Paul's Reef

Acro Eating Flatworms

2010-12-21T18:07:00.003-06:00

After treating for red bugs I decided to check a pale frag that hasn't done well since I put it in the tank a couple of months ago. After pulling it out and inspecting it closely I saw a couple of brown blotches on the coral. I got the camera and macro lens out and started snapping some pictures. Sure enough the brown patches were AEFW eggs.

Although I couldn't see any of the worms on the coral I dipped in Revive and a couple came off.

I'm not sure if all of those blotches are AEFWs but the one on the left is for sure.

This coral has been tossed along with two millepora frags that weren't doing well. I never found eggs on the milleporas but I didn't want to take any chances.

Unfortunately there is no in take treatment for these. The way to get rid of them is to pull the corals out and dip every week for 6 weeks to flush the worms off. The dips will not kill the eggs so repeated dipping is a requirement. Some of my corals are encrusted on my rock so there is no way to remove the frags.

Since I don't see any bite marks or eggs on any other corals I'm not going to pull them for now. Instead I have ordered an Adorned Wrasse, halichoeres cosmetus, which is supposed to hunt AEFWs. I'll inspect regularly and hope for the best.

Red Bugs

2010-12-21T17:33:00.003-06:00

I've had Red Bugs in my system for at least a year. Although I've had Interceptor sitting on my bookcase for almost the same period of time I was reluctant to use it. Shrimp and crabs could be killed during treatment I was afraid that I would kill my Fire Shrimp. I was also afraid that dosing the Interceptor would kill my pods and I would end up starving my Mandarin.

I finally dosed on Saturday and am happy to report that my fire shrimp survived. He didn't even look stunned by the treatment and was very active during feeding time. I have a couple of hitchhiker crabs in my system. I'm not sure if they survived and am less concerned about their survival. One lives in my fuge and flooded my floor twice...will post on this later. One, big black, harry and ugly lives in my DT. I've never seen him do more than scrape algae off rocks until the other day when I saw it eating a snail.

One 23 mg tablet of Interceptor treats about 400 gallons. I have a 72 gal tank with probably about 15 gallons in the sump, fuge, skimmer and plumbing. Lots of water is displaced by my rock - I have no idea how much. I dosed about 1/5th of a pill which should be good for about 80 gallons. The pills cut really easily with a steak knife so breaking a pill into the correct dosage isn't a problem. I used the back of a spoon to pulverize it and mixed it with water and stirred until it looked dissolved.

Befor adding I moved my collection cup on my skimmer as high as it could go. My AquaC Remora doesn't have an air intake so I couldn't disable the skimmer. It is important to let water flow through the skimmer to kill any that may be hiding in there. I normally don't run carbon but if you do it must be removed prior to starting treatment.

I added it to the tank and the fish start eating the powder but they're fine. Within an hour most of the red bugs had stopped moving. Within 6 hours most had fallen off the corals. Some were hanging from threads from the corals are moving around attached by one leg. After 9 hours I couldn't see any red bugs left on any corals. After 9 hours I dropped the skimmer cup down and added carbon to start removing the Interceptor. The following day I did a normal 15% water change.

The stuff works amazingly well and is reef safe. While I was reading about red bugs during the treatment I learned that a lot of people have reported outbreaks of Acropora Eating Flatworms (AEFW). It has been suggested that the red bugs keep the flatworms in check and once they're gone the AEFWs emerge in force and start munching on the corals. Although there is an easy treatment for the red bugs there is none for the AEFWs.

After the Crash

2010-10-24T21:34:00.014-05:00

My tank has started recovering from this spring's crash. For a while I could barely stand to look at my tank. Throughout the summer I thought things were recovering but I would then have an unexpected loss.

After coming back from vacation at the end of July my Green Slimer had no polyp extension. I never figured out why. I watched it start losing tissue. Despite fragging I knew I would lose all of it so I pulled it out on August 3rd.

Late August or Early September my Bird of Paradise RTNed. It was beautiful one evening and the next day after work it was gone with the exception of a few tips. I cut off three tips just a few millimeters long and glued them to a plug. Two survived and are growing well. Not a great pic.

Here are some more survivors:

Lots of pieces of this digita died. Fragged the dead pieces off but still showing some scars.

This Forest Fire Digitata was wounded but survived.

I have no idea what this acro is. A very slow grower and showed no sign of stress during the crash.

This purple stylo is the most expensive coral I've bought. Thankfully it survived.

Growth was also stunted on my blue and pink stylos. They have started growing again. Here is the pink.

My Sunset monti was unfazed by the whole ordeal.

I thought that I would lose my monti caps but they pulled through after bleaching pretty badly. The orange cap is now about 1/2" away from the front glass. I can no longer get the Mag Float between it and the glass.

The above picture also shows a smile green slimer that survived. One branch from the large colony reached a rock and encrusted to it. The tip of the branch later broke off when the colony was slightly moved. That piece survived and is now shooting up new branches.

I believe this is a Joe the Coral. It also survived. It lost a lot of color during the crash and turned mostly and army camo green. The tips are now growing quickly and are a beautiful blue. This piece has red bugs but is doing well anyway.

Closeup

This pink birdsnest also survived and is growing quickly now.

This one was completely browned out and given up for dead.

The following are some pieces I've purchased over the last few months.
Echinata?

The flesh of this one was almost white at the LFS with a hint of yellow. It has darkened to green in my tank but retained the blue tips.

Yellow A. Caroliniana?

Tenuis? This one is curved and the picture is looking at it from the top. It's much bigger than it looks in this picture.

Pearlberry?

The tips of two others.

Perhaps a Purple Monster in the center. Green tipped birdsnest is on the right. The pink stylo that survived is on the left.

A couple of millies. The second one was getting stung by my anemone so it was recently moved. It had great polyp extension before it started getting stung. Hopefully it will live. There is also a third one that I didn't photograph.

More

This digitata was added recently but isn't doing well. I already fragged a few tips.

I bought another pink birdsnest. At the store it was much pinker than mine and under actinics was blue. After a couple of weeks in my system the color changed and looks exactly like my established pink birdsnest even though it is near the top of the tank. It is to the left of the cap.

From 2010_10_20

Finally, a full tank shot.

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow

2010-06-08T20:51:00.000-05:00

I lost my CBB yesterday. He was literally fine one day and dead the next. Not sure what happened. He was doing great. He ate lots of Rod's food and seemed to be doing well.

A few days before he died he seemed to be out of sight more than usual. I was a little alarmed when I couldn't find him but after about 5 minutes he came out and ate well.

I was feeding him every other day. I used a turkey baster to feed Rod's food to make sure he got enough. He would stick is mouth inside the end of the baster to get the food. Perhaps every other day wasn't enough.

Yesterday when I came home from work he was no longer able to swim. he had brown splotches on him as well as some white spots on the end of little threads hanging off his fins. He was still alive but barely. I had to go out and when I came home I couldn't find him again.

I had heard of other reports of CBBs that died suddenly. Not sure what happened in other cases.

Testing the Waters

2010-05-31T21:38:00.003-05:00

I bought two acro frags this weekend. I'm hoping these thrive.

I did notice a few days ago that my green Wellsophyllia had some skeleton exposed in the area that was closest to the dying colt.

Pulled out the Colt

2010-05-26T22:34:00.003-05:00

Tonight I pulled out what was left of my Colt coral. It looked as if it had gone beyond the point of recovery and was turning white. Indeed when I pulled it out it was getting a little oozy. Several months ago the Colt coral started to decline when I separated it from the glass and a rock so I could stabilize the rock my Green Slimer is on. It never recovered. In fact, looking back, that is about the time my tank started to decline. Could the stressed colt have been allelopathic and led to the decline of my SPS and my recent tank crash? On the bright side not all is lost with the Colt. A baby Colt is growing nearby in a spot where long ago I pulled a branch of the colt off the rock.

RIP Bluethroat

2010-04-19T21:24:00.001-05:00

Found him dead in the HT tonight.

He was turning around and eating very aggressively. I thought he was going to make it. Last night he didn't eat though. Today he was dead. The HT never really seemed to cycle. Don't know if it was the medication or what. I was doing 50% water changes a night to keep the ammonia in check and dosing Prime. I thought maybe the ammonia was a little higher than normal yesterday but I didn't test. Just did the usual water change.

For the record I started treating with Prazi in the HT. I did that for a week and a half or so. He seemed to get worse so I switched to Metro. This seemed to be helping and was eating aggressively but still not putting on weight.

Pretty bummed out. Not only did I lose the fish but I lost a lot of nice coral trying to originally treat him in the DT.

Lesson learned.

STN Carnage

2010-04-10T21:35:00.002-05:00

Here's what some of my corals look like today. I hope it's done. My monti cap continues to color back up so that is a good sign.

What's left of my milli

Purple acro

Tricolor plana

Orange Digitata

Green monti cap

Purple Digitata

API Calcium Test

2010-04-09T21:50:00.002-05:00

I'm unhappy with my API calcium test. I've only been using API for Ca and have been using Salifert for everything else. I had no issues with API Ca up to now. The Ca test was nice since a color chart isn't involved. You simply count drops until the solution changes from pink to blue.

When I bought this last test kit I noticed that my Ca had dropped quite a bit. I didn't think much about it because I hadn't tested for a week or two but thought my Ca had dropped kind of quickly. In time I forgot about this until I started having problems. I went out and bought another API Ca test and compared the results. My older kit was measuring 420 ppm and my brand new one was measuring 520 ppm. Which one was right?

Neither...

After I found out I couldn't trust my API test I bought a Salifert Ca test. It measured 480 ppm. Essentially right in between the two APIs.

The APIs are now officially tossed in the trash. I'm using Salifert for everything now.

Apex Lite

2010-04-09T21:46:00.003-05:00

I bought an Apex Lite controller and received it last Friday. After using it for a week I can tell you I love this thing. I'm using it to control temperature and to control two Bulk Reef Supply dosing pumps so I can control dosing of Ca and Alk throughout the day. I had been dosing about 50 mg of each in the morning. I'm now dosing a little of each once each hour. I'm still adjusting the dosing of each.

My Alk had been down to 7. I'm in the process of slowly raising it. It reached 9 today so I backed off the dosing so I can keep it steady at this level. Ca is a little high right now according to a Salifert test - 480 ppm. I'm easing up on the Ca a little to bring that in line.

Carbon

2010-04-09T21:34:00.003-05:00

I'm starting to think it was the fast addition of carbon that caused the decline of my SPS. I was so afraid of the Metro medication affecting my inverts that I used about 3/4 of a cup in my bulk reef supply reactor. I thought this was taking it easy but I may have stripped out too many nutrients too quickly. This would explain why I've seen carbon negatively impact some of my corals before.

I'm not totally sure what caused the crash but here are some other possibilities:
1. The metro medication itself.
2. My home made food. Unlikely but it is something that changed.
3. All the extra feedings. Trying to get the trigger to eat as well as my copper banded butterfly.
4. Change in lighting. I changed my bulbs in February. One of my corals started declining immediately. Maybe the others took time to catch up.
5. When I moved my trigger to a hospital tank I started mixing salt in a new Rubbermaid roughneck storage box. Unlikely to cause issues. Salt was never stored long and my purple digitata started declining before I pulled the trigger out.
6. I recently changed the restrictor on my RO unit to have less waste water and to produce water more quickly. TDS was still 0 out of the RO/DI so it is unlikely.
7. Too much carbon too fast.

