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

[Snow_Phoenix]

1 minute ago, Amphrites said:

Really glad to hear the elegance recovered, love the frogspawn.

Thanks. Tbh, I thought the elegance was done-for. It was in very bad shape and pinched all over. 😓

 

I think the iodine dip helped a lot. That, and target-feeding the mouths selcon + reef roids. Looks like I'll have to keep target-feeding it twice/thrice a week. I stopped because I thought dosing + light + broadcast feeding was enough, but I was wrong. 

 

My piece isn't Australian. It's local (Indo-Pac) so it's more sensitive than usual. 

[Snow_Phoenix]

Boss-fish and his territorial display today afternoon:

 

^I was told that this could also be a potential mating sign? 🤔

 

Not sure because the very few incidents of Starrys going full-on white like this has been attributed to either territory or mating online. I'm quite sure Thanos is a male though. And I'm 100% sure he'll kick the fins off any other Starry, male or female, if I were to add them to this tank. I've seen him literally heckle all the newcomers (fish) to the reef, except the smallest of my gobies or blennies. He does this weird posturing thing (asserting dominance?) and then leaves the new fish alone to explore the reef. <--- This was what he did to my brotulid/dartfish/wrasses etc. in the past. It was why even though I love, love blennies - I don't think it would be wise to add any more of fav. fish to the 60G (Miko the TSB was ultra-lucky, he was so tiny that Thanos probably thought I added a funny-looking noodle to the tank than an actual fish ). 

 

Anyway, here's the boss hiding between my Xenia and Elegance, in his usual purple coloring:

 

 

Bonus pic of Goblin getting cozy:

 

Also, my urchin stole my UCs and dropped the whole frag in the opposite side of the tank, next to my green hairy shroom pile. 

 

Will have to scrape off the bottom of the frag plug (it's encrusted with old glue), and put new glue at the bottom and make sure it sticks to the zoa garden this time. My new frogspawn looks better this morning, as does my green frogspawn and cynarina. Oddly enough, the recovering-from-bleaching red symphyllia was 'thin' and not puffy today - I think it attempted to ingest some of the bailed polyps of my green frogspawn yesterday, and has the coral version of a 'tummy ache'. 

 

Can't do much except wait and monitor it - maybe iodine-dip it? - but I'll try feeding it some minced shrimp tomorrow. 

 

 

[Snow_Phoenix]

Thanos says Hi! today:

 

Doc says Hi! too:

 

Okay, so I'm having a slight issue with my new frogspawn colony - a corner of one of the heads is retracted on one side, and 'peeling' a little, which is very worrisome. The other two heads are perfectly fine though, and shows no tissue regression or retraction. I'm debating giving it an iodine dip. I think the issue is because my flow is very strong in this particular area of the tank, and my frogspawns are both few inches below my wavemaker, to the left of the unit.

 

I still do have green film algae, but this only covers three rock pieces as far as I know of. How curious. 🤔

 

Also, I think I'll need to do a WC next week or so. More corals = more work = more maintenance. Speaking of maintenance, I scraped the glass, basted the rocks, stirred the sandbed and rescued my UCs. I will need to find a way to trim off the hardened glue at the bottom of the frag plug before I can try sticking it in the zoa garden again though. 

 

Tank is chugging along on its own otherwise. 👍

 

 

[Snow_Phoenix]

Updates!

 

Part 1: Fish & Inverts:

 

Gary lazing about:

 

 

 

Casper:

 

 

Nero:

 

 

Goblin:

 

 

Thanos:

 

 

 

Candid fish shot today - for every one decent pic you see, there are easily two dozen blurry or hazy pics in the mix like below:

 

[Snow_Phoenix]

Part Two:

 

Corals! 😊

 

What I usually feed them:

 

 

Mushrooms:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Top-down shots:

 

 

 

 

 

Blasto merletti:

 

 

Three different angles of my elegance (front, side & top-down):

 

 

 

 

Long-polyped toadstoool:

 

 

Metallic GSP growing quickly:

 

 

Lobo brain coral:

 

 

One of the healthy heads of the latest frogspawn:

 

 

 

 

 

[Snow_Phoenix]

Part Three:

 

FTS:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Ratvan]

6 minutes ago, Snow_Phoenix said:

Part Two:

 

Corals! 😊

 

What I usually feed them:

 

 

Mushrooms:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Top-down shots:

 

 

 

 

 

Blasto merletti:

 

 

Three different angles of my elegance (front, side & top-down):

 

 

 

 

Long-polyped toadstoool:

 

 

Metallic GSP growing quickly:

 

 

Lobo brain coral:

 

 

One of the healthy heads of the latest frogspawn:

 

 

 

 

 

How do you feed your corals? Is it a mixture of target feeding and broadcast or is there another way?

