Project 58!! (Image intense)

Nick, when it comes to RTN, you have to cut off only healthy pieces, with no sick edges on the new frag. Hopefully you saved some. I had a green slimer RTN about a month ago, maybe longer. It was blowing tissue off right before my eyes, as my tank got too cold one night. I cut off all the living tips, and glued them on a piece of LR with super glue gel, and placed it in my son's 29g that was 80F. The coral was moved back into my tank when it was back up to 80-81F, and has continued to do well.

Sorry you're dealing with this. Were the corals wild-caught perhaps? I personally love table acros, but have never had one. Currently I have two tiny 1/4" pieces that I'm caring for, hoping they become tables one day.
 
These were aquacultered Walt Smith corals...The LFS has a partnership with him. Since two of the 7 acros came with acro crabs, I think its safew to say these werecultured in the ocean, and thats probably why they going through RTN. I just checked on them all again...so far they all look decent. Not happy mind you, but at least the polyps are out on some of them. After looking more carefully at the green table frags, the two larger ones appear to be okay right now. I didnt have to touch them this morning when I was going over the other frags and culling out the ones with tissue sloughing off.
I cut as far away from the affected areas as possible when I initially fragged them. Right now its just a waiting game...

Hows Nathan doing? I'm annoyed and concerned with whats going on in my tank.....he has to be sick.
Things could definately be worse for me.....

Nick
 
ouch.......not cool. Did fedex ship monkeys just assault the box or what? I know you packed them, so thats not an issue..but what caused the bags to puncture and drain?

Nick
 
Eric,
The algae has been completely eradicated by the astrea's and ceriths from Keys Critters....I'm going to be giving 2/3 of the snails to a friend of mine with the clams that had the pinched mantle issue. She has a 120 gallon with an algea problem also. She also has a gorgeous RBTA she bought from Premium Aquatics that I'm going to pick up from her on Tuesday. The anemone wandered into her closed loop intake earlier last week...no major damages, just couple of gnarly tentacles according to her. She caught it immediately, and her closed loop has multiple inlets like mine and LunchBucket's so there isnt alot of suction coming through any one inlet....but my friend is no longer wanting an anemone in her tank.
I didnt remove the two green table frags that were showing RTN....the largest seems like the RTN is slowing down on it....but over half that frag is gone. Whats really strange for me is that the coral sloughing off tissue, but the polyps are still extending great in the areas that are unaffected....has any one ever heard of RTN just stopping spontaneously? The small rock with 1/8 inch green table frags seems to be okay for now and is really my only hope at saving any of this particular coral.
The peach table frags seem to be doing okay...great polyp extension, no new tissue loss that I can see....but I'm not counting on anything until I see some new growth in these corals...
Also, I occassionally see what look like messentarial filiments coming from two of my corals. They almost look like small messy sweepers, but they are out at random times and only for about 10 minutes or so. When they are taken back in, I see no openings or damage to the coral that would expklain these things...so I'm at a loss on them. I'll take pic of them next time I see them.
I borrowed my buddies digital rebel and have taken lots of pics with it. Unfortunately, I dont have a card reader so I have to wait until I give him back the camera to download the new images. That should alkso be sometime next week...

Thats about it for now....unless anyone wants to hear about my spectacular hangover???

Nick
 
Dude check you phosphate levels. when my tank crashed almost ALL my corals were polyped out and looke great but would slough tissue. we (me and many others) think that my downfall was phophate (when i checked it after quite a while i was a 2.0ppm) or Oceanic salt.

sorry to hear about the RTN...really sucks when you pay for corals and they die

pics of the tank?? tang? clams...come on now don't hold out

Lunchbucket
 
Jeez man, dont you ever sleep?? I know why I'm up at this time of night, or morning as the case maybe...whats your excuse?
I hear you on the phosphate issue,but I dont think that's the case here. I use RO/DI water, and IO salt mix. I soak all the food in RO water to release as much phosphates as possible before putting it in the tank, and I'm running phosban reactor...so if I've got any phosphate issues, they're pretty hard core.
What I think happened here is just that these two tables didnt really adjust well to shipping, and I bought em the day after they came in....none of the other corals are showing any signs of RTN...

