You have some great looking pieces there Christy :). Those soon to be colonies are just gonna be da bomb!

looking real good Christy, there are couple in there that will be showstoppers once they are grown out.iI really like the red digi, so often you see them in a rusty brown color not the deep red you have . Might need a piece of that one one day once it grows out a little.:)

This man speaks the TRUTH!!!

That is an awesome digi!

Wow that seems to be a popular one! It fell over on my pink lemonade and burned it the other day so I turfed it to the back forty. Guess I should re-mount it and make a killing off frags from you guys :wink:

There don't seem to be too many vibrant orange or red corals in the SPS world, not that I've seen anyways.

I for one would love to have a piece of your.....um .....digi:, Christy:wink:

Pretty hard up these days eh Doug? Have you tried eharmony.com?:razz:

it shows that much huh?:neutral:
but, Canreef is my eharmony....what better place place to find someone with the same interests?:wink:

but seriously, if logistics ever allow....I would love to get a frag of it from ya.

Been awhile since I updated this thread. Green slime is mostly gone, cyano still hanging in there in a couple of spots. I just siphon it out when it gets really annoying.


Got some new photos today :biggrin:

Todays FTS

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...june112010.jpg

New addition: Powder Blue Tang. I had one previously in the tank but he was a little bastard to new additions. Solution, send him off to a new tank and add a new one last. Well last tang anyways (and don't hold me to that). He's super mellow and guess what? He has ick! No way you say? Yes way, I know, shocking. Course everyone else has it too so when you see it in the photos, don't be too surprised.

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_8919.jpg

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_8921.jpg

I have yet to see him eat what I offer. He fills up on algae though, no lumpy gut or anything.

Course everyone else wanted to get in on the photo action:

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_8938.jpg

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_8923.jpg

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_8932.jpg

Clams are growing nicely
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_8927.jpg

The others look like hell as they're still being snacked on. I've ordered an autofeeder to feed the Fat Bastard (aka regal tang) during the day so hopefully he'll lose his taste for clam mantle.

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_8925.jpg

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_8899.jpg

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_8888.jpg

My version of the Purple Monster. Its not authentic so I call it the Purple Monstrosity
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_8883.jpg

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_8863.jpg

Early to bed, late to rise makes a fish....lazy. My wrasse sleeping in his sandbed :)
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_8864.jpg

Is that your Melanarus sleeping in the sandbed?? Mine is the first to bed as well. He calls it a day about 8:10 on the dot! 10 minutes after day lights out and doesn't even partake in the evening feeding frenzy of frozen food goodness which happens at 8:15. Plus there's still a good 2 hours of light left :neutral:.

Yep thats him. He heads to bed around 9:30 or so. He gets up early on sunny days as there is enough light coming through the nearby window for him to wake up to but on days it rains/cloudy he waits until the first MH comes on :biggrin:

My canary wrasse goes to bed around 7:30- 8:00 too. No idea what he's cueing on for time because there are no light changes around then. Internal chronometer alone I guess.

I came home today at 5pm and I asked my wife whether she saw the Hawaiian flame wrasse and she said "I don't know" then I proceeded to look all around the floor and in my stand to see if she jumped. I ended up finding my Solarensis wrasse that "disappeared" quite a few months ago all dried up. I was quite frantic at this point and fed some "frozen goodness". Out she comes from under the sand and has supper and swims around for about an hour and then heads "back to bed". Is this normal for wrasses to be lazy?

I think that if they don't have a chick to show off for then yes, they're lazy. Get him a girlfriend. I'm thinking about it for my melanurus. I'm not sure if I would have to increase the sandbed size or just add another one :razz:

Your Orange Shoulder is GORGEOUS! Can't wait til mine looks like that...sorry, I much prefer the adult coloration. LOVE the Powder Blue too...would really really like to add one at some point...but....we'll see! Tank is looking absolutely spectacular Christy!!!!!!

Thanks Sarah. My Orange shoulder still has a bit of the yellowy tinge to it, can't wait till it gets the two tone grey. He looks jaundice-y at this point and it bugs me sometimes :razz:

PBT is a MUST for el giganto tank!!! :mrgreen:

Have you seen the price tag for a Hawaiian flame wrasse :shocked!: and I wouldn't have a clue how to sex them. I have only seen them at the store once in my life....they aren't a common fish.

Argh... BTW - love your melanurus' bed. It's like a little sand box that you buy for a little kid :biggrin:

Oh, I had no idea. Lucky melanurus wrasses are like birds. The guys are flamboyantly colored, the chicks have way more faded colors, like they've been left out in the sun too long.

