New Corals

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

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

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

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

My Anemone Split

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

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

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.