I guess I'm gonna hafta post up some pics of the tank with the digi cam I've used for all the other pics...
I'll do that when I get home from work this morning....

Nick
 
well i was up doing my Thesis till 2:30am! i was supposed to get up for church at 9am and when i woke up at 10min to 12noon i noticed i must have shut all my alarms off during my sleep...guess i needed it

yeah shouldn't be a phosphate issue...just wanted to throw that idea out there.

acclimation could easily be the issue.

post some pics later
Lunchbucket
 
03-16-05

Update, I took a couple of quick photo's with the Sony digi cam....I have 2 CF flash cards full of images taken with my friends Digital Rebel, but I dont have a card reader, so I need to wait until he can download those images for me...I'll post them as soon as I can.

But here are some new pics....

The purple tipped acro has been changing colors to more of an all over purple.
Here it is with my Tomini, and then without.




This is what it used to look like....also notice the algae is gone!!



I'm not noticing any new RTN on any of the frags...hopefully, its not going to any more. Has anyone heard of RTN stopping and healing? Or is it one of those terminal type dealies where once an acro has RTN its fatal?

The two largest table frags...Green on the left, the strange purple encrusting-ish acro, and the peach table frags.



Green and Peach table frags



The Chicken Foot and Green table frags....These are the Green frags that have not as of yet shown any RTN, so they are my best hope. The Chicken foot is turning a slight green and begining to match the mother colony.



Nick
 
Here is a pic of a brown table, the blue polyp acro, and the stylophora which is lightening in color since I've moved it up in the water column.



Here is what the Stylo used to look like...



Here is the neon green polyped acro...you can see that its encrusted in this pic.



Here is a pic of the Chalk Bass hovering over the Teardrop Crocea, and eyeing the food floating by in the water column.




Nikki bought a really cool RBTa from Premium Aquatics. She had some drama with it, (okay, it got sucked into the closed loop intake and she was concerned it was splitting), so I drove up to Indianapolis yesterday and took it off her hands. This thing was a total PITA to get off the rock, it took more than an hour, and several 4 letter words under my breath. When we finally got it off, we noticed a good sized hole in the base of the anemone, and mesentarial filaments were clearely visible....I was very careful while removing it from the rock it was attached to, so I know I didnt tear it. I'm guessing its in the process of splitting from the bottom.
Its currently on top of a homemade rock, on the right side of the tank......as far away as possible from the closed loop intake. So if it splits, (and frankly, I'd be AMAZED if it didnt to be honest), the clone will have a nice safe rock to wander around on.

Here are some pics of the anemone today. Rocio says, " That Minnie is cute. But he needs a friend."
Obviously, clownfish will be the final fish in the tank.





Finally, Here are full tank shots...sorta

Left side





Nick
 
LOL....I knew someone was gonna gimme grief...


The two biggest fish in the tank only get to be 5 inches. Rocio and I will be buying a house next year, and I'll be upgrading to at least a 120 then...

Nick
 
03-20-2005

The anemone has not split yet. The small hole beside the mouth I saw earlier in the week is gone. I'm beginning to wonder if this is one of the mythical non-splitting BTA's that are sposed to exist. I did manage to get it fed yesterday, which was tougher than expected. The cleaner wrasse is very brave and has no qualms about getting food out of the anemone. I finally just took a quarter of a cube of Formula 1 and placed in it the anemone's tentacles, causing it to contract around the food. I also fed it a small silverside. Both were gone quickly. A friend of mine has made a trip to Chicago today to check out some captive bred Onyx Percula clowns. These are reported to be True Onyx percs, and I expect she'll be buying two juveniles for her tank. If thee percs look good, I could see making a trip up myself for two juveniles in a month or two. I still want to wait a bit and let the anemone adjust and get acclimated some more before I add some clowns to the mix and stress it out any.

Here is a shot of the RBTA again.



I've noticed encrusting growth on just about all my corals including the Peach Table frags which I had some initial worries about. Its tough to see if the Green Table frags have any encrusting growth, or new growth in the areas that RTN'd, but I'm hopeful. I havent noticed any more tissue loss on those frags that were RTN-ing and thats a good sign. Polyps are all still extending on the Green Table frags, so I am getting more confidant they will make it.