Yeah that sandbox was the best I could do with not having a sandbed (and having no interest in installing one). I'm glad it worked, took him a few days to find it but the change in his personality was immediate. It was like watching a frenetic insomniac finally get some sleep and return to a normal state (that being crusing around the tank eating anything that dares to stick its appendage out of the rock and sleeping late/going to bed early:razz:).

Looking good Christy. Beautiful PB tang. Mr. Regal had not problems with him?

Love the sandbox. Great idea. I used it once when moving tanks or something for my leopards.

The only thing the regal really cares about is eating every bit of food at feeding time, he doesn't really pay much attention to who I add to the tank for the most part, gives them a once over upon introduction, then is off and running.

The fish are looking good and I love the home made/make shift sand bed for the wrasse. I wonder if something like that would be good for my elegance coral. Right now it's on a BB, seems to be ok but I wonder if it would open up even more if it was on a sand bed.

Beautiful tank Christy. Comming along very nicely.

So this week I went on a bit of a killing spree. And I enjoyed it! :twised: Does that make me a bad person??

The tank has been pretty neglected lately, and by neglected I mean I do all the usual waterchanges, skimmer cup cleaning etc but not much looking other than to feed, count the fish, make sure they are all fat and then move on. Suffice it to say when I actually looked at it there are frigging majanos, aiptasia, flatworms, bubble algae and brown wafer algae all over the place.

Enough of that crap. I broke out the flatworm exit and used almost the whole bottle on the tank. Die you stinking flatworms! Who knew there were that many on the tank, I kind of laughed at the instructions "Do not underestimate the number of flatworms in your tank". Yeah thats for sure, they were dying in droves! I thought I had siphoned most of them out. Apparently not :rolleyes:

Next, aiptasia and majanos. I mixed up some superconcentrated Aiptasia Destroyer and went to town on them. Some are pretty difficult to get as they're growing on an angle so you can't really pile on the solution (I like to make little Matterhorn mountains on top of them for good measure). I think I blasted most of them. I even put some of the solution on patches of brown wafer algae just for fun. Works like a hot damn. Unfortunately I'd take out my tank if I attempted to get all the wafer algae.

As for the bubble algae and the rest of the brown wafer algae, I've decided to get back on the FM Ultralith system. Even though I thought it was a pain in the arse measuring all the solutions (why can't they make little pumps for them, one pump = 1ml or something?) it did do a great job of eliminating almost every algae present in the tank the last time I used it. Well, except for the dreaded caulerpa which seems to be impossible to get rid of :rolleyes:

Some new acquisitions from the frag swap :biggrin:

Lobophyllia from Terry
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_8983.jpg

Gorgonian from Anthony
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_8973.jpg

Sea whip from Anthony
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_8969.jpg

Fancypants montipora from Chris
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_8981.jpg

Marshall Island Acro and Hot to trot cyphastrea (I can't remember what it was called so I made that up) from Ron
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_8977.jpg

And some new acquisitions not from the frag swap :razz:

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_8966.jpg

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_8985.jpg

And just because I love it so and its growing like a weed. My pink lemonade MINI COLONY!!!! :cheer2:

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_8970.jpg

And when I got it last October (funny I thought it was longer than that)

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/Img_7142.jpg

I can grow SPS! Who knew!!??!:wink:

Looks Great Christy some nice pieces you have there

looks great. you can grow SPS
"Hot to trot cyphastrea " i like that! where can i get a frag?
OH and WTH is wafer algae?
:question:

LOL I just remembered its called a Toxic Cyphastrea. I like Hot to Trot better :razz:

Brown Wafer Algae = scurge of the deep

Also known as Lobophora sp.

http://i7.photobucket.com/albums/y28...5/P1010562.jpg

Photo stolen from google who stole it from someones photobucket :razz:

Christy this tank is looking good. Some really nice stuff you have in there.

:clap2: Lookin' good Christy!

No problems from the exit Christy. Still my favourite treatment. To heck with the natural cures. :lol: Good ole Flatworm Exit always worked well for me, for various things.

I had a bad bubble algae problem awhile back, and when in Winnipeg, picked up a pair of red mythrix crabs, as he had none of the regular green ones.

Man they ate everything that looked like algae including all the bubble algae. But wholley cow did they grow. One molted and was twice the size. Never bothered anything that I could see. They both reside in different tanks now. Perhaps the big one is eating Mike,s fish. :lol:

Corals are looking good though.

Are you not into the beads scenario or tried and not helping?

yeah I was thinking yesterday that if only they could make a majano or aiptasia exit that worked as efficiently I'd buy stocks in salifert! :wink:


yeah I'm running the beads, to be honest I don't think they're doing a bloody thing. I still have patches of cyano and the green slimy crap. I have a feeling that I don't have enough nitrate or phosphate to get them going. I ended up having to put phosban on the tank to lower the algae levels as the phosphate levels had started to rise and the beads weren't kicking in. When I finally got the cyano/green slime under control (its only in a few areas now) I thought the beads might have been working and fed the tank a bit more but I think that only created more problems with pests and algae growth.

Time to bring out the big guns I guess :razz:

Nice tank... any tank that wins reef of the month shows the person knows what they are doing :-)

That is VERY nice christy! Grow it BIG! :mrgreen:

If you ever decide to prune that "weed" let me know I would love to come and help :D ... some time after I get my tank set up.

Just got back from 10 days vacation and everything looks good for the most part, no corals lost but my royal gramma and one of my pyjama cardinals is missing. I'm hoping the gramma is just ****ed off and hiding somewhere, I've had him for almost 4 years :neutral: I didn't have high hopes for the cardinals as I bought 3 of them and they were having difficulties with the current and hiding next to the wavebox in a low flow area. As a result they need target feeding and well, they're pretty stunned fish.

The tank will need some work, it hasn't had a waterchange in about 3.5 weeks and the coral coloration isn't as bright as it used to be. With the reactors all offline the algae growth has surged and I see bunches of caulerpa and some sort of other algae which I know the name of but I'll be damned if I can remember which book I saw it in.

No pictures, I just finished working on the tank for about 3 hours and my back is done.

Glad to hear that you didn't come back to a disaster.
How was the vacation?

Welcome back Christy! The PJ's will come around. I've had one for going on 3 years and he was like yours at first. After awhile though he learned to come out and get his grub at feeding time. They lose a little timidity after awhile.

The vacation was great, we went to my husbands family cabin at a lake near Fernie, the weather was damned near perfect (which equals sunny with a breeze so I don't die of the heat) except for a couple stormy/rainy days which were kind of neat.

Its funny, the pyjama cardinals come out when the lights are out so it must not necessarily be a flow issue as nothing gets changed at night, I guess with all the big fish they figure they might end up as a snack so they only come out after everyone has gone to bed.

Found my royal gramma, he came out to eat a few minutes ago!!!!!!!!!:mrgreen::mrgreen::mrgreen:

PJ's are naturally a nocturnal fish. They will change this in captivity though. Hurray! Glad you found the R.G. :biggrin:

Yay! It's always nice when you find a lost fish.

Another update as I've decided to start ultralith and today is the day. Looking at the tank, the nutrient load is just far too high, rampant algae, majanos, vermetid snails etc have got to go or at least get toned down some. My previous use of ultralith eliminated brown wafer algae and well, most algaes except for coralline and caulerpa. It also seemed to eliminate vermetid snails. I can't remember if I had aiptasia or majanos at the time but hopefully it slows their growth too.

Looking at some of the corals, they've really lost a lot of color due to the excess nutrient load. Its nothing that can't be fixed via waterchanges and due diligence with feeding but its the algae that bugs me the most, that and the majanos which I think I counted about 50 more pop up while I was gone. So much for the killing spree.

This is a crap photo but you can sort of see the corals have diminished in color some from last month:

July 30
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...july302010.jpg

June 11
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...june112010.jpg

Ugh those are terrible photos and you can't really see much of anything. My "indicator coral" which tells me how happy the tank is and how happy I am with the tank is the big pink Pocillipora damicornis on the left hand side. Here is a closer shot:

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_9039.jpg

Its spent most of its life being the funny shade of browny pink it is today and I've spent most of its life trying to make it the lovely pink it was on June 11th. I'm determined to get it back there.

Some comparison photos of coral coloration:

June 11th
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_8888.jpg

July 30
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_9061.jpg


June 11
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_8901.jpg

July 30
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_9040.jpg

And just some shots of various pests I want gone from the tank for later comparison:

Wafer algae:
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_9045.jpg

Halimeda:
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_9042.jpg

Majanos:
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b3...0/IMG_9064.jpg

In the FTS comparison pics the Regal tang is in almost exactly the same position. :biggrin:
Good luck with the ultralith. I hope it works for you.