Jack's EXT-50 Lagoon

[jservedio]

Another update for my Hollywood Stunner chalice recovery!

 

Here is what it looked like about 7 months ago after spending close to 4 months in zero light - it lost all of it's flesh and about 50% of it's polyps. After a little more than a month of recovery, this is where we were. The dark between polyps is not flesh - it's actually green film algae:

 

 

Not so good... But, after another 7 months of recovery we are looking great! It's getting a little too much light since the orange is only showing up in the shade, but with a little more time it'll do nothing but improve. While the picture from above makes it look small since it's mounted almost vertically, it's actually about 4" across and 3.5" high. Not too bad!

[Christopher Marks]

On 1/7/2022 at 8:59 AM, jservedio said:

I got super lucky last night and happened to catch my RBTA mid-split while refilling the ATO bucket and snapped a few pictures! It's really nasty looking and happens so fast.

 

I just wanted to highlight how cool this is that you caught your anemone in the act of splitting!

[jservedio]

7 hours ago, Christopher Marks said:

I just wanted to highlight how cool this is that you caught your anemone in the act of splitting!

Thank you! It was definitely all luck though - just happened to be filling a bucket at the right time. Ive never caught it at that point before and it looks terrible while it's happening!

[jservedio]

Been away for a bit, but tank is still chugging along and I'm still having issues with hair algae coming and going. A pretty decent chunk of the CUC that survived the winter shipping has been slowly dying off which is giving the algae a fighting chance to come back every time I knock it down.  I ended up changing out all of my RODI media to ensure it wasn't contributing (even though it still showed 0ppm).

 

Haven't lost anything and most things are still growing really well, but the fluctuating nutrients are really taking a toll on my acro coloration. Even though the color is shot, most of the acros are still growing quite a bit and my Red Planet started throwing up vertical growth all over it's huge base. Thankfully, as long as they keep getting fed the LPS don't really care and have been going wild lately.

 

Sorry for the really low quality pictures, but I broke one of the legs on my tripod and have another few weeks before the replacement parts get here!

 

All of my blastos have been growing like the rest of the LPS, my two anemones are now three, and one of the RFAs has moved over by my LPS island.

 

 

 

No color and bad PE from scraping the glass, but lots of brand new growth!

 

[NoOneLikesADryTang]

1 hour ago, jservedio said:

Sorry for the really low quality pictures

Your really low quality pictures are still better than most others! The blastos look awesome growing together like that. 

[jservedio]

18 hours ago, NoOneLikesADryTang said:

Your really low quality pictures are still better than most others! The blastos look awesome growing together like that. 

Thanks! I still want to get one or two more blasto frags to add to that little island, but it's coming along really well.

[mitten_reef]

 

these blastos may or may not have influenced me to buy myself a couple of varieties to give them a try.....🙃

[jservedio]

4 hours ago, mitten_reef said:

these blastos may or may not have influenced me to buy myself a couple of varieties to give them a try.....🙃

Can't wait to see them. I didn't see them in your build thread yet, but based on how absurd that new pink clam is, I'm going to go out on a limb assume they are very nice and cost a little more than tree fiddy! I've been on the hunt for a couple more myself, but every time something really nice comes up locally, it gets snatched up before I see it or it's more than $100 for a 2-3 polyp frag.

 

I also need to figure out how to get a good shot to show the scale of that blasto colony. I can't seem to find the right angle to show how big it actually is, so it looks like a pretty standard smallish LPS colony, but it's actually about 7x5" and it moves so much!

[Zer0]

In love with those blastos, that’s an incredible colony.

 

I did the same thing with my filters. TDS was reading 0, but it had been a year since replacing any of them. Didn’t want to take any chances that it was contributing to my dinos, so I swapped everything out except the membrane.

[jservedio]

1 hour ago, Zer0 said:

In love with those blastos, that’s an incredible colony.

 

I did the same thing with my filters. TDS was reading 0, but it had been a year since replacing any of them. Didn’t want to take any chances that it was contributing to my dinos, so I swapped everything out except the membrane.

Thanks!

