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kevnkev

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About kevnkev

  • Birthday 02/21/1982

core_pfieldgroups_99

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    Seattle

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  1. Thanks for all your replies - it's a big relief to know it's a normal and common thing.
  2. I was just about to post the following message: I have a leather coral (~id'd as devil's hand, or Lobophytum) mother colony that has spent the last couple of days looking really unhappy - a little like this one. I'm hoping maybe someone knows how to make leathers happy again (prozac in the fish food?). All of its polyps are withdrawn, it's looking kind of yellowed (usually more of a pink-beige) and secreting thin sheets of mucus. I would think poor water conditions, but no parameters are off, and there are lots of smaller colonies (~1cm-5cm across) that the mother has dropped off over the last few months that are doing absolutely fine. It has gone through bouts of polyp withdrawal in the past, but never for longer than a day at a time. Has anyone else experienced something like this before? How can I help her out? But then I didn't get the chance to post immediately. I went home and, lo and behold! the leather coral is back to normal, polyps extended, looking just like before, with the last remnants of mucus sheets just peeling away. So my question has changed - Does anyone know if leather corals molt or shed? Does anything in particular set this kind of thing off, or is it a regular once-a-year phenomenon? Normal behavior, or a symptom of some deeper problem? Here's a picture just as she started improving. You can see the peeling skin / mucus on the left, and some of the smaller colonies looking like they should on the right. Thanks for any advise!
  3. I was out at the beach last night on the good low tide, and found a bunch of Anthopleura elegantissima that have the same kind of tentacle banding as these ones you found.
  4. It definitely looks like an Anthopleura species, probably artemisia, and they will get bigger. The size makes it sound more like an odd color morph of elegantissima, although I've never seen banding on the tentacles like this. Wait and see how big they get, I guess! Also, elegantissima will undergo binary fission to increase the colony size, so if you see that happen that's probably your guy.
  5. Good or bad guy, sure is pretty though!
  6. Not a flatworm - definitely a dorid nudibranch. Note the rhinophores (antennae) near the head and the gill cluster near the tail. Can't say whether it's a good or a bad guy, but nudis tend to be extreme specialists, feeding on only one or a handful of prey species. Keep an eye out for little rosettes or ribbons of gelatinous egg masses attached to the rock - if you see these then yeah, you have another one in there somewhere. If you want some nudi specialists to take a crack at identification, you might try submitting the pics to the www.seaslugforum.net. They may have ideas about prey types too.
  7. M- I've tried PM'ing you about the Remora Pro, but the messages I try to send never show up in my "sent" folder, so I'm not sure if they're reaching you. Forgive me if this is yet another duplicate. I'm heading sounth from Seattle tomorrow morning, aiming to pass through Olympia on my way to the coast. If your tank is taken apart to the point where the Remora Pro is available, I'm still really interested in buying it from you. Would you be able to meet me somewhere between OLY and PDX? I'm thinking the Longview/Kelso area, unless you have better ideas. Let me know if this will work for you - we're in desperate need of replacing our crummy skimmer with something that will actually work to remove the phosphates and other gunk from our tank - we have a cyano outbreak that just won't quit! Thanks! -Kevin
  8. Thank you for your tips. We'll get the nutrients under control. Great to know that pointing the powerhead at them will get a retreat. We'll give it a try and report back later with results - wish us luck! (fingers)
  9. Today marks the third week. Right after the move there was a lot of sediment and greenish-brown detritus kicked up, and the protein skimmer went nuts for a day or so. Everything appears to have settled back. The person I got it from wasn't monitoring levels very frequently, so I don't know what historic nutrient values are, but our current ones are just a hair north of optimal for ammonia, nitrate/nitrite and phosphate. The difference in placement between where the tank is now set up at our house and where it was is that she had it in a windowless office, and we have it near a window with natural, but not direct, sunlight.
  10. First, thank you PNWMAS for having this website - I just inherited a 50gal tank from a friend, and this site has been invaluable in helping me figure out how to care for it properly. Thanks! One confusing bit I haven't been able to figure out yet is about the anemones in the tank. I had two long-tentacled anemones (clones of eachother), with a very attentive yellow striped maroon clownfish tending them. (The past tense will make sense in a bit). I'll tell the whole story, but my question boils down to: is there a way to encourage anemones to stop moving around so much? When we got the tank a few weeks ago everything seemed to settle down pretty quickly after the move. But then after a week or so the two anemones just started cruising the tank at high speeds. One made a beeline for the mid-upper glass side near one of the pumps, and the other went and wedged its way down among the rocks. The one in the rocks was the clownfish's absolute favorite of the two, but since the anemone was wedged in rocks, the clownfish would get scratches on her fins from trying to rub in the anemone but missing and hitting rocks. She would heal fast, but get new scratches just as fast. Next, one of the anemones wandered too close to one of the pumps. I don't know exactly what happened, but we came home one day to find that one of them had gotten sucked up through the filter screen of one of the pumps, and had been reduced to anemone puree. Finally, our remaining one continues its rapid cruising of the tank. I wouldn't care that it wants to move around except I don't want it heading back into the rocks again for the clownfish to tear her fins up, and it also has a nasty habit of sitting itself down right in the middle of the colony of Anthelia polyps and harassing them. So, if anyone has some tips on convincing the remaining anemone to settle down, I'd really apreciate it! I don't want another case of blended anemone, and I would prefer to have the corals and anemone ignore each other instead of bickering. The tank's nutrient levels are a little high, and I'm working on getting those cut down - could that be it? I would have thought light issues, except that the first major movement was one anemone up and the other one down. What else could it be? Thanks for your help, and again, thanks for being here PNWMAS! -Kevin
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