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Joe's IM 20: Got a couple clowns, call it a circus 🎪


Joevember

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On 2/15/2019 at 6:28 PM, Joevember said:

Well I went to Tank it Easy to pick up some snails, and they had some cool ones. Have you ever heard of NINJA STAR SNAILS? I have always wanted these in my CUC before I even set up my first SW tank, so obviously I had to buy them! They look so cool with their spiky shells; you can't get any other snails like it. I'll let you know how good they are after I see how big of a difference they make in the tank.

I also found an awesome acan frag for $10... it took a lot of willpower to not buy it, gotta save for the cynarina 😁

 

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I stopped by there last week when I was in Chicago. They have some awesome corals for pretty cheap and the guys there are awesome! 

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2 hours ago, mattbaar said:

I stopped by there last week when I was in Chicago. They have some awesome corals for pretty cheap and the guys there are awesome! 

Yeah, plus I live a walkable distance away, so I'm in there all the time. My go to for LPS. Might even get a summer job there if I'm lucky 😄

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Pics as promised, enjoy

 

Here's the crab

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He's out! Just saw sifting around in the sand. The clowns saw him in the middle and didn't care. 😄

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New favorite shots are top downs

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And a FTS20190320_174037.thumb.jpg.4570335ae96328bffb539c6b3c53a210.jpg

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Well here's something weird:

I've been having a tank problem recently, but it wasn't exactly in the tank. Every day when I check up on the tank, there are ants crawling around the rim or back chamber of the tank. I'd kill them as soon as I saw them, but they always come back. I thought this was going to be normal since my basement has had ants regularly in the hotter months.

But today was different. I go to grab the microfiber cloth I have out of the stand (I normally just use my shirt bc I'm lazy like that) and it was covered, I mean covered, with ants. Since I hardly use the cloth and the stand is completely dark, I haven't noticed the growing colony of ants in the stand. They were most likely attracted to the heat of my power strip -there were hundreds on it when I shined a light in the stand- and the salt creep around the tank. Didn't grab a pic because I'd already went to town on the whole stand with the shop vac, but it was nasty. I'll try to wipe everything down with vinegar after I'm done vacuuming.

 

Inside the tank is doing fine. Picked up a new 1.5" RFA from a basement dealer for a steal. Green isn't really captured in the pic.

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The hector's goby is out and about. Not eating prepared foods yet, but you can see him sifting the sandbed all day long. The pom pom just hides out all day in his cave, thinking I should have gotten a porcelain crab instead.

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I moved the cynarina to the back and RFAs to the midground so the cynarina wouldn't get its skirt blown up by the mp10 and feel embarassed.

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And I'm also fragging 5 heads of my dark green torch and the cobalt trumpet to sell to a local guy, he's a big spender 😁

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On 3/20/2019 at 6:46 PM, Joevember said:

Pics as promised, enjoy

 

Here's the crab

20190320_173559.thumb.jpg.8c69b8e7a190a52aeaeeb0dbd48d1188.jpg

He's out! Just saw sifting around in the sand. The clowns saw him in the middle and didn't care. 😄

20190320_181006.thumb.jpg.bf068d07273af4e2408ebe4c89b2121a.jpg

20190320_173743.thumb.jpg.38bac5e84a6417df2f6adaf392f9d766.jpg

New favorite shots are top downs

20190320_173848.thumb.jpg.aa5f0d87caf36670ffb7ea529d55048b.jpg20190320_173900.thumb.jpg.e25e7aa8c6d9197a07d1ae04457ee4fb.jpg20190320_173910.thumb.jpg.9759cb69955fe4994b8a4739cbee1c82.jpg

And a FTS20190320_174037.thumb.jpg.4570335ae96328bffb539c6b3c53a210.jpg

 

Looks great. 😃

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Fragging the torch went well. Got 4 good branches off the colony pretty easily. But now I have an awkward bald spot on the scape, so I'll be getting some different kinds of torches to fill the void. 

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Also, somehow breaking all laws of physics and logic, the torch frags I made got their long, painful hands on my cynarina. The torch had its sweeper attached to it for, most likely, over 5 hours. The tissue of the cynarina looks bad, there was brown slime and dead tissue where the torch was attached. The other side is looking fine though.

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And lastly, the hector goby. His behavior has been mostly the same, but just a lot more sand sifting. He has definitely cleaned things up, but in doing so also makes a mess simultaneously. I have to constantly blow sand off my sandbed corals. 

 

Here's a better pic of the RFAs from today (much better colors than the first):

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Your tank is really blossoming into a real show tank.  I would love to see a video clip of it to enjoy the waving flowing tentacles in the water column current.  It must be quite soothing and relaxing to watch.

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15 hours ago, vlangel said:

Your tank is really blossoming into a real show tank.  I would love to see a video clip of it to enjoy the waving flowing tentacles in the water column current.  It must be quite soothing and relaxing to watch.

Thanks, it really feels like it is! 