I got my buddy to download the shots I took using his digital rebel. Here are a few of them. Getting them Re-sized was a complete PITA. I used Irfanview and cropped abunch of pics, but they still had to be re-sized to a much smaller image. I apologize about that. I shot all of these images in Fine JPEG mode...would I not have had to resize them so much if I shot in JPEG normal mode, (or whatever the hell isnt Fine mode)?

Here is a shot of the Maze Brain.



While playing around with Irfanview, I found a way to make it a negative of the image....thought it looked kinda cool...



I got a decent shot of the Peach Tipped acro, (different than the peach table that had to be fragged). Can you spot the little bandit acro crab hiding among the branches? (hint, bottom left-ish)



Here is a shot of the Blue Tipped Table acro...finally got a decent one that represents its delicate blue color accurately.



Here is a top down photo of a brown table acro that came in on the same shipment of corals with all the rest. This one sat in the store for a week and showed no signs of RTN so I bought it. I intially put it on the bottom of the tank near the Purple tipped acro on the right side of my tank, while waiting for some epoxy to mount the coral. A snail came by and knocked it over during the night. The acro crab that came with the brown table, (one of the reddish ones), moved to the purple tipped acro, and the bandit acro crab originally in the purple tipped acro moved to this one. The only thing I can think of is the Red acro crab chased the bandit out and he went to the nearest available coral.



Nick
 
I also got a neat top down shot of the Blue Crocea clam. Unfortunately, it looks like it might be showing signs of Pinched Mantle again. This picture was taken before signs appeared. I Know Nikki had to re-dip her clams as they started to pinch up again. I will wait until I have positive mantle curling and pinching before dipping the clam again. The teardrop is fine.



And I got two cool fish shots. Finally a decent image of the Tomini! I say decent because he was moving and the head and face isnt as sharp as the rest of the body. Thanks Travis for telling me about speeding up the ISO in order to get better results when shooting fish. I should have thought of that on my own, but I dont normally shoot moving objects. I still need to practice more...the D-rebel is not my Elan 7e, the auto focus isnt as fast.



And a good shot of the Chalk Bass just hanging out underneath the Blue Crocea. This one shows his colors pretty accurately.



I had been concerned about my Tomini for the last couple of days. He is not going after Nori placed in the tank, nor is he going after Nori shredded up and suirted into the tank with the rest of the food. When the snails cleaned out all the ugly algae, he had very little to nibble on. Fortunately, (sort of) since I gave Nikki 20 of my 30 Astreas, and 50 Ceriths, (all I could get...these little suckers were hiding in the gap between the glass and the cutting board bottom, I couldnt reach them!) some algae has begun to build up on the back wall of the tank and some of the rock is slightly fussy in some places. I think its enough to keep him healthy as he appears to be fineand continues to pick at the rock etc. He will go after the Mysis, Brine Shrimp, and whatever else thats meaty I feed the rest of the tank with, but that isnt enough nutritionally for him. I'm definately planning on continuing to work at gettting him onto Nori...

Nick
 
maxx - good luck w/ the nori!!! mine won't touch it even in the QT tank were there isn't anything to pick at. it guess the bristle tooth tangs like ours only like the micro stuff. my suggestion is get some formula two and feed that...mine loves it. that way it gets algae nutrition.

nice shots!
Lunchbucket
 
Thanks, I need to play with the camera more, and figure out a way to post up images that dont have to be shrunk down to thumbnail size....
I'm betting that its in the image quality mode of the camera..RAW, JPEG Fine, JPEG small etc....Cause I'm thinking I should be able to post these pics w/o shrinking them so much....

Yeah, I've just accepted that he needs to graze and wont move onto the Nori just yet.....If I had a larger tank, I would consider getting another tang in the hopes that the Tomin would watch the new one eat the Nori. I've never had a problem with getting tangs onto Nori in the past...including the Chevron's I kept as a kid in Hawaii....but they were always kept in a tank w/ another tang that ate Nori...At least yours is eatting formula Two...

I dunno..

Nick
 
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