Mhucasey's SPS obsession
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mhucasey
Acros & wieners, oh my!
The one I have came from Steve Garrett and its pretty close to red, I imagine there are morphs that are truly red out there. Th stuff that I have is growing under a ledge and grew over zoanthids, its pretty hardy.
mhucasey
Acros & wieners, oh my!
I don't think I have, but thanks for the tip. Ill check it out. I'm getting pretty suspicious of yellow corals at retailers, about half of my current green corals were a lovely yellow when I bought them.
mhucasey
Acros & wieners, oh my!
No pics today but a little update. I lost the yellow coris wrasse featured in so many tank shots
. He recently has been perfecting intentionally splashing people and dogs near the tank to get our attention when hungry. He was getting good at it, but sometimes he would misjudge and end up "catching air" above the tank surface. Apparently he missed while we were out and ended up on the couch. I'm pretty impressed that none of the dogs messed with the dead fish.:fish1:
I also returned the sun power light to its original configuration of two bulbs on one cord and 6 on the other. I didn't see any bad impact from the extra exposure of 4 blue bulbs all day, maybe slightly faster growth. It didn't seem worthwhile to waste extra electricity.
. He recently has been perfecting intentionally splashing people and dogs near the tank to get our attention when hungry. He was getting good at it, but sometimes he would misjudge and end up "catching air" above the tank surface. Apparently he missed while we were out and ended up on the couch. I'm pretty impressed that none of the dogs messed with the dead fish.:fish1:I also returned the sun power light to its original configuration of two bulbs on one cord and 6 on the other. I didn't see any bad impact from the extra exposure of 4 blue bulbs all day, maybe slightly faster growth. It didn't seem worthwhile to waste extra electricity.
mhucasey
Acros & wieners, oh my!
Well, today I went to get the "Red Ronin" acro, and luckily I still have some self control. It was pretty darn expensive and after taking a good, hard look, it just wasn't as impressive in person as it was in the pictures. It may turn out to be a stunner, but its one of those acros with very little to no PE and smooth skin so its hard to tell if its doing well or about to RTN.
I still wanted to get a red or pink acro, so I looked at other options and I ended up with a cherry blossom acro for a lot less:
Because I spent less on the pink coral, I was able to get a blue Hoeksesmi frag as well
I also picked up a piece of branch live rock and created some instant real estate for the new pieces. Their new home:
I still wanted to get a red or pink acro, so I looked at other options and I ended up with a cherry blossom acro for a lot less:
Because I spent less on the pink coral, I was able to get a blue Hoeksesmi frag as well
I also picked up a piece of branch live rock and created some instant real estate for the new pieces. Their new home:
markalot
...
AH, I saw the purple on the rock, but now that I take a closer look it appears to be purple stylo? Yea, I have cloves ... really weedy and popping up everywhere.
mhucasey
Acros & wieners, oh my!
I had a little bad news last night, I cleaned out the Refugia chamber in the sump, the whole system was swamped with crap in the water. Some hydrogen sulfide must have been released, two fish were dead this morning. I lost a swallowtail angel and my rabbitfish
I'm going to leave the fish population as is for now until I upgrade. I've lost more fish in the lat month than in the previous year and a half combined. Ugh.
. I lost a swallowtail angel and my rabbitfishI'm going to leave the fish population as is for now until I upgrade. I've lost more fish in the lat month than in the previous year and a half combined. Ugh.
. that was the base of a big colony, it survived a Kalk pasting
markalot
...
Sorry about the fish loss, that sucks.
Purple Stylo is my oldest SPS coral and mine is huge, it dwarfs everything except the slimer. I hate to get rid of it, but I suspect eventually I'll have to chop it down to nothing. The base is a foot wide and spreading. You picture makes me wonder if I shoudl jsut decapitate it and let the base grow back.
Purple Stylo is my oldest SPS coral and mine is huge, it dwarfs everything except the slimer. I hate to get rid of it, but I suspect eventually I'll have to chop it down to nothing. The base is a foot wide and spreading. You picture makes me wonder if I shoudl jsut decapitate it and let the base grow back.
mhucasey
Acros & wieners, oh my!
