TheGooseWhisperer

Thanks for the link! Those are great pictures.

Ive been adding a little cyclopeeze to the tank after lights out a couple times a week and I've started noticing a couple frags are growing new polyps. Since I have several frags I put them in a range a lighting conditions. All the frags are doing fine, but higher up in the tank frags are greener, stay more tightly closed during light hours and are thinner. I've had a frag or 2 fall off the frag rack and been left in the bottom corner of the tank for a couple weeks and they pretty much bounce right back. I've also had them get overgrown by algal slime for a week or 2 at a time and they do just fine with that too. At night they really open up big and are very reactive to feeding. Lately I've noticed the outer edge where growth appears to be going on will be a brownish/red. These guys are about the most bullet proof thing I have in my tank really. The mushrooms are pretty nice too, I agree. When they are in happy mushroom land (on the fringe of light/shade) the spots get a nice blue gem quality like the spots on my watchman goby. BTW I have frags to trade of the palythoas pictured here if anyone is interested.

I wasn't sure where to post this. Its not really an emergency and my tank is mostly softies so I guess I'll start here. One of the larger pieces of LR in my 29g has been growing a green beard for the last month and a half or so. I finally stumbled across "bryopsis" and I think that is what it is. At first glance it just looks like single thick, short filaments growing on the rock, but if you catch the right spot you can see that it looks more like a tiny feather with a thick middle shaft. Seems like what i see on a google image search for bryopsis, but i dont know for sure. I've been dropping snails and hermits onto the rock now and then and they pretty much just crawl straight off of it. There is also a bright green film algae growing around the bottom of the tank that in places is growing up over the bryopsis. I've upgraded my whisper HOB to a GFO reactor and that seems to be getting the film stuff under control. I kinda blooms for a couple days after a water change and then dies back down. (I have crushed coral substrate and it looks like a snow storm if it gets disturbed. I leave it alone as much as possible, but I suspect that during WCs this is where the film algae bloom comes from). Tank stuff: 29g, no sump, HOB skimmer, GFO reactor (with some carbon in it too), 175W 20k MH (about 8hrs on-time) and a 24" VHO actinic for lighting. Mostly softies in the tank (zoas, palys, shrooms, ricordia, GSP, kenya trees), but there are a couple frogspawns and a small acan and chalice frag. 6-line wrasse, percula clown, pygmy cherub angel, watchman goby for fish and a fairly standard CUC. Only additives to the tank are a bit of calcium and super buffer to top off the alk a couple times a week. WCs are 35-40% every 2-4 weeks. Any ideas on how to get this stuff on the way to dieing out?

I have a 29g that's been going for 2.5 yrs and I think I am finally tired of all the "HOB" equipment. I had a skimmer and whisper that was running GFO/carbon. I got tired of replacing the GFO every couple weeks and I just don't feel confident that it works as well as a media reactor so I finally got one of those. I would kind of like to still use the whisper for the filter sock affect though (always pretty nasty when i rinsed it out every couple weeks). There isn't room with the skimmer, media reactor and frag rack though so it has me thinking about using a 10g tank for a sump. The debate of overflow box versus drilling the tank has me leaning toward an overflow...I'm a bit terrified of having the tank drilled and really dont want to mess with taking every thing out into buckets, hauling the tank somewhere and then putting it all back together. On the other hand I know having the tank drilled would be the "pro" way of doing it. So I guess the bottom line is...am I making a big mistake doing the overflow? and what is the basics that I need for sump design? A couple considerations are that it will need to accommodate my HOB skimmer, the media reactor and I think i want the return pump to be in the sump to save some space. A proper filter sock will alleviate my desire to use the whisper for particulate matter. Are there some additional benefits I can get out of the sump? What GPH should I shoot for on a return pump (I dont think i need any additional flow in the tank really)? Thanks in advance for your help to a "sumpless wonder" (laugh)

Very cool to see that frag as it came from my tank:) I traded it along with some other stuff for some store credit at Upscales. I originally got the colony from a user here (in Vancouver, but cant remember the name now) about 2 years ago. The color has changed through out the life of my tank from bright green to more of a cream color and back again. AFAIK Roger is right on the ID. When i first got the frag I fed it a few times a week and it grew nicely. After a few weeks I took a scalpel to and fragged it into 6 or 8 pieces. Each frag added polyps over the next couple months, but then something changed in my tank and pretty much all my zoas stopped growing. I used to feed my fish pretty heavily and got tired of the extensive water changes that this led to. Thats about the only reason I can come up with. Anyway, I haven't seen any negative affects from having this coral, but I'm not nearly as knowledgeble as many users here. Just wanted to add that when i was in Cancun last summer I saw a yellow variety in a local aquarium and on a few advertisements for scuba/snorkeling outings. I had the impression they are native to the area.

Nice work so far!! I'm happy to see "coors light" was there to help out (hopefully those holes are straight (laugh))

upload them to photobucket and copy/paste the "IMG" line into your post

There;s been a bunch of wrasses hitting stores in these latest batches of Hawaiian fish shipments. I got a canary/yellow from Waves for $26 bucks. They didnt have a 6 line at the time, but had an 8 line.

Does "red turf algae" resemble 3 or 4 days of stumble growth on a man's chin? If so it looks like I have some of this. Its localized to a small frag with a few shrooms. Would the best course of action be to remove the shrooms and toss the rock?

The 2 biggest pieces are doing better everyday. The 1/3 size frag had its feeders way out yesterday, but the cleaner shrimp trampled it before I could get a chance to feed it. The tiny frag is toast I think. There is still a tiny bit of flesh stuck to the skeleton so I'm going to leave it alone, but I really doubt it is going to make it at this point.

