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Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
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Lisa absolutely insisted I keep it going. She thought I was quitting cause she didn't want it, so she insisted I keep it going cause I loved it. Problem is, I didn't find that out till later. I moved it all and went through great lengths cause I thought SHE wanted it. So now the 700 pound dirty pig is five feet behind me making noises, waiting for it's chance to wreck the house, vibrating up a storm, wanting fed, and waiting for me to dump another $170 bucks into it. Ahhh, the riddle that is love. :D |
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If I could see a large pile of money needing to be spent, you can bet I would get rid of it all. I think if I had to move
out of town, they'd be S.O.L. But for now, my purple mushrooms multiply about one every three months, and things are not so bad that I think everyday about breaking it down. I will say that if I ever have a PERMANENT home that I paid for and now own, I would knock out a wall and have all the plumbing and access far out of sight and just a window and no vibrations or waterfall sounds ar anything around ME. And small! I first started out in the 20 I have now, killed everything cause I added stuff early, then went to 110 cause "I was smart now", lol. Dumped all that 8-9 years ago or more, and like I have said, for some reason a year and a half ago, thought I should turn some dry white rock and a obsolete skimmer into a base for buying all new everything else....sheesh. Oh the money I would have. |
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This money hole is only 90 gallons. Can you imagine what the 240 gallon guys spend? Worse yet, can you imagine the time? The mere thought makes me shiver.
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I think when I finally get my dream home, for which I will sign the papers, come home, cough up a speck of
blood and find out I have lung cancer, I will make it between 40 and 55 gallons. Against all the arguments over how more water makes mistakes happen sloower, etc, all fine arguments, there is also the one that says 'you don't HAVE to have it all", you just have to be satisfied with what you can afford, and afford to maintain, both time AND money-wise. |
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There is a 500 gal tank at my LFS that someone gave up on. I could probably get a good deal on it. The owner showed it to me and my first thought was you needed SCUBA to clean it.
I go months without doing anything but feed my tank and add makeup water to it, only cleaning it because of company. If it is likely something will die then it did already. |
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I picked up a few more corals down in Mogadore the other day. Finally got some yellow polyps. I forget what the other two things are called. :D
We got a shrimp and a spiny urchin, too. |
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I spent money on more cigars.
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Lance, I've got so many freakin cigars that I can't even find them all. I did buy five or six boxes of "save for later" stuff last week, though. ;)
Now I'm really strongly considering LED lighting for the tank. Will you guys please take a look at this for me, and see what you think? Here's where I am so far... I'm trying to figure out how to get from watts/gallon to lumens/gallon to size my fixture. I already plan on getting the biggest one at that Foster Smith link cause I think it'll fit my tank. The reef capable lighting are rated for 50,000 hours, which is 17 years of 8 hour days. Right now I run a little over 8 hours, but I need to back that up. The fixture is $365, you never replace bulbs. In 17 years, I'd spend somewhere between $1600 and $3200 for t5 lamps. I'd also have to replace the fixture at least twice, and that'd cost about $1,000. So it's t5's for $2600-$4200 or led for under $800. (Apparantly I need two fixtures because these things really focus the lights into a very thin, straight down wall of light.) With two fixtures, I'd be down to 108 watts from my current 432 watts, so I'm looking at 1/4 the energy use and I'm guessing 1/4 the heat. Being that I was already going to spill $200 for tubes, I'm really looking at $530.00 to make this upgrade. I'm sure I can sell my 48" t5's on Craigslist or to one of the reefers in my club, bringing down the price even more. The one drawback is that there's a polycarbonate lens on this thing that creates a "realistic ocean shimmer effect" that is only realistic to people who have never been in the water. It's more like a strobe light cranked all the way up to max, almost constant on, or at least that's how I perceive it when I look at them. I'm hoping that's more prominent with one light than with two. Will you guys please take a look when you have time and let me know what you think? I could use a bunch more negatives so I can weigh this out a bit better. |
Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
Lumens per watt, LEDs are the same as T5. LEDs randomly go bad for no apparent reason. They actually do generate a good deal of heat. 100 watts of LED is the same lumens as 100 watts of T5s. This is what keeps me from upgrading. HIDs are the most lumens per watt and I get about two years for about 100 bucks. I have 2 80 watt CFs that run pure actinics for color affects with two 14k HIDs. $150 every two years. Yep, 960 watts. Along with the main pump, skimmer pump, two little pumps for the calcium reactor and a circulating pump in the tank, a chiller and two 230 watt heaters, I need my own substation to run this rig.