In my opinion the most likely causes were the Metro and/or carbon. I doubt the extra food caused issues since some of my corals were coloring up nicely before disaster struck.

Bottom?

2010-04-09T21:29:00.002-05:00

I'm hoping my tank has hit bottom.

I'm starting to see white edge growth on my orange monti cap again and it appears to be starting to color up again just a bit. My large orange digitata looks awful but in some spots I can see just a little bit of polyp extension. So much of the colony was covered with a bright colored algae. I don't know if it is dead under these areas. I'll find out soon.

So many of my acros have lost the tips and are covered with algae on the tips. My beautiful plating milli has lost so much tissue. I'm not sure if I should leave the skeleton or cut it back.

Pictures tomorrow.

RTN

2010-04-01T22:09:00.002-05:00

Came home from work yesterday and saw that this milli had RTNed during the day.

My orange digitata still looks awful.

as does my purple acro colony.

and my caps.

I'll be devastated if I lose this milli that looked like this only 21/2 months ago.

and now looks like this

I pulled carbon off line yesterday, stopped the water changes and started dosing alk and calcium again. It doesn't look like anything changed over the last 24 hours. That's a good sign.

CRASH!

2010-03-29T21:43:00.002-05:00

My tank has declined. I've lost several small acro frags, I have a milli that is RTNing, my digitatas are bleached and a monti cap has bleached on one petal. Paul's reef ain't a happy place right now.

Here is how it happened. Hopefully others don't repeat my mistakes.

My Blue Throat Trigger went from this on January 11th

to this on March 13th

Since he was eating like crazy I concluded, along with some over on Reef Central, that his wait loss was due to internal parasites. i.e. tapeworms. The only treatment options were metronidazole or praziquantel. Since I didn't have a hospital tank set up and I knew catching the trigger would be quite the challenge I wanted to treat in my reef tank. This, as it turns out, was a big mistake.

Of the two medications Metro can be dosed into food but prazi can't. So I made the decision I would make some of my own food and then mix it with clear gelatin and metro. The hope that the fish would ingest it and the medication would not enter the water in massive quantities. For this reason I chose not to dose prazi directly into the tank.

Since I was going to add medication I decided to start running a little bit of carbon in a reactor. Last time I did this I lost some frags so I was a little reluctant to do so. However lots of people run carbon and wouldn't even dream about running their tanks without it. So I decided to go ahead and run my BRS reactor about 25% full.

After about a week of feeding the trigger had not improved. In fact he actually stopped eating. I also noticed that a purple digitata that had been growing very slowly had started to STN. At this point I decided to stop feeding the Metro in the DT and set up the hospital tank. I went out and bought a sponge filter to prepare. This was on Sunday 3/21.

I managed to catch the trigger but I had to rip out about 25% of my rock to do so. This included a rock with my large orange digitata colony. When I pulled it out I put it in a bucket of tank water while I was trying to catch the fish. This clearly upset the digitata that was already stressed since it hasn't shown its polyps since then.

AFter pulling out the trigger I changed the carbon in my reactor and filled it 3/4 full and added some GFO just in case the phosphates were high even though phosphate was undetectable with my Salifert test. I had to leave town for a couple of days and when I came back nothing had improved. My monti caps had a white coating and some of them were growing algae along with some of my digitatas. I added a polyfilter the following day to help pull out the Metro.

For the last 6 days I've been changing 15 gallons of water a day in my tank. It seemed like the decline was slowing since my forest fire digitata was starting to color back up. However today I noticed one of my millis was starting to RTN and a pedal of my monti cap had started to bleach. You can actually see light through it where it has bleached.

Since the massive carbon, GFO and water changes weren't helping and since I have had problems with carbon in the past I decided to take the reactor off line, pull out the poly filter and to stop the water changes for now. I'm not sure if things could get worse I decided to give it a try.

Through all of this my Birds of Paradise looks great, my Stylos look good and my Green slimer doesn't even look phased. My green birds nest got disturbed big time when I rearranged my tank but is holding up with somewhat less polyp extension. My green trumpet candy cane has had some recession but appears to be the only LPS affected. My Kiwi-strawberry milli has browned out.

Is it possible that the something besides the metro caused this? sure. My Colt coral has been stadily receding for months ever since I had to detach it from the glass. Perhaps it was the home made food I started feeding when I tried to fatten up the trigger. I made it with grocery store fresh seafood. Could it have been treated with something? Perhaps it was the extra feeding I've been doing since I bought my copper banded butterfly. Unlikely since nitrate has stayed at 5 although it did test at 10 one day about a week ago. Who knows. I'm hoping for the best now.

Dragonface Pipefish

2010-03-07T08:59:00.002-06:00

I purchased two Dragonface Pipefish on January 25th from Liveaquaria. They arrived with no issues. I originally bought them to control Red Bugs. These are great fish and they are very interesting to watch. They instantly paired up and always hang out together. Like Mandarins they won't eat what is introduced to he tank. They'll only eat what they find on the live rock. My Mandarin has gotten nice and fat so I figured it was worth a try.

Unfortunately, one of the Pipefish has gone missing over the last few days. These guys always hung out together and now the survivor is alone. Maybe one got too close to my anemone. I also have a lot of stinging LPS corals whch are not recommended for a safe Pipefish environment. After more than a month in the tank I was starting to get more positive about the chances of survival for these fish.

I never have seen the Pipefish go after the Red Bugs. Even if they don't tese are really cool fish for a mature tank. If the surviving fish lives a few more months I'm going to try another one.

Change in Lighting Cycle

2010-01-19T22:53:00.002-06:00

I decided to reduce the amount of time my lights are on. I noticed my corals colored up when I replacing some higher PAR bulbs with actinics. I figured I'd reduce the amount of time the lights ae on and observe the results.

Before
Actinics: On 9:30 am, Off 11:00 pm, Total 13.5 hours
Rest: On 10:00 am, Off 9:30 pm, Total 11.5 hours

Now
Actinics: On 10:00 am, Off 11:00 pm, Total 13 hours
Rest: On 11:30 am, Off 9:30 pm, Total 10 hours

Frogspawn Update

2010-01-19T20:53:00.002-06:00

It appears that I have stopped the progression of dying heads on my frogspawn by fragging the dying branch off. I'm convinced that leaving the ranch with the dying head would have caused the spread from one head to the next. The piece I cut off had one head that was still alive. I tried dipping it in iodine but it did not save it.

Dead Heads

2010-01-16T22:20:00.002-06:00

Three heads on my frogspawn have died. The most logical explanation is that I dropped some dried salt on the edge of the tank into the tank when installing the net lid. The frogspawn sits in the middle of the tank directly under the center brace. Per Occam's razor, the simplest explanation tends to be the best one.

Tank Lid

2010-01-16T12:48:00.000-06:00

I decided to make myself a lid for my tank after reading the trigger I bought last week is a notorious jumper.

I started with just egg crate cut to the size of the tank. This blocked too much light and was hard on the eyes because it was so bright when looking at the tank from above.

I then started removing some of the egg crate material to open up the size of the holes using wire cutters. It was a long process. I stopped before getting half way through one side because my hand started blistering.

I thought about plan B and came up with using deer or bird netting that is draped over bushes or flowers to prevent the deer from eating your plants. I bought a roll of bird netting at Home Depot for $7.

The next thing I needed to think of was constructing a frame. I wanted to find some plastic rods but I couldn't find any at Home Depot or Michaels (craft store). So I decided to use 1/4" hardwood dowel rods instead. I needed 5 of them at $.59 each or $3.

I cut the dowel rods to the proper size and wove them through the netting. I connected the dowel rods with pieces of airline tubing. The tubing is tight so I had to stretch the tubing by inserting some needle nose pliers into the tubing and expanding the pliers to stretch the tubing.

Stopping Carbon

2010-01-16T12:05:00.003-06:00

All but one polyp of this coral started lightening up around the end of last year. I thought it may have been because I moved it up just a little into the rock work. So, a few days ago I moved it back down. The lightening started occuring prior to my anemone getting caught in the powerhead so I can rule that out. The only other change was the addition of carbon and the carbon reactor.

Therefore, as of this morning, the carbon reactor has been taken off line.

I thought I had noticed some increased growth in some of my acros since adding the reactor. Additionally I have definitely noticed my green open brain starting to expand more and more lately.

When I first got it would always be expanded. For the last yer or year and a half it stopped expanding. So this is a definite change and perhaps a benefit of carbon.

Also this morning a few heads of my frogspawn are retracted.

My chaeto has also started to brown a little. Perhaps because the carbon is removing some of the nutrients needed by the chaeto. Perhaps the browning chaeto is causing the stress in the tank.

This is the latest in a series of unfortunate events. Is it due to carbon? I don't know. However, it is easy to take the carbon off line and observe what happens.

Fragile Digitata

2010-01-16T11:56:00.003-06:00

In the past I've been clumsy and have broken off a branch of my orange digitata while performing maintenance on the tank. This morning, I woke to find a good size branch sitting on the sand bed propped up by my maze brain and green trumpet. I'm guessing the trigger brushed up against it and broke it.

The break is visible in the center of the coral. The piece that broke off is simply propped up against the rock behind the coral.

Anthias Missing

2010-01-16T11:52:00.003-06:00

Second in a succession of negative events in my tank is the fact that my Anthias is missing. Thursday I noticed that it had an injury on its left side. Some sort of an abrasion. It seemed fine and ate well on Thursday. It didn't see it at all last night. It has not made an appearance so far today either.

RTN Event

2010-01-16T11:46:00.002-06:00

The red monti frag I bought last week is no more.

Here is what it looked like up until yesterday.

Yesterday, evening when I got home from work it looked like this.

I dipped it in a solution of Revive in an effort to save it. But alas this morning it looked like this.

I'm not sure what caused this. It's weird how a coral can be fine one day and completely gone the next.

Nice Wrasse

2010-01-12T21:28:00.002-06:00

The Radiant Wrasse I introduced on Sunday finally decided to come out of hiding. It seems to be getting along with its tank mates.

Sunday - New Fish

2010-01-11T22:04:00.003-06:00

I heard about a reef store about 45 minutes away so my wife and I took a trip up to Sho Tank in Mundeline, IL. What a great store. A great selection of fish and corals.

Here is what I bought:

A male Lyretail Anthias

A Blue Jaw Trigger. I'm assured that this is reef safe. It spent its first full day in hiding. It finally came out briefly to check out the tank.

This trigger is huge. It is 5 or 6 inches long. Despite its size it is extremely shy and is easily spooked. It doesn't like to stay out for long.

I also bought a Radiant Wrasse. After I introduced it it disappeared into the sand and I haven't seen it yet.

Finally, although not a fish, I bought a maze brain. I've been looking for one for months with no luck. This store must have had 4 or 5 of them. I bought one of the smaller ones. It fluoresces nicely under the actinics.

Saturday - New corals

2010-01-11T21:57:00.003-06:00

On my way from the grocery store on Saturday, (yes I do most of the grocery shopping), I stopped at my LFS. I occasionally, stop in to see if they have anything I really want to add. They finally had a Pink Birdsnest frag. I've been wanting one for almost a year and had yet to find a good looking frag.

Since all their frags are two for $30 I also picked up a red millie of some sort.

Before adding these on Saturday I moved my Green Slimer and added a piece of rock to elevate it a little. In the process of adding it the slimer fell on and broke a piece of my orange monti cap. I superglued the unintentional frag to the rock.

