some more photos

[fullmonti]

FedX took two full days to get an over nite order from DD to me, lost a fish & the feather star was not in good shape at all. He had lost most of the tips on his arms & looked dead but when I squirted some food on him he started to move a little.

I'm hoping he will be OK.

Also got a chironephthya tree coral in that order, he seems none the worse for the delay.

Lollipop has its third set of head now, but seems very happy.

My chili didn't open for a month, then just opened up & also seems to be very happy now.

My carnation & scleron have not been happy for a while. But I just got my ozone set up & I'm hoping the improvement in water quality that should bring will snap them out of it. I'll take pics of ozone set up tomorrow. It's cold & late right now.

 

[Fretfreak13]

Very pretty. The lollipop has always been my dream, but I don't think I'll EVER be able to get a tank up and dedicate myself to the NPS corals like that. All I can do is admire other people's. Thank you for sharing. =)

 

[donkeys4hire]

How long have you had the lollipop? What do you feed it?

 

[fullmonti]

Only had it about a month, & it is in a dedicated NPS tank. Feed the typical nps foods FM, Ova, oyster feast etc.

 

[uhuru]

Beautiful shots! What happens to the old heads? Do they just float around the tank until you remove them or does anything eat them?

I hope the crinoid is able to make a full recovery. Do you see it capturing food and moving it towards its mouth?

I was cleaning and rearranging some rocks in my elos last night and accidentally dropped a heavy rock on my crinoid. I felt so bad. I have never seen it move so fast trying to get out from under it, but it couldn't. The rock immediately severed a couple of its arms and I was really worried that I had crushed its body, but I think the rock may have missed the body by millimeters! I'm so angry at myself right now.

 

[flying_dutchman]

What temp do you run your tank at?

@uhuru that sucks

 

[fullmonti]

The heads grow fast & when they drop off they seem to just dissolve. Within a day or so they disappear.

My crinoid doesn't move much at all, stays pretty much in that position. Couple times a day I'll turn the pumps off & mix up some min F & min D & squirt it on him. He immediately opens up & squirms around, but never seen him move an arm to the center all the feathery parts move around though. He also seems to like some brightwell foods squirted on him. How big of food can they eat? If any one has any videos of normal movements I'd love to see them. I really don't know much about them, but he sure is a cool little critter.

I have a 180g sps tank on same system with the nps (I know one wants an aquatic desert & the other soap) so temp right now is 76 to 78. I have been thinking I could lower it a bit more & not hurt the sps.

 

[flying_dutchman]

http://www.reefsmagazine.com/showthread.php?t=79032

 

[uhuru]

He immediately opens up & squirms around, but never seen him move an arm to the center all the feathery parts move around though. He also seems to like some brightwell foods squirted on him. How big of food can they eat?

The food is actually transported through a conveyor belt type system within their arms, so the arms never have to actually move towards the mouth. You have to look really close to see it. Cyclopeeze would be my guess on the max size of food they can handle, but that varies by species. Some won't be able to eat food that big. Aquabacs article linked above is definitely worth a read, as well as the references after it.

 

[fullmonti]

Thanks for the link!

This is what I did for an ozone set up. All the water that overflows from nps tank is fed to the pump that supplies water to the ozone reactor. The reactor is a geo 420 media reactor. Used a venturi injector from Aquatic Eco Systems like what some are using on fridge feeding system to mix ozone & water entering reactor. Then through carbon then it drains into feed to the skimmer. I'm bypassing air dryer right now it started turning colors in two days & seems to create a great deal of back pressure (think I must have hooked it up wrong some how). I started bleeding of excess pressure to the out side, but system started not working. After a couple hours of max aggravation I discovered there was enough condensation in the line that it froze in the part of the line that was out side. I now bleed this off to the skimmer intake. I didn't want to do it that way because we have a small living area & didn't want ozone in the house, so far so good. What ORP number do you guy go for. Mine is hard pressed to get much passed 350. The thing in the bottom left is a zeo reactor.

Some had ask for a FTS

Kinda a crappy snap shot, but the tank is not even close to where I want it to be yet. I'm hoping the new ozone will clear up the bit of hair algae there is in the sps tank & the little bit of film type algae in the nps tank.

 

[uhuru]

Nice work with the ozone setup. I like how you used the geo media reactor like that. FWIW I don't use the air dryer either due to the back pressure. Even with a pressure rated air pump turned all the way up I was hardly getting any air through the reactor. I think the design is flawed or meant for much larger applications. If you figure it out LMK. Red Sea makes a cheaper air dryer that might work better for our use, although TBH I don't see myself using an air dryer that requires manual drying. In the future I would get one of the automatic ones. Just don't have time to be recharging the media every couple of days, would rather just use an oversized ozonizer and turn up the power.

 

[fullmonti]

What is a good ORP number to maintain, is 350 enough? I haven't turned up the generator all the way yet if higher number would be better.

 

[uhuru]

I set my controller to shut off ozone if the orp gets to 400. It never gets that high it usually hovers around 350 - 370. I wouldn't worry too much about getting a higher orp than 350 since orp in itself is not a measure of water quality. You should read the 3 articles on ozone by RHF if you haven't already. Here is where to start:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-03/rhf/index.php

 

[fullmonti]

few more pix

I see now how they get food down to their mouth, little tiny feathers.

Mr. lollipop is at it again!

2-3 days ago

last night

this morning

this must be normal, grow them for a week, show them for a week, drop them!
There is a couple of the old heads stuck on the power heads, but mostly gone already.

 

[fullmonti]

I have had this scallop for three months now. Put him in & didn't see him after that night for a full month, thought he was dead. Then one day there he was right in the front of the tank. He finally settled in this hole in the rock in back of a goni.

This guy looked so happy I just had to take his pic again. Does it drive every one else crazy that nps will look so happy for awhile & then close up for awhile for no apparent reason?

 

[wireefman]

wonderful pictures!!!!