 

I get into a lot of trouble with my RODI because the tap water at my house is absurdly clean to begin with. Tap water typically reads under 50ppm (sometimes as low as 20ppm) and the input side of the RO membrane is normally around 3-4ppm and output of the membrane is 0-1ppm before it ever even touches the DI media. I let these past filters run waaaaaay too long this time - a bit over 4 years with generic media, so even though I didn't get it tested, I'm willing to bet Silica was off the charts based on the amount of algae and the fact that at some times of the year, it's 8ppm out of the tap!

[Pjanssen]

55 minutes ago, jservedio said:

Thanks!

 

I get into a lot of trouble with my RODI because the tap water at my house is absurdly clean to begin with. Tap water typically reads under 50ppm (sometimes as low as 20ppm) and the input side of the RO membrane is normally around 3-4ppm and output of the membrane is 0-1ppm before it ever even touches the DI media. I let these past filters run waaaaaay too long this time - a bit over 4 years with generic media, so even though I didn't get it tested, I'm willing to bet Silica was off the charts based on the amount of algae and the fact that at some times of the year, it's 8ppm out of the tap!

You are lucky. My tap water is over 150 ppm. Plus its loaded with chlorine.

 

[NoOneLikesADryTang]

We’re anywhere from 350-800, depending on the time of year, here in Arizona. I can’t even imagine what less than 50 would be like. 

[mitten_reef]

19 hours ago, jservedio said:

Can't wait to see them. I didn't see them in your build thread yet, but based on how absurd that new pink clam is, I'm going to go out on a limb assume they are very nice and cost a little more than tree fiddy! I've been on the hunt for a couple more myself, but every time something really nice comes up locally, it gets snatched up before I see it or it's more than $100 for a 2-3 polyp frag.

 

I also need to figure out how to get a good shot to show the scale of that blasto colony. I can't seem to find the right angle to show how big it actually is, so it looks like a pretty standard smallish LPS colony, but it's actually about 7x5" and it moves so much!

the blastos are just single-polyp frags, one bright red with neon green center, the other one is pinkish purple with green mouth.  so do these grow in mound like micromussa lord?  or to they branch out in bouquet like candycane?  because yours look so nicely packed together, just curious how I want to place my two frags on the rock. 

 

As for the clams?  they're both $60 each, my LFS either import them direct, or has someone who he works with that doesn't have much upcharge, I can't recall.  I did ask him how he can sell them so cheap, lol.    

[joshthebox]

24 minutes ago, mitten_reef said:

the blastos are just single-polyp frags, one bright red with neon green center, the other one is pinkish purple with green mouth.  so do these grow in mound like micromussa lord?  or to they branch out in bouquet like candycane?  because yours look so nicely packed together, just curious how I want to place my two frags on the rock. 

 

As for the clams?  they're both $60 each, my LFS either import them direct, or has someone who he works with that doesn't have much upcharge, I can't recall.  I did ask him how he can sell them so cheap, lol.    

wow $60 is a steal! I can't find a maxima for under $300 here in Canada lol 🙃

[jservedio]

18 hours ago, Pjanssen said:

You are lucky. My tap water is over 150 ppm. Plus its loaded with chlorine.

Yeah, we've got chloramines here so I need to use the more expensive carbon cartridges and because it's so clean, the carbon is the first thing to go. Unfortunately, there is no visible or measurable indication that it's been expended so there is always a chance to turn your RO membrane into swiss cheese. Plus I run at low pressure (like 45-50psi) without a booster, so I get much more waste water (worse than 3:1) which makes getting an idea of how much water has flowed over the carbon very difficult.

 

17 hours ago, NoOneLikesADryTang said:

We’re anywhere from 350-800, depending on the time of year, here in Arizona. I can’t even imagine what less than 50 would be like. 

Do you know what those 350-800ppm are? When I was up in WI it was up past 450ppm for the most part because of the water softener, but it was almost all sodium so it gets pulled right out by the RO membrane. It was also relatively clean other than being stupidly hard water, so I actually got better life out of DI than you'd expect with that high TDS - post membrane was like 1-3ppm.

 

The only bad part about our water is that basically 100% of what gets past the RO membrane is silicates. I should probably stop procrastinating and throw a cation resin stage after my mixed bed stage to take care of it!