Happy reefing! |
Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
Lance, From what I ciphered (before I went insane from reading light buld tech specs) is that led's give up 166% more lumens per watt at minimum. The biggie is that the lumenosity is focused and drills way deeper into the water.
That said, I could find nowhere where an outfit would say "just use led's on your tank". The best outfits say you should use them to compliment your other lighting for technical reasons as an advantage. They just aren't ready for primetime yet, period. If you're trying to use a watts per gallon comparison, led's require 14-28% of wattage for the same amount of useful light. Here's an awesome writeup on all types of aquarium lighting. The reading is about as dry as a popcorn fart, but there's lots of great info if you can stand to read it. It's recent, and was just updated 4 days ago. All that said, the two fixtures I picked should be a good direct replacement for my t5's. I'm not gonna chance it, though. I'll just get some new lamps and keep this fixture for another four years if it'll last that long. By then, price should come down and all the bugs should be worked out. :tu |
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I just checked specs on a few different technical sites and was seeing lm/W for HIDs in the low 100s, for T5s & T2s in the upper 90s, Some LEDs are in the mid 100s but these are the wrong color temp, like 4500K or lower. The CREE type seem to be the most efficient. They are nice in flashlights.
That picture of the plant growth on your link proved the plants weren't getting enough light. Everyone knows plants will stretch out if there is not enough light. Or, if they are low light plants, the small ones were getting too much light. An inclusion like this in an article makes me begin to doubt some of the rest of it. I know I have too much light, plus I have direct sunlight, but I got most of my stuff free, for starters. Since then it has not been so free. I run 2 1/2 hrs. in the morning and 4 1/2 hrs. in the evening to stretch the day out all year long. I am a little tired off maintaining things. Too much of my time is being drained by routines. Anyone want a good deal on a reef tank? |
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hood. I was simply buying closeout for price. So there was no way on the LEDs. However, like anything there are kinks to work out, and those first fixtures were WROUGHT with problems. In fact I think that many of the problems are still there. Random LED failures, entire strip failures, and NOWHERE near the durational performance they were sold at. "It's the last light fixture you'll EVER BUY!"...."All the light with none of the heat!"...."LEDs Don't burn out like light bulbs!" None of which turned out to be true. I say stay with what you have, ESPECIALLY since you got drug into starting this back up at great cost to yourself. Let the newness of your rig wear off, have a few disasters again, and then think, "Hmm, good thing I didn't spend $800 on LEDs. I have a "night lite" led on my fixture, and i can tell you it IS like a semi-strobe effect, but it DOES produce shimmer in a way. I guess if you are going to extrapolate out to 17 years, it's a good buy, but as with any reef tank, I predict disaster, the LAST disaster, way before then, lol. |
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Hey guys - Figured I've been around here long enough to warrant an intro.....
This is my first forray into SW, although I've had FW for many years. The tank has been up for about 8mo...Yes I know still no fish - but between a crazy work schedule and traveling, I just haven't gotten a chance to sit down and figure out the load list. Right now there's assorted zoas and star polyps, pulsing xenia, and some interesting non-photosynthetic hitch-hikers. I also have one pincushion, two golden coral banded shrimp (mated pair), and the usual assortment CUC. Also on the way I have a decorator crab - figured it would do a better job of fragging than I do =) I also just got a mini-carpet last night - seems to be doing real well in the tank already... Anyway, as it does not exist without pics - here's a couple: https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_I.../IMG_00163.jpg https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_I.../IMG_00165.jpg https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_I.../IMG_00164.jpg |
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Lookin good, Steve!!! :tu
I thought those goofy decorator crabs were a big no-no? |
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Not that I was aware of ? Granted.....If you have softies that you like where they are; then the decorator isn't for you.....However its my understanding that they don't feed on the corals; only use them for decoration.
