Qball77 Posted May 8, 2019 Share Posted May 8, 2019 Welcome to my journal. I’ve had my bio cube 16 up and running for almost 4 months. My current tank in habitants include one clown fish, and one cleaner shrimp. The rest of my CUC is mostly snails and one emerald crab. Unfortunately today, I lost my yellow watchman goby 😞 I’m not sure what happened to him but all of the sudden I found him face up at the top of the tank. I’m going to include a picture of my corals as they stand today. I’m hoping to update this journal weekly so that I can keep track of all my growth and progress. 1 Quote Link to comment
Qball77 Posted May 9, 2019 Author Share Posted May 9, 2019 So today I happened to notice while feeding my corals two tiny small little clause poking out of my elegance coral. I had never seen this before and I was in wondering for the past couple days why am I elegance coral was not looking so great. So I did some research online and found out the elegance corals can get a little parasite called a gall crab. I read that these little guys can wreak have it on an elegance coral so I took my elegant coral out and did some surgery. I was able to extract this crab from the bottom of my coral. Unfortunately no there is a rather large hole on the base of my elegance coral. I did a dip on the coral and returned it to the display. I am really hopeful that he will recover. I’m going to try and include some pictures so that if anyone out there reads this and notices the same problem with their elegance coral they can get it resolved quickly. This coral has been doing wonderfully up until this week. I probably would not have noticed this crab if I wouldn’t have fed my corals and have been watching very closely to see if my elegance would eat. Leave any comments that you’d like to let me know if you have had the same problem and what you did about it and also if your elegance coral recovered. 2 2 Quote Link to comment
Qball77 Posted May 10, 2019 Author Share Posted May 10, 2019 Well today has been an adventure for sure. I was able to remove the nasty looking crab from my elegance coral. He has been showing signs of recovery over the past four hours and I hope that tomorrow he will look even better. Just did my weekly water change 10%. The snails seem to be loving my new macroalgae and have devoured half of it 😞 On A good note my quarantine tank is finally ready for fish and not too soon since I have four new fish arriving tomorrow. I’ll be sure to include some pictures of my new little critters and hopefully they do well in my tank but for now here’s a picture of the empty quarantine tank. 1 Quote Link to comment
colinadam Posted May 10, 2019 Share Posted May 10, 2019 Great looking tank! Like the aquascape. That's crazy with the elegance, hope it bounces back quick. What fish do you have coming? Quote Link to comment
Qball77 Posted May 10, 2019 Author Share Posted May 10, 2019 Yellow goby with a pistol shrimp, firefish goby, flameback angel, and pj cardinal Quote Link to comment
Gravity Posted May 10, 2019 Share Posted May 10, 2019 Sounds like a big order. What size QT you setup? What corals you have so far? Quote Link to comment
Qball77 Posted May 10, 2019 Author Share Posted May 10, 2019 Elegance, zoas, acan, torch and hammer, cyphastrea, 2 blastos, toadstool, monti cap, pavona, and a favia. My qt is only a 10 gallon. I'm gonna keep my angel in my bigger tank once he's quarantined. I'm in the middle of a 75 gal build right now! Can't wait. I'm sure I'll journal that too 2 Quote Link to comment
Gravity Posted May 10, 2019 Share Posted May 10, 2019 Nice, looking forward to seeing them grow out. 1 Quote Link to comment
kimdawg Posted May 10, 2019 Share Posted May 10, 2019 Great catch on finding and getting rid of that crab. 1 Quote Link to comment
Qball77 Posted May 10, 2019 Author Share Posted May 10, 2019 It looked like a giant white tick! Hoping for a speedy recovery 1 Quote Link to comment
Jackal227 Posted May 10, 2019 Share Posted May 10, 2019 18 hours ago, Qball77 said: So today I happened to notice while feeding my corals two tiny small little clause poking out of my elegance coral. I had never seen this before and I was in wondering for the past couple days why am I elegance coral was not looking so great. So I did some research online and found out the elegance corals can get a little parasite called a gall crab. I read that these little guys can wreak have it on an elegance coral so I took my elegant coral out and did some surgery. I was able to extract this crab from the bottom of my coral. Unfortunately no there is a rather large hole on the base of my elegance coral. I did a dip on the coral and returned it to the display. I am really hopeful that he will recover. I’m going to try and include some pictures so that if anyone out there reads this and notices the same problem with their elegance coral they can get it resolved quickly. This coral has been doing wonderfully up until this week. I probably would not have noticed this crab if I wouldn’t have fed my corals and have been watching very closely to see if my elegance would eat. Leave any comments that you’d like to let me know if you have had the same problem and what you did about it and also if your elegance coral recovered. Wow, that's a crazy find. I find it amazing to see all the different life forms that come into our tanks. Hope the elegance comes back because they are beautiful corals. 2 Quote Link to comment
Qball77 Posted May 10, 2019 Author Share Posted May 10, 2019 Well my new fish have arrived! Thanks to saltwaterfish.com for a great deal for all these new critters. Hopefully either stay in the quarantine tank won’t be too long but I have to make sure that they are doing well before transfer to the display tank. Also just a quick update on the elegance coral he seems to be plumping up but has no tentacle expansion today. Hopefully over the weekend and he will come back to his full normal self. Here are some pics of the new critters and some shots from the display tank. Quote Link to comment
Qball77 Posted May 13, 2019 Author Share Posted May 13, 2019 Well it's becoming clear to me that this elegance coral probably is not going to make it. I spent the weekend away and came back to find him very shriveled and just not looking good. None of his polyps are extended, he has a weird spider Web looking film all over him, and just does not look the way he did 2 weeks ago. Everyone else in the tank looks thrilled and happy and is growing wonderfully. I'm going to give the elegance a few more days and then probably remove him as to not let him do any harm to the other tank inhabitants. 1 Quote Link to comment
Qball77 Posted May 13, 2019 Author Share Posted May 13, 2019 Well since my CUC ate all my red gracilarius and green finger algae, I made the leap into using my 2nd chamber as a refugium. Moved my chemipure elite into chamber 1 and my matrix into chamber 3. Got a light that I’ll run from 9-9. Hope this goes well. 1 Quote Link to comment
Qball77 Posted May 14, 2019 Author Share Posted May 14, 2019 New refugium light kinda looks cool! And here's some other random actinic shots 1 Quote Link to comment
colinadam Posted May 14, 2019 Share Posted May 14, 2019 That elegance looks rough, that's too bad. The rest of the tank looks awesome, everything is super happy. Any other corals on your wish list? I am envious of that shelf you have, can do a lot. I have a birdsnest that is doing good as well as a new Monti Digi frag, a nice branching SPS frag may be perfect there Quote Link to comment
Gravity Posted May 14, 2019 Share Posted May 14, 2019 What refugium light did you get? Quote Link to comment
Qball77 Posted May 14, 2019 Author Share Posted May 14, 2019 Got it from Amazon for 25 bucks. It's a 12w red spectrum. Everyone raved about it on Amazon reviews 1 Quote Link to comment
Qball77 Posted May 20, 2019 Author Share Posted May 20, 2019 Well today was a big day. Decided to dip my elegance coral and some iodine solution. This is my last ditch effort since it’s been about two weeks since I removed the crab from the skeleton. He’s looking pretty rough and at this point since I have nothing to lose I went for the iodine dip. I also did some peroxide dipping on some of my zoas since they were starting to get Some algae blooms. Boy does that work fast! I left them in the peroxide for about 90 seconds and there was immediate results. Now they’re looking all puffy and happy with little to no signs of stress. My quarantine tank is coming around nicely also. I haven’t noticed any white spots or parasites on any of the new fish. Luckily for me I haven’t had to dose with any copper or any other medications. I did throw a snail is the quarantine tank to help with some of the algae that was blooming. I just have to remind myself to take them out if I’m going to start dosing copper. So far so good! Can’t wait till Friday. Got new coral is coming from the reef2reef sale that they had all weekend! Boy was it tough trying to win corals some of which were up to 70% off. But I snagged four. One of which is an acro which will be my first attempt at this SPS. I do have a Pavona growing nicely at the moment and my Monti caps seem to be doing just fine so I decided to take a shot with an acro. I’m hoping that they’re not as difficult to maintain as everybody on the Internet says. My water parameters are super stable and right on target for a nice healthy reef so I am hoping it does well. If not it was only five dollars so I can’t complain about that other than if it doesn’t survive I’ll be killing a coral. Happy reefing 2 Quote Link to comment
colinadam Posted May 21, 2019 Share Posted May 21, 2019 I love the Flameback! Beautiful fish. Glad your corals took that well, hopefully they all bounce back. Can't wait to see the Acro, can't wait to see it 🙂 Quote Link to comment
Qball77 Posted May 24, 2019 Author Share Posted May 24, 2019 So after weeks of monitoring I’ve decided to take the plunge and and start dosing aquavitro ions to bring my magnesium up. I started in the mid 1300’s and tonight I was at 1200. My only change has been my water. I started my tank 4 months ago using Nutri-sea water from amazon. It was $20 for a 4 gallon jug. I was using 1 jug to do a water change every 10 days or so. It was getting expensive! Since my parameters were pretty stable I decided to switch to reef crystals mixed with distilled water. I do a 3 gallon change now every 10 days. I do top off with kalk every 4-5 days. My Ca is 450 and my dkh is steady at 8.9. The rest of my parameters are normal. And my nitrates are at 5 now that I started the refugium in chamber 2. I’m nervous about dosing copper in my QT since it will change a lot in that tank. I do see some white dots on my angel fish tho 😞 I don’t know if it’s a parasite or just the design of the fish. They have been on there since I first got him and the fish seems very healthy so just watching him for now. Anyone else use cupramine for their QT? The bottle tells me to remove carbon filtration but what else can I use for filtration? On a good note, my elegance is still kicking. He still isn’t a hundred percent and his polyps are not extending but he plumps up during the day and retracts at night. I was going to remove him from the display but he “reacted” when I took him out of the tank. I’ll give him another week to show improvement. Happy reefing Quote Link to comment
Qball77 Posted May 24, 2019 Author Share Posted May 24, 2019 Thanks @wwc for the new additions during the time splitter sale last weekend. Bonsai acro, orange ricordea, birdsnest, and monster mash zoa! Grow baby grow! Quote Link to comment
colinadam Posted May 24, 2019 Share Posted May 24, 2019 Looks great! That bonsai is a nice piece, and I love how Ricordias look under the blue lights Quote Link to comment
Gravity Posted May 24, 2019 Share Posted May 24, 2019 Nice corals, that sale was crazy. Looks like you got a nice zoa garden starting. Always liked the Ricordea too, will probably get one eventually. Quote Link to comment
Qball77 Posted May 25, 2019 Author Share Posted May 25, 2019 Thanks. I'm also hoping that the small piece of the birds nest will grow. It's was broken off on delivery so I glued it to the bottom of a frag plug and put it on my scape. Hope he's like the little engine that could 1 Quote Link to comment
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