very nice. You will have to frag like crazy to keep all this stuff int he tank as it grows in.
And I'm really lazy
We'll see how this works out. I already bought that fake-rock frag holder, but may/probably need a frag rack anyway. I should be trimming back the A. formosa as it's been growing like crazy (as formosas do) and I have just letting it do it's thing, but one day it will be trouble. It grows at 2-3x the pace of any of the other corals.[/QUOTE]
Please tell me more about why you prefer that Calcium value. What is your target value.
My target is 440ish (with ~8 DKH), as I want to be just above NSW levels. I let it get to 330 because I haven't really thought about it in a long time. The good thing is that unlike nitrates getting too high causing algae outbreaks and other issues, low calcium just means low growth, so it's less obviously detrimental. And honestly, if my corals grow slowly and look nice, then more power to me, since I don't have room for them to grow out all that much more
Loved my anemones, still keep some maxi mini. It got to the point though were I could not sleep at night worrying my Haddoni was going to go for a stroll, wander into my MP, over my corals. One of the best interventions was re-homing the carpet.
Yep, I've heard that a lot. You're just lucky it didn't eat your fishes first.
You picked up some really nice stuff
Thanks! I'm really lucky to have met some incredible reefers locally and in my time in the hobby, and most are incredibly generous.
Uggg GSP, I cringe every times someone recommends them as a stocking option, that and blue star polyps.
What did you dip the Hawkins in?
I don't mind them as a stocking option for new tanks, they're hardly as problematic as damsels as cycling fish. People just need to understand how they grow, and to use them on rocks that are easily removed from the tank, or on their own on an island in the sand bed.
I never understand how some people are able to keep them under control so well. The best example of natural control I've seen yet though was I had a colony of favia/moon coral/small brain corals that was on one rock upstream of a bunch of pink zoanthids/palys, and the sweeper tentacles that came out at night from the favias would keep back the zoa/palys. These giant 10-12" tentacles would sweep amazingly far across the tank and the zoas were right in the way, so they were never able to climb up my rock work.
I did star the hobby with some xenia though, and while they did grow prolifically, and walk around my tank, I learned to be comfortable with fragging corals from that experience. And they're good for nutrient export as well!
For the hawkins (and almost all of my acros) I've just been doing research on the tank they're coming from, then doing a deep visual inspection, and if I have any hesitation or questions, I usually dip. I didn't dip from the tank that the hawkins came from because he is a respected reefer and has a HUGE tank filled with giant healthy colonies of every LE/named coral you could want, so I didn't really think twice about it. That being said someone else told me that he has a nasty infestation of AEFW, but I don't remember seeing them on his tank, or on any of the half dozen or so frags that I got from him, and I never dipped them.
I've been very vigilant about looking for AEFW and can say almost without a doubt that I haven't seen any or any evidence of them. (I say almost without a doubt because while I've found "inconsistencies" in texture, my wife tells me after her double-check that I'm just looking for issues and there isn't anything there abnormal).
I do now own a bottle of Bayer advanced for dipping THOUGH I KEEP IT AND USE IT OUTSIDE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK BECAUSE IT IS ILLEGAL IN THE CITY AND BOROUGHS OF NEW YORK. So I can dip with that when I add new corals, but only if I suspect something after a deep visual inspection. Now with a macro lens, it functions really well as a microscope for me to really explore new acros and see every nook and crannie under a bright light.
