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Peninsula style - 4.6 Ultum Rimless - Adjusted and growing


Postlarval Kow

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Postlarval Kow

A bunch of new changes in the tank! We fragged out half of the SPS to stop war and give space for growth and then ended up getting some new stunning corals from a coworker. But most importantly, our beloved cowrie - Rangoon - has adapted to the new light schedule (featuring classic glowing blues at dawn and especially dusk) by coming out at crepuscular hours! He is a hard worker and it is always awesome to see him - especially with glowing coral in the background.Cowry_on_prowel.thumb.jpg.be858eac01154c7e3c52fbaf9b2bb467.jpgCowry_on_glass.thumb.jpg.26673edb8cf9dc1cf66a6ed71d45d12d.jpg

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Postlarval Kow

A few weeks after a massive fragging event, new corals and new light and the tank is definitely thriving. The AI fixture has things exploding with color and growth. For example, that superman we thought we had is definitely a rainbow. Looking down from above reveals the extent of the fragging and the pretty new colors:HeavilyFragged.thumb.jpg.d487b658e2fbd77c67c2924c4e350c2a.jpg

 

The new acro is even coloring up and encrusting the glue as well as popping out new polyps. It should be beautiful. Pale purple now with bright yellow growth tips and big hungry blue polyps.heavyFraggedOS.thumb.jpg.343cfdafd19a5145904effdb8783f723.jpg

 

Speaking of polyps - we are having a hard time with ID on some of our new acquisitions.

UnknownGreenAndBlueSpade.thumb.jpg.fac23d9f88b0d8b4781be56fb7c87fdc.jpg

These are a crazy metallic green core, with a blue mouth, a deep blue spade shape, a light blue grey layer, and metallic green flecks on the skirt. Any ideas?

 

UnknownPinkIrridescent.thumb.jpg.d8e27e09786e711488b3db7d0184af1f.jpg

Similarly, these have colored up with the new light. They are an absolutely iridescent pink and white that turns pale pink under heavy blue spectra. No idea...

 

Lastly, these are maybe laser lemons? Green skirt, blue layer, pink layer, dark band, lime green mouth:LaserLemons.thumb.jpg.df75cfa63f28ce67ca8430794800d39c.jpg

 

Thanks for the help!

 

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23 minutes ago, Postlarval Kow said:

A few weeks after a massive fragging event, new corals and new light and the tank is definitely thriving. The AI fixture has things exploding with color and growth. For example, that superman we thought we had is definitely a rainbow. Looking down from above reveals the extent of the fragging and the pretty new colors:HeavilyFragged.thumb.jpg.d487b658e2fbd77c67c2924c4e350c2a.jpg

 

The new acro is even coloring up and encrusting the glue as well as popping out new polyps. It should be beautiful. Pale purple now with bright yellow growth tips and big hungry blue polyps.heavyFraggedOS.thumb.jpg.343cfdafd19a5145904effdb8783f723.jpg

 

Speaking of polyps - we are having a hard time with ID on some of our new acquisitions.

UnknownGreenAndBlueSpade.thumb.jpg.fac23d9f88b0d8b4781be56fb7c87fdc.jpg

These are a crazy metallic green core, with a blue mouth, a deep blue spade shape, a light blue grey layer, and metallic green flecks on the skirt. Any ideas?

 

UnknownPinkIrridescent.thumb.jpg.d8e27e09786e711488b3db7d0184af1f.jpg

Similarly, these have colored up with the new light. They are an absolutely iridescent pink and white that turns pale pink under heavy blue spectra. No idea...

 

Lastly, these are maybe laser lemons? Green skirt, blue layer, pink layer, dark band, lime green mouth:LaserLemons.thumb.jpg.df75cfa63f28ce67ca8430794800d39c.jpg

 

Thanks for the help!

 

The second one looks like AOGs (Armor of God) zoas. Not sure what the first & third ones are, but I love the color on the third ones. So pretty. 🥰

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Postlarval Kow

The tank has universally recovered from the mass fragging event, although the whammin watermelons and fiestas caught something and went thru a hideous shrinking and partial bleaching event. In addition, I was out of town for a week and the newest acro encrusted past its glue, grew a wedge between the glue and the rock, and toppled onto the mystic sunset. It turns out the acro wins that battle, and the mystic is now recovering from partial digestion where the two made contact (5 spots). I remounted the acro with a more liberal use of glue and it is recovering and starting to recolor. All of the coral has continuously enhanced its color after the light fixture change as you can see beautifully from the top down:

TopDown2020_12_12.thumb.jpg.c2018c5da52a5700a1ee6692a6d210ea.jpg

 

The placement of the newest zoanthids was... suboptimal - so that got switched up and they are now jammed together in a happy little rainbow in the front corner of the tank:

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The scrambled eggs are gluing together the whole arrangement as they grow - and every colony has growth. The sunnyDs and the unnamed blue/metallic greens are competing with the hailanders as my fav zoas in the tank. Really pretty!

