BottomCoastReefs
Active Member
BC Rainbows In Spain: Defying All Odds
First let me state that I enjoy reading Adam’s write ups on Reef2Reef which partly inspired this write up/ review/ telling of one frag’s epic journey to blooming. The other motivation behind this write up is the actual journey that my little frag of Rainbows in Spain (Spainbow) has treaded. Also seeing another thread about the Rainbows in Spain made me want to tell my experience with this little guy. This story begins in a 2014 winter group-buy down here in Texas. I got the Spainbow frag along with a handful of other premium SPS and was absolutely excited to grow the frags out into beautiful colonies but my tank had other plans. I was kinda in between tanks at the time (still am) using a 20gallon long frag tank equipped with a 10gal sump while my 75build was in progress. As you may guess I might have set myself up for an uphill battle keeping things stable with such low water volume. So dumping in SPS who drain water parameters and require stability might not have been the best idea. I just couldn’t refuse the group buy though and my hard headedness came out on top. As you might imagine, the SPS I put in started dropping like flys, of course, but I never gave up on a frag until all the tissue was gone. RTN took a cold grip on each frag 1 by 1 as I watched on hopelessly. When it came around to the Spainbow frag I had lost hope and counted it as another loss but I didn’t want to toss it until all the tissue had RTN’ed. To my amazement the necrosis slowed down as it got to the last quarter at top of the last branch, but was still necrossing. I watched the tissue die on the Spainbow almost in an endless slow destruction like watching Lava from a volcano inch its way across the land. As the necrosis reached the absolute last bit of the frag, the coral decided it would not hang its white flag. I watched on for weeks as the tissue necrosis had reached the absolute LAST polyp at the tip of the frag and just halted. Then I waited waking up each morning expecting for that last polyp to be gone so that I could throw out the dead frag. As the days passed, that SINGLE polyp was still standing unwilling to be slayed by the cold grip of death. Then I decided it was time, time for this polyp’s second chance at survival. In an effort to give it its best shot I decided to frag the polyp off the dead skeleton and glue it onto a fresh slate. Though it had survived the RTN I felt it was still not out of the woods. I questioned if the delicate polyp would survive the fragging and whether I could pull it off without damaging it or stressing it out by touching it with my fingers and such. After all it was just a SINGLE polyp and the slightest miss calculation with the bone cutters or haphazard smear of super glue would have just ruined the whole endeavor. I pulled it off without a hitch though and now it was just the waiting game. I watched on wondering if it had handled being out of the water well while fragging and soon it showed signs of improvement. It gained great polyp extension (singular not plural) as the polyp stretched out its legs and got confortable. Weeks maybe months later it started to encrust and what was once a single polyp now had friends to keep it company. As it grew it would come to realize that RTN was not the only battle it would face in my tank.
I had trouble keeping the water parameters stable as they swung like a mechanical bull knocking out various SPS from the fight, but this booger still stood. Being that the tank is so small I had issues keeping the ALK stable and within range, which is the second battle this frag took head on. At times I would dose too much and have my AlK sit at over 10dkh and other times have it dip to the low 6’s like really low 6.2dkh. Swings of about 2dkh were a norm in this tank that definitely upset the rest of my corals constantly, but to my amazement this frag kept trucking along with new encrustment while never even flinching and losing polyp extension. I believe that having the original frag RTN down to one polyp than bouncing back allowed only the strongest genes to be passed on as the frag grew. After all survival of the fittest am I right? I have since witnessed this Spainbow be the most bullet proof frag in my system not showing signs of stress in extreme low or high DKH’s while other corals showed clear stress. Not only has the Spainbow shown tolerance to DKH instability, but also it has also shown tolerance to high nitrates. At one point I had not kept up with maintenance allowing my nitrates to rise high enough to the point where even my Zoas weren’t having it, but as you may have guessed it, the Spainbow stood valiantly. It seems no matter what I throw at the frag it stood while other corals fell. Just absolutely fascinates me, but that pretty much sums up my write up of an extraordinary journey a single polyp has faced. Hopefully it has been a good read and a testimony to the resilience that life can demonstrate against all odds when the cards are stacked against them.
