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Snow's 60G Secret Predatory Sanctum 🐲🐉 - Shutting Down


Snow_Phoenix

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I forgot to add earlier: When I took my hammer coral to the LFS, the store manager found a lot of vermetid snails and some weird blackish snail-like creatures on the sides of the coral. He took them off using a pair of bone cutters - but I'm not sure what those weird black critters were. According to him, those can be parasitic and interfere with the growth of a coral. I should have taken pics so that someone in the forum can ID them for me. In my entire reefkeeping journey, I've never come across critters like those. If my store's right, and those things are harmful, I *might have more of them lurking in my tank. I'll check the base of my cynarina tomorrow - it was a *bit retracted today, and I'm a bit worried for it. 

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Something of interest - Illaron's face darkens during each courtship, and iridescent blue flecks appear along the curve of his eyes and in a mosaic pattern on either side of his body:

 

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My camera isn't good enough to catch this, but I can see it, and it's beautiful. These flecks are not visible during any other part of the day - so I assume these are breeding colors used to attract his mate. 

 

Likewise, Bella adopts a more reddish hue, especially around the edges of her dorsal and tail fin. These colors are present in a much more sedate form during the day, but are stronger/more evident during courtship. 

 

And there's still going after each other at full steam:

 

And here's Bella passing by Dusky's burrow. He seems rather protective of it: 😄

 

 

 

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I smothered two of my aiptasia with coral glue today. The third aiptasia was on a frag plug, so I simply tossed the plug into the trash. I still haven't spotted my new dragonet - I truly hope he's okay. 😞

 

I would like to get started on training him to accept/eat frozen & pellets ASAP, but it's difficult to train a fish you literally can't find. I'll do my best though. 

 

I wanted to get another Cleaner shrimp from the store today - but I picked out a Zanzibar shrimp for my nano instead. Cleaner shrimp are relatively common during shipments though, so I can easily acquire one in the future. One of my older rhodactis shrooms fell off the rocks a couple of hours ago and landed on my giant tunicate. It's okay and both animals are unharmed, but I just had a bath so I didn't feel like dipping my entire right arm in the tank just to retrieve one mushroom. I'll do it tomorrow after breakfast though, and re-glue it back on the rocks. 

 

My LFS currently doesn't have too many varieties of shrooms, and I *think I have acquired most of their morphs already, but I'll keep an eye out for anything interesting regardless. I mostly can't wait to bring home my frogspawn & bubble coral. The hammer coral should recover a fair bit in the next 4 weeks or so, and I'll do another WC before bringing home anything new. 

 

Still debating if I should bring home that massive Elegance. It's a foot long, and that's partially retracted. At full size, I think it can stretch up to 16"+ or maybe even more. It'll be the perfect centerpiece for my sandbed though - and help break the line of sight between my sand-dwelling fish. Feeding sessions are nuts sometimes with all fish scrambling to grab whatever pellet that they can. I still have certain hotspots on the rocks, but I now scatter food all over the sandbed and try to get some in different corners of the tank too. And yes, I have tons of bristleworms. 😮

 

Thanks to the fuge, the nitrate levels don't go beyond 50ppm. Sometimes it even drops to as low as 10ppm, which is quite low for *this tank. Phosphates remain at a consistent 0.25ppm so far, which is okay. 

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1 hour ago, Snow_Phoenix said:

I smothered two of my aiptasia with coral glue today. The third aiptasia was on a frag plug, so I simply tossed the plug into the trash. I still haven't spotted my new dragonet - I truly hope he's okay. 😞

 

I would like to get started on training him to accept/eat frozen & pellets ASAP, but it's difficult to train a fish you literally can't find. I'll do my best though. 

 

I wanted to get another Cleaner shrimp from the store today - but I picked out a Zanzibar shrimp for my nano instead. Cleaner shrimp are relatively common during shipments though, so I can easily acquire one in the future. One of my older rhodactis shrooms fell off the rocks a couple of hours ago and landed on my giant tunicate. It's okay and both animals are unharmed, but I just had a bath so I didn't feel like dipping my entire right arm in the tank just to retrieve one mushroom. I'll do it tomorrow after breakfast though, and re-glue it back on the rocks. 

 

My LFS currently doesn't have too many varieties of shrooms, and I *think I have acquired most of their morphs already, but I'll keep an eye out for anything interesting regardless. I mostly can't wait to bring home my frogspawn & bubble coral. The hammer coral should recover a fair bit in the next 4 weeks or so, and I'll do another WC before bringing home anything new. 

 

😮

 

Thanks to the fuge, the nitrate levels don't go beyond 50ppm. Sometimes it even drops to as low as 10ppm, which is quite low for *this tank. Phosphates remain at a consistent 0.25ppm so far, which is okay. 

That would mean major GHA to my tank. How do you manage to keep these number so high? I'm gutted as hight phosphate and nitrate means great zoa / softies growth in my tank bit also good old GHA as well 😅

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11 minutes ago, Grimes said:

That would mean major GHA to my tank. How do you manage to keep these number so high? I'm gutted as hight phosphate and nitrate means great zoa / softies growth in my tank bit also good old GHA as well 😅

I do have fuzzy grayish algae on my rocks. It's a bit of an eyesore, but also good food for the urchins. I have a large refugium, so I think that does help with maintaining the nutrient-balance. As for the high NO3 & PO4 - I feed very, very heavy - so high numbers are expected. 🙂 

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Some really good news - I woke up and peeked at the tank. The hammer coral was fully open and looked very large/content: 🥰

 

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I think it can make a full recovery in a few months. The flesh should regrow, and hopefully it'll develop more heads again. 🥰

 

Thanos flashing his territorial colors:

 

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Also, my new mandarin made it through his first night in the tank! 😄

 

My only concern is that he's still mostly hiding under the rock ledges at the back of the tank, near some shrooms. I'll try basting some pods and rotifers in his direction - to see if I can lure him back out. Otherwise, I suppose it's time to hatch some brine shrimp. 🤔

 

I'm not sure why he's afraid though. None of my other fish - or dragonets are attacking or bullying him. In fact, everything else in the tank is ignoring him. I think he *might still be stressed from yesterday, but I hope he recovers soon so that he can start hunting normally. These fish waste away rather quickly if they skip meals - and the best chance of keeping them is to make sure they start eating ASAP. 🤔

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I have some bad news - things took a steep turn for the worse with the new dragonet. It finally came up to the waterline of the 60G and it looked awful. It was sloughing off a lot of mucus, looked very stressed and disorientated. I scooped it out using a brine net - but with the amount of mucus it was shedding, I didn't think it would make it. I quickly dipped the fish in FW to get as much of the mucus off, then I just dropped it in my second tank - the nano. 

 

I did it because I was hoping it could de-stress in a tank with more cover (my nano, despite being significantly smaller than the 60G, is full of corals and large cave with a few other shadowy areas). It took about 15 mins and the fish went from being *dying to *almost normal. :eek:

 

It even started exploring my nano - and I quickly dropped in a large breakfast consisting of frozen rotifers, pods & mysis. It was more interested than exploring than eating - and I saw it examine my red fungia and Coralline Ledge several times. It even looked at me a few times - as in, asking, 'Is this okay to eat?' 

 

I had to rush off to drop my dog at the groomer's & buy lunch, so I'm uncertain whether or not it ate anything that was given. I eventually found it resting in the major cave that belongs to my circus barred goby, Prowler. 

 

The nano is merely a temporary measure. Once the fish is healthy enough, I'll try to see if I can re-add him to my 60G - and if I can't, it looks like I'll have to rehome him (which is a bit sad, because I adopted him and a zanzibar shrimp from the LFS yesterday - a whole bunch of animals that used to belong to someone else came in because the original owner is stuck in Singapore and cannot return to Msia to care for his animals, so he had to give them up). I'll keep you guys updated.

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Snow_Phoenix

Update #1:

 

The hammer coral is definitely improving - looks large today morning and no lingering traces of BJD: 🤗

 

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Thanos:

 

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From here on out, it'll be a dragonet-heavy update. 😊👍

 

Orion:

 

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Snow_Phoenix

Update #5:

 

My current dragonet roster: 🐲🐉🥰💦

 

Orion:

 

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Bella:

 

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Illaron:

 

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Poseidon:

 

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Qin:

 

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I love them. Easily my most favorite type of fish so far (blennies are another point of interest). Can be challenging to keep, but rewarding if kept right. 🥰👍

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Snow_Phoenix

Goblin:

 

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The cynarina is doing poorly for some reason. Very shrunken and retracted. 😔

 

My hammer has recovered fully though. It's tilted to one side, so I just need to adjust the placement. 👍

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  • Snow_Phoenix changed the title to Snow's 60G Secret Predatory Sanctum 🐲🐉 - Shutting Down

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