Coral war, huh, what is it good for?

2010-01-05T22:42:00.004-06:00

My green birdsnest and a nearby millie have oh been taking off lately. The tips of a branch of each finally got very close and the birdsnest lost the war. Sunday morning I noticed the polyps on the affected branch of the birdsnest were not extended and the branch was discolored.

I moved the millie immediately after this picture was taken.

Today, two days later, the birdsnest looked like this.

A small portion of the branch had died. I'm not sure if this is RTN or what. I decided I wasn't going to take any chances and fragged off the affected branch to prevent the RTN from spreading further. If I waited longer an the RTN spread I would have had to frag apart the colony.

I cut off the living sections of the branch and superglued them to a plug. Hopefully this will be the end of this. I'm not sure if the anemone in the powerhead exacerbated this or what but I would not have expected to lose a branch due to a coral war.

Anemone vs. Koralia 1

2010-01-04T21:54:00.002-06:00

Who won? The Powerhead did.

Yesterday morning I noticed the BTA on the right side of the tank had moved just a few inches from where it has lived for the last four months or so. I wasn't too concerned because it went back to it's original spot by the afternoon. By evening it was on the move again and was crawling up the glass only to be stopped by the branches of my Green Slimer. It retreated slightly by the time I went to bed. Just before bed I moved the closest Koralia 1 far away from the anemone as a precaution.

When I woke up this morning I turned on the lights in the tank to see what was formerly an anemone wrapped around the inside of another Koralia 1 in the tank. Part of the anemone was on the outside of the powerhead and part was on the inside and had been sucked through the protective grill. There was no saving it. It had to be ripped apart to free it from the powerhead.

I'm really bummed to see this guy get killed this way. This is the anemone that didn't look good a few months but then came back. Yesterday it was quite a beautiful animal and its tentacles were all bubbly while it was hosting my Maroon Clown part time. I had been thinking to myself just a few days earlier how neither of my two anemones had moved at all for the last several months.

What changed to make the anemone wander? The only thing I can think of is that I cleaned the acrylic light shield on my Nova Extreme Pro just two days earlier. I removed the entire cover and cleaned both sides in the bathtub. The inside had a good coating of dust and the outside had a good coating of salt spray. Perhaps the difference in light intensity was enough to upset the anemone. Perhaps it was upset because I hadn't been feeding my anemones lately because they were getting huge on their own. I'll never know.

Another Chromis Missing

2009-12-27T11:19:00.000-06:00

I haven't seen my remaining green chromis in days. I wonder if the lifespan of the chromis is short or what. All water parameters are spot on.

Carbon reactor

2009-12-23T19:16:00.002-06:00

I just got my single carbon reactor from BRS today. I have it about a third full of Marineland black magic carbon. I'm hoping that it helps get rid of the short dark fuzzy algae growing on my LR. If it doesn't make an impact I'll start running some Phosban in the reactor as well.

Red Bugs

2009-12-14T23:07:00.002-06:00

I was taking some macro shots of some of my frags today and there they were, Red Bugs (Tegastes acroporanus).

I haven't decided what to do about them yet. I read the dragon faced pipefish will eat them and keep them under control. They can also be killed with Interceptor.

Lost

2009-12-11T21:41:00.000-06:00

I lost a green chromis today. All parameters in check. No ick or parasites. Its mouth was red though. It could have been from being blown into rocks by a powerhead.

Power Backup

2009-12-02T20:25:00.002-06:00

I've been sarching for a solution to keeping my tank alive through a power outage. We had a 5 or 6 hour one last year. I had to run out and buy an inverter so I can use my car to power the pumps of my tank. During very long power outages I can do the same thing. However, I felt I needed to get the tank through a shorter outage on its own without the need for me to be there to hook up an inverter.

From what I have read the loss of water circulation is the biggest cause of tank nukage during a power failure. Corals and fish can go without lights for days. Temperature is important but the tank temp will drop somewhat slowly. The temperature should remain at an acceptable level until I could get home, and hook up an inverter to my car or use a generator. So my objective was to power one or two powerheads for at least 8 hours.

The obvious solution was to use a computer backup UPS. I bought two; one for my tank and one for my PC. I bought a 1300 VA and a 1500 VA version of the APC XS series from Fry's. The larger 1500 was originally intended for the tank and the smaller 1300 for my PC.

Unfortunately, the Koralia 3s I have don't like the modified sine wave of the UPS when it is running on battery power. It would just chatter like crazy and would never start up. This was a surprise because the Koralia 3s worked fine from my inverter which also outputs a modified sine wave. One way around this is to use an APC Smart-UPS which outputs a true sine wave but they run more than $500. I wanted to do this as inexpensively as possible.

My Eheim 1262 return pump worked just fine when the ups was running on battery so I figured there had to be hope in finding a pump that would reliably work. I tried a Maxijet 1200. Unfortunately, the MJ would not run when the UPS was running on battery power either. I read on a forum that someone was using a Koralia Nano on a UPS with no problems. I decided to buy a Koralia Nano, 1, 2 and a new 3 to see which ones would work and which ones don't. I bought a new K3 to find out if a newer model may work whereas my current ones don't. I tried the K1 and found that that one worked so I never tried the nano since I wanted to use the largest one possible. The K2 did not work and neither did the K3. So, it looks like K1 is the way to go. I'll need a couple since they don't produce a ton of flow.

One other interesting point is that the largest UPS won't necessarily run the power head longer than a smaller one. In fact, the opposite is true. I purchased a 1500 VA UPS as well as a 1300 VA version of the same model. When both of these are fully charged the 1300 indicates it will run with no load for 850 minutes (14 hours). The larger 1500 indicates it will run for 785 minutes (13 hours) with no load. This is because the 1500 includes a higher wattage inverter that consumes more power to run itself even with no load. The load of a K1 is so low that it doesn't even register on the UPS and doesn't change the run time. Perhaps going with a lower wattage UPS would run for even longer. I'm sure there is a limit at some point.

So it looks like I'll be able to keep my tank circulating for 14 hours during a power outage.

Time lapse

2009-11-26T22:07:00.002-06:00

Time lapse video of my tooth coral eating. At least tit was trying to eat. The fish kept stealing the food. The video is sped up 64 times. The total length was one hour.

Merulina Ampliata

2009-11-23T19:46:00.002-06:00

Well, the nice folks at wetwebmedia believe that what I have is a Merulina Ampliata and not a maze brain. The merulina needs more light and is harder to care for. This article presents some good info on Merulina. I'll have to move it up my rock work. The only problem is where. I'm running out of space.

The Man With Two Brains

2009-11-22T21:46:00.002-06:00

I've been wanting a maze brain coral for months. I've never seen them in any of the LFSs in my area so I was starting to to look online. Yesterday I came across this at a LFS.

It was labeled as a Merulina rather than a Platygyra. The latter is the maze brain. This was the closest thing to a maze brain that I've seen in a store. I looked at a coral book in the store and it didn't look anything like a Merulina in the book so I bought it. I'm hoping that it does turn out to be a maze brain and gets the nice round shape. Only time will tell.

Suprise find

2009-11-22T21:37:00.004-06:00

Last weekend I found a BTA in my fuge.

Several weeks earlier one of my BTAs disappeared. I found it in my overflow outside the tank. It hat gotten into the overflow in the tank and traveled through the U tube into the overflow outside the tank. I removed it when I found it and put it back in the tank. Well, somewhere along the way another split occurred due to the stress. So the anemone count was p to "4". That's too many for my tank. The more anemones I have the higher the probability one will make its way into a powerhead. So the BTA from the fuge and its twin that had been hiding behind the overflow were traded in for the following four frags:

An encrusting montipora

Not sure

Some kind of tort

and another I'm not sure

More Corals

2009-11-11T22:33:00.002-06:00

On Saturday I traded in three large Colt corals for fours SPS frags.

A blue millepora

A pink millepora

Unknown acro

Unknown acro

Two New Frags

2009-11-06T20:39:00.003-06:00

I just bought two new frags. The first is a green monti cap.

The second is a pocillopora verrucosa.

Anemone Worries

2009-10-31T21:40:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, my anemone that resulted from my first split looked awesome. It was well inflated in the right-rear corner of my tank looking better than I've ever seen it. It had spent the previous month between my Xenia rock, the one I had pulled them all off of, and the glass. In the last few days it moved to the other side of the rock and opened nicely between my Monti Cap and Green Slimer. I was a little worried it would sting the cap but it didn't stay there long. It moved back t its original location. It then moved back to the corner.

This morning I found the anemone deflated on the bottom of the tan completely deflated. A small section of its tentacles were clear. The ones still with color were fluorescing a bright shade of green. It looked limp and done. There were even a few pieces f tentacles on the sand bed. It looked like it had gotten into a fight with a powerhead and lost. I knew that couldn't be the case since my powerheads were wrapped in bridal veil netting to protect the anemones.

I feared that it was dead or dying. Knowing that a dying anemone can nuke a tank I felt that it may need to removed. I picked it up and noticed the foot was still firmly attached to several pieces or LR rubble. A good sign. I decided to leave it in and observe it. Had it not been attached I would have removed it.

Over the course of the day it moved a little. Climbing the glass an inch or two and then returning to the sandbed. My cleaner shrimp kept picking at it on and off throughout the day.

It's strange how the body of the anemone is sunk within the outside of it's column. I've never seen one do this before.

As of a few minutes ago it crawled to a dark spot on the sandbed. I'm not sure what to think or do at this point. Do I leave it in and risk it dying and killing everything in the tank? Or do I sacrifice it to guarantee the safety of the others?

Not sure what caused this to occur. I do no my nitrates were somewhere around 7 ppm this morning. This is the highest it's been in perhaps a year. I lost a firefish a while ago and noticed some elevated nitrate levels. However last week nitrate was undetectable.

I think I'll do a water change and run carbon tonight. I can't get myself to destroy an animal that may be going through some ordinary thing.

New Additions

2009-10-31T21:17:00.002-05:00

Last night I picked up three new additions:

ORA Bird of Paradise

ORA Joe the Coral

Unknown Purple Acro w/ Blue Tips with some green

Lighting change

2009-10-18T22:34:00.002-05:00

I changed some of my bulbs around yesterday. I wanted a more blueish look. I added some of the stock actinics from my fixture. I like the new look. I hoping some of the corals that have been doing well like my mushrooms and clove polyps respond positively to the change.

The new bulb order from front to back is now:

Front
ATI Blue Plus
Current Actinic
Korallen-zucht Fiji Purple
Current Actinic
UV Super Actinic
ATI Blue Plus
Back

Interference

2009-10-17T09:36:00.003-05:00

This morning I decided to move my leather. It had been continuously rubbing up against my monti cap. The bottom of the cap was looking dark where it was being rubbed.

I never observed any permanent damage caused by the leather rubbing up against the cap. I just didn't like the way it looked and I felt that growth was being restricted. The leather was also starting to shade my frogspawn. The frogspawn was sending out sweeper tentacles that on occasion reached the leather. This was another indicator that it was time to move it. It's now on the sandbed under my green slimer and next to my colt. I'm not sure if this is an ideal location but it is the best location I have for it right now.

The leather had grown so that it was adhering slightly to a second rock. I needed to perform some delicate surgery to cut some flesh from the second rock. I'll be curious to see if a new leather develops from hat rock.

BTA Split

2009-10-08T20:47:00.003-05:00

One of my two BTAs split again last night. I consider this the original mother because after it split the first time this was the larger of the two.