It's kind of like gardening, you have this lovely plant that starts small and just keeps growing till it chokes out everything else. Sometimes you can prune the plant back and after it starts growing again it looks like it did originally. Other times the trunk is too thick and the whole thing has to go. That was what this one was like. I pruned multiple times but eventually the center of the stylo was this dense lump and it just didn't look good and blocked out other things. I ended up lopping it off at the base and trading it to my LFS. I then tried killing off the base to give me a platform for acros but it came back. Luckily it loses fights with acros so for now I'll leave it be. It's trying to form some branches off the base so I'll need to keep on top of it.
mhucasey
Acros & wieners, oh my!
This week I had a lesson in carefully watching the tank - after my fish die off I noticed the corals not doing great, a few looked like they were burned, less PE in general as well. The big Validia colony was puking mesenterial filaments from the tips. I did a full round of tests last night and the numbers are better then they have been in a while:
Mg:1350, Salinity 34ppt, Nitrate:2.5, Ca:410, KH:7.5, K:410. I don't have any phosphate test reagent right now. The downtick correlated to my weekly dosing of color elements(Sunday Morning), I thought perhaps something in the mix there was causing the problems.
I then realized something: Saturday I milled a piece of Aluminum near the sump. I tried to shield the sump from any flying pieces, but perhaps some Aluminum got in there. I carefully removed all debris from the sump, and found one large flake of Aluminum in there:eek1:
If there was one, there could be more...and like a dummy I don't have any poly-filter on hand for such emergencies. I will pick up some today plus Im going to try the new metal ion scavenger from Two Little Fishies. A couple hours after the flake was removed, the corals seemed to be doing better, I looked this morning and they looked even better still. I'm wondering now if this was part of the cause of the fish issues as well.
If I just went off test results I would have never seen it. Always have poly-filter on hand for such emergencies!
Mg:1350, Salinity 34ppt, Nitrate:2.5, Ca:410, KH:7.5, K:410. I don't have any phosphate test reagent right now. The downtick correlated to my weekly dosing of color elements(Sunday Morning), I thought perhaps something in the mix there was causing the problems.
I then realized something: Saturday I milled a piece of Aluminum near the sump. I tried to shield the sump from any flying pieces, but perhaps some Aluminum got in there. I carefully removed all debris from the sump, and found one large flake of Aluminum in there:eek1:
If there was one, there could be more...and like a dummy I don't have any poly-filter on hand for such emergencies. I will pick up some today plus Im going to try the new metal ion scavenger from Two Little Fishies. A couple hours after the flake was removed, the corals seemed to be doing better, I looked this morning and they looked even better still. I'm wondering now if this was part of the cause of the fish issues as well.
If I just went off test results I would have never seen it. Always have poly-filter on hand for such emergencies!
mhucasey
Acros & wieners, oh my!
I hope so too, I haven't lost any corals but they were looking pretty ragged. I did lose the two fish, the rabbitfish was always a bit of a stress case, but the Swallowtail angel seemed bulletproof. The rest of the fish were in hiding for about a day and a half, and our Pajama Cardinal that was in the tank from day one was laying on the bottom in the front. He is doing fine now.
mhucasey
Acros & wieners, oh my!
I'm very happy with them too, I wanted a pink acro bit then the blue caught my eye as I passed the tank and I skidded to a stop! The Store owner talked to me about the blue corals I was drooling over, then my rational mind asked "but will they hold their color?" He pointed out that the ones I was looking at were freshly fragged and then pointed to another, more intensely colored group of frags that had encrusted. I had to have one then!
Oh, and if you are ever to visit southern California, let me know, I'd love to meet you in person!
mhucasey
Acros & wieners, oh my!
So I have been wondering what is up with the corals and the tank and as stated before, I was convinced that there was some metal poisoning from Aluminum shavings. I couldn't find much about Aluminum's negative effects on aquariums, and my LFS owner said he hadn't seen much in the way of toxicity from Aluminum either.
I was staring at the acros tonight wondering why they just seemed "Off". There are still issues with some only showing partial PE, and some spots that look "burned". The colors looked wrong too. I finally figured it out - the acros are bleached! They are bleached like they would look if I did a massive overdose of Zeospur. There is still coral pigment, but when you look up close, the subtle dots and pinstripes of the zooxanthellae are gone.