I'll keep an eye on him. Worse comes to worse my sump is large enough to keep him in...Im sure he'll enjoy all the oddities down there. |
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Will you please let us know how it goes? I just remembered where I read about them. I have a book called "The top 101 marine invertebrates" (I just ran up and got it). It adds 33 species you should definately avoid. Decorator crabs were the #12 worst. They not only decorate themselves with all your stuff, but they are also predatory on other inverts. There's a real good chance he'll eat your mated shrimp real quick, so be super careful, my brother. Maybe throw him in the sump right from the get-go and give him some stuff he can decorate with? I'm glad I dragged the book out. We just carried home a longspined sea urchin the other day. It's not only venemous, but the 33rd worst critter to keep in a reef. How are we doin, my friend? :D :r |
Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
Wow - thanks for the heads up ! Ya, I'll put him in the sump for sure....Im not that worried about the corals as the shrimp. Interesting; as my source where I got him I really find that they are on the money. Here's what they told me:
"A slow moving and somewhat sloth like creature, the Decorator Crab is one of those critters that makes this hobby enjoyable. By attaching sponges, algae and even soft corals to their carapace, they are able to "disappear" in plain sight. They are omnivores, and will scavenge and pick at live rock. They eat some algae, but we wouldn't consider them a cleaner. They are often too slow to catch food during feeding time, but they generally are very good at scavenging. When frightened or stressed, they will remain motionless, relying on their camouflage to protect them. If you have a lot of expensive zoas, maybe this isn't the guy for you. If you don't mind a small mobile frag, then this guy is reef safe enough. Grows to have a 1'' wide or so carapace" (reefcleaners.org) From other research I've done, it seems that this guy (Pelia sp.) is one of the safer ones. The Spider Decorator (Stenorhynchus sp) from what I've read are more destructive. The reason I picked him up was due to my fondness of them when I see them in the wild. They are quite amusing ! Here's one I photographed off the coast of Parguera, PR. https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_I...0/IMG_0886.JPG Living a couple of mangroves down, I found this pair of Coral Banded Shrimp, which although they aren't considered cleaners - took a fondness to running all over the camera and my hands. https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_I...0/IMG_1214.JPG |
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It's been a few years since I've been in the water, Steve. Take that back, I was snorkeling the mangroves in the Keys last winter, but there were record lows and I mostly just got to check out dead stuff. Thousands upon thousands of urchins, and every other thing you can think of.
Keep sharing the pics, will ya? If I can find mine (just built a new computer), I'll try to post some up. :tu |
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Hehe - sure. Don't want to hijack the thread w/diving pics....but here's just a couple more:
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/_I...0/IMG_0829.JPG https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_I...0/IMG_0844.JPG https://lh5.googleusercontent.com/_I...0/IMG_1130.JPG https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_I...0/IMG_1202.JPG Hehe - look close.....I watched that guy for about 10mins as he was watching me. I was hoping to catch him eating; but I think he was just resting after his meal. |
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Nice blue polyps. :tu
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Well, I decided not to go LED.
I ordered lamps and food. Another 300 bucks down the chute. I think I could switch to a hard core heroin hobby and be money ahead. :r I have to admit, now that the problems have subsided, I'm enjoying this reef more and more every day. I'm afraid that my beautiful wife may once again be right. I'm starting to get glad we set it back up. :D I think I mentioned picking up a few more corals the other day. Yellow polyps were one, and I think the grassy mat is a pipe organ coral. The beige thing with blue eyeballs that comes right out of rock is called a gonapora? No idea how to spell it. Now if I can get some different red and blue polyps to grow some mats, I'd be thrilled. A couple more starfish, and some pulsing xenia would round it out and I think my livestock acquisition phase will be over. Key word, think. :D |
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Got my new lights in.
http://fracstar.com/pics/tank20110516.jpg |
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I think goniapora is a coral too far. Many super-serious reefers can't keep them alive. Their diet leads to
fouled water I THINK is the knock. Many are sold, few survive. But don't take my word for it, nevr had one. I WOULD SAY though that if you are going to get one, let me send you a frag of this purple gorgonian. That Goniapora is going to want to eat, and it can be bad for your tank in some ways. If you have a good overflow system, most of the food is going to go into the sump/skimmer. You need something with a LOT of polyps to capture the food that the gonio can't eat. Like a lot of palythoa or other sea mat type organisms. The Goniopora will want enough cyclopeze to survive, and it can foul a tank up if it's the only coral feeding in that manner. I guess you could turn the pumps off and target feed. I have so many polyps with tentacles in my little 20 gallon, the cyclopeze disappears in minutes. |
Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
I kept a Goniapora alive for two years. It is generally believed to be not a responsible thing to buy a Goni. They seldom survive for long and it would be best to leave them in the wild.