-Tizoc
First let me state that I enjoy reading Adam’s write ups on Reef2Reef which partly inspired this write up/ review/ telling of one frag’s epic journey to blooming. The other motivation behind this write up is the actual journey that my little frag of Rainbows in Spain (Spainbow) has treaded. Also seeing another thread about the Rainbows in Spain made me want to tell my experience with this little guy. This story begins in a 2014 winter group-buy down here in Texas. I got the Spainbow frag along with a handful of other premium SPS and was absolutely excited to grow the frags out into beautiful colonies but my tank had other plans. I was kinda in between tanks at the time (still am) using a 20gallon long frag tank equipped with a 10gal sump while my 75build was in progress. As you may guess I might have set myself up for an uphill battle keeping things stable with such low water volume. So dumping in SPS who drain water parameters and require stability might not have been the best idea. I just couldn’t refuse the group buy though and my hard headedness came out on top. As you might imagine, the SPS I put in started dropping like flys, of course, but I never gave up on a frag until all the tissue was gone. RTN took a cold grip on each frag 1 by 1 as I watched on hopelessly. When it came around to the Spainbow frag I had lost hope and counted it as another loss but I didn’t want to toss it until all the tissue had RTN’ed. To my amazement the necrosis slowed down as it got to the last quarter at top of the last branch, but was still necrossing. I watched the tissue die on the Spainbow almost in an endless slow destruction like watching Lava from a volcano inch its way across the land. As the necrosis reached the absolute last bit of the frag, the coral decided it would not hang its white flag. I watched on for weeks as the tissue necrosis had reached the absolute LAST polyp at the tip of the frag and just halted. Then I waited waking up each morning expecting for that last polyp to be gone so that I could throw out the dead frag. As the days passed, that SINGLE polyp was still standing unwilling to be slayed by the cold grip of death. Then I decided it was time, time for this polyp’s second chance at survival. In an effort to give it its best shot I decided to frag the polyp off the dead skeleton and glue it onto a fresh slate. Though it had survived the RTN I felt it was still not out of the woods. I questioned if the delicate polyp would survive the fragging and whether I could pull it off without damaging it or stressing it out by touching it with my fingers and such. After all it was just a SINGLE polyp and the slightest miss calculation with the bone cutters or haphazard smear of super glue would have just ruined the whole endeavor. I pulled it off without a hitch though and now it was just the waiting game. I watched on wondering if it had handled being out of the water well while fragging and soon it showed signs of improvement. It gained great polyp extension (singular not plural) as the polyp stretched out its legs and got confortable. Weeks maybe months later it started to encrust and what was once a single polyp now had friends to keep it company. As it grew it would come to realize that RTN was not the only battle it would face in my tank.
I had trouble keeping the water parameters stable as they swung like a mechanical bull knocking out various SPS from the fight, but this booger still stood. Being that the tank is so small I had issues keeping the ALK stable and within range, which is the second battle this frag took head on. At times I would dose too much and have my AlK sit at over 10dkh and other times have it dip to the low 6’s like really low 6.2dkh. Swings of about 2dkh were a norm in this tank that definitely upset the rest of my corals constantly, but to my amazement this frag kept trucking along with new encrustment while never even flinching and losing polyp extension. I believe that having the original frag RTN down to one polyp than bouncing back allowed only the strongest genes to be passed on as the frag grew. After all survival of the fittest am I right? I have since witnessed this Spainbow be the most bullet proof frag in my system not showing signs of stress in extreme low or high DKH’s while other corals showed clear stress. Not only has the Spainbow shown tolerance to DKH instability, but also it has also shown tolerance to high nitrates. At one point I had not kept up with maintenance allowing my nitrates to rise high enough to the point where even my Zoas weren’t having it, but as you may have guessed it, the Spainbow stood valiantly. It seems no matter what I throw at the frag it stood while other corals fell. Just absolutely fascinates me, but that pretty much sums up my write up of an extraordinary journey a single polyp has faced. Hopefully it has been a good read and a testimony to the resilience that life can demonstrate against all odds when the cards are stacked against them.
-Tizoc