Here's a quick clip of the tank, kind of short, but it shows all the movement. It's also bad quality since my phone's camera doesn't let me shoot video in 'pro mode'.

 

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10 hours ago, Joevember said:

Thanks, it really feels like it is! 

Here's a quick clip of the tank, kind of short, but it shows all the movement. It's also bad quality since my phone's camera doesn't let me shoot video in 'pro mode'.

 

That video clip was great and did not disappoint!  It was totally soothing and peaceful just like I imagined!  Thank you.

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Thought the new goby died today. I saw it, ate dinner, came down to my tank and didn't see it anywhere. I was thinking that it jumped out of the tank, but no fish jerky; then I thought that it was in the back chamber, but again no. Gave up and thought that the BTA ate it. Then I go to feed the tank and I see it after all the food is in the tank. How the f...

 

Anyway, I found out that his new hiding spot is under the cynarina's skirt. He darted under it after he ate a piece of mysis. Life finds a way.

 

The purple torch has also been closed up tge past couple days, started with a couple tentacles now it's the whole head. Hope it's not a gonner.

 

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Wasn't going to make an update today, but thought I had something cool enough to share. So picked up some more CUC to replace some trochus snails and zebra hermits that I lost (pretty sure the hermits killed everything with a shell that moved), and I picked up 3 scarlet leg hermits and 2 astrea snails to replace everything. So I come home, acclimate, and drop it in and I found these guys on one of the new astrea's shells:

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Barnicles! Don't know how long they'll last, but cool nonetheless.

 

 

Speaking of things on snail shells, I tried gluing a single zoa head to a live trochus' shell yesterday. I found the zoa free-floating in the tank after it detached from the rock (never knew they did that) and decided to glue it to a snail. Hasn't opened up fully, but if it does I'll be sure to snap some pics to share.

 

I also have a question for you guys: My rose/black widow nem hasn't grown at all -about 1" diameter, and I'm wondering how fast they grow. I feed it a piece of mysis weekly, and it gets as much light as it wants (meaning it likes to be on the move). So can you think of anything that I could do to speed things up for him? Or tell me your experience with small BTAs.

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20 hours ago, Joevember said:

I also have a question for you guys: My rose/black widow nem hasn't grown at all -about 1" diameter, and I'm wondering how fast they grow. I feed it a piece of mysis weekly, and it gets as much light as it wants (meaning it likes to be on the move). So can you think of anything that I could do to speed things up for him? Or tell me your experience with small BTAs.

They will grow very fast with aggressive feeding and lots of light. Mysis won't cut it in my opinion. I used to feed my RBTAs (back when red was hype lol) almost a whole uncooked cocktail shrimp. But since you will be transitioning from mysis, do small cuts of shrimp and see how it takes it, since cocktail shrimps can foul your water fast, you want to make sure it eats it fully.

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20 hours ago, Joevember said:

Wasn't going to make an update today, but thought I had something cool enough to share. So picked up some more CUC to replace some trochus snails and zebra hermits that I lost (pretty sure the hermits killed everything with a shell that moved), and I picked up 3 scarlet leg hermits and 2 astrea snails to replace everything. So I come home, acclimate, and drop it in and I found these guys on one of the new astrea's shells:

20190403_204651.thumb.jpg.2c4990fdf7d3d75066b92068374e2563.jpg20190403_204657.thumb.jpg.3d96b8fff0c4b244b9c72e00955ea1ac.jpg

Barnicles! Don't know how long they'll last, but cool nonetheless.

 

 

Speaking of things on snail shells, I tried gluing a single zoa head to a live trochus' shell yesterday. I found the zoa free-floating in the tank after it detached from the rock (never knew they did that) and decided to glue it to a snail. Hasn't opened up fully, but if it does I'll be sure to snap some pics to share.

 

I also have a question for you guys: My rose/black widow nem hasn't grown at all -about 1" diameter, and I'm wondering how fast they grow. I feed it a piece of mysis weekly, and it gets as much light as it wants (meaning it likes to be on the move). So can you think of anything that I could do to speed things up for him? Or tell me your experience with small BTAs.

 

I have several hitchhiker barnacles. They are super cool and still alive! 😃

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14 hours ago, Fish_Wiz said:

They will grow very fast with aggressive feeding and lots of light. Mysis won't cut it in my opinion. I used to feed my RBTAs (back when red was hype lol) almost a whole uncooked cocktail shrimp. But since you will be transitioning from mysis, do small cuts of shrimp and see how it takes it, since cocktail shrimps can foul your water fast, you want to make sure it eats it fully.

Do you think krill would cut it? I have a big bag of it that I feed the big pieces in my tank. 

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My search for torches seemed hopeless, too many people asking $200+ for a single head of their "gold" torch. Then I found this new torch yesterday, but mounted it in a bad place so you can't really see it from the front.