When I came home from work yesterday I noticed a hole in the anemone. The live rock was clearly visible through the hole.

It appears that it split on one side of the mouth first starting within the anemone. It didn't split starting from the edge as I imagined it would. At the time I took this picture it hadn't even started splitting on the other side of the mouth. It looks like it split on one side first and then the other.

I couldn't stay up and watch the whole thing. When I woke up the split had completed.

The anemone split right through the center of its mouth. The remnants of the mouth are clearly visible in the pictures above. The other half was hiding behind the rock and was barely visible.

When I came home from work both halves had moved behind the rock but were still somewhat visible.

Sweeper Tentacles

2009-09-27T19:46:00.001-05:00

Both my frogspawn and leather are growing. It seems as if my frogspawn knows the leather is there. It is putting out sweeper tentacles on the side closest the frogspawn . On occasion thay have extended out far enough to sting the leather. How does it know its there? It has never put out sweepers before this week. Does it sense the reduced light due to the proximity of the leather? Perhaps it could just smell it. I've heard of the chemical warfare between corals. So far it has been simply cold war in my tank.

Flatworms

2009-09-26T22:59:00.004-05:00

I discovered some planaria flatworms in my tank. They are only on two corals that are right next to each other. I haven't seen them on any live rock anywhere.

I pulled the mushrooms and the candy cane out of the tank, swirled them in tank water, brushed them off and put them back in. I ended up with a lot of flatworms in the container but I certainly didn't get all of them off.

I decided against using Flatworm eXit for now. I'd rather keep chemicles out of the tank. When the flatworms die they can become quite toxic. I'll probably purchase some and use it to dip the affected corals and new corals outside of the tank. In the meantime I purchased a spotted mandarin. I'm hoping he will develop an appetite for them. It's been a couple of days and so far it doesn't look like he is touching them.

This guy looks pretty skinny. I didn't realize how emaciated it was when I bought it. I hope he finds enough pods in the tank. I have an upward climb with him.

Tooth Coral Under Actinics

2009-08-26T21:27:00.001-05:00

I Want To Pump You Up

2009-08-11T19:42:00.003-05:00

About a month and a half ago I upgraded my return pump to an Eheim 1262. I had been using two 802 power heads for return pumps from my sump. The flow with the powerheads seemed decent enough. However, it was not enough to sweep all the bubbles out of my overflow tube. This was especially true when algae started growing in there. On a few occasions enough air accumulated in the tube to severely reduce the flow. This would result in the level in my tank rising to counteract the reduced flow. There were two or three times when the center brace of my tank ended up underwater.

It seems somewhat counter-intuitive but increasing the capacity of your pump actually reduces the probability of an overflow disaster. The new pump is powerful enough that small bubbles are swept out of the overflow tube. Since getting this pump I have yet to see even a small bubble at the top pf the tube. I no longer have to worry about an overflow occurring through this mechanism.

The pump, although expensive, is great. It is extremely quiet. I simply cannot hear it run. All I here is the relaxing sound of water flowing through my system.

Meet My New Frags

2009-08-08T19:41:00.005-05:00

After a bad week at work I decided I deserved to reward myself with a little gift. Well, actually nine little gifts. Meet the new frags:

Multi Color Millepora

Blue Polyp Stylophora (Cat's Paw)

Either an Echinata or Tenuis

Wicked Tri Color

Forest Fire Digitata

Tri Color Plana

Kiwi Strawberry

Red Planet

Blue Vermiculata

I bought these from Madfrags Online. I couldn't be happier with my purchase. Justin was extremely helpful and even emailed me to see how the frags were acclimating to my tank. I had been looking for some colorful frags at my LFSs but I couldn't find anything that really stood out and was at a fair price. He has some really nice pieces available and he has them priced very fairly in my opinion. Some of these frags he even through in for free. I'll definitely purchase frags through him again.

I spent this morning arranging my tank to accommodate all the new frags. I added a few pieces of dry rock that I had left over in the process. At the rate coraline has been growing in my tank again it won't be long before these bleached rocks are nice and pink. Here is how the tank looks now.

I was running out of holes in my LR for the frag plugs. I discovered that the plug breaks off the disc easily if I hold the disc in a pair of pliers and snap the plug off with another pair of pliers. The disc can then be epoxied to any rock with reef epoxy putty. Yeah, I'm relatively new to this.

Some growth pics

2009-06-11T23:34:00.002-05:00

Montipora Digitata
Jan 19, 2009

June 9, 2009

Bali Green Slimer
Jan 19, 2009

June 9, 2009

Monti Cap
Jan 25, 2009

June 9, 2009

New Corals

2009-06-10T23:11:00.002-05:00

I picked up four very small SPS frags last Sunday 6/7.

Miami Orchid. My child BTA is in the bacground

Green Birds Nest

Purple Digitata (behind the Ausie Acan)

And finally a teal something or another. Looking at it essentially from the top down.

Hunting for a Home

2009-06-10T23:07:00.002-05:00

My second anemone, the child, emerged from hiding yesterday evening and started crawling up the back glass. It got dangerously close to my overflow so I decided a relocation was necessary. I removed him from the glass quite easily and placed it in the crevice between two rocks. It has moved about 6 inches from that spot in the last 24 hours. The nightmare scenario is this guy getting sucked up in a power head and nuking the tank.

In Hiding

2009-06-07T10:46:00.003-05:00

I was out of town from Tuesday through Friday last week. When I returned home I found that one of the anemones had moved and was in hiding. I'm calling this one the clone or child since the other anemone is in the original spot and pretty much looks the same size as the anemone before the split. In fact I forgot all about it for a while before realizing there should be two anemones.

I moved some rocks around and turned some rocks over and found the child hanging upside down under a rock perhaps a foot away from the parent. It looks healthy so I'm not too woried that it is hiding.

Full Tank Shot

2009-05-31T18:20:00.001-05:00

Here is the latest full tank shot. All corals are doing well and growing.

My Anemone Split

2009-05-30T22:05:00.002-05:00

After getting home from work yesterday I looked at my tank and saw that my Green Bubble Tip Anemone had split into two. It may have split Thursday night or during the day on Thursday. I looked at the tank on Friday morning before the lights came on and it looked like the anemone was covering a larger area. I started to worry that it was moving again.

Thursday I traveled for work all day and had to get up at 4:00 am to make a 7:00 flight. It was a one day trip and when I got home I was too tired to do much more than glance at the tank nothing caught my eye.

Kind of weird but the two clones have different personalities. The top clone is keeping the tentacles inflated. The bottom one is not. It also looks like the bottom clone has already developed a new mouth whereas the top one is still working on it. The clown goes back and forth between the two like it is a single anemone.

So why did my BTA split?

Chances are I stressed it during the water change I performed on Wednesday night. I poured a bucket of water in kind of quickly right over the anemone. I had done this before however this time the flow was a little faster since the bucket kind of got away from me.

It was right after I did this water change that I removed the bridal veil netting from my two Koralia power heads. This really increased the flow. The tentacles of the anemone were now waving all over the place. The increased flow may also have been the culprit.

Perhaps the was just happy and wanted to reproduce. I don't know. The anemone seems to have been happier lately and hadn't moved for about a month. I think it settled down because I started feeding it again. I had stopped feeding it after my Tomato clown started hosting it and was feeding it. I hadn't seen the clown feeding it so I was worried that it wasn't getting enough to eat. So now I give it about a third of a thawed shrimp tail twice a week. Perhaps the feeding made it happy again. Who knows.

I am wondering if it one of them is going to split again. I can see the foot gripping the rock one two sides of the anemone. I'll have to keep an eye on it.

Fiji Purple

2009-05-30T21:40:00.004-05:00

I decided to purchase a Fiji Purple bulb and a UV Super Actinic Bulb. I bought the actinic to try to increase the coraline. I just wanted to try out the Fiji Purple to see if it would help the colors pop more.

The new bulb order from front to back is now:

Front
ATI Blue Plus
Giesemann Aquablue+
Korallen-zucht Fiji Purple
Giesmann Midday
UV Super Actinic
ATI Blue Plus
Back

The front ATI Blue Plus and UV Super Actinic are on during the dusk and dawn cycle to increase the actinic spectrum.

Reduced Lighting Schedule

2009-05-30T21:17:00.003-05:00

Since acclimating my tank to my T5 fixture I had all 6 bulbs on for 12 hours per day. Two bulbs were on for one hour before and after all 6 bulbs were on to simulate dawn and dusk.

About a month or two ago, as part of a multi-faceted approach to reduce the cyano outbreak, I reduced the number of hours all the bulbs were lit each day. The new schedule has all 6 bulbs on for 10.5 hours per day. I also rearranged the bulbs so that my two ATI Blue Plus bulbs were on during the dawn and dusk hours. I rearranged the bulbs to encourage the growth of coraline algae on the back glass. The algae had been disappearing ever since I upgraded to the brighter T5 fixture.

The modified lighting schedule did indeed encourage the growth of coraline. It again started growing on the front glass. I had to get the razor blade out last week to scrape the algae. This is the first time I had to do this since I upgraded the lighting.

Cyano

2009-05-30T20:47:00.003-05:00

After my anemone moved I started to also see an increase in cyano bacteria growing on my live rock. I had just a little bit on my sand in a low flow area but not so much. For the first time had to start cleaning my live rock. During water changes I would just place the hose up against the rock and i would suck most of it up. Some cyano was also growing over one of my Palythoas plugs and they stopped opening. I had to carefully siphon the black cyano off the plugs during water changes.

I realized that my RO water wasn't getting purified enough. I measured a TDS level of 50 ppm. So I changed everything. New DI resin, new RO membrane and new carbon blocks and prefilter. Ironically my old RO membrane worked better than the new. The old one was some generic no-name brand 100 gpd. The new one is a Filmtec 75 gpd. I replaced the restrictor to the recommended flow rate and I'm getting a TDS level of 7 out of the membrane. Whereas in the generic one I would get 2 ppm. I thought it was bad because when starting the RO filter after it sat idle I would get a TDS level of about 200 ppm for a while before it would drop. Unfortunately, the new one does the exact same thing. So, I need to rely on the DI resin to knock the TDS level down to about 2 ppm. Unfortunately this exhausts the resin quickly.

Several water changes later the amount of cyano seems to be decreasing but is not completely gone yet.

When my anemone started moving around I wrapped my Koralia power heads with bridal veil netting so it wouldn't suck up the anemone. Now that it has settled in again and is no longer moving I removed the netting. I couldn't believe how much the flow in the tank picked up after the netting was removed. I bet the reduced flow was also responsible for the increase in cyano.

New Corals

2009-05-29T22:03:00.003-05:00

On April 25th I purchased two new corals.

A green striped mushroom rock and a rose open brain coral. So far so good. I have another mushroom rock but I have to keep it in the shade otherwise the mushrooms shrink down. I was hoping that the green striped mushrooms would be more tolerant to bright light. They are indeed smaller tan they were in the LFS but they are loking pretty good. I should try moving it to the shade to see the difference.

It's been a long time

2009-05-29T21:46:00.002-05:00

I haven't posted now for a few months. I got discourage with my tank when my anemone started moving around and didn't know what was causing it to do so. I also started getting some growth of cyano bacteria over my live rock.

The biggest reason for not posting I guess has been piano. I've started playing again and it has pretty much occupied all of my free time. I hadn't played in years and now that I've started again I can't put it down.