[Snow_Phoenix]

Part Four:

 

My view from bed every morning:

 

Here's the catch. Pretty pics don't paint the full pic:

 

The caption under the pic pretty much explains everything. I am struggling with my newest frogspawn at the moment. It seems to be getting worse as the days move on, so it looks like I *might need to cut off the dead/dying head. BJD is a concern at this point. Iodine dip is a reliever, but not a miracle cure. If anyone has any good suggestions, please let me know. 

 

[Snow_Phoenix]

Just now, Ratvan said:

How do you feed your corals? Is it a mixture of target feeding and broadcast or is there another way?

Mostly broadcast feeding. I target-feed the LPS chopped shrimp/shrimp juice/mysis mix on occassion though. 

[Snow_Phoenix]

So I dropped by my LFS and they agreed to help me cut off the dead/dying part of the frogspawn. I hate to say it, but it's starting to look like BJD. I'm not 100% sure yet, but I think it's best to get rid off half of it to salvage the other healthy half. 😢

 

Back to lighter things, I bought a few things from my LFS today - one of it was this really cool mix-colored blasto frag with 3 large heads and plenty of baby heads ringing the sides. Here's how it looks like under the white lights of my bedroom - so you can imagine how strong the colors are under my blue LEDs: \

 

Also saw some really cool Moorish Idols on sale - wish I had a large 250G FOWLR to keep a pair or quartet of them! They're already eating pellets at the store, and are 6" and cost only RM 45 each. 

 

 

Back to the 60G, the frogspawn issue aside - I'm checking up on every other coral piece and so far, tentatively, everything is okay. I'll need to do some target-feeding for the larger LPS tomorrow (chopped raw shrimp + shrimp/mysis juice). 

 

Here's my yuma garden:

 

(Thanos is actually sitting on my tricolored yuma lol, so it can't be seen in the pic)

 

Also managed to get some shots of Helios, my Yellow Coris, & Miu, my Pink Streaked Wrasse:

 

 

And Gary lazing about as usual:

 

Lastly, close-up of my Elegance today morning: 

 

 

 

I'll take more pics of the new blastos tomorrow, under blue lights. They really pop! under the blues. I'm thinking of making a mini blasto garden - LFS put a bunch up for sale on the discount rack, so I might nip by again next week to see if I can bring different colored blastos home. My merlettis are fast-growers, so hoping this one would grow and spread quickly too. 🙂 

 

 

 

[Ratvan]

1 minute ago, Snow_Phoenix said:

So I dropped by my LFS and they agreed to help me cut off the dead/dying part of the frogspawn. I hate to say it, but it's starting to look like BJD. I'm not 100% sure yet, but I think it's best to get rid off half of it to salvage the other healthy half. 😢

 

Back to lighter things, I bought a few things from my LFS today - one of it was this really cool mix-colored blasto frag with 3 large heads and plenty of baby heads ringing the sides. Here's how it looks like under the white lights of my bedroom - so you can imagine how strong the colors are under my blue LEDs: \

 

Also saw some really cool Moorish Idols on sale - wish I had a large 250G FOWLR to keep a pair or quartet of them! They're already eating pellets at the store, and are 6" and cost only RM 45 each. 

 

 

Back to the 60G, the frogspawn issue aside - I'm checking up on every other coral piece and so far, tentatively, everything is okay. I'll need to do some target-feeding for the larger LPS tomorrow (chopped raw shrimp + shrimp/mysis juice). 

 

Here's my yuma garden:

 

(Thanos is actually sitting on my tricolored yuma lol, so it can't be seen in the pic)

 

Also managed to get some shots of Helios, my Yellow Coris, & Miu, my Pink Streaked Wrasse:

 

 

And Gary lazing about as usual:

 

Lastly, close-up of my Elegance today morning: 

 

 

 

I'll take more pics of the new blastos tomorrow, under blue lights. They really pop! under the blues. I'm thinking of making a mini blasto garden - LFS put a bunch up for sale on the discount rack, so I might nip by again next week to see if I can bring different colored blastos home. My merlettis are fast-growers, so hoping this one would grow and spread quickly too. 🙂 

 

 

 

I thought that Blasto was some RFA's when i first glanced over the post. The colours are incredible never seen anything like it.

Those Moorish Idols 😍

Glad my LFS doesn't have this much choice 

[Snow_Phoenix]

31 minutes ago, Ratvan said:

I thought that Blasto was some RFA's when i first glanced over the post. The colours are incredible never seen anything like it.

Those Moorish Idols 😍

Glad my LFS doesn't have this much choice 

I haggled the heck outta them. 

 

They have another multi-mix colony that I have my eye on - problem is they're charging per head, and that colony had a lot of large heads, so it might cost ~RM200 (which is too expensive for me). I'll ask if they're willing to take installments - usually my LFS is quite good with me, and take installments in 2 to 3 payments for big purchases. I've already reserved a green zoa colony from them today - it's not fantastic and doesn't have a special name, but I really liked the green color (not radioactive green though). 

 

They're trying to clear the rack as quickly as possible. If I catch my manager or one of my worker-friends in a good mood, it usually means a lot of discount for me, so I can get some interesting pieces.  (I *almost got a hold of a very browned-out, half-dead rainbow monti today - but my worker-friend decided to keep it at the last minute to try and *see if it can make a comeback - I'm hoping she'll write it off and I can purchase it somehow 😛)

 

My orange-striped frogspawn is coming apart though - just saw my Cleaner shrimp pick at the dead bits, so I'm *tentatively taking it to the store tomorrow itself to get it fragged into half. 😞 

[A.m.P]

Gotta agree that your lfs has a pretty insane selection.

[Snow_Phoenix]

5 minutes ago, Amphrites said:

Gotta agree that your lfs has a pretty insane selection.

Yeah, they do. I don't go after the premium stuff - like they had gold meat corals, jawbreakers/candy crush shrooms etc. but I just hang back and wait for the leftovers. You'll be amazed over how many people skim over the more 'common' types/colored corals in favor of the 'premium'/'fancy' ones. Sometimes the more simple-looking corals look better, but that's just my opinion. 😛

 

 

[A.m.P]

Stuff moves too quickly where I'm at for bargain bins or haggling, can only have that kind of fun with the locals and even then there's a real market for the high-end rich-kid-club pieces people are passing on to keep things affordable on their end as well "investment pieces" if you will /sigh.

[Tamberav]

Cool stuff! The LFS here gets cool fish but nothing interesting for corals. People always posting "I wait a few weeks to make sure the fish is healthy at the LFS before buying". Fish here are gone in a few days and they get two shipments a week. They must be shopping at a dead LFS! 

[Ratvan]

21 minutes ago, Tamberav said:

Cool stuff! The LFS here gets cool fish but nothing interesting for corals. People always posting "I wait a few weeks to make sure the fish is healthy at the LFS before buying". Fish here are gone in a few days and they get two shipments a week. They must be shopping at a dead LFS! 

Do they not allow you to reserve a fish?

[ValerieR]

53 minutes ago, Ratvan said:

Do they not allow you to reserve a fish?

I can't speak for their LFS, but mine also go through an entire shipment in a week most of the time. One or two of the stores would hold a fish for a few days, but if it dies, you're out your deposit, barring some good haggling skills. Why would they hold fish when turnover is what makes money? They can be practically assured they'll sell it to someone else, and fill the spot with another round of sellable inventory.

[Snow_Phoenix]

9 hours ago, Ratvan said:

Do they not allow you to reserve a fish?

At my LFS, you can reserve a fish by paying a deposit first and picking up the animal once the full payment has been made. But if the fish dies at the store, you lose your deposit. 

 

Initially, we could make reservations without payment, but a lot of people were ordering animals and didn't show up to buy them - or in one buyer's case, showed up and rejected the fish because it was too 'big' (he ordered a blueline trigger and it came in adult-sized). 

 

The store was losing money because most of the pre-orders were exotic, and regular reefers won't buy them. So the animal ends up staying at the store for weeks/months and either dies or is sold at a loss (no profit). 