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Postlarval Kow

The Dead Sea of 2020 – long in case it helps someone else facing tank doom and recovery

I left the tank on autopilot for a relatively short trip of 7 days looking better than ever; look at that awesome growth especially on the two acroporas! I followed the same routine I have for the other 12 times this year that the tank has been abandoned for over a week – a 33% water change two days before and heavy feeding the day before - to make sure that nothing looked stressed and lipid reserves were high. I filled-up a reservoir that can last a month, and did not stress.

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Upon return as I approached my door, I smelled acropora mucus and then heard the jingle of the ATO alarm. This is what I saw:DOOM_above.thumb.jpg.a168478970c6f3910dc9f4481fbab172.jpg

About 40% of the water had been allowed to evaporate out exposing the two acros and the rainbow monti to 66.6 degree (ironic) air and the powerhead running dry but the aquaclear and heater miraculously still creating a trickle of warm water and oxygenation in the tank. Everything was covered in salt from the resulting waterfall. Which was good – imagine if all of it was somehow in the remaining water? As it was the salinity was at 55 ppt (1.040 SG) making the tank a nice experiment for testing coral tolerance and giving 2020 the chance to give me one last strong punch to the gut.

DOOM_back.thumb.jpg.91a0fb739f2ce44fc1f80b3b843f247a.jpg

I sat down. Cracked a beer and came up with a plan. Fortunately I had plenty of RO water on standby… I went super slow and added a cup of water every 15 minutes to refill the tank until the refractometer read 1.025@79. That took about 3 hours. It was brutal to leave coral continuously exposed, but the last thing I wanted was for the remaining corals to explode from a sudden shift in osmolarity. Indeed for the next couple days, pockets of tissue on each colony were swelling and exploding, but thankfully ONLY pockets.

I started doing a series of 33 - 40% water changes in combination with running floss (switched with every change as it filled with yucky) and carbon (switched every other day). I did one water change in the morning and one at night until greater than 95% of the tank volume has been switched – seven water changes thus far. I decided against a 100% water change because the LPS was pale but seemed alright and the zoas were sporadically opening, and I did not want to further stress anything else with a dramatic swing in nutrients or whatever else was going on in the doom-tank.

So where is it now? All of the exposed tissue (was probably days in chilly air) died, but there is still about 40% of the rainbow monti that is (hopefully) recovering. The yellow-tips is dead, minus one polyp that – who knows, may live (DOOM!). The staghorn has a ring of live tissue at its base, and is beginning to show polyp extension – so who knows, it may live and recolonize (DOOM!). The sunset monti hated the experiment and is 95% dead, but with a thin band of live tissue in the warzone closest to the rainbow – its prognosis is poor (DOOM!). The mystic sunset browned out, covered itself in mucus and lost tissue where the aquaclear was a waterfall on it – still it doesn’t appear to have polyp extension nor does it have massive tissue loss so it is being mystical. The stubbs monti is unperturbed – even the tips that were exposed. The melonberry is sorta gross with mucus but does not appear to be dead. The birds nest has plenty of recession low, but is starting to get fluffy again. All of the zoa colonies have some polyps fully open, and some in weird states so I have high hopes for recovery. All of the LPS and the FEEEEESCH ate and appear mostly unperturbed. The snails, cowrie and crabs are enjoying plenty of fine dining on mucus and slimy algae after they recovered from torpor as part of their 2020 year end stimulus package.

The good news is that its not ALL dead, and now we have a great benchmark for life at the start of 2021 – from the ashes.

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Postlarval Kow
On 1/2/2021 at 1:18 PM, ReefGoat said:

Sorry about this disaster. This tank was looking fantastic. It'll bounce back......what substrate were you using? 

Thanks for the well wishes! We use about 1 - 2 cm of crushed coral. I like having a semblance of a bottom substrate for critters to hide in and for a myriad of algae to persist in as well.