[jservedio]

2 hours ago, mitten_reef said:

the blastos are just single-polyp frags, one bright red with neon green center, the other one is pinkish purple with green mouth.  so do these grow in mound like micromussa lord?  or to they branch out in bouquet like candycane?  because yours look so nicely packed together, just curious how I want to place my two frags on the rock. 

 

As for the clams?  they're both $60 each, my LFS either import them direct, or has someone who he works with that doesn't have much upcharge, I can't recall.  I did ask him how he can sell them so cheap, lol.    

They grow pretty much exactly the same as lords and make mounds - no branches. Here's what they look like after poking them with a stick for a few seconds to piss them off:

 

 

 

With the exception of the purple blastos which had been growing for many years before being glued down, all the others got glued down as just small frags. Here's how I glued them down them back in late 2019:

 

 

That is an absolutely absurd price for that pink clam! Basic blue Maximas at my LFS are $80-120 for these teeny 1.5" guys, anything nicer is just astronomically priced.

[jservedio]

Haven't been able to figure out what coral(s) my fat lady has been tangling with, but she's definitely been expanding her territory well beyond the nems based on just how speckled her belly has gotten. Surprisingly, the male hasn't moved from the nem outside of quickly eating. I am not excited about the prospect of introducing new fish into this system with just how aggressive she has gotten since being moved into the bigger tank. I had hoped that 2.5x the square footage would mellow them out, but that is clearly not the case. The older she gets, the worse she is and she still hasn't stopped growing - they'll be teenagers come November!

 

New tripod parts should have gotten shipped today so hopefully the good pictures will be back soon.

 

 

That's a spotted belly!

 

[aclman88]

Is the speckling the result of stings from other coral?  

 

I cannot wait for the tripod to get back to good pictures... these potato quality photos are getting out of hand! 🙄😉

[jservedio]

3 hours ago, aclman88 said:

Is the speckling the result of stings from other coral?  

Almost certainly from one of the LPS surrounding the nems - my best guess would be the bowerbanki or platygyra, but could just as easily be from the blastos, echinata or cyphastrea that ring the nems. The platy has been getting pretty aggressive of late and throwing really long sweepers which take out lord polyps here and there, so maybe it was that.

 

Every one of my "pets" now have have cow spots on their bellies. My beagles bellies look exactly the same from lounging in the sun for 12 hours a day for the last 10 years and now the fish match!

[jservedio]

Still lots of GHA (it's actually the b word) and I've been removing it manually a couple times a week and trying to keep up with water changes, but even if I don't beat it any time soon, I know in a year or two I'll beat it the exact same way I beat everything in the 20g - by sheer coral growth! The new rocks it's been on for a long time are starting to really thin out and still hasn't spread to any of my old rock, so I'm hoping it'll be gone in a few more months if I stay on top of it. Unfortunately, the back wall and powerhead are the only places it's still growing really strongly, so I may just add some encrusters to the back wall.

 

Nutrients are low so color isn't great, but I've been able to keep nitrates between 0.2 and 1.5ppm without dosing and phosphates move between 0.04 and 0.07ppm depending on how recently I removed the algae, so everything is growing extremely well across the board even if it looks ugly.

 

My Boomberry that threw up a little branch a few months ago is blowing up and getting the correct color/growth pattern! The entire old mini-colony this sprouted from, branches and all, is now entirely base and the acro and monti are growing at exactly the same rate, so it still looks super cool:

 

 

 

 

On the other side of the SPS island, my purple/teal/green confusa has entirely recovered from bleaching just a few months ago (when I lost the majority of the bubblegum digi, which is also recovering) and the slimer is about to go nuts and is surprisingly colorful:

 

 

 

 

On my zoa island, while it's still got a TON of hair algae, the zoas are out-competing it. The utter chaos are growing quickly, but the purple/pink zoas I glued down there exploded and double in size in the last couple months:

 

 

 

 

Haven't taken a picture of a while since the acans started as just little tiny frags and being new rock, is also battling algae, but my purple/green acan is getting pretty big now - about 40ish polyps:

 

 

 

 

And the fastest growing coral in my tank, by far is this meteor shower cyphastrea. It's well over 3x3" and it started out as the little 3/4" ball back in June. It's decimating the algae on the new rock I glued it to. Best CUC member in the tank at this point.