In the next few posts I'll try to recount all that's happened over the last few months.

Trumpet Coral Update

2009-04-02T22:15:00.003-05:00

Several days ago I wrote about the skin that was tearing between two heads of my Trumpet Coral. A hole had formed in the skin. Two days ago the skin completely tore at the bottom opening the hole. The skin still connects the two heads at the top. Overall it looks healthy. The tentacles came out to feed last night.

Anemone Update

2009-04-02T20:58:00.002-05:00

Still no change in the anemone's status. It is still hiding behind the rock wall near the bottom hanging upside down. In order to see it I either have to look between the rocks with a flash light or stand on a chair and look down at the tank behind the rock wall. The anemone looks healthy and my tomato clown is always there with it. Pretty hard to enjoy it back there I hope it moves soon.

It Moved!

2009-03-29T21:44:00.001-05:00

I've had this BTA for about 16 months. I watched it decline gradually under inadequate PC lighting and high nitrates. I got my nitrates to 0 in November or December and upgraded to 6x54W T5s in December just before Christmas. The anemone grew from a shrunken two inch diameter to about eight inches now.

Friday night I watched in disbelief as my anemone moved about three inches down from the spot it has inhabited for the last five months. On Saturday morning it was still in that spot but a few hours later, to my surprise, it moved back to its normal spot. Unfortunately, Saturday night it started climbing up and over my rock wall. It probably moved about two feet. It's higher in the tank all the way at the back and kind of underneath a ledge. It was moving uncomfortably close to a Koralia so I turned it off. I reached in the tank to make sure it was off and the water felt cool. Sure enough the temperature was 76 deg F. When I performed my usual set of Saturday morning tests the tank temp was at its normal 80 deg F. So, I wonder if the tank temp has been fluctuating without me realizing it.

This morning I played around with the heater and realized that the the heater was generating stray voltage in my tank too. I would occasionally feel a slight tingle if my arm touched my light fixture while my hand was in the water. It was a 250W Stealth heater. I can no longer recommend this. My sump was just big enough to house this heater on a diagonal. Nothing larger would fit and of course everything else at the store was larger. So, I decided to go with two 200W Hydor heaters which fit nicely. And, with these heaters I don't feel any electrical tingle!

I must have had some bad Karma heading my way because after I got the heaters installed the power went out. We got several inches of heart attack snow last night and trees were snapping everywhere today. So my tank sat with lights out and no current or heat for several hours. So, if my anemone was unhappy before it must have been really upset at this point. After a few hours I hooked up an inverter to one of our vehicles to get some flow in the tank again. The inverter I had couldn't power a heater. After several more hours and power wasn't restored I went out and bought a 750W inverter from Lowes. This allowed me to turn on some lights and one of the heaters. Power came back at 6:30 this evening after about 5 1/2 hours.

The only other thing that changed was that in the past week I started dosing alkalinity made with baking soda instead of the mix from Bulk Reef Supply. Perhaps this BTA only likes the more expensive stuff.

Here are my parameters:
Nitrate 0.0
pH 8.1
Alkalinity 3-3.5 meq/l (jumped from 2 meq/l last week)
SG 1.026
Calcium 460 ppm
Magnesium 1260 ppm
Temp 79F (now)
Phosphate 0

With the exception of alkalinity, my tank has pretty much had the same parameters for the last 4 months or so. Alkalinity is the only thing that jumped. Anybody think this is what made the BTA unhappy? Anybody else dosing with baked out baking soda?

I'm hoping the anemone moves back to the front. It is barely in view now. My tomato clown looks freaked too. He stayed with it the whole time it moved.

Long post. I needed to vent.

Ouch!

2009-03-28T10:34:00.003-05:00

The skin is tearing between two heads on my Green Trumpet coral.

Not sure what is causing it but the tear is growing. When I initially bought this coral about a month ago this area was swollen.

So, what is wrong with this guy? Is it an infection of some sort? Should I remove this section and frag it onto a different rock to keep it from spreading?

And Then There Were None

2009-03-22T19:52:00.002-05:00

My yellow star polyps have disappeared. I bought this rock for $10. It seemed that the individual polyps vanished one by one. I tried placing the rock in two different places. The first was in a somewhat shaded area in the tank about half way down. They didn't do well there so I moved them to full light at the top tank. It didn't seem to make a difference. They still kept disappearing one by one.

Earlier this week I was down to the last one. Today, even that one is gone. There is no evidence that it was ever there. It is almost as if it just decided to let go with its foot and let the current take it somewhere else. Maybe I'll spot one again someplace.

Colt Coral Fragging

2009-03-19T21:23:00.003-05:00

Ever since I upgraded my lighting to 324 Watts of T5 luminosity my Colt coral has been growing like a weed. Not only is it growing but the polyps are feathery and voluptuous. Yes, voluptuous. A term more often used for describing the lips of a Hollywood starlet rather than the polyps of an animal that most would confuse as a plant.

This Colt has grown to the point where it was shadowing my green open brain coral and basically taking over the front-right corner of my tank. I decided it was once again time to try to frag this coral.

My previous attempts at fragging small pieces of this coral have failed. I've tried rubber banding pieces I cut to small rocks. The rubber band would eventually cut its way through the soft flesh of the coral no matter how loose I tightened it. If I went too loose the piece would eventually float away. One of these pieces has nestled itself up against a piece of live rock and does seem to have attached itself. Unfortunately, it will likely end up getting stung by both my anemone and my Toadstool.

This time I decided to try a different approach. I would spear the piece to a rock and hope it would eventually stick.

First the prep. This is the best part.

Visit local watering hole and purchase one Martini with an olive.
Consume olive and Martini and keep the Martini spear.
Order 2nd Martini with olive to have a backup.
Order 3rd just in case.

I then glued the spear to a small piece of live rock using Super Glue Gel. The rock needs to be dried off first.

Then I had to pick a piece to cut. The choice was easy since there was a large branch shading my brain.

I cut the branch with a utility knife blade right at the trunk. I then put some Super Glue Gel on the rock next to the spear to help hold the coral down. After that, I quickly lanced the coral up through the branch so the cut piece was up against the rock and so the spear would exit where the branch split into smaller branches. In the process the coral secreted slime all over the place and shrunk like a frightened turtle. This big branch was now half the height of the olive spear.

I quickly put the coral back in the tank on the sand bed. This way it was at approximately the same distance away from the light as it started.

So twelve days later it looks like this. It actually looks worse.

A lot worse.

I'll give it time and hope it improves. In the meantime the mother Colt is still growing like crazy and will soon need another haircut. I hope I figure out a way to propagate these colt pieces. It would be a shame to have to throw them out.

Chemistry

2009-03-06T21:45:00.002-06:00

Chemistry was never my strongest subject in high school or college. I was much better at physics, calculus, statics and dynamics, etc... For some reason chemistry and I never had a really great relationship. Don't get me wrong, I got by. I believe I got a B in college chemistry but it wasn't an easy B. It was a struggle. Somehow, after all these years, I still remember that Avagadro's Number is 6.02 x 10^23 and that it is the number of atoms in a mole. Not sure what to do with it after that though.

So, lately, I'm wishing I remembered more about chemistry. I'd like to have a better understanding of the relationship between alkalinity, pH, calcium and magnesium. I have been using two-part additives and supplementing calcium and alkalinity. I stopped dosing calcium because I was pushing 500 ppm in my tank. I now just let the level drop between water changes. I'm measuring the calcium level of Coralife salt to be 540 ppm. Doing water changes every two weeks seems to be enough to keep my calcium level between 440 and 460 ppm. Right after a water change the level is 460 ppm after two weeks it drops to 440 ppm. I'm kind of surprised it only drops to 20 ppm. I expected my calcium consumption to be higher than that.

I have found that I need to continue dosing alkalinity. In the same time period my alkalinity has dropped from 3 meq/L to 2 meq/L. During this time I have been dosing but apparently not enough. My pH seems good. Last night it was at 8.15.

Over the last few weeks I dosed magnesium bringing my level up to 1275 ppm. I measured the magnesium level of Coralife salt to be 1335 ppm. I haven't been monitoring magnesium long enough to know how it reacts long term. However, since sea water has a magnesium level of about 1250 ppm there is a chance that the additional magnesium in Coralife salt will replenish what is consumed by my corals and coraline algae and keep the level at an appropriate level.

Here is a good article I found about reef chemistry. It provides instructions on how to adjust calcium and alkalinity levels.

I've almost used up all of my alkalinity mix. This time instead of buying it I'm just going to use baking soda and see how that goes.

Neon Green Trumpet

2009-03-04T21:52:00.002-06:00

Last Saturday I acquired a really nice looking Green Trumpet Coral.

I say acquired because I traded 12 pom-pom xenia frags for it. Actually, I only had 10 frags but the LFS gave me 2 frags worth of credit. I just need to bring them two extra one next time I have a crop ready. Pretty sweet deal, eh.

Pictures

2009-02-20T23:13:00.002-06:00

Here are some pictures from this evening.

Full tank shot

Left side

Right side

Zoas

Yellow tipped green clove polyps

Montipora Digitata

Purple zoas

More zoas

T. Maxima

Different angle

Leather

Green Slimer

Monti Cap

Good-Bye Hofer Gurgle Buster

2009-02-18T22:05:00.004-06:00

I pulled my Hofer Gurgle Buster (HGB) from my overflow tonight.

A few days ago I noticed that the water level in my main tank was way high. After investigating I determined that a big clump of algae dislodged from the inside of my overflow (the part inside the tank) and got stuck against some of the holes in the HGB. The water level in the overflow rose and caused the tank level to rise. This caused my sump to empty and my pumps started blowing microbubbles in the tank. These bubbles ended up collecting in my siphon tube between the overflow boxes because the flow slowed down dramatically. When I noticed this my tank was within a half inch of overflowing and my siphon tube contained a huge bubble that was also blocking half the pipe.

This was the second time this happened in about two months. When I got home tonight I noticed again that the water level in the overflow outside the tank was rising again. Another big piece of hair algae was trapped. I could no longer ignore the warnings the HGB had to go or get modified before I came home to a flood.

After pulling it out I noticed that the overflow really wasn't all that loud. I then got a new piece of PVC for a stand pipe and cut it so it was just lower than the height of the wall in the overflow. By using a stand pipe I eliminated the noise of the water crashing over the wall in the overflow down to the drain.

It turns out this is all I needed. The overflow is just as quiet as the HGB was and I don't have to worry about algae clogging the drain holes and causing a flood. Now, I'm not knocking the HGB design. Perhaps the holes I drilled ino it were just too small. But if the simple PVC standpipe does the job just as well why should I make something that is more complicated and has a higher risk of failing?

It would be really hard for anything to get stuck and block the hole at the top of the simple PVC. Perhaps my overflow is quiet since I don't have a huge amount of flow, I'm just using two 802 powerheads for my return pumps.

So what is the lesson here? I determined that I needed the HGB even before I actually tried my tank without it or trying the simplest solution first. Always try the simplest solution first.

Stop The Stimulus Scam

2009-02-12T16:03:00.002-06:00

And now a brief detour away from reef-keeping and to politics.

Sign the petition here! http://nostimulus.com/

Conference Report Is Another No-Stimulus Disaster
This bill provides the least tax relief of any version yet, even cutting President Obama’s signature middle class tax cut from $500 per individual and $1000 per couple to $400 and $800. That takes money out the pockets of regular Americans to pay for more wasteful spending.
This bill, by all accounts, still funds the stealth imposition of health care rationing via so-called “Comparative Evaluation Research,” that would let bureaucrats decides whether people are too old or too sick to receive a treatment.
The price tag, is still astonishing. $789 billion might be less than the Senate’s $838 billion, but it’s massively more than the $300 billion this bill originally was proposed at, and still tops a trillion dollars when interest is including. This is money we don’t have being spent on things we can’t afford on every city and state’s pork wish list.
President Obama promised the federal government would be more open and transparent, and that all legislation would be available for 5 days of public review. The House voted unanimously to allow a 48-hour public review that now looks unlikely to happen. Can't we slow down and properly evaluate a measure that will (including interest) cost taxpayers over a trillion dollars?
What's Wrong with the Stimulus Bill?
The so-called “Stimulus Package” is being sold to taxpayers as an investment in useful infrastructure like roads and bridges. But the facts prove otherwise.
Only 3.6% of the scheme’s $825 billion price tag would actually go to real, practical infrastructure projects--roads and bridges.
Most of the other 96.4% would go to special interest pet projects, and to cramming years’ worth of radical policy changes into the single largest spending and debt scheme in history.
Even the Congressional Budget Office, the official scorekeeper of the economic impact of legislation, has said that it would, on balance, hurt the economy.
Why are our nation’s leaders doing this? Obama White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emmanuel was strikingly honest when he said "Never let a serious crisis go to waste...it's an opportunity to do things you couldn't do before." Exactly what fringe policies are big-government politicians attempting to ram through with this colossal bill?
Under the auspices of a “Comparative Effectiveness Review,” the package heavily funds the first steps towards the socialization and government-mandated rationing of health care. And this is just one of many government power grabs being shoehorned into the so-called “Stimulus Package.”
In fact, even by the most charitable estimates, the bill would force taxpayers to foot the bill for at least 600,000 new government bureaucrats. That’s six tenths of a million more people on the government payroll -- adding little or no value to our economy and being paid with billions upon billions of your hard-earned tax dollars.
And just what sort of special interest giveaways and wasteful government spending are included in the so-called “Stimulus Package”? To name just a few...
- $4.19 billion in slush funds for ACORN, the left-wing advocacy group best known for allegations of voter fraud during the 2008 presidential campaign- $600 million to buy brand new cars for government bureaucrats- $335 million for adult sex workshops (one of the few line items which could conceivably deliver "stimulus" )- $150 million for honeybee insurance- $2.8 billion for the US Department of Agriculture in a misdirected program more likely be spent to build unnecessary broadband internet services in urban areas than in the rural areas that lack service.
These are just a few examples of the shameless feeding frenzy taking place in halls of Congress today with this so-called “Stimulus Package.”
This trillion-dollar debt and spending scheme will provide little or no stimulus, but will put each and every American household in at least $6,700 of new debt, to be paid by our children and grandchildren.
Spending Stimulus Can't Work
1. Every dollar the government spends comes from the private sector.
Nobel Prize winner Milton Friedman famously said: "there ain't no such thing as a free lunch." Government spending is either financed through higher taxes, higher federal borrowing, or by printing money. Those are the only possibilities. They all create greater economic damage than any stimulus effect of new spending.
● Tax increases lower the incentive to work, save, and invest. There is a strong association between tax increases and reduced economic growth. In an economic crisis, tax hikes should be unthinkable. The Revenue Act of 1932 was one of the major reasons an economic crisis deepened into the Great Depression.
● Government borrowing also takes money out of the private economy—the money that bond purchasers hand over to the government in exchange for the bonds. That money could otherwise be used for business investment that would expand the economy’s productive capacity. If the funds are borrowed from abroad, our exports are lowered because U.S. dollars are being used to buy bonds instead of goods. Borrowed funds also have to be paid back, placing a burden on future taxpayers. Excessive borrowing also may increase interest rates, deepening the credit crisis.
● Inflation may be most damaging financing mechanism of all. If government spends money that it hasn’t taxed or borrowed, then it is literally creating money out of thin air. More dollars being created means that the dollars in our pockets and bank accounts are worth less than they were before. Inflation is a stealth tax that erodes the value of everything and destroys real economic growth.
2. History shows spending stimulus fails.
America experimented with large-scale expansions of government spending in the 1930s with the New Deal and again in the 1960s and 70s with the Great Society. These dramatic expansions of government spending coincided with economic failure. The long-boom that started under Reagan and continued until now with only a couple of brief, mild recessions coincided with a significant decline in federal spending as a percentage of the economy.
3. Infrastructure projects should be judged on their merits, but not as stimulus.
There is a role for government in providing certain public goods that the market cannot efficiently provide. If financing is available at favorable rates it may make sense to take a long-term view and begin projects that are legitimately justified on their merits. We should be under no misconception, however, that public works spending is stimulative, because borrowed dollars are taken out of the private sector.

New corals

2009-02-09T22:33:00.002-06:00

Browsing ebay for corals I came across a place in Villa Park, IL called Reef Depot. I sent an email asking if I could just pick up the corals if I won an auction. One of the owners, Mark, said I should just stop by on the weekend. So, this I did. My daughter and I took a road trip and stopped at Chipotle for lunch along the way.

I wasn't sure what to expect. I knew this was somebody's home. I figured that he had a couple tanks with egg crate and coral flags and I would be the only one there. Turns out they have a good business running there. There were about 4 or 5 other people there while we were there. They have two huge homemade plywood tanks lined with rubber. All pumps were turned off so you can easily view the tanks from above. Each tank had at least 500 coral frags in it. They also had some much bigger corals, mushroom rocks and a few huge clams. They also had two very friendly chocolate labs. We had to be careful not to step on any paws or tails while browsing.

So here is what we got. I appologize for the lousy pictures. I'm not feeling great today and didn't want to get the tripod out. I'll take some better ones later.

Red Australian Acan with 10 polyps (some of them are small). $40

Fiji yellow tipped clove coral with 3 polyps. At the store it only looked like it had 2 polyps so they only charged me $10. After it opened at home a 3rd free polyp showed itself.

A green paly

and a purple one

Each of these was $10 per plug.

Finally, some zoas. Also for $10/plug.

Put my Xenia to Work

2009-02-09T22:12:00.004-06:00

I stopped into a LFS on Saturday and asked them if they would be interested in taking some of my Red Sea Pom-Pom Xenia frags from store credit. I was prepared and took a video with my phone so I was able to show them pulsing away. He said to bring in 10 of them and we negotiated on a price of $5/rock. Most rocks had two small stalks, some had one and one had 4. He said he would be interested in more when I get them. He actually gave me cash. So what did I do with my hard-earned pay? I bought another coral of course. A beautiful leather.

I think this was a pretty sweet deal. I would have had to eventually throw the Xenia out to trim them back to prevent them from taking over the entire tank. I hope to have another crop ready to go in another month.

These pictures were taken by wife. Who is, for the most part, very understanding of my obsession/hobby.

My toadstool leather that I've had for some time hasn't opened up during the day since I got the new leather. Its tentacles were out this morning when I woke up and the tank was still dark.

Gold Flakes Inside My Anemone

2009-02-04T22:02:00.002-06:00

So I was looking at my bubble tip anemone the other day and I noticed a spot of color on one of its tentacles.

I sat there and watched it for a while and realized that the speck or flake was moving and was inside the tentacle.

When the tentacle was lifted straight up by the current the flake would fall with gravity.

When the tentacle drifted down, the flake would work its way towards the tip of the tentacle. Looking around I could see some very small flakes in a few other tentacles.

So what are these? These flakes look like the flakes of real gold in a bottle of Goldschlager. Now I've heard of people dosing their tanks with vodka to help with nitrate reduction. Now, it almost looks like somebody has been giving my anemone Goldschlager. Could my anemone be sneaking out of the tank when we aren't home and getting into the liquor cabinet? Hmmm, better install a webcam.

Which Salt Mix is the Best?

2009-02-03T21:14:00.002-06:00

Here is a study of the most common seawater salt mixes.
http://reefsaltanalysis.googlepages.com/AWT_Salt_Analysis_0208.pdf
To me it looks like Coralife seems to be the best. Interesting.

Here is another analysis. http://saltaquarium.about.com/cs/seasaltmixes/l/aa090503b.htm

Happy as a Tridacna Maxima

2009-01-29T22:22:00.002-06:00

I've been longing for a clam for some time. I finally came home with one yesterday. It's only a few inches long.

Last night I placed it high on a rock and placed a small rock next to it to keep it in place. This morning it wasn't there. It had fallen between two pieces of LR. I decided to place it in the sand so it wouldn't fall again. I hope it gets enough light there. This evening I burried a piece of rock in the sand and placed the clam on top of that. This will allow me to move it without breaking any of its byssal threads that would otherwise attach to the bottom of the tank.

It doesn't look like it has fully extended its mantle yet. Then again I disturbed it this evening to place the rock under it. It quickly draws in its mantle when my yellow tang swims close by.

Mouth

2009-01-27T21:10:00.002-06:00

Another close up of my BTA.

What a gorgeous creature. Looking closely at its flesh you can see patterns that are reminiscent of the colors and patterns of oil on water.

Baby Coral

2009-01-26T20:30:00.002-06:00

Under my toadstool grows a tiny leather coral. I've noticed it a few months ago. It is now large enough to photograph, but barely.

Here is a crop of the same picture.

It is most likely a Colt since I already have a large one in my tank. If I'm lucky it may be something new like a Kenya Tree.

Only time will tell.

Crazy Clown

2009-01-25T19:51:00.004-06:00

For over a year I tried to get my ocellaris clown to host my bubble tip anemone. I finally gave up and bought a tomato clown that happily lives within its tentacles.

A few weeks ago I put a small plastic container in my tank to grow out some Xenia frags. Guess who has decided to make it his home. This clown basically lives inside the container now and swims all around it. If my tomato gets to close to it he defends it and chases his cousin away. Kind of nutty.

So don't expect your clown to host with the anemone you put in your tank. He may prefer a piece of plastic.

Xenia Frag Farm

2009-01-19T22:32:00.003-06:00

From Paul's Reef - Apr 15, 2008

I got tired of all of my Xenia frags taking up valuable real estate on my sand bed so I built myself a frag farm. I already had a piece of egg crate so all I needed to do was purchase the 1/2" PVC pipe and fittings. No PVC cement was used. Everything is just press fit. This will allow me to make changes and I didn't have to worry about letting the cement cure.

My LFS was on the way home so I stopped in. I was looking for a clam but the one I liked had been sold. Instead I decided to purchase some SPS corals.

First is an orange Montipora Digitata.

From Paul's Reef - Apr 15, 2008

Next is a Green Slimer Acropora. This staghorn coral is huge. It got its name because it produces a lot of slime when disturbed. This one lived up to its name.

From Paul's Reef - Apr 15, 2008

I dipped these corals in an iodine solution for about 7 minutes to kill off any flatworms or red bugs that might be along for the ride.

Thankfully my wife is understanding of my obsession. I do feel like I need to contact Reefaholics Anonymous.

My name is Paul and I'm a Reefaholic...

New Frags

2009-01-18T21:25:00.001-06:00

Bought three new frags today.

A Favia

From Paul's Reef - Apr 15, 2008

Two candy cane polyps

From Paul's Reef - Apr 15, 2008

and some yellow polyps

From Paul's Reef - Apr 15, 2008

Zoas

2009-01-17T18:22:00.002-06:00

From Paul's Reef - Apr 15, 2008

Here is a macro shot of my new zoas.