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Postlarval Kow

Things bounced back - shockingly fast! Ill take some pics and post a new reality FTS this evening, but it appears that The Doom ended up costing the tank only a single colony (the yellow-tip acro). There is still massive tissue loss on the rainbow and sunset, but they are both healing. The rainbow has been recolonizing old tissue like crazy and has probably regained about 10% of the lost surface, and the sunset has gone from perhaps 2% coverage to perhaps 6% coverage. The remaining "acro" (base has tissue, branch has none) has recovered about 20% of what it lost on the base but has not yet taken to the sky. All of the zoas have regained 95% of their color and the mystic sunset is slowly turning from brown to pretty again. In fact I am going to have to frag it again since it is starting to encroach on the glass and other colonies...

 

My biggest quandary is about the remaining acropora - should I remove the skeleton (snails doing fun gymnastics to keep it clean) or will the remaining tissue recovering around the base also recolonize the upright portion? Rather unsure about what direction to take... its ugly, but it may also result in a faster recovery for that colony as it would not have to recalcify the whole branching structure.

 

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Postlarval Kow

The extent of the tissue loss is very evident from the top down, but so is the road to recovery!

20210114_191816.thumb.jpg.02eb2535238c4a7be521bc907e927781.jpg

(top down 01/14/2021)

 

I am always amazed at how resilient coral can be when given the chance. The amount of recovery has been insane. That is not white band disease on the Rainbow Monti - it is rapid new growth! Interestingly, the flame red only stays at the outter rim of the colony and does not appear where it is rapidly re-colonizing old skeleton. I have decided the remaining acropora structure will stay. It is being colonized, although at a slower rate than the rainbow (likely because it experienced even more than 50% mortality).

 

I will never speak ill of the hardworking snails in this tank again (until I forget), they have proven to be gymnasts beyond what I would have expected in keeping new algae at bay. Tho perhaps that is a guilty concious because I am pretty sure they caused an overflow which caused the ATO to not run for a week...

 

20210101_192105.thumb.jpg.1f3e869a6fd9c69422f08eb20696895d.jpg

(extent of damage - 01/01/2021)

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Postlarval Kow

During my last water change the salt bucket was running low and I wanted to see how well the 150 gallon bucket of salt matches up with my water change records. So I plotted out my notes, which was sorta cool. You can see when we were ramping up the system, adding lots of coral and doing lots of changes to keep quality high. Then we lost FEEESCH (many changes as we tried to keep pristine conditions to help his infection) and then removed the daemon worm which meant the biomass went to zero and the nutrients probably followed suite which triggered a Dinoflag bloom which meant no water changes. Things rebalanced and consumption was at a nice steady crawl until the recent ATO failure while outta town and DOOM event.

Timeline.thumb.jpg.83e1205f174e5c9da6edc933946952a9.jpg

Overall, it looks like the bucket yielded roughly the amount of salt that it was supposed to - which I suppose is not surprising, but still damned nice to see.

 

The tank has recolored nicely and algae has worn down the exposed skeletons where the DOOM killed which is now slowing recolonization. Still, stuff is cranking along. Miss the blast of color from the sunset monti the most I think... but added a new and beautiful red planet which is a fuzzy and fantastic feature.

20210130_212519.thumb.jpg.8428660f0b9c4cfcd48beb590f1ce738.jpg20210130_212409.thumb.jpg.435df64c89c94ad83aa397a8b17062b6.jpg

 

The Hammer is living up to its name of late and stinging away the mystic sunset, even tho I aggressively fragged the bits that were covering it up.

20210129_180602.thumb.jpg.b206603ba29155c9402c1b7bb8caa02d.jpg

 

 

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Postlarval Kow

Recovery inches along! The chalice is now raking the poor lepto (probably going to have to remove) and mystic sunset so its about time to frag it again. Things are plump and happy.

20210209_224745.thumb.jpg.dbfc394b257cc0cd4668506a14ca2ded.jpg

New acro is adjusting well and has gained more pink in its polyps. No new growth directions yet tho.

 

20210209_224649.thumb.jpg.324b87a868e628c3a76ce0e8be0fe7d5.jpg

 

The melonberry and green digita are growing into eachother - but with no war!

 

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Postlarval Kow

I have been feeding mostly daily to help stuff regrow over the bald areas. And the zoanthids love it! There are 2 baby rastas, 4 baby sunnyDs and 2 baby cats eyes. These colonies have been rather slow to grow - in contrast with the rest of the colonies. The Whammins and Fiestas are finally touching when the current is right!:

WhamminFiestaGrowth_smaller.thumb.jpg.3474508138bbbe15de6717530cea8df4.jpg

 

My favorites, Hailanders, look unreal under both actinic and daylights and increased from 3 to more than 20 polyps:

Hailander_growth.thumb.jpg.50f7a1c3d7e40bcdb58793faa57ebf59.jpg

 

The Gooshter colony started with 2.5 animals, has been fragged twice and is huge!:

Gooshter_growth.thumb.jpg.9db65cda7be2910e2dd169ba2c1ee4d1.jpg

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Postlarval Kow

The perpetually hungry and irritable FEEESCH gets about a tenth of a cube of Hikari brand mysis shrimp. I try and use a 5 ml pipette to give the tongue, chalice, and turbinaria a few bits of shrimp as well if I chop off more than a sliver of the cube. I also use the pipette to squirt some old reefroids to everything, probably about 1/8th of a teaspoon - just a pinch mixed into some water in a shot glass. I turn the pump off for about 5 minutes for the feed.  Since increasing the feeding rate all of the dinos have gone away.  The increased rate is also helping train the FEEESCH to go into a container so I can catch him. Wary little stinker when it comes to nets and containers - but has no problem attacking my fingers.

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Postlarval Kow

Coworker tossed a pretty Ricordea florida my way. Thing is a huge beast - maybe too big. Ive seen them approach softball size while diving, so I hope this thing stops expanding and starts splitting so I can make it a pretty little splash of color instead of having it overshadow the whammin colony. Interesting interaction there, with zoas looking a bit displeased by their new neighbor.

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Also fragged out half the chalice and removed the lepto - it was being mauled into oblivion.

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Postlarval Kow

Couple small updates as overall things look good and the damaged montis are chugging along with good growth.

20210324_223421.thumb.jpg.5c939f34d41a711f978bc4e8355d9e6a.jpg

 

Moved the ricordia to the shame corner where it is thrilled to exist and is currently splitting. It was stretching the full width between the hailanders and whammins which looked weird. I like the negative space there under the chalice. Moving it caused the whammins to start a bizarre melt thing... which is mildly disconcerting. Heres the sad whammins and a creeping FEEESCH:

sadZoas_creepFeeeeesch.thumb.jpg.10a11c2013c8ba30248076c5f45a4b9f.jpg

 

In contrast to the rest of the zoas, which are just the happiest as shown by the front mixed colony:

happyZoas.thumb.jpg.84cdc86b9b03f0ac6f0e327433a8fda8.jpg

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Postlarval Kow

Thanks! It is looking better, although still rather scarred up. I try to not take pictures during evening glow, but these actually turned out and really show where things are recovering and where it lags (pardon the radiant glow):

glowCorner.thumb.jpg.067dc0bb24564877170f3722da75c67d.jpg

 

The OG acro is slowly making progress upwards and the sunset is unfortunately mostly visible only from above, where it manifests as a pretty green and orange ring around what once was:

IMG_4270.thumb.JPG.96c570c0baefbb9bd2400c6d9ae0c30e.JPG

 

 

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Postlarval Kow

The tank successfully moved into new digs with only 1 loss - apparently Red Planet will just die in this system. Heres a shot of the new cleaner set up.

 

S20210505_222209.thumb.jpg.8056178e44857b5f38d17bf6fc8bb0cf.jpg

Slightly nerve wracking experience, but just drained half the water into bucket, put the coral (mass fragging event) into a 5G Tupperware, dumped the water onto coral, drained rest into Tupperware, grabbed fish and crabs, gently lifted tank/gravel and placed into 18G rubbermaid lined with towels, wrapped towel around tank, wiped down stand, loaded everything (tupperware, gear in another tupperware, rubbermaid, stand) into car, then got to new space and inverse process.

 

Didnt break any equipment which was the concern and finally had a chance to hang the light from ceiling so it looks way better!

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Postlarval Kow

Been a hot second but the tank is thriving! I just fragged out half the birdsnest, a good hunk of the green monti and more than half the chalice - but the tank looks fine. The zoas are all in various states of reaction to the next place, but they are growing. The rastas have finally started really growing and there are somehow 11 now! I feel like the system is stable and growing, and now it shall become a coral war. The mystic sunset and neon fire turb are the next round. There are bits of chalice, monti, birdsnest, and stray zoas throughout the system now.

 

Love it!

 

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Note that somehow the zoas have all began to intermingle. The "gooshters" are encroaching on the whammin/fiestas, which also lost big time to the chalice and my poor adjusted rock work.

 

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The birdsnest was literally over the green monti before fragging. It got huge. Taller than the acros and just so happy to be alive. The AoGs have expanded dramatically on the lower left.

 

 

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The ric split and is irritating the hammer, but I figure the hammer can throw down if it needs to. Alas for the poor red planet. The rainbow monti is absorbing it as well...

 

 

 

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