 

 

 

 

And finally, another picture of my big Favia(?). This thing became a monster from literally a 1/8" speck of flesh that I saved from my pico. It's about 5x4" and 3" tall now:

 

[DevilDuck]

That favia staged an amazing comeback!

[jservedio]

1 hour ago, DevilDuck said:

That favia staged an amazing comeback!

Super low resolution crop of a cell phone picture, but this is the little scrap of flesh that turned into that colony after a few months of recovery back in 2015 (along with 2 of the 3 blastos on my island and my hulk micro!):

 

 

[jservedio]

It's been a while since I've posted any updates, but here is a new FTS from today. For the past year it's been two steps forward and one step backward as things were maturing, but I think things are pretty much finally under control. Thankfully, I haven't lost anything through all of this and my corals are growing, but the tank seemed at a standstill for a long time and color was not good. A couple weeks ago I spent 5 days away from the tank and about an hour before I left, I dumped a full 2 weeks of skimmate into the sump by accident - so I was expecting the worst. Strangely enough, while it angered my red cap, everything else was more colorful when I returned and all the progress I made on my bryopsis was not erased.

 

The Bryopsis I'd been battling is now in full retreat, I haven't removed any by hand in about a week and the rest of it is pretty rapidly dying. I used Tech-M to get my magnesium up to 1600ppm and have been dosing about 0.2ppm/day of Nitrate through the ATO and it's mostly being out-competed by coralline as it dies off. Things should be great assuming I can keep my nutrients up where they need to be and avoid the post-bryopsis dinos, chrysophytes, or cyano that a lot of people get from their nutrients fluctuating all over the place.

 

The last major battle to fight at this point is the colonial hydroids that have been thriving from the massive amount of particulates that get caught in the byopsis and then released when they die or get disturbed. Once the byropsis is totally gone, I'll definitely be running a filter sock! But until it's gone, the sock just gets filled with dead bryopsis and I don't want to be removing the nutrients released by it!

 

With all that taken care of, I think it's safe at this point to buy more acros! I kept putting it off because of the fluctuating nutrients and little frags tend to get smothered by byopsis when bigger colonies are fine. I also finally put together all of the furniture for our new deck that's been in the garage since 2018, so I have room to set the QT tank back up and room for the 65g ATO reservoir! Now I'll have no excuses not to get more fish.

 

[aclman88]

Always so excited when I see a notification that you updated this thread.  Beautiful as always, and glad to hear Bryopsis is on the way out.  What are you thinking about, fish wise, moving forward?

[jservedio]

41 minutes ago, aclman88 said:

Always so excited when I see a notification that you updated this thread.  Beautiful as always, and glad to hear Bryopsis is on the way out.  What are you thinking about, fish wise, moving forward?

I know at the very least I want another melanurus and a flasher wrasse, but the main fish I wanted is a pink margin fairy wrasse, but they are impossible to get at the moment and nobody has had any in stock for like 3 years now. I definitely have some thinking to do on the subject.

 

Also, I got my new tripod leg in the mail, and I've been using it to good effect - hope you enjoy some more photos I took this morning!

 

 

The little branch nubbins that started poking out of the big red planet base a month or two ago have now exploded and all almost all of it's color has returned:

 

 

One of the worst areas of bryopsis was on my zoa/paly rock and there is very little left and the Zs and Ps are spreading pretty rapidly now:

 

 

The big yellow tips colony was looking rough there for a while and I had a little bit of STN 4 or 5 months ago on the underside of "table" that stopped and started regrowing has also colored up quite a bit. Still lots more to go, but you can start to see the "crosshatching" pattern coming through a bit. Heavy morning blues, but under white light you can see it's still pale in the higher light areas:

 

 

The boomberry growing on the monti cap just threw a bunch more branches of the little one that popped up a few months ago. Can't wait for this to get a lot bigger:

 

 

With the tripod, I finally took another picture of the bowerbanki. Hard to see the growth since it's mostly growing down vertically to the sand, but it's looking good:

 

 

I got a new green cap a few months ago and just finally got it glued down yesterday, so I'm excited to see it start intertwining with the other two. It's maybe 4x4" at this point, but it look so tiny next to the others: