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In the interest of making sure I have qualifying FTS, here are a few quick shots of lydia wishing I'd leave her alone. 
(Seriously, I lived and grew up on the big island, I never figured life'd put me in a room with a fish giving me the stink eye)

 


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You also probably noticed the new coral, it's the most expensive one in the tank - a kind of Colgate Red-White-Blue Acan. It was $20, but it went to a local who could use it and the Acan is for my wife who has difficulty seeing greens and blues in our tanks - the lighting makes it difficult for her to tell the colors apart. 


Oddly enough the white in this animal still appears green to her, it's really, really interesting to hear how she see's animals compared to myself. Partial-oops on my part XD

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cosmicbread

Following, love the look of this tank already! I'm also a sucker for those "oddball" aquarium shapes. Your choice of branching rock work was a good decision here, imo.

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34 minutes ago, cosmicbread said:

Following, love the look of this tank already! I'm also a sucker for those "oddball" aquarium shapes. Your choice of branching rock work was a good decision here, imo.

It was a lucky find for sure, branch rock is hard to come-bye these days, been loving the progress of your systems!

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I love this little damsel, she pulled the algae from it's rock and now has to constantly, with extreme-frustration and pecking, drag it out of her nest every time the current blows it back in. I've tried to secure and put it underneath rocks, but moving anything re-subjects it to her OCD and she'll just re-arrange the rock its' under back to her liking in short-order or tear the algae back out -starting the cycle over again.
What a hilarious little animal.

I'll try to get a video if she pulls it back out from its' most-recent spot.

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  • 4 weeks later...

The promised video of Lydia living with the consequences of her actions. She continues to insist on moving any rockwork or frags which go into the tank as well lol, I've just been leaving her to it.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/xapFGstbE2EbowtR8
 

A couple shot's of the branching Briarium's growth and this month's FTS. I'm having to ration waterchanges and the animals in my systems are meeting it with mixed reactions.


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May update and FTS

 

  • Acan is recovering nicely, it's nearly totally-healed from where its' largest head was cut in half - no real new growth but it presents a tons of feeders at night which makes me want to start feeding a bit of benereef.
  • The frogspawn's base, which started out pinprick-small, is now easily the size of a dime, it's not much and the colony hasn't visibly grown that much, but its come a long way.
  • White-tipped Torch has mostly ceased to be fussy and now has great extension again, I think it was mostly upset because the Nitrates in my two systems essentially hit 0.
  • I'm now dosing a bit of phyto, some aminos, and nitrate a few times a week alongside a touch of alk and calcium to keep things elevated and happy.
  • The duncan is nice and fluffy, the tentacles are short and fat, but we knew that when we bought it. The animal seems much happier in this lower energy system than the main.
  • The GSP continues to grow at an almost daily-visible pace and the chip of favia is still holding on somehow.
  • The dragons' breath has been beaten to death lol, I have a small forest in the main system so I'm not too heartbroken.


I added the chalice coral to this system as it seems to be having a hard time recovering from a bacterial infection which killed the main system's favia overnight (there's some flesh regrowing thankfully). I've no idea what it is but it causes transparent white bubbles on the flesh of these animals, it could be simple bleaching, reactions to low nutrients, too much flow, it being pissy about my clownfish using it as a couch. Hard to say, too many factors as usual, but I decided to take the risk of spreading a potential infectious pathogen to attempt to save one of my oldest colonies in a lower-energy environment. 

 

Also picked up a gorgeous Ironman shroom for $12 from a local, been wanting one of these for a while as I absolutely love they way they look, the rate they spread is... too bad, but I made a nice island for it and will deal with that problem when I must.

 


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I love damsels, they're such a treat to watch.

Here's a shot of the chalice, I'll have to get a better picture - it's purple with bright red, pink, and orange stripes - greenish rims around the mouths.

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5 hours ago, Peaches said:

What are you using to dose nitrates?

Seachem Flourish Nitrate, I have the phosphate as well from a Dino outbreak in my main system, but I've found keeping P04 above zero is easier and likely more healthily done via Phytoplankton dosing.