I have Zeospur, and I've felt that it was an overrated product mainly because it didn't do almost anything to the acroporas in the tank when I used it. When I first got it I used it at 20% strength and got nothing, each time I used more and more. Eventually I was up to double strength! Still not much of a change, most corals still had visible zooxanthellae, but shortly after dosing there would be a reaction from the corals like they had been stung, pulling polyps mostly in, mesenterial filaments out. Once I had a mega overdose by accident, I was not paying full attention to what I was doing and added .5 OZ rather than the 5MLs I was intending, and the corals actually expelled pretty much all their zooxanthellae and looked a lot like they do now. I haven't added any Zeospur in months, mainly because I saw pretty much no positive effect.
What causes this when using Zeospur? Well, very little research has been done on this but copper causes the expulsion, but alone you need so much copper that you would kill the coral. In the presence of Zinc, however, much less copper is needed. I didn't add any Zinc, but that doesn't mean that another element couldn't have the same effect when combined with copper. I use FM Elements at about 2/3 the weekly dose one dose a week, Sunday morning. FM Elements contains copper and is already formulated to "gently" reduce the amount of zooxanthellae in the coral tissues. It is possible that the Aluminum that was in the water from he shavings combined with the trace copper I added with the Sunday morning dosing of FM Elements, causing a big zooxanthellae expulsion event.
Until I receive something to bind metals(LFS out of Polyfilter, had to order online), The corals are continuing to be irritated by the metals and are getting a little cooked by too much light. I will feed pappone tonight and reduce the daylight tomorrow to compensate, hopefully that will save the couple of corals that are struggling a bit. Luckily the new corals are doing just fine.
I was staring at the acros tonight wondering why they just seemed "Off". There are still issues with some only showing partial PE, and some spots that look "burned". The colors looked wrong too. I finally figured it out - the acros are bleached! They are bleached like they would look if I did a massive overdose of Zeospur. There is still coral pigment, but when you look up close, the subtle dots and pinstripes of the zooxanthellae are gone.
I have Zeospur, and I've felt that it was an overrated product mainly because it didn't do almost anything to the acroporas in the tank when I used it. When I first got it I used it at 20% strength and got nothing, each time I used more and more. Eventually I was up to double strength! Still not much of a change, most corals still had visible zooxanthellae, but shortly after dosing there would be a reaction from the corals like they had been stung, pulling polyps mostly in, mesenterial filaments out. Once I had a mega overdose by accident, I was not paying full attention to what I was doing and added .5 OZ rather than the 5MLs I was intending, and the corals actually expelled pretty much all their zooxanthellae and looked a lot like they do now. I haven't added any Zeospur in months, mainly because I saw pretty much no positive effect.
What causes this when using Zeospur? Well, very little research has been done on this but copper causes the expulsion, but alone you need so much copper that you would kill the coral. In the presence of Zinc, however, much less copper is needed. I didn't add any Zinc, but that doesn't mean that another element couldn't have the same effect when combined with copper. I use FM Elements at about 2/3 the weekly dose one dose a week, Sunday morning. FM Elements contains copper and is already formulated to "gently" reduce the amount of zooxanthellae in the coral tissues. It is possible that the Aluminum that was in the water from he shavings combined with the trace copper I added with the Sunday morning dosing of FM Elements, causing a big zooxanthellae expulsion event.
Until I receive something to bind metals(LFS out of Polyfilter, had to order online), The corals are continuing to be irritated by the metals and are getting a little cooked by too much light. I will feed pappone tonight and reduce the daylight tomorrow to compensate, hopefully that will save the couple of corals that are struggling a bit. Luckily the new corals are doing just fine.
jackson6745
Yeah Yeah
You should look into a good amino additive. Aqua vitro fuel is decent, and I still like acro power. They will definitely help a bleached coral recover, but you will likely get a cyano bloom which isn't a big deal. I don't think the amino is the cure but it will help.
Given the situation, I would consider taking a shop vac to the sump and drain it completely. The water change will only help the system, and suck out any metal shavings that might still be in there.
Also, it's a good thing that you didn't spend big $$ on that cool red frag. It's nice but it has a red shadow
Given the situation, I would consider taking a shop vac to the sump and drain it completely. The water change will only help the system, and suck out any metal shavings that might still be in there.
Also, it's a good thing that you didn't spend big $$ on that cool red frag. It's nice but it has a red shadow
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