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Snow_Phoenix
9 hours ago, A.m.P said:

Looks like a Garf bonsai and a milli.

I wasn't sure if it was a garf bonsai because my LFS simply called it valida. I did look it up online when I came home though and 'garf bonsai' kept popping up. What is the difference between the garf bonsai & regular bonsai, and how do you tell them apart exactly? 🤔

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5 minutes ago, Snow_Phoenix said:

I wasn't sure if it was a garf bonsai because my LFS simply called it valida. I did look it up online when I came home though and 'garf bonsai' kept popping up. What is the difference between the garf bonsai & regular bonsai, and how do you tell them apart exactly? 🤔

I believe purple and garf bonsai are essentially the same thing, although WWC's Purple Bonsai was known the get a kind of white-ish base compared to garf which stays (somewhat?) darker IIRC.

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Snow_Phoenix

I decided to take pics differently today for a change. I basically used heavy blues and placed a pair of orange filter glasses over my phone's camera. 

 

The results were quite interesting because my corals do glow under intense blues, but I could never truly capture their glow until today. 😊

 

My montis:

 

My brains:

 

The Zoa Garden: 🥰

 

I also WCed the tank with Aquaforest Reef Salt for the first time today. Changed approx. ~4G of SW - corals are all open and no polyps are retracted. 😊

 

There is a small slice of bad news though - I binned my milli because it was RTNing and only the tips (which were greenish-brown with no PE) had very little flesh left. This piece has been faring poorly for the past week - for some reason it kept falling over even though I glued it into a rock crevice, and it was positioned in a more shadowy area of the tank, so it didn't receive as much light as the rest of my SPS frags. 😕

 

My fault, really. Should've moved it out into a more open spot last week. 

 

My LFS had a purple ponape birdsnest frag for sale yesterday - not sure if I should pick it up to replace the milli because it's as expensive as my bonsai acro. Still, it's purple (!!!). 🥰

 

I'll see if I can haggle for it. Or trade something in. 🤔

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cockatoo fish man thing
1 hour ago, Snow_Phoenix said:

Cold and rainy morning. Corals are still waking up: 

 

Panda says hello! 😊 :

 

 

Harold on the red pavona: 😄

 

Qin is up early: 😊

 

Two mandys! 🥰 :

 

 

 

SO COOL

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Keeping a close eye on these two: 😉

 

IMG_20210110_171308_636.thumb.jpg.db59481216b2512be197698dbf930221.jpg

 

20210110_171341.thumb.jpg.31487f17cce9c06962220448f3f79926.jpg

 

Shrooms of the nano:

 

IMG_20210110_171718_711.thumb.jpg.e7bdd8211f2f1aff1f6d4e729e8d1333.jpg

 

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That baby bullseye rhodactis will most likely be transfered to my 60G. The adult shroom is the one on the far right. 😊👍

 

Acans looking puffy: 😊IMG_20210110_171502_211.thumb.jpg.a6587144dd19a041f7ba26cb8a39a87c.jpg

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My country *might shift back into a partial lockdown today. I quickly dropped by the store and picked up some extra pellets & coral glue. 

 

Decided to pick up the pretty (but pricey!) purple ponape birdsnest frag too. Hope it does well in the nano. 

 

It had very retracted polyps at the store today. 😓

 

But it looked amazing just a few days back. 

 

And yes, I have a thing for rescuing unhealthy or browned out corals. I like nursing them back to full health and watching them color back up & regrow again. 😅

 

Pics of the new frag later, once I reach home. 👍

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So, the purple ponape birdsnest is gorgeous, but appears to be suffering from STN. There are white places (complete tissue loss/no polyp or color) at the base of the stick in some areas. I'm debating if I should trim off the tops (because they are showing signs of growth) and then compile all the new frags in one spot and stick them all together. 

 

I'd probably lose half the current size of the frag, but if trimming means I get to even save a portion of it, I'll do it. Before I trim though, I've shot a DM to a more experienced SPS-keeper for advice, because I don't want to chop up this frag unless I really need to. 

 

In the meantime, Sapphire - bless her little fiendish damsel-self - managed to drag my entire frag of nuclear green plays out in to the open (I'm not even sure *how she managed this, because that frag plug is heavy! 😮) and in doing so, exposed a tiny secret hidden in one corner of the plug - namely, my long-lost leopard discosoma shroom, which I *thought had melted/vanished completely from this tank weeks ago when it detached from the rocks:

 

 

Sapphire's antics also exposed a single small clove polyp that had grown on its own in the base of my Zoa Tower:

 

But the surprise doesn't stop there! 😄

 

I looked around the tank for more hidden things, and I found a *single John Deere leptastrea polyp growing between my two warring monti plates: 😄

 

 

And quite frankly, I think it's just cool how I have random bits of corals popping up all over the place, away from the original parent frags/mini colonies. 🙂

 

Zen the zanzibar shrimp now hangs out in Prowler the goby's cave when the lights are on:

 

 

But I have seen him explore the tank at night - I think he feels safer when the lights are off for the day.