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  • 1 month later...

The macro lens doesn't work particularly-well through the curved acrylic, but I decided to take a few shots of the animals and play around with settings anyway.
 

 


The frogspawn fell from its' spot and had to be relocated, luckily -despite landing facedown- it doesn't seem to have been damaged at all and warmed-up to the lower-light quickly.

 

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The White-Tip torch has a mouth big enough to eat Lydia now, though it's rarely overly-interested in food (probably from how much light it gets).

 

 

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Colgate Acan has healed completely and popped out a new head, it has feeders out all day and greedily eats anything that gets close lol.

 

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The branching briarium seems to have decided to encrust before growing any taller, which is fine by me, for a while it just didn't seem happy with the new system (Lydia kept  moving it)

 

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The Duncan has morphed to a mostly neon-green color, probably because of being moved up higher in the tank. Its also got three baby heads growing and has really started to flurf out.

 

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My poor, abused, two-year old chalice is slowly recovering from its' bleaching event, although it may still have too much light I've no idea where to put it.

 

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Iron Man Disco was also getting too much light and went to the dark side of the tank a few days ago

 

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And here's the FTS for June, hope the slightly out-of-focus and sensor-strained photo's weren't too rough to get through lol.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

 

 

The Duncan and Torch have new platforms, they were in pretty solid before but it was bugging me. Duncan's new heads are growing quickly too.
I'm a little concerned about the Torch, moved it into a bit higher flow and a bit more light, but the angle it was at caused the far-side to recede a bit.

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The Acan has a new head, has fully-healed, and fluffs-up wonderfully. Apparently when its' mouths' are closed they're bright pink

It's always hungry so I essentially never get to see that lol... I've been feeding it benereef and pellets twice a week and love the cottony-texture.

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The chalice is all-at-once growing on one end, receding on the other, while slowly recovering color and adding a ton of new eyes... 

The tank's got a really interesting turf-algae growing in it and honestly I'm 100% down with it so far, it's a dark emerald green - grows low/slow- and looks beautiful.

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And here's a classic FTS for July of Lydia telling me to leave her alone.
This little gal is hilarious, she's started hitting the feeding baster hard enough to make a sound, she's also developed a lovely turquoise diamond near her tail that she only colors up when sleeping.

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Sorry the tank's a bit boring compared to the competition lol, it's budget-first and a combination of my being happy with things, waiting for prices, dealing with the struggle-bus of a 20-gallon, and SCV-2 has really just left me content to sit around and get fussed at by lydia without worrying about adding or removing much.

Hope everyone's staying well and is having a great day.

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  • 1 month later...

Lydia is a sassy little PITA and I love her.

She's been judiciously reshuffling and re-arranging corals with her big fat face, it's hilarious to watch but she nocked the duncan over twice, plucked a bunch of polyps off the GSP, and has essentially killed the iron man shroom (she really dislikes that coral for some reason lol).

 

Ah well, the Duncan is still growing and the Acans continue to develop a pink rim around the edge of their mouths.

 

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I've been feeding everything that will take it a mixture of red sea ab and benereef, it's honestly kind of difficult to find the right ratio as too much ab or too thick a slurry seems to upset the coral.

 

There have also been a few new additions

Neon Green Sinularia

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And an unnamed harvest/fall colored favia.

You'll have to take my word on the colors until I get my macro and gel filters back out, but the body is a brilliant yellow with rust and pink all throughout.

 

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Past that the tank is now mostly on an every-other-week to monthly WC schedule, alternates ab feeding with benereef slurry, and gets a bit of all-for-reef once or twice a week.

 

The torch was taken down from its' perch, partially from Lydia, but also because I think too much light and too little flow were contributing to some recession. It seems to have started reclaiming skeleton and eats like a pig, so I'm pretty optimistic.

 

The frogspawn is growing skeleton, but otherwise has remained about the same size, it might not be getting enough light, or the right kind of light, maybe too/not enough nitrate, euphyllia are weird sometimes.