[Snow_Phoenix]

Oh, and here is a pic of my new blastos under mild blues today as promised: 😊

 

[mcarroll]

1 hour ago, Snow_Phoenix said:

At my LFS, you can reserve a fish by paying a deposit first and picking up the animal once the full payment has been made. But if the fish dies at the store, you lose your deposit. 

 

Initially, we could make reservations without payment, but a lot of people were ordering animals and didn't show up to buy them - or in one buyer's case, showed up and rejected the fish because it was too 'big' (he ordered a blueline trigger and it came in adult-sized). 

 

The store was losing money because most of the pre-orders were exotic, and regular reefers won't buy them. So the animal ends up staying at the store for weeks/months and either dies or is sold at a loss (no profit). 

People can be lousy customers.....LOL.  Fickle!  We had the same experience with reservations where I worked....had to have a system, and it was still routinely abused.

[Tamberav]

12 hours ago, Ratvan said:

Do they not allow you to reserve a fish?

They only hold 2 or 3 days max...not enough to see if it is truly healthy and robust. No guarantee.

 

[Ratvan]

1 hour ago, Tamberav said:

They only hold 2 or 3 days max...not enough to see if it is truly healthy and robust. No guarantee.

 

Damn, mine hold for 2 weeks with a minimum deposit of £5 per fish. And yeah deposit goes if fish dies, but then that is expected.

[Snow_Phoenix]

So it turns out the frogspawn did have BJD - smelled rancid when I pulled it out of the tank today. I took it to the LFS but they returned their fragging machine to the factory/coral farm - and we couldn't cut the dying head(s) off because the base rock was too thick. 

 

In the end, the store helped me clean off as much of the goop as possible - I came back home and cleaned it up again using a toothbrush and some SW, then dipped the whole thing in iodine-laced SW for 15 mins. 

 

The good news is that I managed to salvage 1 head - the one that was on an isolate branch. The bad news is my coral now looks like this, with bits of white skeleton exposed: 

 

 

It looks really awful. 😭

 

And this was totally my fault because I dropped it on 2 other corals during placement on the very first day I introduced it to the reef. 

 

Lesson learnt: don't drop things on other things in the tank or you'll piss off everyone. 

 

Tbh, this thing was rotting in my tank overnight - thank goodness it didn't crash my system. 

 

Sad story aside, LFS had several interesting things including some dragonface pipes, baby boxfish (that were being booked by the Aquaria in KL) and various other fish:

 

 

 

I also managed to haggle down the large mixed blasto colony to a more affordable rate. I put down a deposit for it and the zoa colony - can't wait to pick them both up in the weeks to come. 🤗

 

Another small point of interest, I have 3 tiny fish in QT. A small chromis (at the store for 2 months, with me for 1+ week) & 2 super-tiny 1.5" steinz gobies (just purchased yesterday). I was initially planning on getting a Wheeler's goby or a yellow tilefish, but they were both sold out when I arrived. 🙁

 

But the three fish I currently have are doing well so far and eating well too. Putting them in a more natural setting seems to help a lot (I am QTing them in my 3-year-old nano downstairs). Still hoping to get a hold of a healthy wrasse. Either a Lubbocks and/or a Leopard. 

 

We're having a lot of trouble getting hold of healthy wrasses lately - both my LFSes are having issues keeping them alive as well. 

 

Add-On: Did a 5G WC today - it was an accident, actually. I was scooping out a lot of SW from my DT to 'cleanse' the frogspawn separately, and I actually removed too much water from my own system (5" to 6" drop in the sump waterline noted, left my macro & my mini sump wavemaker partially exposed to the air). So I quickly mixed up a fresh batch of SW and poured it into the sump. 

 

Will perform a proper WC some time next week. Need to siphon some gunk out of the tank and do regular maintenance again soon.

[Snow_Phoenix]

Miko still YEET-ing my merlettis. His latest victims had to be reglued even further away from his burrow than before:

 

New blastos looking puffy and nice in the tank (under heavy whites, minimal blues) - I think it looks much better under total whites though:

 

This piece is still in recovery-mode. If you scroll on to the next pic, you can still see some of the edges are still bleached and white. The rest of the coral is making a comeback though:

 

Cynarina under heavy whites:

 

One of my small, hungry rainbow acan frags (sorry for the blurred quality, but I had to zoom in from above the tank and my phone is at least 18" above the actual coral piece):

 

Goblin looking good:

 

Thanos: