Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Lance, the stuff in the upper background of the Rhodactis pic is dead coral. It used to be a great big piece of blue coral, which I believe to be exactly what the thing in the bottom pic is.
The guy that sold me the frag in the bottom pic busted up a great big pile of it, he had pics of what it looked like before he destroyed it.

I found a pic of the Rhodactis, and it looks exactly right. Rhodactis cf. Inchoata. It's growing INSANELY fast. It used to look just like the pic I'll post below, but it's a lot different now and much bigger. There's actually three pieces, but there's no way to tell anymore.
Here's what it looked like before it started getting huge...

http://directsealife.com/shop/images...n%20green).jpg

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

That large skeleton in the upper back LOOKS like a potato chip coral, lettuce coral, whatever you like,
just the way the lobes are oriented....Pavona Species anyway. If we are talking about the same thing.
I need to watch the video again to see what it is that you say ?self-fragged? maybe?
Not sure what you were saying. I think Lance can tell you the dangers of Rhodactis. It's like the green
star polyps of the mushroom world, lol.

OK, I looked on the previous page and see now what you are talking about. If that is 'supposed' to be,
or as you put it, smacks of a leather coral, then I think you have a Porites species there. If it is blue, then
that is reaslly something. I wish I had that. They are also tough to keep alive, put em way up top once you
feel it is acclimated, turbid water and MAYBE target feed? They tend to be out much more at night when in
captivity, so if you can't get it eating in the daytime, you may have trouble keeping it alive. This is the
species of coral that you often see called "worm rock", "Christmas-tree worm rock" or "Bisma rock" It's one
of my personal favorites, if in fact that's what it is. Of course the bisma rock is a much different TYPE of porites.
And I only THINK that's what it is, but that's a great pic, btw.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Brad, go to liveaquaria and look up Montipora. It comes in blue. I have a Porites that was originally a worm rock that the worms all died in but the coral is ten times bigger now. Stupid Rhodactis are always trying to carpet it.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

The Montipora I see available are too spindly to be this, at least IMVUO (very-uninformed-opinion.) haha. I had a green montipora
that I killed, sadlol. But I am going to stick with Porites, just on the clumpy and stubby fingers. Check out Porites at the same site.
See how height is achieved by a larger central clump, where in Montipora, height is achieved by longer fingers FROM the clump.
Now, with the COLOR morph, yes, that gives me pause. I am not sure Porites has a blue color morph....hmm. Couple that with
the fact that didn't Scott say he got it from F & S ?? Not sure they offer anything like what he has in porites. What has me
latched onto porites is the "skin" of the coral, the encrusting part. Porites I have seen, even including bisma rock, has this "microfibery"
looking skin like that.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Brad, this guy is brown and looks like a leather outside, but he has a rock hard skeleton. His skeleton is blue/white.
That thing that is in the background is just a great big blue/white skeleton that I bought years ago in florida cause it was gorgeous. It ended up in the fish tank cause I got tired of looking at it. :)
I suppose my insistance that the two are even remotely related is pretty nonsensical and uninformed. I just thought the similarity was cool.
That brown lump I have has little polyps. You can see them. They used to just come out at night. Now they come out more often.
He's currently at the bottom of the tank, I haven't moved him up for lack of a place to put him.
Lisa's trumpet fell down, so now I have a reason to go diving again. I'll reattach it and sit the brown un-named guy up higher. :tu

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

So the skin is brown, and where the skin is scraped off, or underneath the base, it is blue/white??
hmmm. This is a mystery. I stick with my theory, but again, I am a seriously under-informed individual
who bases a lot of what I think I know on me thinking I am smarter than I actually am, lol. ;) But
whatever it is, you are lucky to have it. I love mystery corals that go from being pissed off to being beautiful
specimens. If the coral is realtively heavy for it's size, I also vote porites, haha. Mr. broken Record.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

I think you guys might be on track with Montipora, cause I recognize the name.
The outside is brown, you can see the polyps in the pic.
The inside is hard, a beautiful blue/white. I'll get a pic later when I move him.
I got him from a frag swap. The guys have pics of the great big lump it came from, he smashed it all up and had lots of pieces there, along with pics of the mother lump.

Here's the pic again, maybe it'll help...

http://i925.photobucket.com/albums/a...a/6e48843b.jpg

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

I am also thinking the spacing of the polyps may end up being important, porites is more of a carpet of polyps
that are wide and flat, these are more stalked and super widely spaced. I have to admit, I am not sure.
But is is fun guessing and doing something on this slow-a$$ forum.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Maybe Montipora Digitata?
I have never seen sweeper tentacles at night, but that doesn't mean they aren't there. I can start watching?

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

The skeleton my not be it's own. Motipora is like stony star polyp and encrusts whatever it can. It would be lettuce leaflike if it didn't have something else to grow on.

Edit: M. digitata sounds like something that would be branching.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Got ya, Lance. That'd probably make it Montipora, right?
Mind ya, this was a great big piece before it got smashed. I don't know if that says "grown" or "stole it's host", but it's definately not on rock, it's on coral. (If that helps.)

Brad, the Porites Cylindrica looks a lot like it, too.

From reading, I see it's important to find out what it is to know how to care for it. Aaargh.

This is giving me a headache.
I gotta go hook up my trailer and fetch my motorcycle at the shop. I sure hope you guys come up with something!!! :D

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

AH, it doesn't matter....pretty soon it will be 'my brown coral that I like'. You may find out eventually through
the father of the frag. Wish I was picking up a motorcycle.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Wow! I think this is it.
Not even SPS. If you look at the polyps and they have 8 symmetrical tentacles then it's an octocoral. This sounds like a cool specimen, if it doesn't try to take over the whole tank. I just sent a bunch of Rhodactis on a ride "in the water park". Wheeee!

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

I think you're right, Lance. If I remember corectly, the dead coral in the background that I keep blathering about was called a Blue Ridge Coral when I bought it years ago down in Florida.
The odds of me seeing 8 symmetrical tentacles are slim to none. I'll take a pic with my good camera and CSI it, then I'll be able to count them.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Our tanks are truly amazing ecosystems.....

My liferock had more than a couple of hitchhikers on it.....What shocks me is the amount of new life which pops up even to this day (I dip my corals, etc; so 99% sure that whatever pops up was in the rock to begin with). Check out this little guy I captured tonight. He was just roaming around the sand - so an easy catch:

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_I...0/IMG_1227.JPG

Any idea as to what he could be ? He's TINY right now; maybe about the size of a penny. I do recall seeing some larger crabs which looked kinda like him when I first got the LR; judging by their claws I didn't feel like they were 'reef safe' so I sump'd them. Clearly I missed a couple and/or the ones in the sump were doing some XXX activities down there :D
I moved him down to the sump; as the spots on his back make be believe he's most likely from the xanthidae family.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

He's just a baby by the looks of him, Steve. He could probably turn into anything. Maybe I Sally Lightfoot? Hell, I don't know.

I went to Aquacon in Pittsburgh today. Got some D-T Phyto, some frozen Cyclopeeze, and 10 or 11 little frags out of the cheapo bin. I got a couple decent stalks of Pulsing Xenia, and we're thrilled about it. :D
I also got a big fat sea hare to do some cleaning. I stopped and got 3 bottles of super glue gel to fix all the stuff he wrecks.
We didn't see any big stuff we liked too much, and everything was covered with bubble algae and anemones. So we just passed on the few things we did like.

My D-D refractometer came today and I'm thrilled with it. It works great and you calibrate it with RODI water. My water was perfect.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Nice - PICS :D

I need to get to the LFS today and get some pH calibrating fluid....Lost power two days ago for about 10mins and ever since my pH probe has been way off....I hope to pick up another mini-carpet 'nem they had there last week - looks really nice.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

No pics yet, they're just sitting in the sand. The lights haven't even been on them yet. I'll probably check them for critters again tonight to make sure there's nothing on there that shouldn't be. Then I'll check them a week or so from now.
Everyone gets fed today, and that should pick them up, too. They should be a lot bigger for pics in a real short time. :tu

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Came home tonight to a 'pod explosion ! Everything was jumping around; even the urchin was on the glass (something it never did before).

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/phot...eat=directlink

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

That is too cool, Steve. Thank You!!! :tu

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Hey guys, another question...
The frags I got Saturday, is it possible to take them off the ceramic discs, or better to leave them alone?
I can see that some are superglued on there pretty crazy, and I'll never get them off. Some I may be able to.
I guess I just want to hear "Leave them alone and just glue them to your rock" before I start killing them all. :D

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Just glue the disc.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

+1. Sometimes I'll take a small nail file and roughen up the disc...It helps with both glue and biological adhesion.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Thanks, guys. Will do. :tu

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

One more new addition....I actually was going to get this guy last week when I picked up the neon yellow one....But at the time this one was not being cooperative and wouldn't come unstuck. So we moved all the sand away from his foot; and once he moved the LFS snagged him for me.

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/_I.../IMG_00183.jpg

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

The heck is that, Steve?
It's badass, but you have some kinda funkadelic lighting going on there.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

ITs a carpet anemone under 20k lights (just a guess)

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Yep, Carpet 'Nem.
Not sure what color temp the lights were....Im running AI LED's, where each puck is 1 warm white, one blue, and one royal blue LED. I was just messing with the color blend to find what made the guy pop out.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

At the frag swap just awhile ago, the guys were running led's that made everything blue, but the corals would fluoresce. It gave everything a black light/neon paint look.
I didn't like it at all, but if you could mix in a little of that light like I guess you're doing, just to make the corals "pop", that'd be nice to bring out some definition.
Can you mix them up like that, or will one type of lighting overpower another and kill the effect?
Ahh, I think I get it. You have led pucks where you can just concentrate a spotlight?

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Scott -
Here's a link to the lights:
http://www.aquaillumination.com/sol/#intensity

Each unit has 8 pucks in it. Each puck contains 1 warm white, 1 blue, 1 royal. Each of those colors is operated on a different channel...So you can control on/off and intensity for each color. Dependent upon intensity, you can adjust the color temp. So if you look at the tank and think its too blue, you just bump the blue intensity down a little, and bring the white up a little (so you have the same actual PAR)...Or visa versa.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

I woke up in the middle of the night last night convinced I need some of those lights, Steve. I must have been dreaming about them. I don't even remotely need any. :D

So, when I woke up, I came downstairs to have a pop tart. I grabbed my flashlight out of my drawer and saw great big sweeper tentacles coming out of the potato chip coral. That's a first time for that.
I also saw four snail looking things all hanging out together on the front glass down by the substrate. They don't appear to have shells, or they just have a flat shell like a turtle shell that blends with the whiteness of their bodies.
I saw one of them before, it came in on a piece of coral. I thought it was cool, and it was from a good source, so I let it be.
Any idea what those things are? They're about the size of a pinky fingernail (and smaller).

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

I thought once my chip coral was disintegrating in swirly aludge...it was only sweepers. Mine were only about 2 inches.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Sounds like a stomatella Scott. Dont worry about them. :D

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

I fully expected mine to be in a giant knot this morning. It seems to have worked itself out. :D

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

I checked pics, Mark. That's what they are.:tu
I suppose they were probably all gathered together making sexy time last night. Any babies that eat stuff I don't want in there are okay by me.

On another front, my big, fat sea hare made an appearance this morning, right after I told Lisa I hadn't seen him for a couple days.
The pic sucks, but it'll do...

http://i925.photobucket.com/albums/a...a/8c3559ff.jpg

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

As you can see, I'm not much of a cleaner. :D
Hopefully Lisa will help me glue some critters and then I can clean the front really good. I like to leave the back and sides for the animals to take care of.
I suppose I should change some water, as well. I was overfeeding pretty bad, I just wanted the new corals to have plenty to eat. Now I have a mess again.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

When I was up having my pop tart/reef check last night, I spotted a possible one of those bad anemones, the little brown ones. I always forget the name.
Whatever it is, it gets killed soon.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Scott -
Speaking of those bad anemones (Either Apastia or Majano)...I picked up this niffty little thing last week which allows you to electrocute them...Its fun, and more effective than the other methods :D

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

LINK? this sounds amusing.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

That's what I'm talkin about. :tu
I've never had a one, but with all the new corals, I knew it was bound to happen sooner or later. A cattle prod would be way better than mooshing them and wiping them off with a paper towel. :D

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

I found this. It looks like a blast. :tu

Here's where I found them for sale.
It's a new product and there's a patent pending, so apparently they're hard to come by. That first link has the inventor's email where supposedly you can contact him directly and buy one.
Waiting to see where Steve got his...

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Hrmm - that one looks interesting ! Here's where I got mine:

http://tropicalreefcorals.com/produc...id_product=155

Quite honest, I am on the fence with what design I like better. The one that Scott found is nice - because both electrodes are on the same wand. The one I ordered the electrodes are separate; which may mean that its easier to replace/maintain in the future.....Granted I don't think you'll go through electrodes anytime soon - but it IS saltwater; and damn these things are expensive.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

I found a DIY thread for one like the one you have, Steve.
I only looked at the initial pics, haven't read the thread yet. It'd definately very easy to make. Not so easy right now with my shop in boxes, but it will be once I'm unpacked.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

I should have my zapper finished today. I used RTV silicone to seal it up which takes longer than hot glue but I trust it more. I made it 100% from parts that were just around.
Some chemistry facts:
Oxygen and chlorine end up as the gas on the (+) electrode that you are zapping with. That is probably the way it is killing.
Hydrogen, sodium, magnesium, calcium, etc. go to the (-) graphite electrode. I'm thinking this will mess up that electrode after a while.
I don't think the electricity by itself is killing anything.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Finished the zapper and tried it in some salt water. It bubbles pretty good. Can't wait to get home and try it on some anemones.
A little more I figured out about the chemistry. The chlorine you can smell. There must be some sodium being produced on the graphite electrode. This would react instantly with the water to produce NaOH (lye) and more hydrogen. It also would produce a lot of heat. The chemicals are not a problem as most tanks will buffer them away but the heat could get to be a problem if you were to use a switch that stayed on instead of a momentary switch. Then again, the water may keep it cooled. Just a thought.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Lance, I did a bunch of forum reading when the zapper first got mentioned. The only thing they said that you didn't say is to re-up your carbon to buffer the chlorine.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

I tried the zapper on about 20 majano. They shriveled up at least as bad as injecting them with kalkwasser would have done. I didn't zap any aiptasia yet, they are more fragile anyway. In my experience majano can come back from being almost gone, but aiptasia disappear quickly. Now to see if the majano recover or not. This is still easier than injecting them.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Lance, one of the guys who built his own said you could jam the wire right through the anemone, zap it, and it'd lift right away. I guess that depended on the size, I suppose? It'd be nice to get them out of there rather than have all the dead stuff, I was thinking.
Other guys said one zap would turn them to jelly, which is contrary to what the videos showed.
Let me know what happens exactly, will ya?

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Maybe an Aiptasia might melt but Majano are pretty sturdy. Mine shrivel up as if I put Joe's Juice on them. My probe is a little too thick to be poking through some of the small ones and if I could get to them easily I would scrape them out with my custom built scraper. I am not going to kill more than 15-20 at a time so the bristle worms, serpent stars, hermit crabs, and who knows what else can take care of the clean up.

Re: The Official Asylum Reef Tank Thread
 

Good thinking, Lance. :tu
I was gonna ask you to make me one cause I don't have time, but I also don't have a problem yet, so there's that. :D
I'll make one later this Fall if it's necessary. I kept the DIY plans, so I'm good. I remember how to make it, anyways, so the plans don't much matter, even.