Pavona are nice. You need to keep your calcium up is all. |
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Wow - hell of a tank...Makes mine look like a sump :D
Shilala - What LED's did you go with ? Also my pulsing xenia are splitting again - want a piece ? Speaking of which, those corals are something else. When I first got mine, it was a single stalk and looked healthy....This was the first coral I realized that could move ! It positioned itself about 10" from where I placed it, and split along the way. Now the 'parent' stalk is splitting in 3, and the 'child' is splitting in 1/2. |
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If you look at my picture you will see that the left wall of the tank is totally covered with Xenia. I allow it to grow there but I cull it from most other places or it gets out of control.
I have noticed that the live rock disappears over time. I think I could use another 10-15 lbs. It dissolves and is also ground up by critters. |
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I'll take a video so you can see my stock and send it up to youtube. I did that just a bit ago, but we have more stuff now. I've changed 90 gallons of water in a very short time cause of the hair algae. I got rid of every bit of it (queue the parade). Thank You very much for the offer, and if I already didn't have some, I'd have taken you up in a second. :D I should also say I was gonna move my gorgonia but it's already grown fast to the rock I dropped it in. It's a crazy fast grower. Oh, I ordered freeze-dried cyclopeeze yesterday. I feed phyto regularly. When the frozen cyclopeeze becomes available, I'll order some of that. I spent $100 on just food yesterday. lol I'll post pics of what I think is goniapora. You guys can tell me then, k? |
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No problem with the calcium, I'm a water changing madman. :tu |
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I should have posted the end-all-be-all lighting tech sheet I found. It's awesome. Way more than I ever wanted to know, super concise, and a good read. Here it is. Do yourselves a favor and torture yourselves with it a bit. It's good material. Steve, I'd love to take you up on the Xenia. Let them get well established first, I don't want to cause you to do them in. I'm going to a ball game in Pittsburgh Friday and we'll stop at the super-awesome LFS on the way home. I'm sure they have to have some stuff I need/want. I've been dying to get down there for weeks. Let me see what they have before I bother you, okay? Thank You for the offer!!! :D |
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I made a video in hopes that you guys can help me figure out what this stuff is I have in my tank, and to see if that gonorrhea is really gonorrhea.
It'll be done uploading in about an hour. It's only 4 1/2 minutes long, but it's super duper HQ, so you guys should easy be able to figure out what this stuff is if you're willing to help me out. Please? :) |
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Cool stuff! I have always wanted a reef tank or SW tank, but just never took the plunge.
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Nice - send me a link to the video !
The decorator came today along with the rest of my additional CUC....Ugly bastid; no wonder why they cover themselves ! https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/_I.../IMG_00171.jpg |
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New video so you guys can figure out what my stuff is.
I uploaded the video in hi-res, youtube made it far less resolute. I hope it'll still work. If not, I'll make a super quick video and upload it. That should help, it never crossed my mind till now. |
Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
Nice tank Scott. I got my book out but haven't figured out any you don't know. The Goni is definitely a Goni.
A note on the light issue: The article made importance of the PAR and PUR values. Admittedly based on agricultural research. These values are tuned to chlorophyll. The zooxanthellae in coral don't use chlorophyll. Red wavelengths can't penetrate water to any significant depth, so these ranges are less important to reefkeeping. They are a large part of the PAR and PUR values though. I would want to read up on real life experience from various reefkeepers to correlate a better opinion on this. Also, it would be nice to see the spectrum sensitivity of zooxanthellae. |
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There is some insight there on where the problems lie and how they're working on getting them ironed out. Controllers and new tech are expected. While it helped to make up my mind to stay away for now, at least I know they're headed in the right direction. I like crazy bright light on my corals so I can see and enjoy them. I want the light to keep them healthy. All that other stuff, I don't care, ya know? That's my consumer perspective. I love my t5's just like you love your mh's. I'm not gonna settle for less than what I already like. What I'd really like to see is light that's brighter to MY eye, and better for the corals. That's not at all where LED's are right now. On a good note, all my frozen fish food came today. Good thing, too. I found out the freezer wasn't closed all the way. Foster and smith sent that stuff overnight in a styrofoam box with 13 freezer packs. My shipping cost was zero, and I paid less for the food than I do at my LFS. I love that place more and more every time I shop there. Oh, I ordered a D-D Refractometer while I couldn't sleep last night, too. It's supposed to be the best and you calibrate with RO water. I'm excited to see how close to 1.026 I really am. :D |
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Lance, I should also say that I read TONS of real life experience at both of my reef forums and then a bunch of others I don't frequent.
What you'll see if guys that have LED's saying they work great, but they just keep softies and fish. Guys with LPS and SPS don't use them. Other guys use Stunner strips and stick on strips to add extra lighting to their current systems. I really couldn't find anyone who used strictly LED's to do what I want to do. A couple did, stuck their necks out and said they did with great results, then got crucified by reefer asshole know-it-alls that insisted it couldn't happen even though they posted pics. I'll tell ya, brother, It's tough out there. It sure ain't Cigar Asylum everywhere. The lack of respect and keyboard thuggery at the reef forums is pretty pathetic. I'd rather hang with you guys. It's fun learning with you all. :D |
Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
My tank is really loving the 14Ks as opposed to the old 10Ks I replaced. Things are changing color. Pinks, yellows and greens are coming out on things that were mostly brown. I think they are not needing as much symbiont in their tissue and are decreasing it. If it goes too far it will cause bleaching. I don't think that will happen, though. From what I have read it is pretty hard to use too much light on a reef tank.
I have a mixture if soft, LPS, SPS, fish, inverts and plants. What survives is what's in there. I just read that you should not mix types of corals. Good thing I hadn't read that before.:D |
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I have never heard you shouldn't mix coral types...... Sure softies throw out a lot of chemicals if they get pissed off but all you do is fun some activated carbon and that will solve that issue. You shouldn't put anything close to LPS with long sweeper tentacles that come out to feed at night. A good 6" bubble around things like thatis a good idea. SPS for the most part will tolerate each other ive never had an issue with that. Zoanthids are a seamat and will fill in wherever they can assuming other corals dont zap them away. The only thing i would be wary of is anemones. They have a tendancy to move about the tank looking for their perfect home and if they contact a colony of any coral the nem will kill it.
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In your video the first ones are trumpets. The next one is a Pavona coral also known as lettuce or potato chip coral (thi has particularly long sweeper tentacles careful when placing other corals around this). That is a Maxima you are correct. They usually dont like being on the sand the best way to make them happy is to bury a flat piece of live rock in the sand so its just below the surface of the sand and put the clam on that. After a while the clam will attach itself to the rock. The "pipe organ coral" looks to me like ti may be galaxea coral but I cant say for sure unless I see it with the polyps retracted. The yellow anemone is infact an anemone all mushroom corals are. The ones you have are known as rhoactids. The "frogspawn" you showed may either be hammer coral or a torch coral. Frogspawn will have multiple nodes on each tentacle it looked to me like there were only nodes on the tips.
Your tank is looking great Scott! Keep up the good work. |
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I agree with Wolfie all around on nomenclature, and I also would add, that's one boss reef!. Mine is embarassing after that show. Some ideas since I saw it, if you feed all that stuff, just a blast in the water column of various stuff, it looks like everybody is gonna get fed, I would not worry about the excess food not getting trapped, looks like you have plenty of polyps open to pick up the tiny bits. As for the gorgonian, yours is a true "purple gorgonian", and even though generally that morphological variety seems to be non-photosynthetic, judging from the color of those polyps, it would seem to likely be photosynthetic. Not sure...but one thing is sure, yours and mine are miles different. Yours seems stiff, mine is uber-rubbery. It would seem that sometarget feeding with a baster would help some of your corals, I believe if you feed cyclopeeze when everything has polyp extension going on, you might do OK with your Goniapora. No one can tell, but your tank is much further advanced than I would have thought, from a recent move. THAT must have been a BEYOTCH! Just in terms of the mushroom rocks, that is a lot of stuff to MOVE UNDERWATER! Nice bowl you got there. My favorite coral right now, and I have very little true coral, but it's my lettuce/chip coral. ONE POLYP was alive, and now as I said earlier, it has fully encrusted over it's original skeleton. OHH, and don't be totally bummed if one day for some unknown reason, your yellow polyps start to slowly disappear one by one. Some specimens just grow and grow, some look healthy one day and a month later you have a bare rock. But I like em, too.
