Well time for an update I imagine.
This was the tank a few weeks back ( phone camera seems to pic up a bluer tone than my actual camera )
So far its been one roller-coaster ride, I go from being pleased to frustrated to irritated all the time lol.
Since the photo I've pruned the red grape kelp and found to huge feather dusters near the base-bonus
The RBTA decided it wanted to split so magically one morning I came down to find 2, they hid out in caves for a week and then slowly made their way back up to the top and I have 1 on one side and another the other side of that back tower. They are feeding again but seem still a little shyer than the original, any time I need to work in the tank they retract into their caves
The coral banded shrimp ( CB for short) has grown a bit and is quite the anemone bully, specially when they were lower down
I've also added a mushroom, a ric of some sort I think, I did glue it down, but do not underestimate the persistence of the electric blue banded hermits, came in to find it a week later off its rock and face down in the sand. So I just flipped it right side up and left it on the sand for now. First few nights it was reflipped face down but I think they tired of the game and its been left alone ( fingers crossed )
Got a fragbox order, got 5 zoas/palys : Ring of fire, green crack, space monster, candy apple red and a wysiwyg snow white cluster.
Space monster hasn't opened so not sure if its going to make it, snow white cluster is half open and of course it wouldn't be my tank if there wasn't some weird hitchhiker, a vermetid snail in the snow whites, I glued the hole closed but might have gotten glue on one of the polyps too
Of course every hermit in the tank made a beeline for them, they have some super radar that knows when something new is in the tank, the small hermits are a minor annoyance, the electrics make me want to smack them, they just pull the whole frag plug out of the sand where I planted them, proceed to nibble on any imaginary algae and then dump the zoa face down *sigh*
I sort of have a love/hate relationship with them ( but they were the hubby's pick )
I can say for sure I have 1 female blue leg hermit, happened to catch her trying out a new shell and saw the mass of eggs she was carrying-pretty cool.
On the fish front, well still nothing in the tank, but this weekend the bicolour and mandarin come out of QT, yay! The mandarin will be in heaven I think as there are copepods everywhere, on the glass, sandbed, rocks, they even drift around the tank for fun, they run around on the hermits shells. Its literally a copepod paradise, although once the mandarin goes in I'll hear their screams of horror.
I'll do an update once the fish go in and try to get pictures.