Greetings from Turkey!

memorisa · Feb 23, 2009

Hi all,

Guess this is a post long overdue. I was introduced to the site by my friend pufferpunk, and have been browsing ever since. Before I made a post elsewhere figured I'd come and say hello here.

Well, I am from Turkey. Have had FW tanks for about 23 years or so. SW has always been a dream and finally started one 2 years ago after moving back home from the States. Now I have a 265 gal. reef with mostly softies. Lately I have been obsessed with zoas - and just been binging on frags - so my tank looks like a frag tank w/ LR and fish

I hope to expand my collection and grow colonies from those frags.

Other than that, guess one thing to mention is that even though we can keep up with most of the stuff through online resources, actually getting those stuff is sometimes nearly impossible. which saddens me a lot and keeps me dreaming of alot of the beautiful polyps, sleek lightning and even the great stuff foam (still can't believe its not here)

Anyways, I look forward to chit chatting and sharing info/pics with you all.

BuyTheReef · Feb 23, 2009

Welcome!!!!!!!!!

mak060 · Feb 23, 2009

Welcome to R2R. I like your introduction!

pakora · Feb 23, 2009

Welcome and to me having a 265gallon tank is a dream! lucky you!

Saltysteele · Feb 23, 2009

Welcome! Glad to have you here!

revhtree · Feb 23, 2009

Welcome to R2R!

memorisa · Feb 23, 2009

Thanks for the warm welcomes everyone.

dfurbee · Feb 23, 2009

Welcome to R2R!!

str8salt · Feb 23, 2009

welcome. How about some pics of your tank?

JGoslee · Feb 23, 2009

Welcome to R2R!

Pufferpunk · Feb 23, 2009

You need to tell them our story...

memorisa · Feb 24, 2009

Pufferpunk said:
You need to tell them our story...

Hehe... well, at the end of last year, my friend was visiting Chicago for a few days; and in high hopes and low probability I posted a message on CMAS forums asking for zoas and palys. Puffer offered to help and she did more than that at the end!

I got a few frags from 2 other fellow aquarists and had them ship/deliver to puffer. Then she and her friend packed them all in a lunch box - no water, damp paper towel, and no frag discs/plugs.

We weren't sure how to get them all the way to this side of the globe, but FedEx would not have worked because it was a national holiday over here. So my friend took em aboard in his luggage on his flight. However, his flight from chicago to london was delayed and he missed his connecting flight to turkey. well, he then flew to munich and caught a flight home there.

But... his luggages never made it to that flight. we searched and found that they were still in london and had them delivered to istanbul. at the end i received my frags after 55 hours and immediately started gluing them to frag discs. not all were doing good, it probably took about 2 weeks for them to open (for those that opened). Somehow there popped a few nudis which kept me up a few nights in a row. Then there was a fungus infection. On top of all this I didn't really have iodine dip handy. No lugols solution, furan2, salifert flatworm exit or anything of that sort was available in turkey. at the end i lost about half the frags i think

but looking at the glass being half full, i now have a number of frags that are most likely the only ones of their kind in my country.

Sorry for the long post, but that's our story.

p.s.> I am always looking to get some frags from fellow adventurist aquarists. pm me!

rarelyseriousb · Feb 24, 2009

wow that is a good story. It would be cool to have the rarest frags in the country. even if they are not the best pieces.

Pufferpunk · Feb 24, 2009

Actually, my GF didn't show for the packing, so I packed them all myself. And tell the truth... you had those nudies before our frags got there, right?

rarelyseriousb · Feb 24, 2009

whats GF?

Pufferpunk · Feb 24, 2009

Girlfriend.

ahayes13 · Feb 24, 2009

hi. welcome to r2r!

rarelyseriousb · Feb 24, 2009

oh ok im not hip to the internet abbreviations. lol

memorisa · Feb 25, 2009

Pufferpunk said:
Actually, my GF didn't show for the packing, so I packed them all myself. And tell the truth... you had those nudies before our frags got there, right?

Oh I didn't know you packed them all yourself. Guess I never asked again, once we made the plan. Thank you very much again.

As for the nudis, actually I am not too sure. (I wasn't trying to accuse anyone though, sorry if it came out like that.) Because as we were talking while the frags were in transit, I dipped all my older frags and inspected them for any possible threat to the new comers. I found that asterina star, and didn't know at the time about it - and once again thanks to you I learnt and had to go back the next day (the day the new frags arrived) to seek and destroy.
Then, they day after the arrival - I hadn't dipped the new frags in FW or lugols, just had TLF ReVive at the time- I found what I thought was a green nudi. Then the hunt began, I found 2 others. I found the first nudi in close proximity to one of the new frags, however it wasn't a green one. (so it is not very certain based on this)
Then Rob had mentioned how he got stung (?) by a nudi while preparing my frags. Which made me question whether it was from the new frags. Also because I didn't have any more than those 3-4 that I found. Even though I picked up a yellow coris within a week of the nudi discovery, I had to wait a few days in between. So, I'm thinking since no eggs, and no more than a few nudis, they had to be hitchhiking nudis and none that had established a home in a colony that was in my tank.

Anyhow sorry for such a long post (I'm still not awake yet and can't be precise with a second language at this time :tongue: ) - but long story short, I don't know where the nudis came from, but -knock on wood- haven't had one pop up since then.

p.s: And I was thankful again last night for the valuable information you shared, in this new colony I got from Fiji, I had about 11 zoa eating spiders. If I hadn't known about them, I would have probably overlooked it. The sneaky jerks were hiding inside the polyps. Well the first one was, then once I knew what to look for the rest followed.
-Anyone know if those guys lay eggs or something? There were greenish stuff that was stuck on some polyps as well. They were hard and roundish in shape but flattish dome shaped in dimension with white marks. And these white spheres with spikes (very very tiny.) (sorry should I be posting that elsewhere in the forums?)

p.p.s: str8salt, I will try to post a pic when I get home tonite. Also I was going to post some pics of my zoas too. But I don't know the names of a few of them, should I post them in eye candy thread (although they are not much of a candy compared to what you guys have) or make a new thread to get some help with ID'ing in exchange of pics

? (learning my way around the forums, hehe)