While working on these photos I discovered I had dust on my DSLR's sensor. I bought a bulb blower which removed most of it. There are still some small dust or pollen particles on the sensor that need to be cleaned. I'll have to figure out what to use to clean it without damaging the camera.

Maintaining Your Overflow Box

2009-01-14T22:27:00.003-06:00

Tonight I noticed that the water in my tank was much higher than it should be. It was starting to submerge the cross brace. My Hofer Gurgle Buster had gotten clogged with some big chunks o algae. This caused the water level to rise in the overflow box which caused the level to rise in the tank. The water level had not yet reached the hole on top of the gurgle buster which is there to start a siphon and quickly lower the level if it ever gets submerged.

I pulled the Gurgle Buster out and cleaned it but the level didn't drain quickly. The reduced flow had caused some extra bubbles to accumulate in the siphon tube and reduced flow. So, I spent some time cleaning the algae out of the tube. I really need to get a flexible brush because using paper towels is a pain in the arse.

I cut some pipe off the Gurgle Buster to lower the level that the siphon action will start if it ever gets clogged again. everything is running again and working normally.

My salinity dropped from 1.025 to 1.024 during all of this because the elevated level in the tank dropped the level in my sump which allowed more RO in to maintain the level. I'll just let the salinity rise again to 1.025 as the water evaporates. Everything should be fine.

Since the tank consumed so much RO water during this the container got close to being emptied. This would have halted the rise of water in the display tank. Had I plumbed an RO unit directly into my sump for a totally automated top off system I could have had a flood. Requiring some extra maintenance may be a good thing after all. From now on the Gurgle Buster and siphon tube will get cleaned during water changes every two weeks.

Unexpected Child

2009-01-13T22:02:00.003-06:00

Since replacing my light fixture with my new T5 6x54W Nova Extreme Pro I've been increasing the amount of light that all 6 bulbs are on by hour per day. Soon after installing it my toadstool developed a spot of sunburn even though all 6 bulbs were on for only about 4 or 5 hours a day. At that point I throttled the lighting way back so that only 4bulbs on were on for 4 hours per day. I kept adding an hour of illumination per day until today. Now, 6 bulbs are on for 12 hours a day from 10 am to 10 pm. 2 bulbs are on from 9 am to 10 am and from 10 pm to 11 pm to simulate dawn and dusk.

All signs of sunburn on the toadstool are long gone and the toadstool now looks very healthy. In fact it has decided to have a child. Just under the top of the toadstool is a very small toadstool growing sideways off the main stalk. I commented on a small ball of tentacles a few days ago. It tuns out that it is a small toadstool. I wasn't able to see it until last night after all off the lights went out and all of the polyps retracted. The toadstool must be enjoying the new lights.

Porites

2009-01-12T21:08:00.002-06:00

I purchased a zoa rock about a year ago. It game with a little patch of green SPS coral on it.

From Paul's Reef

The zoas have not done well. There are only 4 or 5 left and they never open completely.

The green SPS coral from what I can tell is porites. It, on the other hand, is doing well. It is spreading over the rock. In certain places I can actually see day to day growth.

Here are some macro shots of the porites along with a few remaining zoa polyps.

From Paul's Reef - Apr 15, 2008

I'm not sure what did in my zoas. This isn't encouraging since zoas are supposed to be easy. To encourage the porites to grow I placed the rock high in the tank so they would get a lot of light. Did the zoas not like this location? I moved the rock to the sand substrate when I upgraded my lighting to T5s. Hopefully, they like it there. The porites do. They're still growing.

Perhaps the zoas didn't like my higher nitrate levels. Perhaps this colony was finicky. I bough small zoa frag last week. We'll see how well this one does.

This Bud's for You

2009-01-11T21:30:00.002-06:00

From Paul's Reef - Apr 15, 2008

My toadstool has developed a little ball of tentacles. I'm wondering if this is a bud and it is basically going to frag itself? It is only loosely connected to the mother. I never noticed it before because it is obscured when the mother's polyps are extended.

I always thought these budded from the foot. Indeed, there are a few polyps growing off the foot that I have been watching. Unfortunately I have yet been able to take a decent picture of them.

I'm a TDS Meter Believer

2009-01-10T09:59:00.002-06:00

So, I've had some time to use my TDS meter. What I found was that the output of my RO/DI unit was not the pure water I was hoping for. Instead of having a low reading, close to 0, the output was measuring anywhere from 200 down to 40ppm. The longer the RO/DI unit sat idle, the higher the reading would be. If I ran it for a long time the reading would drop.

My meter has two inputs. A slide switch selects which input is displayed on the LCD; in or out. I originally hooked it up to measure my water supply into the RO unit, municipal supply and the output out of the DI that went into my storage container. My municipal input has a TDS reading of about 300 ppm. Since I can't control it and since it doesn't need to be monitored regularly I moved the TDS in probe to measure the water out of the RO filter which feeds the input of the DI filter.

What I found was that the RO output had a TDS reading of 6 ppm. Since the DI output was varying between 200 and 40 it was obvious that the DI resin was actually contaminating the water rather than filtering it. Time to change the resin. The resin indeed was very dark but I never noticed it because the location of the filter is pretty dark.

So I ordered more resin from the Pure Water Club on eBay.This where I bought the filter 15 months ago. The refill resin arrived quickly and I replaced the resin in the two canisters. Now, my RO/DI filter produces pure water with a TDS measurement of 0 ppm.

The moral of this long-winded story is if your RO/DI filter is more than 6 months old you really should get a TDS meter to verify your water quality is what you think it is.

New Frags

2009-01-09T20:51:00.003-06:00

I've been resisting going to the LFS for some time. I love visiting the place but if I go in I always come out with something. I decided it was time. My nitrates are at 0.5 ppm and I have new lights. I like buying frags. They sell frags for$19. If they don't make it its not the end of the world. I can buy 3 frags for what the price of one coral usually costs.

So here's what I got.

An orange (or is it red) monti cap frag. It's about 3 inches across. I was bale to wedge into this piece of LR so thats where it is going to live.

From Paul's Reef - Apr 15, 2008

and a Zoa frag. This frag is only about 2 inches across but has two different types on it.

From Paul's Reef - Apr 15, 2008

I bought a zoa rock a long time ago and it didn't do well. There are only about 4 polyps left on it. I want to see if this one does better before buying more.

Caught You

2009-01-07T23:18:00.002-06:00

I caught the smaller of my two known Mythrax crabs that I talked about in my earlier post. I basically took the piece of live rock out that he called home, held it over my refugiuem and prodded him with some pliers until he came scooting out and dove into the fuge.

I then picked him up out of the fuge and took these pictures:

From Paul's Reef - Apr 15, 2008

He's back in the fuge hiding under some Chaeto.

I Can See Your Beady Red Eyes

2009-01-07T21:12:00.003-06:00

From Paul's Reef - Apr 15, 2008

I have another Mythrax crab. This one hangs out in a crevice in my live rock right in front of the tank. He is also a mason. He gathered up a bunch of live rock rubble and he uses it to wall himself off inside his crevice.

From Paul's Reef - Apr 15, 2008

I thought I had a picture of him completely walled off but I looked and can't find one. You'll have to take my word for it. I only noticed this guy originally because I saw a piece of rock wiggling. I wasn't sure what it was at first because the crab was not visible behind his wall. A few days later the top of the wall was gone and I was able to see the crab tucked away in its home.

My tank is also home to another Mythrax crab. The other one has hairy legs and probably has a leg span of about 4 inches. I need to get him out of the tank and into the fuge before he develops an appetite for corals and fish. He moves so fast that I have not been able to catch him yet. I need to implement a trap by tying a piece of shrimp to a small rock and putting it in the bottom of a small plastic container. Crabs check in but they can't check out. I may try to get this small one out sooner than later while he is still easy to catch.

Tentacle Lickin' Good

2009-01-04T00:21:00.002-06:00

From Paul's Reef - Apr 15, 2008

I fed my Bubble Tipped Anemone a small sliver of frozen Formula One yesterday. It closed around the piece of food and ate it. When it started opening back up I was able to snap this picture of the anemone with a tentacle still in its mouth. I never really knew before how it got the food to its mouth. I always thought that the tentacles kind of pushed it in that direction until it fell in. From this picture it looks like a tentacle grabs the food and places it in the mouth.

How does it do this? This animal has no brain. How does it know the spatial relationship between its tentacles and its mouth? Simply fascinating.

Confused Clown

2009-01-04T00:10:00.004-06:00

Every few days my BTA expels all of its water and shrinks down to nothing for an hour or so. My tomato clown doesn't seem to be too happy about this situation. It still tries to root around the deflated tentacles nonetheless and looks very confused when the anemone does this. Lucky for the clown the anemone reinflates itself rather quickly and all becomes right in the world again.

From Paul's Reef - Apr 15, 2008

TDS Meter

2009-01-02T23:30:00.003-06:00

I purchased an HM Digital DM-1 dual in line TDS Meter from Bulk Reef Supply and received it today. A TDS meter is used t measure the amount of Total Dissolved Solids in RO/DI water. My RO meter is about 14 months old so I figured it was time to check on the performance of the filter. Since it is a dual meter it allows me to check on both the tap water and RO output. If I want I can place the first sensor between the RO and DI sections but haven't done that yet.

My water input measures 313 ppm. The output of the RO filter was measuring 60 ppm, not great when the goal is 0 ppm. I have never flushed the membrane so I went ahead and flushed it for about 45 minutes. I also positioned the two DI canisters so they are vertical instead of horizontal. This ensures that the water goes through the beeds not over them. After flushing and running the RO filter the output is now down to 8 ppm of TDS. Much much better. I did notice that the beads in the two DI filters are now dark. The second filter is much darker than the first which makes no sense to me. It's probably time to replace the resin.

Sunburn

2008-12-29T15:42:00.004-06:00

I gave my toadstool leather coral a little bit of sunburn on one corner with my new T5 light. I was only leaving all 6 bulbs on for about 4 hours a day. After 3 days the polyps on one corner the size of a nickle stopped coming out. The flesh of the coral also started peeling in that spot. As soon as I noticed the problem I reduced the lighting. I will slowly bring the lighting up to maximum with the following schedule increasing the amount of light the tank gets by one hour each day. The toadstool has already healed with the reduced lighting. Hopefully, the gradual acclimation with this schedule will help the corals adjust to the brighter light.

12/25 - 2 bulbs 9 am to 5 pm, 4 bulbs 5 pm to 10 pm, 2 bulbs 10 pm to 11 pm
12/26 - 2 bulbs 9 am to 4 pm, 4 bulbs 4 pm to 10 pm, 2 bulbs 10 pm to 11 pm
12/27 - 2 bulbs 9 am to 3 pm, 4 bulbs 3 pm to 10 pm, 2 bulbs 10 pm to 11 pm
12/28 - 2 bulbs 9 am to 2 pm, 4 bulbs 2 pm to 10 pm, 2 bulbs 10 pm to 11 pm
12/29 - 2 bulbs 9 am to 1 pm, 4 bulbs 1 pm to 10 pm, 2 bulbs 10 pm to 11 pm
12/30 - 2 bulbs 9 am to 12 pm, 4 bulbs 12 pm to 10 pm, 2 bulbs 10 pm to 11 pm
12/31 - 2 bulbs 9 am to 11 am, 4 bulbs 11 am to 10 pm, 2 bulbs 10 pm to 11 pm
1/1 - 2 bulbs 9 am to 10 am, 4 bulbs 10 am to 10 pm, 2 bulbs 10 pm to 11 pm
1/2 - 2 bulbs 9 am to 10 am, 4 bulbs 10 am to 4 pm, 6 bulbs 4 pm to 5 pm, 4 bulbs 5 pm to 10 pm, 2 bulbs 10 pm to 11 pm
1/3 - 2 bulbs 9 am to 10 am, 4 bulbs 10 am to 3 pm, 6 bulbs 3 pm to 5 pm, 4 bulbs 5 pm to 10 pm, 2 bulbs 10 pm to 11 pm
1/4 - 2 bulbs 9 am to 10 am, 4 bulbs 10 am to 3 pm, 6 bulbs 3 pm to 6 pm, 4 bulbs 6 pm to 10 pm, 2 bulbs 10 pm to 11 pm
1/5 - 2 bulbs 9 am to 10 am, 4 bulbs 10 am to 2 pm, 6 bulbs 2 pm to 6 pm, 4 bulbs 6 pm to 10 pm, 2 bulbs 10 pm to 11 pm
1/6 - 2 bulbs 9 am to 10 am, 4 bulbs 10 am to 2 pm, 6 bulbs 2 pm to 7 pm, 4 bulbs 7 pm to 10 pm, 2 bulbs 10 pm to 11 pm
1/7 - 2 bulbs 9 am to 10 am, 4 bulbs 10 am to 1 pm, 6 bulbs 1 pm to 7 pm, 4 bulbs 7 pm to 10 pm, 2 bulbs 10 pm to 11 pm
1/8 - 2 bulbs 9 am to 10 am, 4 bulbs 10 am to 1 pm, 6 bulbs 1 pm to 8 pm, 4 bulbs 8 pm to 10 pm, 2 bulbs 10 pm to 11 pm
1/9 - 2 bulbs 9 am to 10 am, 4 bulbs 10 am to 12 pm, 6 bulbs 12 pm to 8 pm, 4 bulbs 8 pm to 10 pm, 2 bulbs 10 pm to 11 pm
1/10 - 2 bulbs 9 am to 10 am, 4 bulbs 10 am to 12 pm, 6 bulbs 12 pm to 9 pm, 2 bulbs 9 pm to 11 pm
1/11 - 2 bulbs 9 am to 10 am, 4 bulbs 10 am to 11 am, 6 bulbs 11 am to 9 pm, 2 bulbs 9 pm to 11 pm
1/12 - 2 bulbs 9 am to 10 am, 4 bulbs 10 am to 11 am, 6 bulbs 11 am to 10 pm, 2 bulbs 10 pm to 11 pm
1/13 - 2 bulbs 9 am to 10 am, 6 bulbs 10 am to 10 pm, 2 bulbs 10 pm to 11 pm

Fragging Xenia

2008-12-28T22:34:00.002-06:00

As noted in my previous post my Xenia is spreading like crazy. So, I decided to try fragging some. I read that I should try to pull a piece entirely off a rock rather than cutting it. However when I did this it was like a just squeezed the snot out of it and the foot refused to budge. Perhaps next time I'll try to pry it off the rock with a screwdriver.

From Paul's Reef - Apr 15, 2008

Scissors were closer so I decided to cut a few stalks. I placed them in a small reusable Glad container that deli meat comes in along with some sand and rubble rock. I covered the container with some bridle veil netting and secured it with a rubber band. I'm hoping that some of these will attach themselves to some of the rocks and begin to grow. The pieces I cut off are already pulsing in the container even though they are upside down.

Xenia is too slippery to super glue to rock so it either needs to be secured to the rock by sewing with fishing line or it needs to attach itself on its own. I'm trying the latter approach.

From time to time I still see a piece of colt coral that I fragged rolling around on the sand. It actually looks healthy but it hasn't attached to anything yet. If I see it again, I'll throw it in the container.

Xenia Warrior Princess

2008-12-27T15:48:00.004-06:00

Because it tends to open and close its polyps Xenia is a great coral to sit back and watch. The downside of it is that it spreads quite rapidly, almost like a weed. I purchased a single stalk of this Xenia back in April of 2007. It was tiny and came on a shell.

From Paul's Reef

It split not too long after I got it. Once of the split stalks ended up growing on a piece of rubble rock that kept falling off the ledge it was on. I ended up finding a nice spot for it on the other side of my tank. So now I have two colonies growing and spreading.

The colony on the left side seems to be spreading faster than the colony on the right side. Also, the Xenia on the right side is growing taller than the Xenia on the left. This is probably due to differences in current between the two sides of the tank.

The video below shows the Xenia in action. On the right side there are two stalks that have closed up tightly. They will do this from time to time and I have no idea why. They will will do this when I perform a water change probably because of the additional debris that gets stirred up.

Tomato Clown Video

2008-12-26T23:47:00.005-06:00

Got some time to record my tomato clown in its bubble tip anemone this evening. I had a lot of problems with each of the video editing programs I tried crashing so I decided this was good enough. Great music, eh.

Sleeping with the Anemone

2008-12-23T10:32:00.004-06:00

Last night was the first time that my tomato clown spent the night in his new anemone. The previous night it went and slept against the side glass close to my ocellaris where it has always spent the night since I bought him. Last night, however, after the lights went out it stayed in the anemone. It was still there this morning before the lights turned on.

This relationship continues to grow as time goes on. It keeps spending more and more time within, around and even under the anemone. It is now inside the anemone more often than not.

I'm pretty sure that the clown did not take to the anemone right away because the anemone wasn't looking great. It took two months of manual feeding to fatten it up to the point where the clown felt it was a suitable anemone. The anemone really opened up the day after I upgraded my lighting to T5s. It must have looked too inviting for the clown not to dive in at this point.

My advice to people that can't get their clown to host an anemone is to make sure you are pairing the right fish to the right anemone. Not all clowns will host all anemones. Secondly, make sure your anemone looks healthy. Your clown, like every creature, wants a nice home to call its own.

Holiday Hosting

2008-12-20T23:05:00.004-06:00

From Paul's Reef - Apr 15, 2008

The new lights look great. They really don't look that purple to me anymore. instead, everything else that I used to think looked white, like my computer screen as I'm typing this, looks yellow. My bubble tip anemone appears to like the new lights too. It opened really wide today under the new lights to soak it all in.

Up to this point my tomato clown that I purchased the 1st weekend of November had never gone into the anemone. It would often hang out a few inches above it for a while and then go merrilly on its way. Today was different. All day today the clown kept visiting the anemone. It started getting closer than usual and let a tentacle touch it for the first time that I've seen. It then started getting territorial and would occasionally chase away a green chromis, my firefish and my oscellaris clown.

It would still venture away from the anemone and swim around the tank. There always seemed to be an attraction that would pull the clown back after a few minutes. It would get close again and look at the anemone.

Finally, tonight, it started nipping at a few tentacles. Then, it actually went between a few tentacles and came back out, almost like dipping a toe in a hot bath to test the water. It didn't stay for long but contact was indeed made. It kept visiting the anemone more and more over the course of the evening and making brief contact with it. Eventually it stayed longer and started wiggling and twitching amongst the tentacles. It was almost as if the tentacles hurt it a little bit and it was getting used to it. Each stay was short and lasted only a minute or two at a time and then the clown was off swimming around the tank again.

From Paul's Reef - Apr 15, 2008

Now, the lights have gone out in the tank for the night. I do miss the blue moonlights my old fixture had. Oh well. The clown is no longer in the anemone. Instead it is swimming up against the side glass of the tank where it has spent every night since I bought it. I wonder if it will eventually spend the night in the anemone.

So, tonight it finally happened. This was something that I wanted to observe ever since I got my first saltwater tank in the early 90s. That tank failed and I didn't pursue the hobby any farther until last October. There is just something about observing a symbiotic relationship like this. Way way cool. I love this hobby.

Nova Extreme Pro Review

2008-12-19T19:54:00.009-06:00

All day today I waited with the same enthusiasm that the father from A Christmas Story waited for his major award. His award turned out to be a leg lamp. Mine was a lamp of a different sort, a Nova Extreme Pro 6x54W T5HO fixture.

I ordered it from Marine Depot. I found it for about $20 less on Amazon after the fact. Oh well.

I couldn't ask for it to be packaged any better. It was essentially triple boxed. The regular box was wrapped in bubble wrap. The wrapped box was then wrapped in a piece of cardboard.

From Current Nova Extreme Pro

Must be I-talian.

From Current Nova Extreme Pro

The inner box was mounted in the second box and secured with spacers to maintain a gap between the two. The fixture was mounted in 3 Styrofoam spacers within the innermost box.

From Current Nova Extreme Pro

Despite all of the packing one of the bulbs arrived broken.

From Current Nova Extreme Pro

I wasn't concerned about the broken bulb because I wasn't planning on using them anyway. However, it was a pain to get the broken pieces of glass out of the fixture. I heard from multiple sources that the Current bulbs should be replaced. My LFS said that their corals lost color and turned brown under them

The reflector is stamped out of a piece of highly reflective material. The reflector surrounds each bulb and reflects the light that goes out the sides of the bulbs down into the tank.

From Current Nova Extreme Pro

After installing my bulbs the fixture looked like this:

From Current Nova Extreme Pro

The bulbs from left to right are ATI Blue Plus, Giesemann Aqua Blue+, Aqua Science Special 15000 K, Giesemann Midday, Giesemann Aqua Blue+ and ATI Blue Plus. The Aqua Science and Giesemann Midday were substitutes for a UV 75.25 and GE Starcoat respecively. It turns out that the Aqua Science special looks pretty much the same as the Giesemann Aqua Blue+.

Before placing the fixture on my tank I wanted to take some comparison photos with my 4x65 PC fixture first. For the following pictures I placed the camera on a tripod in manual exposure mode and with manual white balance. This way no camera parameters were changed between pictures.

First, is my PC fixture alone with my supplemental 6500 K bulbs turned off.

From Current Nova Extreme Pro

In the following picture, the supplemental 6500Ks are turned on.

From Current Nova Extreme Pro

Finally, the Nova Extreme went on the tank.

From Current Nova Extreme Pro

Obviously the bulbs I purchased cast a very purplish tint to the tank. They are also much much brighter. Now when I take close up pictures the camera stops down the lens to f/8 and decreases the shutter speed to about 1/125 s. Previously, the lens would be wide open and the shutter speed would be about 1/40 s.

From Current Nova Extreme Pro

Here are a few more pictures:

From Current Nova Extreme Pro

The fixture is very solid. The main housing of the fixture is made out of metal and not plastic. The legs, on the other hand, seemed a little flimsy. The manual does not include instructions on how to install the legs. It's not difficult but you need to figure it out on your own. The legs slide in through grooves. To access the grooves the acrylic shield needs to be pulled out a few inches. The shield also slides in on a different set of grooves. In order to get one of the legs on, the center brace needs to be removed since it slides into the lamp on the same grooves used by the legs.

The fans pump out a lot of warm air. Directly under the lamp you can just barely feel some warmth. I don't expect this to increase the tank temperature at all. The fans do make some noise. They are a little louder than the return pumps in my sump.

Despite the broken bulb I'm very happy with the fixture. The quality of the fixture seems very high.