Diary of my LiL 40 Gallon Breeder(Intense)

[JCoral]

awesome, i sent you a pm

 

[rireefguy]

Very cool setup! Nice work.

 

[new2u]

hey if you get magnifying glasses (i use two) you can get great macro shots see?

 

[InsaneClownFish]

Here's one of my favorite critters:

 

[asnatlas]

Here's one of my favorite critters:

I know this is probably a stupid question... But what is it ??

Shawn

 

[InsaneClownFish]

It's a Staghorn Hermit. It has a symbiotic relationship with the Fire Coral it wears.

 

[InsaneClownFish]

After two attempts, my Crocea finally has a permanent home:

The only thing that concerns me slightly is that after the second time he fell, some tissue form his byssal threads remained attached to the live rock.

I'm not sure if this is cause for concern. I examined his foot and byssal opening...neither appeared damaged. He opens up beautifully in his new spot.

 

[InsaneClownFish]

A few quick updates:

My Monitpora Mollis is showing even more new growth. I'm going to try and get some pics tonight.

The little half inch purple tip Digi frag I found in a fellow reefer's sand offering, and had subsequently placed on top of a piece of LR, has been slowly encrusting on the rock..now an ovular section of almost 1.75 inches...kinda neat...

I think I've lost a number of Nassarius snails. I found one empty shell, and I can only count 4 of the 7. I think this is attributed to a lack of feeding the tank....something I tend to do less and less(it's not really necessary with my current livestock).

The other night I threw the lights on and saw an almost 3 inch across snow white brittle star making its way across my live rock. It quickly sank into a crevice. I'm wondering whether this is a live rock hitchhiker, or whether those micro brittle stars I added with a fellow reefer's sand are growing into sea monsters.

 

[InsaneClownFish]

I'll be uploading a few new pics soon.

God did I score big tonight.

Not only did I pick up another fantastic ORA Maxima from JP at Just Phish, but I found BLUE Xenia at the LFS.

They had no idea what it was...so I gladly took it off their hands...

 

[InsaneClownFish]

Here's a quick pic of my new clam, and you can see the Blue Xenia in the far left:

 

[InsaneClownFish]

The Xenia sits directly under Blue+ bulbs. This picture was taken with all the lights on and using a flash at night.
The color looks a bit washed out, but if you look closely at the blue dial on the Jager heater...you can see how blue it really is.

 

[asnatlas]

Here's a quick pic of my new clam, and you can see the Blue Xenia in the far left:

Nice looking clam... I just picked up 2 Maximas myself about a week ago...

Shawn

 

[InsaneClownFish]

Here's a pic of the Xenia with just the Blue+ on, taken at night using a lighter ambient flash:

Under my tank lights even the stalks look blue.. Some of them actually look purplish.

Under actinic PCs at the LFS just the heads looked blue/steel blue. Under 10k the heads looked powdery blue/silver white...very cool.

 

[InsaneClownFish]

Taken about 20 minutes after acclimation. All the lights had just been turned on.

 

[InsaneClownFish]

Here is a pic of the growth from a barely half inch piece of purple tip Montipora Digitada that hitchiked from a fellow reefer's sand. I had placed it on top of this rock while my tank was still cycling. If you look dead center you can see the little, original tip, sticking up. This has encrusted and is now aproximately 8-10X its original size..

Here's a top down on the captive bred Blue Millipora that survived the "incident:"

 

[InsaneClownFish]

Here's a quickie tank shot with the actinics on. You can see all 3 clams in the pic.

I finally took people's advice and started moving rock off the right side of the tank. I did this mainly to make a more stable base for my new clam, but it really does look better. Now I can get my Magfloat behind there and scrape some algae and coralline, and it provides a much nicer viewing pass through for my angel.

Speaking of my angel...my ceriths continue to spawn...and he continues to eat their eggs...nice little food chain in the works..

...and speaking of snails...I continued in my task of manually removing pyramids from my Tiger Trochus...

 

[InsaneClownFish]

Top down shot of my Crocea with no lights on the tank:

 

[InsaneClownFish]

I had gotten my scheduled water change done a bit late, but I did get to it. It was actually nice timing for the new arrivals.

There is a ton of growth and hair algae on the powerhead outlets, but I generally ignore this as my angel likes to "pick."

I've had some hair algae take hold in two bottom sections of the tank, but this ebs and wains. One of the reasons I got the Nassarius Distortus was so the top layer of the dsb would get gently "stirred"- not sifted...or even shaken like Mr. Bond would say.

All my clams looked gorgeous today....more pics to come.

 

[melev]

:thumbsup:

 

[InsaneClownFish]

Another thing I noticed is that my new clam's mantle dances up and down from the flow. From my understanding, clams generally don't like alot of flow, but my lil Maxi doesn't seem to mind.

Anyone have experience with this?