Pete's 110 build

[psteeleb]

Ooooooo! Pretty.

What does one feed gorgs?

right now I'm hitting these with 3 sizes of food

Phytoplankton twice a day,
rotifers once a day, and
cyclopseze once a day --- for size reference you can see a cyclopseze in upper right of the picture of the red gorg

the cyclopseze seems an okay size for my red and orange gorgs but to large for another purple one I have, and it may be to large for the yellow polyped one but it does appear to be taking the rotifers without issue.

 

[Zigginit]

i will try a little kalck and see if they respond to it. i do have very fast growth in most corals but some just sit around and dont really grow a lot or open during the day. i guess it just depends on the kind of coral. i wonder if very intense light has anything to do with it. i get par in the high 500's in most spots. 375 at the sand.

 

[psteeleb]

my purple gorg decided to spawn (release of gametes), to bad I didn't catch it in while in process when the gametes pop out and release to the water column. I did get a few pictures of some gametes that got stuck to the gorgonia. I also got some video that I'll post later.

 

[Robb in Austin]

Wow! Extra special cool.

 

[aquaph8]

Pete, that pretty cool about the gorg but what really caught my eye was that gorgeous plana ^^^^. Just love it.

 

[Bigjoe2531]

so cool...

 

[Bigjoe2531]

"I finally got around to mounting the acropora plana. Sorry not the best picture as the lights were already in the dim to off mode and the coral wasn't happy from me messing with it."

How did you move that piece? Do you cement your corals in place? If not, How do you fasten them? :hmm3:
-Joe B.

 

[psteeleb]

thanks Robb, Brett and Joe

 

[psteeleb]

How did you move that piece? Do you cement your corals in place? If not, How do you fasten them? :hmm3:
-Joe B.

All my acropora are mounted to rocks that are removable. Most of them are drilled and pegged and just slide into one of many predrilled holes I made in my live rock before placing it in the aquarium..

The Plana came mounted to a large rock that was structured to stand up straight, I trimmed the rock to fit into or on a ledge I had.

 

[psteeleb]

I went by a not so local fish store today, I only needed some phyto but hadn't been there in a while so decided to head that way.

I picked up 3 new corals, the owner has a good sale going on right now so I got myself a couple Chrismas presents :dance:

2 of the 3 are small acropora colonies;
this first one looks like an acropora millepora, its a cream and pink color and came with an acro crab. I wanted to dip and treat the coral and this little crab was not too hard to get away from it. The coral also has a small barnicle on it but I doubt it will survive the dip process.

 

[psteeleb]

the colors on this second coral make it look like an Acropora Spathulata, but I believe those are specific to Australia and the owner told me the group of colonies he had was from Bali. The Spathulata also has very fine close nit and very uniform corallites, this one looks just a little different. The Spathulata is a beautiful coral but tends to fetch a very high price. Be it a Spathulata or some other acropora I'm happy. This one came with two acro crabs that weren't as cooperative when it came to vacating the coral, but I was persistant. When I put them back in the tank after dipping the coral I tried to carefully pour them out (under water) over the coral but one of them decided to take a line to another coral and now resides in my Ponape Birdsnest

 

[psteeleb]

the pair of acro crabs got back together, I think they are buddies (maybe more :inlove
sorry for the video quality, I took the video early this morning under very dim actinics

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[psteeleb]

heres a better video of the two new acroporas I picked up a couple days ago
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[psteeleb]

Not positive that it's the culprit but since I reactivated my GFO a couple things like my sponges & St Thomas Mushrooms have gone down hill. I suspect the GFO is sucking up trates (po4 & No3) they may have been consuming. I’m considering shutting the reactor off or at least reducing the flow to a trickle.

The month old +/- acropora plana is looking kind of bland, I can't say it's dying but it seems to be in a holding patern, the color has dropped some and there is very limited PE. Being a maricultured coral it may just be in a long term acclimation process (at least there is no bleaching or RTN/STN).

The 2 new acropora's are both looking fantastic, great PE and color
Acropora sp #1

Acropora sp #2

As for maricultured corals my experience with my 300g was that I'd loose about half of them. The ones that didn't make it would make it through the initial acclimation okay, but never seemed to adjust in total to the aquarium biosphere.

 

[Trini 2D Bone]

Wow this is one super nice tank. Thanks for showing your work, am trying to get some what close to this.

 

[psteeleb]

Wow this is one super nice tank. Thanks for showing your work, am trying to get some what close to this.

thanks

 

[psteeleb]

Over the past week or so a couple corals have not been looking their best. I initially attributed it to using GFO for the first time in about a year but today when I got home another coral wasn't looking good, so I tested the parameters

Nitrates where through the roof, >25, usually they are undetectable. I suspect that loosing more then 50% of a shipment of snails combined with 2 linkas dieing in the sump unoticed where just too much for the system to handle. Yuck what a stinky mess it was pulling out the rotten linkas, and I mean stinky and I'm sure it wasn't good for the tank.

No wonder my new ORP probe has been reading so low, and I though it was all due to an extended break in period, but now I'm sure the excess decay was bringing down the ORP readings.

I'm making up a fresh batch of salt water, I just hope everything hangs in there. Otherwise things look great

 

[psteeleb]

a few more pictures from the past couple days

 

[Robb in Austin]

Looks ok to me!

 

[Taqpol]

Its amazing how much Nitrates SPS can handle and still look wonderful if everything else stays in check. Hopefully the water changes bring everything back in line.

Do you know what cause the snail die off? I ask because I need to order new snails for my tank very soon.