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

[Snow_Phoenix]

2 hours ago, Ratvan said:

Love that long polyp toadstool at the back 😍 and the lurker in the Kenya Tree shot 🤣

I actually had to scroll back to see what I'd missed. That's Lady! So sneaky. 😅

[Snow_Phoenix]

My older AI Prime HD started to have heating issues today - it auto-shuts off because the temp. was too high. I wasn't sure how to reboot the fan, so I just turned the whole light off for 30+ mins, and let it cool down on its own. Once the casing was cold, I turned it back on the light worked like normal, plus I could hear the fan spinning as well. 

Tank overall seems to be doing okay. Fish are quite active and the corals are growing slowly. I still have patches of turf algae here and there, but it's not too bothersome. Thinking of picking up another quartet of snails from the LFS the next time I drop by there. Might wind up trading in a few frags from my nano for the snails, or for any other softie frag. I'm starting to enjoy collecting all the various leathers out there. Plus, they seem to be quite forgiving and are the only type of coral to truly grow out in this tank. 😅

[Snow_Phoenix]

Well, someone had a successful molt. 😊👍

 

 

 

 

[Snow_Phoenix]

Woke up after a short rest to this. 😅

 

 

The pup is definitely getting comfy. 🐶🐕🐾

[Snow_Phoenix]

Looks like the ready-made aquascapes are already here at the store. 😊👍

 

 

 

I'm favoring the first one - I like how it curves and almost touches each other. These scapes are pricey though. 😕

 

And I'm also currently suffering from a bad neck muscle strain that hasn't eased up for a week. Thinking of downsizing my current mini zoo at home. Right now, I *might fold and sell off the old 10G AIO downstairs. But it has so much sentimental value, that I'm torn between selling it off or putting it back into storage. 😕

 

Since I'm indecisive and currently lacking enough funds to purchase the scape (still in the midst of selling off some pet accessories online, but no takers yet), I'm in no rush to get it. I can't drive in my present condition anyway. Need to rest for another full week or two. 

[Looselyhuman]

How many systems do you have? I think i know of 3...

[Snow_Phoenix]

1 hour ago, Looselyhuman said:

How many systems do you have? I think i know of 3...

3x SW (10G FOWLR AIO, 10G nanoreef, 60G (+23G sump/refugium) reef WIP), 2x FW (70G each), a hedgehog, 2x hamsters, 1x parrot & 1x dog. Also have a whole bunch of semi-wild mourning geckos & wild chameleons in the garden. 👍

 

So yeah, full house somewhat. 

 

[Looselyhuman]

Love it!

[Snow_Phoenix]

Just now, Looselyhuman said:

Love it!

Forgot to add - we also have a troop of langurs and monitor lizards that visit on and off, but those are wild. There has been a pesky tree shrew that has made its home somewhere behind the pots in the side porch, much to my mum's chagrin. If I can catch the lil' guy, I'll deport him to a park. Mum's not as merciful towards rodents or anything with 'furry tails' <--- her words, not mine. 😅

[Looselyhuman]

5 minutes ago, Snow_Phoenix said:

Forgot to add - we also have a troop of langurs and monitor lizards that visit on and off, but those are wild. There has been a pesky tree shrew that has made its home somewhere behind the pots in the side porch, much to my mum's chagrin. If I can catch the lil' guy, I'll deport him to a park. Mum's not as merciful towards rodents or anything with 'furry tails' <--- her words, not mine. 😅

Nice! I take it you're in Asia? So much more diverse. We have coyotes and roadrunners, the occasional boring lizard that disappears behind a rock, and not a whole lot else.

[Snow_Phoenix]

9 hours ago, Looselyhuman said:

Nice! I take it you're in Asia? So much more diverse. We have coyotes and roadrunners, the occasional boring lizard that disappears behind a rock, and not a whole lot else.

South East Asia, yes. 😊👍

 

You guys have bears though, right? 👀

 

One guy in the suburbs up north here woke up recently to a panther in his side porch. Another person (closer to my home) found a reticulated python curled up in a washing machine in a laundromat. Both incidents were all over the local news. I actually feel bad when I read about these cases. The only reason the animals were desperate enough to intersect with the daily lives of people was because of habitat loss and lack of food. 😔

 

Otherwise, you'd most definitely *not encounter a panther in broad daylight, in the suburbs. It was tranquilized and moved to a nature reserve though. Hope it's okay. 

[Looselyhuman]

5 minutes ago, Snow_Phoenix said:

You guys have bears though, right? 👀

Yeah up closer to the mountains there are occasional bear and mountain lion (aka cougar, puma) sightings. Deer and elk too.. I'm about 7 miles (you can do the km conversion lol) from the mountains, a couple miles from the river - see: coyotes and roadrunners. We have other birds like jays, robins, doves, hawks, owls, etc, of course.

10 minutes ago, Snow_Phoenix said:

because of habitat loss

Everywhere 😞

[Snow_Phoenix]

Lady shed her cuticle today. 🥰

 

 

 

Here's Lily:

 

 

 

 

 

[Xj reefing]

6 hours ago, Looselyhuman said:

Yeah up closer to the mountains there are occasional bear and mountain lion (aka cougar, puma) sightings. Deer and elk too.. I'm about 7 miles (you can do the km conversion lol) from the mountains, a couple miles from the river - see: coyotes and roadrunners. We have other birds like jays, robins, doves, hawks, owls, etc, of course.

Everywhere 😞

Here in Australia there’s pretty much a giant spider in everyone’s house hiding away waiting to be found. Around where I live there are quite a few carpet pythons that slither around peoples houses and I’ve seen a couple of eastern brown snakes which are ranked as the second most toxic snake in the world. Luckily we don’t have large animals that are dangerous but we sure do have a lot of small ones.

[Snow_Phoenix]

9 minutes ago, Xj reefing said:

Here in Australia there’s pretty much a giant spider in everyone’s house hiding away waiting to be found. Around where I live there are quite a few carpet pythons that slither around peoples houses and I’ve seen a couple of eastern brown snakes which are ranked as the second most toxic snake in the world. Luckily we don’t have large animals that are dangerous but we sure do have a lot of small ones.

Well, we have cobras lol - the monocled being a quite common encounter in slightly rural areas, although you might have the misfortune to run across a king or spitting one too.

 

Oddly enough, when I stayed in Aussie for around ~5.5 months to study, I never encountered a single snake, spider or lizard there. I know they had to evacuate our Zoology lab once due to a large Huntsman spider they mistook for something else, but I wasn't there to see it. Funny bit though - during the orientation for all foreign exchange students, we had several Aussie school admins teach us how to 'kill' spiders. 😅

 

One lady even stripped off her shoe and thumped it on the desk to 'kill' the imaginary spider, and another had an aerosol can on hand. We couldn't stop laughing at the demo since all of us were from Asia, and we run across spiders very frequently here. 😅

 

(Just probably not the venomous sort. 😄)

 

 

[Xj reefing]

Spiders are definitely not welcomed in houses here. Especially when they grow to massive sizes

[Looselyhuman]

4 hours ago, Xj reefing said:

Spiders are definitely not welcomed in houses here. Especially when they grow to massive sizes

We don't mind the the little brown wolf spiders we get. They rarely exceed the 3/4" (2 cm). We know they help take out the odd roach, and almost never bite people. Over in Arizona, tarantulas are pretty common, but again, they almost never bite.

 

Black Widows on the other hand...

[Snow_Phoenix]

I had to shift my green weeping willow toadstool from my nano to this tank today because it outgrew the 10G, and begun shading everything else. 

 

One small issue though - even through careful removal, the coral is anchored to a super tiny piece of LR which is simply not big enough to be glued onto pre-existing LR in the 60G. 

 

I tried wedging the leather in a crevice in a LR at the center of the tank, but the size of the base makes it hard to fit into anything without being dislodged by the flow of the tank. Eventually I left it at the bottom of the tank, where it's slightly protected from the flow by the surrounding LR. 😕

 

 

I was looking around the tank for other places I could wedge it, in an area of medium-flow yet direct light. Found one, although it's a bit close to my neon toadstool, and I'm still unsure if this leather will simply get dislodged again:

 

 

The coral actually looked like this in my nano:

 

 

So it's definitely a piece that I don't intend to lose. 

 

I think once it stays put and attaches itself to the rock, it will grow out again and stop sulking (I hope!). 

[Snow_Phoenix]

Copepod storm. 💦

 

 

 

Limpets. 

 

 

Duster worms. 

 

 

I managed to glue the tiny rubble the toadstool was on to a small piece of LR (which I pulled out from the fuge), and glue that LR to a larger LR in the DT. 

 

The leather is still stressed and flopped over though. I accidently dropped a tiny blob of glue on its rim, but I'm hoping it'll shed that off. 😕

 

Otherwise, it has extended a few stubby polyps. 

 

I also scraped the glass today - can finally see my fish again, yay! 😊

 

I'll need to drop by a store and pick up some live shrimp though. Time to feed the lions again. 👍

[Snow_Phoenix]

Chunky Foxy. 🥰

 

 

Foxy says, 'This toadstool is mine now.' 😅

 

 

 

Chunky Hawke. 🥰

 

 

Latest Kenya tree is doing fine too. 👍

 

 

 

It has some nice PE up close. 🥰

 

 

Looking forward to collecting more leathers and softies. 😊

 

I'll be fully engaged with cleaning up my discus tank today/tomorrow/(and possibly the day after), so I'm holding off my trip to the FW LFS to pick up some live shrimp for my venomous girls. 

 

Fish overall are fine though. Everyone's eating, swimming and behaving normally. 👍

[Snow_Phoenix]

Finally seeing some polyps on this thing. 💦

 

 

[Snow_Phoenix]

Quite sad to see the colors run off on this one in this tank. 😭

 

 

 

I'm also starting to believe it simply is an ordinary long-polyped green toadstool, and not the weeping willow variant. I'm comparing it to the weeping willow in the background and the length of the polyps are very different. I guess I have to look up some examples for a true comparison, and wait for this guy to perk up a bit more. 🤔

 

Aquilla the pink skunk clownfish looked lovely today. 🥰

 

 

 

Trochus snails hard at work:

 

[Snow_Phoenix]

Taken under heavy *late evening blues through *orange filter lens glasses:

 

 

 

Weeping willow for comparison:

 

 

All taken under *early evening blues using *yellow clip-on filter lens: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Snow_Phoenix]

I was quite sick today, so I didn't go out to get the live shrimp. My girls are okay, but are not as chunky as they should be. 

 

Here's Lady:

 

 

 

 

[Snow_Phoenix]

And Lily: