Amp's 35 Breeder

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While checking out the nuati spiral tonight I noticed specks of coraline have started to take over one of the powerheads and I'm genuinely upset.

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Happy Thursday
 

 

 

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So while the Thursday was indeed happy, I am bumping into a few rough patches with the newly tank-mates.

Specifically I've only ever been around gramma's and this black cap is far more territorial of far-more space than I've encountered before.

 

I do need to preface this by really highlighting the fact that it's being territorial, not aggressive. As can be seen from the photos, the clowns and pink streaked wrasse are small enough she could kill them without effort.

 

No fins have even been damaged, she fluffs up and runs animals off and the buck-stops-there.

She's starting to warm up to the clowns being a bit more in her space, but the feisty little blighters have taken to dodging her and nipping at her tail (they're not even a quarter her size, but they're damsels).

 

The main issue is the basslet straight up won't let the wrasse near the rockwork, I've had to stick a rock for it to hide under in the corner of the tank.

Again the basslet's gentle and not causing any damage, but its' been about a week and her patience with the wrasse is still non-existent.

Despite that the wrasse has been slowly trying to sneak out into the tank along the back wall and investigates the rocks and such while the basslet's pigging out (I feed them separately and in different spots).

 

 

I see three options:

1. Re-scape, most of the rockwork is epoxied and about all I could do is pull what isn't out and just leave the tank more open.
2. Wait it out, its only been a week and things could sort themselves out in time, hard to tell with these animals.
3. Throw a grenade at a pretty peaceful problem and put the pink streaked in the atoll, then drop a proper-aggressive fish into this system (Lydia the irate damselfish).

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Grumpy sausage upset at rubberband for leaving its' nest.
https://photos.app.goo.gl/CqL9E7ad6qofMbeW6

 

Oh, and between the wrasse and basslet the tank essentially no longer has any flatworms or limpets, which means I now need more cleaners to take care of the algae outbreak XD

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New year, New scape, hope you've all had a wonderful holiday season.

 

Out of focus, swimming fish, low light, but it's the thought that counts right?

 

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Blasto's

 

Big Blasto

 

??? Litho, Psammo, IDK

 

A Mess

 

At Least Lily is Photogenic

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Acro has been recovering nicely and looked quite fluffy today, figured I'd share while I had a minute.

 

Hope everyone's been warm and safe.

 

[Zer0]

All of your coral looks gorgeous and so happy, and I really like that macro algae.

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2 hours ago, Zer0 said:

All of your coral looks gorgeous and so happy, and I really like that macro algae.

I love the look of the dragons breath, but I'd recommend gracilaria hayi to anyone thinking of putting something similar in their system.

 

Hayi will bind to rockwork and grow in large bushes, the dragons breath in here drops branches constantly and has to be rubber-banded to a surface. I've only had it weakly attach to one surface lol. Downside is they have different growth patterns and you lose the orange highlights.

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Fluffy psammo this AM

 

 

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Stellar Stylo has been growing pretty steadily, the polyps have gone a bit green instead of bright blue though, could be a response to a bit lower light.

 

 

The nauti spiral behind the Stylo has been outpacing the entire tank in growth.

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Monti's doin' their thing, both have started encrusting the rock beneath their glue, the spiral's already plating. Feeling pretty lucky.

 

Sunburst

 

Nauti Spiral

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Top down shot shows a bit better how its' grown.

 

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Things have been crazy and I haven't been on NR really at all, so here's a picture of the daisy cup I'm using to keep the storm clown from chewing on the Stylo.

 

[Tired]

Ah, reverse jail! 

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On 3/23/2021 at 8:58 PM, Tired said:

Ah, reverse jail! 

Honestly need to make a cone for the little bugger, until then he's dead easy to catch, even by hand.

 

A few more progress shots to make up for otherwise not existing the last month haha.

 

 

Happy to see the Top Fuel recovering from the bleaching incident, still doesn't have all it's colors back, but looking much better.

 

Sinularia is too bright to get lazy shots of, nearly big enough to frag now too.

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Cool enough I had to take some shots and upload them super quick, the dragon's breath has been going through a huge dieback, but its' left a few holdfasts which are regrowing on the rocks.
That's a first for me.

 

 

 

 

And here's a picture of the chubby basslet

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Had a minute this AM to play around with the new budget phone's camera, G stylus I grabbed used for a touch over a franklin.

Not awful once you backdoor in a hacked camera app, meant for a totally-different phone, and then throw a Gel-filter over the lens.
The default app is, well, limited -at best- in what it can digitally cope with and its' white balancing algorithm sucks 100% of the color and life out of any attempted shot past what they call 5000k (good lord it is NOT).

 

However a 12-shot HDR composition plus a Gel filter comes-out pretty close to real-life, though still a bit yellow-shifted and washed-out. Better than the Pixel 2 I think.

 

 

Edit: the focus was supposed to be at the clowns, but they moved, go figure. Was out of time and more interested in the colors.

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I have allot of catching-up to do on folk's build journals and no time to do it haha. I wanted to make a habit of keeping things updated here, at least every once in a while, though.

Sorry for not being able to toss around likes and the usual hairbrained-comments to any who follow, which I also happen to follow, hopefully things'll calm back down soon enough.

Still playing around with the convenience this new phone provides, it's nice to see another super-sampler hit the marketplace, I believe the Nokia 1020 was the only one to really pull much of anything off (though I recall a few others trying, including the new samsung with the absurdly high megapixel count). Unfortunately the digital-side and its' image processing has a long, long way to go. 

 

 

Anyway here are a few quick photos

 

The Gobstoppers are finally opened back-up, they've been stretched, closed, and threatening to die ever since I added them to this system. Fussy coral, hopefully improves from here.

Side note, I picked up a chunky Miagi Tort for 15 that didn't miss a beat after being added, already has new spires, is encrusting over the glue, and is reaching towards the light.

 

 

The Mystery green Acro has really started to look nice and thick on the skeleton, a few of its' branches seem to be building bases to spire-out too, maybe time for another growth spurt soon?

 

 

Despite being re-located into the basslet's territory the Mocha Clown is still constantly bullying this Stylo. It's growing despite the harassment, but you can see a missing polyp or two in this shot I grabbed post-bite.

 

 

Those who followed my previous build know that I almost lost this blasto merletti to Brown Jelly, I had to frag off everything but two heads. Been over a year now and I can't believe it's the same animal.

 

 

And I figured I'd throw in a shot of the $2 big-head purple blasto, it's off in a corner that has a mild-uplifting flow, but I'm concerned it may not be in quite enough light. No other space its' happy with which isn't (probably) near 200 PAR though unfortunately. Looks happy enough for now.

 

 

Hope everyone's been doing well, looking forward to finding a minute to catch-up on everyone else's builds. Happy 20-years to Nano Reef!

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Stellar Stylo was looking extra fluffy this morning

 

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That darn Dragonsbreath means my hands are never out of this system for more than 24 hours lol, for better or worse.

Speaking of the stuff that dieoff was allot meaner than I thought, P04 spiked up to >0.25, which caused the monti's to brown out.
Phosguard and a 25% WC has things back down to 0.1 and the corals colored back up within a week or so, in the meantime things have been growing more steadily than I thought. Noticed this before-after this mornin', while plucking more of that Macro out of the Sicce powerhead, both are quick phone snapshots and definitely not quite from the same angle but it's what I got.
Hope everyone's been having a great couple weeks, finally been able to do a bit of catchup reading.

 

[A.m.P]

Been slacking on taking photo's of the other system, although that's for a specific reason I'll have to get into later.
For now this system is trucking along well enough.

I've bought another pair of big scarlet hermits and added a pair of female molley's to the tank.
I have to say, I really don't regret it at all, despite not having direct hands-on experience with them in systems I've been quick to recommend them, quick enough that I've felt a bit guilty after the fact. However with established hobbyists swearing by them, well I really didn't feel it was too pretentious to bring them up.

But MAN the second they hit saltwater they become a totally different fish from what I kept in freshwater.

They are CONSTANTLY grazing, might be the fastest sprinters in the tank, always begging for food, and have no problem at all with the lighting or the 80x turnover.
In fact the little buggers honestly look fantastic under blue lighting. Past that they even seem to change body shape in saltwater, both of them have slimmed out, lost the bubbly-gut trademark of molley's, and become noticeably more muscled in just a month's time.
BIG DISCLAIMER: I Bought these from a LFS which keeps them in the farther-end of brackish and just dropped them in (after letting them temp-acclimate and de-stress floating in the rear chamber), going straight from freshwater to salt may have consequences (or it may not).

 

Anyway, that's about all the goings'on for this system, aside from moving the toadstool out to smaller-tank and the branching GSP in here post some kind of bacterial infection.

 

 

 

 

This animal always looks like it's getting beaten-down-on by lights which barely even touch it, still recovering from bleaching out a few months ago, at least its' growing well.

 

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Oh, the mollies keep the dragon's breath in the box clean and give the basslet something to fuss at too lol.
Also, I forgot to mention it but I dug out an old 1x linear polarizer for these shots and I love how it brought out the subsurface and reflective/fluorescent colors in the coral tissues themselves, very much looks like it does in-person.
(Especially the mind Trick)

[Zer0]

Question: How is your cleaner shrimp with your SPS? Mine seems to like bothering my montis, though I’ve never seen him actually pick at them, he just likes to cling to them often. I suppose maybe it’s because my tank isn’t big so there’s only so many places for the skrimp to be lol.