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Kind of wish I didn't have the sea of dark green torches so they didn't drown everything behind them out. They are completely covering the purple torch, so I'll be fragging it back a lot more in the future.20190406_153704.thumb.jpg.bf22c1b000a8929de822012c8fdb5cad.jpg

Also got this tri-color valida acro and purple haze encrusting monti from a local guy. His tank was over 14 years old and his scape was covered in zoas. Should have taken a pic. I mounted the monti on the right rock and I'll mount the acro on the back wall.

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I'm also considering joining the pico contest. It seems like I could pull a bunch of things in my tank and put them in a pico. I was thinking that I'd put my nems in there along with some more RFAs, my acans, something encrusting like a cyphastrea, my pom pom (which I hope would be more active), and possibly some softies. I already have a filter for mechanical filtration which I'd make into a fuge, but I don't have another light, tank, or other things I'd have to buy. Guess you'll know if I decide to do it before April 30th.

 

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On 4/5/2019 at 8:00 AM, Joevember said:

Do you think krill would cut it? I have a big bag of it that I feed the big pieces in my tank. 

It'll work but still small in my opinion. Cocktail shrimp is my go-to.

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Fragged another big chunk off the dark green and rearranged the other colors yesterday. Now it's looking a lot better, but the purple torch still needs to open up more.

Here are a couple pics after I adjusted a bunch of camera settings:

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Nothing has really happened since a week ago on this tank. I got buyers for the torch frags I made, one of them is gonna trade me some stuff for one.

The new torch I got is is doing pretty well. I'm having a problem with it where the tentacles get tied up together in knots, and then the tips fall off. It sounds crazy, but I've seen it a couple times. Then the tips float around till they find a coral to beat up. One hit my orange ric and another hit a lobo head, thankfully both are okay. Hopefully this isn't a recurring thing.

 

And pics:

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And FTS to add to the front page timeline:

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.... 👀😶

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The mp10 wet side broke. The ceramic layer between the impeller and axel shattered so the wet side would spin off center and both sides would fall off the glass. Now I have to spend more than half of what I paid for the pump on a new wet side. 😡 

 

 

Also if you haven't seen it, here's the new pico: 

 

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The other tank crashed from a heater exploding in the HOB and raising the temperature over 100°F. But this tank is still chugging along even with the mp10 breaking. It's really hard staying calm in this hobby when everything starts breaking down right in front of you. 

Anyway...  My female clown has found out that she can move stuff around in the tank. She has been biting my frags and pushing them over or moving them. I was wondering why they kept falling over then I saw her headbutt a duncan frag and drive it two inches across the sand. I also saw her move the sand around in the corner with her tail. So now I have to put everything on the left side of the tank. Anyone know what would make her start this kind of behavior? Is she getting ready to mate?? 

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1 minute ago, Joevember said:

The other tank crashed from a heater exploding in the HOB and raising the temperature over 100°F. But this tank is still chugging along even with the mp10 breaking. It's really hard staying calm in this hobby when everything starts breaking down right in front of you. 

Anyway...  My female clown has found out that she can move stuff around in the tank. She has been biting my frags and pushing them over or moving them. I was wondering why they kept falling over then I saw her headbutt a duncan frag and drive it two inches across the sand. I also saw her move the sand around in the corner with her tail. So now I have to put everything on the left side of the tank. Anyone know what would make her start this kind of behavior? Is she getting ready to mate?? 

 

Sorry about the crash. 🙁

 

My clown does this also. He kicks the sand away from his rock and tries to move the gorgonian that is too close for his liking. 

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Great looking setup! 

 

Wojtek reef in Chicago is another good spot for corals! 

Nice to see other Chi town nano reefers

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2 hours ago, colinadam said:

Great looking setup! 

 

Wojtek reef in Chicago is another good spot for corals! 

Nice to see other Chi town nano reefers

Yeah, he's great! Just went in at 3 today and picked up 2 RFAs since he has them all on sale.

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Well my clown must think she's really funny. Both of the duncan frags she has been knocking around the tank have died. She kept frag tipping them into the sand and they got infected and died because of it. 

Something new my clowns aren't attacking are the new RFAs I mentioned earlier (not permanent residents). One is a green mouth+disc with a red skirt, and the other is a green mouth, yellow disc, and light red skirt. The yellow isn't captured in the pics right, too green.

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Most of the torches are looking great. The aussie purple is closed up, and a couple tentacles are bleached. Probably closed from the flow change to my backup wavemaker. Mp10 wetside is coming tomorrow, so hopefully it opens back up then.

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Here's something cool I just found growing on my lobos:

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It may be hard to see, but it's a single head of a zoa. Probably a bailout from the frags I lost that actually made it. Look at the top of the skeleton for the green/yellow if you can't find it.

 

And some pics:

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(The BTA raced around the tank in the new flow, but refound home yesterday after stinging my trumpets. I like the look of it with the new flow, it doesn't look like it's stretching for light.)20190422_201949.thumb.jpg.5d95c6006d679ebd58a3f6b6ea39df5e.jpg

FTS 🤙20190422_201741.thumb.jpg.a2499818b7334032de7d5e7693155491.jpg

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