 

FTS

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Looks great... I love the sinularia... Lydia had better leave it be... must be jealous. Can’t wait to see the favia with your filter!!

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After the Sass from Lydia yesterday I decided to re-scape and replace the pump with a higher GPH model I had in storage, technically can provide 3x the flow, but I have it dialed down to half and the Torch/Frogspawn are still unsure what to make of that change. Going to have to watch them closely, but the recession may have been from the previous pump being near-fully clogged >_>

Some okay shots with an Okay camera:

 

It turns out that favia just isn't very photogenic, I'm going to have to try a bunch of different filters and settings, but for now I have these few quick snaps from this mornin'


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You can definitely make out some of the oranges, reds, and pinks in the flesh, but the yellow washes out to green. I may have to try a dark green-brown gel...

 

 

The Duncan hasn't been quite as fluffy since Lydia knocked it off its' rock twice, and it has since been moved a handful of times, but I'm sure the pouting is temporary.

 

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Uncertain Torch, doesn't know how to feel about the increased flow, hopefully, eventually happy... But it may be a deepwater or hybrid... Euphyllia are hard...

 

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The Frogspawn is also not sure if it likes the new flow pattern lol... But they're usually pretty-adaptable so I'm going to see what happens.

 

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The sinularia hasn't missed a beat even after being knocked-over onto its' face. It's a bit brighter/more-neon/glowstick green in person, but this is pretty-close.

 

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So, I have an unpleasant question and an unfortunate situation where I'm going to want to, again, rather rudely tag both @Humblefish, and @Tired.
I've had a black cap in QT for around two weeks, it went through a pseudo tank-transfer on arrival (From LFS water, to 3x strength rid-ich bath of NSW for 30 minutes, container of NSW, then NSW QT tank w/ API general Cure to be fed fenbendazole prophylactic).
Unfortunately I noticed it wasn't eating as much as normal the last few days and when I took a peek at it sleeping mid-day, it appeared to have ich, dropsy, and/or possibly velvet.

The question is this, a little over a week ago, when it had no visible signs and was eating healthy/active, I tried to get it to eat from the baster I use to feed corals and move things around from time-to-time. I believe there was likely at least a few-hour to a solid day interval between it going in her tank and then being used in at least one of the other systems, but all I did to sterilize was rinse with hot freshwater (I should have used isopropyl, but I made a mistake the one time it counted).

What do you recon' the odds are of my having cross contaminated all three systems? 

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A few hours of drying out and a hot water rinse isn't very nice to most pathogens. I wouldn't guarantee it, but I think your odds of having transferred anything are pretty low. I also would think it may not have been contagious at that point. You should definitely watch things, but I wouldn't go into "time to treat everything" mode. Not least because that would be pretty stressful for everything. IMO, the stress isn't worth it for such a small chance of something happening. 

Definitely keep an eye on everything, but I assume you're going to do that anyway.

 

If it looks like it has ich and velvet, I wonder if it might just have one, that's giving the appearance of both? Obviously not good, but better than both. 

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38 minutes ago, Tired said:

A few hours of drying out and a hot water rinse isn't very nice to most pathogens. I wouldn't guarantee it, but I think your odds of having transferred anything are pretty low. I also would think it may not have been contagious at that point. You should definitely watch things, but I wouldn't go into "time to treat everything" mode. Not least because that would be pretty stressful for everything. IMO, the stress isn't worth it for such a small chance of something happening. 

Definitely keep an eye on everything, but I assume you're going to do that anyway.

 

If it looks like it has ich and velvet, I wonder if it might just have one, that's giving the appearance of both? Obviously not good, but better than both. 

It was fairly distinct, gold powdery covering and then white spots, seems like I may be catching things early but I'm not very optimistic.
Knowing my luck I'm going to be damn-near breaking out the macro to look at everyone's gills for the next month...

Appreciate the response, at this point the Black cap's in Rid Ich and will be starting copper tomorrow after a 50% WC, the stores about town have an odd-schedule still (SCV2).

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