 

Besides the issue of the new ponape birdsnest, the other corals seem fine so far. My neon tenuis was unhappy in the rock crevice because I think the base of it wasn't receiving enough light. So I stuck it next to the red microgoni, and hopefully it'll have full PE again (it still has PE, but not full). Other than that, I'm monitoring all my other corals and everything seems okay. I've had to increase my kH & Ca dosing to cope with the amount of growing sticks that I have in the tank, but it's no trouble. 👍

 

 

 

 

 

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Qin is full after dinner, and is now exploring the tank: 😊

 

I noticed the forest fire digi has encrusted quite a fair bit on the frag plug: 

 

The metallic green palys seem to be a tad invasive. I like them, but they're starting to outgrow all the other zoas and palys on the tower: 🤔

 

The incinerator, purple hornets & skittles polyps are still slowly recovering on the Zoa Ledge. I'm still waiting for the Rainbow Infusions to grow out, but it seems to be slow-growing in this tank for some reason:

 

 

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Mini carpet looking moody after expelling some waste: 

 

Coralline & brown film algae on the rocks - there's even brown film algae on my montihat: 😕

 

All of these are probably going to grow into each other, but I'll frag them as they grow: 

 

Thinking of selling any future frags either via the store or trading in at the LFS for store credit. 🤔

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Update: I'm not going to be touching the Ponape - will just let it sit and observe it. It still has flesh, so hopefully the color bounces back in the upcoming weeks. It appears to be fast-growing though - a lot of the tips are showing signs of branching (which reminds me of tiny antlers). 

 

Qin the mandarin was a bit spooked just now. I was mostly looking at the Ponape, but he probably 'woke up' and saw a giant face looming close to the glass, and shot off. He bumped the lid, but is okay. 👍

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Neon tenuis looks better, but the frag plug is an eyesore, so I think I'll trim off the frag plug and stick the coral directly on the rocks: 🤔

 

IMG_20210112_103910_273.thumb.jpg.19fd7fe4b9d39f0a7b536b25e6c2378a.jpg

 

The mini goni is growing slowly & steadily. Color has improved a lot in the nano: 👍

 

IMG_20210112_103910_272.thumb.jpg.c49acf875f03d6867e8f68af63cf432e.jpg

 

Most of the lost flesh on the favites have regrown. I'm not sure why this pic came out extremely blue though - I didn't tweak any of the camera settings: 🤷‍♀️

 

20210112_103949.thumb.jpg.4e4071bb26929a95031f84cc2a818db7.jpg

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I transferred this orange rhodactis from my 60G to the nano today. I tried to transfer my baby bullseye shroom to the 60G, but I accidently knocked the frag from the tank's bracing before I could glue it to Mushroom Mountain, and now it's lost somewhere in that tank: 😕

 

^Luckily I didn't lose this shroom however. It's safe in the nano, among the rest of the shrooms.

 

Mini carpet nem will probably need to be fed today evening or tomorrow morning: 🤔

 

Harvey peeking:

 

I love his googly eyes. 😅

 

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Some close ups:-

 

Yuma:

 

IMG_20210112_175534_498.thumb.jpg.42836039f2abe4b1fa300ad1770a5f51.jpg

 

Leather coral:

 

IMG_20210112_175534_499.thumb.jpg.ab143cb8958bfdd8e748d702b6bad25a.jpg

 

Tenuis:

 

IMG_20210112_175534_501.thumb.jpg.a3b3d435f126b8122ad781ee7dbdc050.jpg

 

Metallic green paly:

 

20210112_175618.thumb.jpg.ce551f74cc08086b8bfef1f858a06a0f.jpg

 

Rainbow lobo:

 

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I think I need to shift this green blasto somewhere else - it's not recovering because it's in the corner of the tank and shadowed/not receiving enough light:

 

20210112_180022.thumb.jpg.8386f1329ed2915f86e14ee5084050c0.jpg

 

I'll also need to re-glue my trumpet coral - I'm considering moving it permanently back to the 60G. 🤔

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4 hours ago, Grimes said:

@Snow_Phoenix I can't remember but what stars do you have? I think you have a green one.. 

I have two types - metallic GSP & neon GSP. The metallic GSP is growing quite well/faster than thr neon one. 👍

3 hours ago, cockatoo fish man thing said:

@Snow_Phoenix Your tank is so beautiful! i love looking through the pics thanks for posting them 

Thank you for your kind words. 🌺

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Breaking this into two updates:-

 

Update #1:

 

Qin is wonderful. The rest of the tank is still waking up, but he's already very alert and hunting:

 

20210113_102631.thumb.jpg.d72559a47bea114486b931b20c935628.jpg

 

IMG_20210113_102553_058.thumb.jpg.cd0e29e941733078bf09bd7b31b3c298.jpg

 

'I see you' 😄 :

 

20210113_102844.thumb.jpg.d3bb04d10a46bb088b8f48e7691d262d.jpg

 

IMG_20210113_102802_790.thumb.jpg.e35426f16bb2a3b7718d52381ac74b94.jpg

 

IMG_20210113_102802_791.thumb.jpg.4658ae9fdc0f9a007b59664e16e88611.jpg

 

The bonsai acro still has very small PE in this tank. I'm not entirely sure why, because the rest of my SPS have full PE. Perhaps I'll do a quick parameter check later: 🤔

 

IMG_20210113_102409_096.thumb.jpg.f7dcb8b2e78701e848e2696080a1e52f.jpg

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  • Snow_Phoenix changed the title to Snow's 10G Critters of Chaos (TOTM)

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