they were. I need to really scrap to get the glass clean enough for photos, so tonight I tried some more top down shots. Not as sharp as the last turbinaria shot I posted, but it captures the colors much better. It's almost like a metallic green painted over pink. This crab is still very accommodating in being out for viewing. The bigger one, not so much. I'm happy to see both their poms are growing though. His were kind of nubby to start with and I wasn't sure they'd make it. Leather is slowly growing. The zoas next to it are the ones I left in the bag for 3 days. They've recovered just fine. I'm already debating going back on my promise not to add anything new. A bunch of the places I put in email alerts for blue sympodium suddenly have it in stock. I've wanted some of that for a while, and it would give me an excuse to order a couple of non-green ricordea. I should wait until I'm sure I have the gorgonians stabilized and all. I know. but it's so tempting... 1 Quote Link to comment
rO.oster Posted February 6, 2018 Share Posted February 6, 2018 great pics it looks very serene! I cant wait to have my own pom pom crab again, you have two!? Do they interact? Quote Link to comment
sublunary Posted February 6, 2018 Author Share Posted February 6, 2018 I haven't seen the crabs interact at all since the first day. The larger one staked out a spot in a cave and only seems to leave for food. I'm not seeing any aggression, thankfully, but also not seeing any interesting interactions either. Come to think of it, when I had a mated pair several years ago I never saw them interact either. They clearly got together once in a while when I wasn't looking, but spent most of their time ignoring each other. 1 Quote Link to comment
rO.oster Posted February 7, 2018 Share Posted February 7, 2018 21 hours ago, sublunary said: spent most of their time ignoring each other. sounds peaceful and with twice the viewing opportunity! Quote Link to comment
sublunary Posted February 8, 2018 Author Share Posted February 8, 2018 23 hours ago, rO.oster said: sounds peaceful and with twice the viewing opportunity! Yes! It looks like my current two have started getting together behind my back too... She's hiding it with her nems, but I can see enough bright red to tell it's not a bristle worm this time! 1 Quote Link to comment
sublunary Posted February 9, 2018 Author Share Posted February 9, 2018 So today I got to learn about spindle cowries! http://www.realmonstrosities.com/2015/05/spindle-cowry.html I noticed a spot on the purple plume that looked like the polyps were too small and close together. A couple of days later, clearly losing flesh. On closer inspection, definitely not polyps. I feel bad killing critters, but these do cause damage, so out he went. I really thought the camouflage was cool though. His tentacles really look like little polyps. I'm also quite sad I can't find my usb microscope. I would have loved some real close ups.... 1 Quote Link to comment
rO.oster Posted February 9, 2018 Share Posted February 9, 2018 Amazing and annoying, but cool to learn something new. Glad you caught him in time! Quote Link to comment
sublunary Posted February 22, 2018 Author Share Posted February 22, 2018 I've managed to be good and avoid buying anything new for a whole month! I'm trying to put my reef energies into keeping up with maintenance and plotting things for the future instead. I enjoy this, but it makes for fewer updates. The red gorgonian is still hanging on. It lost a lot more flesh shortly after I moved it, but that seems to have slowed down or stopped since then. The smaller pieces I fragged off are doing just fine. I'm still not sure what caused the problem or if it's been solved, but I'm glad I haven't lost the piece entirely. I did lose one of my zoa frags - something kept knocking it off the rock and burying it, and the polyps melted away after the 6th or 7th time I rescued it. The fox coral has been unhappy since I moved it to the front corner, so I moved it to a back corner where it will get less direct flow. I can't see it as well, but I'll live with that if it does better there. I've realized there are 3 parts of reefing I'm really, really bad at: cleaning the glass, limiting feeding, and gluing rocks to other rocks. I try all three of them, I really do. But I always end up with steaks of algae blocking the photo I want to take, really spoiled fish, and frags that will not stay put. Sigh. It's like the three most basic things! Honorable mention goes to not dropping water on the carpet during maintenance. I'm about 50/50 on that one lately.... I'm debating switching to a split photo period. I've read a lot of conflicting opinions on it, and I'm still on the fence. I miss having the tank's sunrise before my alarm goes off in the morning, and I also want more time with the lights on when I get home from work. But my apartment is very sunny in the middle of the day. The tank isn't in direct sunlight, but it would not get anywhere near dark between the two photoperiods. I think it might stress things more than is worth it. Apologies for the crappy cell phone shot of an angry post-water-change tank. But I wanted a picture and the lights were off by the time I got the better camera. Which is one of the reasons that split photoperiod would be nice.... I think the biggest change from last FTS is the amount of sand the shrimp has commandeered for his fortifications. It's hard to see with the blown out white balance, but it's getting a bit silly how lopsided the sandbed is. Quote Link to comment
sublunary Posted February 27, 2018 Author Share Posted February 27, 2018 I'm concerned I might be down to one Pom Pom. I found a molt on one side of the tank, and on the other side I found this: I don't know if this is the ending of a really bad breakup, or the widower refusing to accept he's alone now.... Quote Link to comment
DarkMagic Posted March 7, 2018 Share Posted March 7, 2018 Oh no! Are pom poms known for being aggressive towards one another? I was planning to get two for my tank, but this has me rethinking things. Quote Link to comment
sublunary Posted March 7, 2018 Author Share Posted March 7, 2018 They aren't known for it. I had a pair in the past that got along just fine, and pretty much everyone else describes them as peaceful. I'm really not sure what happened here. I might have a rogue, or something might have gone wrong while the female was molting and the male just cleaned up the mess. My girlfriend insisted on naming my tank critters after Henry VIII and his wives. So if it is a rogue mate-killing crab, I blame her for giving him the idea. Quote Link to comment
sublunary Posted March 8, 2018 Author Share Posted March 8, 2018 So in addition to losing my female pom pom, I've had a couple of things shake my confidence. One of my ricordea has decided to move to the bottom of a hole, and I can't get it out without removing the rock and destroying my shrimp's tunnels. Though the shrimp may deserve it, given how many times he's stolen the other rics off my rock... My turbinaria has suddenly started losing flesh. I think it started after Monday night's small water change (I didn't notice before that, but didn't look closely) and has progressed pretty quickly. Ugh, that just breaks my heart. And today I noticed a tiny patch of cyano. Sigh. That got removed immediately, but I suspect I haven't seen the end of it. The worst part is, I'm going out of state for a week starting tomorrow morning, so I can't do all that much to fix/change things right now. I just have to hope nothing dramatic happens while I'm gone. Maybe a week without me feeding will help avoid more cyano at least... On the I'm-not-a complete-failure-yet side, my leather is still happy, and at least one frag of zoas is multiplying. My monti is growing slowly but surely. (I promise it isn't actually bleached, I'm just too lazy to play with the lights/camera settings.) I really do love starting with small frags and being able to watch closely to see little bits of growth. But it makes for really boring growth pictures. Woo, the super glue is covered by flesh now! So exciting! And my fuzzy gorgonians are still nice and fluffy. When I first got these, I was a bit concerned because the polyps looked white. They've matured into the brown that I'm mosre used to seeing on photosynthetic gorgs. The red gorgonian is still hanging on. I'm still not sure if the main frag will make it, but it's doing way better than it was, and I have more hope now. 1 Quote Link to comment
DarkMagic Posted March 8, 2018 Share Posted March 8, 2018 Hang in there, I'm sure things will improve soon! 1 Quote Link to comment
sublunary Posted March 16, 2018 Author Share Posted March 16, 2018 Well I'm back from vacation and the tank did not explode. My mother checked in on it (and my cats) while I was gone. She actually kept the ATO reservoir full! When she came over to get briefed on what I needed, I told her I would leave two jars with food in suspension in the fridge, carefully portioned to be one feeding each. I showed her an example and how to turkey-baster it into the tank. So of course, I got an email the day she came saying "there was very little in each jar, so I put in what was left of both." So things got a little overfed last weekend... But other than that she did ok. My turbinaria continued its tissue loss about as much as I expected. What saddens me even more is that something knocked my fox coral over, and the 2/3 of it that was up against the rock is now just skeleton. Sigh. I've dipped both, but don't really think that will do anything. We've had a bunch of storms up here lately and while I haven't lost power, my wifi has gone down a few times. Apparently one of these time reset my AI and I didn't notice until today. I had it set with Blues/purples at 50% and other colors lower. The reset had everything blasting at 80%. I'm wondering if the turbinaria could have been shocked by the lighting change and maybe that started it downhill? 1 Quote Link to comment
DarkMagic Posted March 17, 2018 Share Posted March 17, 2018 All things considered not bad! Quote Link to comment
sublunary Posted March 25, 2018 Author Share Posted March 25, 2018 Well I have been awful at updating. I think things are on an upswing. For the last week or so my leather and half the gorgonians had been refusing to open. Water changes didn't seem to make a difference. Yesterday I added some chemipure elite I had laying around, and by this afternoon everything was at least thinking about showing polyps. So now I'm left wondering if the leather was putting out toxins or if something else got in somehow. I don't think I want to use chemiclean constantly, but if things keep improving I will consider it. Quote Link to comment
sublunary Posted April 1, 2018 Author Share Posted April 1, 2018 Things continue to be stable, which makes me happy. Stable enough that I picked up a few more frags today. Will take pics tomorrow if they open up, but for now, here's a reminder of why we dip new corals: Pretty sure this was my first encounter with zoa spiders. Creepy little buggers fell right off during the dip. Between them and the vermetid snails I am not sure I'll be going back to that LFS... Quote Link to comment
sublunary Posted April 1, 2018 Author Share Posted April 1, 2018 New turbinaria. I wanted to stay away from green corals for a bit, but I apparently love turbinaria more than I love varied colors. These are the tiniest blastos I've ever seen. The whole frag is about the size of my thumbnail. Zoas. I somehow failed to get a better picture of the yellow-skirted ones, which are the new ones. I also got a frag of blue sympodium, which I've been looking for for a while, but that has yet to open up. So instead you get a picture of Arthur being the neatest thing in the tank again. I just got my diatom bloom today. It took so long I didn't think it was going to happen. I'm curious to see if I start getting nuisance algae after it passes. This tank has been weirdly clean thus far. 2 Quote Link to comment
k4ndyk1ng Posted April 1, 2018 Share Posted April 1, 2018 It is looking so nice, hopefully you won't get the algae. Quote Link to comment
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