OH, and also as far as chemical warfare, I think the only time it gets really serious is between octocorals and cndarians, or however you spell the family anemones are in. They tend to fight from GREAT distances with chemicals. Most of the other trouble you get is sweeper tentacles beteen corals, and for most, you are talking about separation of a few inches. Anemones can kill from across the tank if they start getting chemically on ya. Or so I THINK I have read. Derh. I know very little about the kid of warfare that one would get concerned about in reefs. |
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I think your 4-16-11 video is also revelatory...That leather MIGHT be the one coral that is going to not
like having large anemones in with it. We'll see, but they do tend to pop out much more after a long adaptation. If they get pi$$y they will just slough over and disappear for a few days, shed a yucky skin and come back out when they please. Give em good flow and med light and in time, the worm will turn. |
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Gorgonians, star polyp, Xenia and leather are octocorals. It seems these are tough in that not much injures them except environmental factors. My Gorgo got shaded out by being overgrown by Xenia.
I've heard Zoanthids are the worst with the chemicals. I have never worried about it as I have a bag of charcoal in the sump. Goniapora don't need sweepers, their whole polyps will reach out far with a very powerful sting. Nothing in my tank could withstand it. Hammer coral is very good at sweeping it's zone clear. I used mine to corral the Xenia until it died in a crash. Now I have put a frogspawn in to fight back against the Rhodactis. It seems to be working. The Rhodis work by slowly nudging other things away and then dividing themselves. They want to carpet the whole tank. There is so much interaction in these tanks it's amazing. The subtle slow motion violence is pretty intense too. |
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I asked Lisa, and she said that truly was a Galaxea. She remembers this stuff pretty good. The Maxima is hers, and you're right about attaching. When I was moving some stuff and gluing it the other day I tried to pick it up and it's attached itself to a big piece of junk it found. When it gets a bit bigger, I'll put a big rock under her so she can switch. What was sold to me as frogspawn used to be tiny and really did look like frogspawn. Since I've fixed my water and started feeding phyto and all kinds of other stuff, it's gotten just as big as my hammer. The only differences in the two are slight color variations and the tips are slightly different. That gets more the same every day, really. I just checked it, and in fact, it does have little nodes and tiny branches off the big branches. I think what looked like a yellow anemone is actually a carpet anemone, or was sold to me as such. It's cool. It's green with tight rows of brown things that look like tiny polyps. Looks way more like a coral than an anemone. I'll try to put up a decent pic of that one for ya so I can find out for sure. There's also one other thing I'm not sure of, I don't know if it got in the video. I think it's a leather. It's insides are a beautiful blue. I'll get a pic of that, too. Two pics coming up. :tu Thanks a million, Mark!!! I just took a test looking at the tank and I know what everything is now. Ya done good, that's definately not a small feat you accomplished. :D |
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Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
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I have no less than 10 different kinds of food here, 7 are frozen. Freeze dried cyclopeeze is in the mail. Plus I keep phyto in the fridge and will soon be growing my own. :tu I make soup for the kids. I feed every other day. I use phyto plus four or five frozen blocks. I try to rotate the frozen stuff. I have a cannister filter to trap junk, plus two over-the-backs that I clean every couple days. I also have two oversize over-the-back skimmers. I change water like a madman. I think I've changed 90 gallons this month, but that was just to unscrewup my water. I'll ease off soon. The critters are exploding with wellness. I want them at their peak so I can watch them and let them tell me how the water is doing. Then I can rest easy. I just needed everything to be right so I could learn from it, ya know? I've kept animals all my life, more stuff than anyone would ever believe, let alone imagine. I've always let them tell me when things are right or wrong. It's always worked real well. What's awesome about corals is that they're very telling and very forgiving. Everyone says they're so fragile, etc. They're tough as nails, man. Amazingly resilient, too. I'm having huge fun now that things are going well. It sure beats worrying all day every day. :D My new lamps came today and I changed them out. Went from 10K to 12K by mistake. Actinics are the same. Everything looks more yellow/green to me, but Lisa says she doesn't notice a difference. |
Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
Wolfie, this is what I think is a carpet anemone that looked yellow...
(I see the colors are still a bit off. It's a dark green background and those rows are brown. I guess now that I got up and looked at them again, maybe the tips of what looks like polyps are yellow. They used to be brown. Everything is changing...) http://i925.photobucket.com/albums/a...a/4bb4570d.jpg This is the thing that smacks of a leather, but it's an SPS. You should be able to see the polyps. The inside is hard blue/white coral. Any clue what it is? http://i925.photobucket.com/albums/a...a/6e48843b.jpg |
Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
Your yellow anemone looks like a Rhodactis, carpet anamones have regular tentacles, Rhodacis have lumpy, branched tntacles.
The encrusting coral is Montipora. You're making me want to get a new clam. |
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