The wrasse is fat and happy...he was bit timid for the first couple days. He hid as soon as the MH went off and wouldn't come out in the morning until they were back on. Now hes staying out until the actinics switch off and he's coming out in the morning with just room lights and indirect natural light. I was resuspending detritus yesterday and was pretty surprised by something I saw floating around in the water. It was a pod exoskeleton that was huge by pod standards...curled up it was the size of a fingernail...stretched out it would probably be an inch long! I was starting to worry that maybe I did have a zoa eating nudi on my hands as I have lost a couple more small polyps, but they were on the opposite end of the tank. This happened just a couple days after the wrasse was put in the tank and hasnt happened again for several days that I have noticed. I'm sure the pod population has not been "wiped out" out all yet. With pods that big I would suspect them to be the culprit over a nudi that I have searched high and low for, but have never seen. Maybe I should do a little night time searching so see what is coming out in the dark. A bacterial bloom broke out on the glass again...this one was pretty strange because I have been running fresh carbon every 4-6 days for the last couple weeks. I thought my water quality was getting better, but apparently there is something in there that these bugs really like. Corals still look great so I'm not concerned at this point though.

Awesome that you found us! We're looking forward to those pics:)

Sounds like its time for a little sushi (flame). Sorry bout the loss. Hopefully it recovers

The unfractured colony and the largest piece are starting to extend feeders...just barely though. My tank is running a bit on the "nutrient rich" side w/ flow and light being pretty good. The main colony and the largest frag are at about mid depth in the tank...even with my other acan that is looking fabulous. The tiny frag is all the way at the bottom in a good flow area close to the glass where I can keep an eye on it. Thanks for the info...sounds like things will be OK and might even be perfect for taking a pinch off the side to trade later:) Side note: My other acan has its feeders out all day. I feed it a few times when it was new, but since then its seemed so inflated and colorful that I thought it was pretty happy and the tank overall would be better without the extra food going in. Long term, is it best if I feed it once a week or is that just if I really want to be pushing growth?

just to be clear I can send that pdf to anyone:)

I bought 2 heads of an acan yesterday and in the process of picking an aiptasia off the backside of the rock one of the heads got broken in 3 pieces (1/2, 1/3, and 1/6th). The largest piece stayed with the other head. I didnt know what to do...the flesh was still loosely attached, but I wasnt sure if it would heal. I ended up thinking that if it could heal from this break then it would heal from a full dissection. So I cut off the 2 smaller pieces and carefully glued them onto a piece of LR rubble, making sure I didn't get any glue on the flesh. Its only been 22 hrs, but they haven't melted yet. I would just keep an eye on them, but I'm going to be away for a couple days and if they have zero chance of survival it would probably be smart to just toss them now.

I have a pdf of a yuma fragging article. If i can get it uploaded here I will share...if i cant I'll try to track down the link. Here's a start: http://www.ricordia.org/mushroom_coral/propagation_basics.htm Also check out the "taking the slice" and "recovery" links on the left. Those 3 articles have basically all the info from the pdf. Oops appears that the pdf is about 740kb too big for uploading. PM me and I'll email it to you.

Snipping the cap off the stalk works great. The base recovers in just a couple days and the cap can be frag'd up in half or quarters depending on the size. I use a small plastic dish that I hit along the sides with a hole punch and then some cheesecloth over the top to put the pieces and some LR rubble into. In about 2 weeks I'll pop it open and remove anything that is healed and attached. Usually a couple are just stuck to the plastic and need to be removed and given a few days to reattach to rock.

"neon green polyp purple base monti" probably the prettiest monti I've ever seen a pic of. Nice stuff! I liked your pics in the T5->MH thread. It was a great comparison. That Favia (i think) on the right side of the first FTS is really beautiful too!

I prefer a flavored vodka on the rocks. Cirton w/ a splash of triple sec is nice or Stoli raspberry alone. I was interested in vodka dosing because of the beautiful color changes seen after maintainance levels were reached, but only ever saw pictures of SPS. Has anyone seen softies or LPS "color up" too? My nitrates are in the 0-2.5 range, but my bio load is tiny. I would do it in a flash if I thought it would make things look nicer. If folks are just starting or thinking about starting please please please take some "before" pics and let us know your progress!

great idea! Thanks:)

reefvideos.com Eric Borneman oxygen seminar. Its over an hour long iirc. I could have it wrong, but thats one of the few things i remember from watching it is that airstones (and so I assume a skimmer also) do little to increase dissolved O2. Thinking more about it though the skimmer has to help since they are usually driven by a pretty good powerhead. Its just that the bubbles don't do nearly as much as most people assume. Looking back at my previous comment it looks like I got myself tangled up...its the airstones that were actually mentioned in the seminar...my flawed logic brought me to equate that with a skimmer. The flow from the powerhead on the skimmer should help, but the bubbles probably dont. Sorry for the confusion:(

those plates might be useful to someone as a shelf for some frag plugs...depends on the hole size and placement. throw a pic up and see if anyone bites. There's always the old saying "one person's trash is another's treasure"

Sounds great! Glad to hear you are making the effort to take great care of this little fella. I would love to have one, but my tank has proven too small for them. Maybe someday I'll find one thats a good frozen food eater that needs a good home. My wife and I are the opposite of you and yours...I love them and she's more "meh"...we both agree on clownfish though and she's a big fan of my new yellow wrasse though:)

its absolutely crazy how fish can hide. I had a dotty back once that would borrow into a hole in a piece of LR that was smaller than my pinky! Even after I saw a tiny bit of his tail sticking out I still couldnt believe it was in there.