Perseverance Reef

[tbrown]

Sounds good. I’m getting three 5 to 10 gallon tanks for free from a friend who’s downsizing. I would use a bucket though if I wasn’t getting the tanks. One will be for the reservoir, one will be for culturing various creatures such as bristle worms, asterinas, limpets if I can find them again, and whatever others I can’t think of currently. I really want a yellow coris wrasse but I want my micro life too.

Get some Trochus snails and Stomatella snails. They breed fairly readily and I have a Melanurus Wrasse in my tank. This morning:

He's about 1/4" across.

 

[Fishy888]

I've got fish tanks all over the place. I use a bucket because it's convenient and available. I'll be upgrading to a 15 or 20 once I get the 75 tore down and moved out.

Total system volume for me is about 150 so we're comparable there, why do you have so much evaporation? I live in the desert. :beaming-face-with-smiling-eyes:

I wish I knew. You’d think I was blowing fans on the water. Come to think of it I’m sure the wave maker helps evaporate some of the water due to the big time churning action. It really looks like miniature waves at full throttle.

 

[Fishy888]

Get some Trochus snails and Stomatella snails. They breed fairly readily and I have a Melanurus Wrasse in my tank. This morning:

He's about 1/4" across.

I would give my right arm for the limpets and trochus snails. No one within 50 miles of here carries trochus snails. There are two other shops I need to call. Hopefully they have trochus snails. One is 75 miles away and one is 100 miles away.

As for limpets they’ll make their way into my reef again, hopefully sooner rather than later.

 

[tbrown]

I would give my right arm for those!

I got mine at Petco. Stomatella are hitchhikers so they usually throw them in free if you buy something, so I bought two Trochus and got two Stomatella for free. Now I have like 12 Trochus and close to 100 Stomatella snails.

 

[Fishy888]

I got mine at Petco. Stomatella are hitchhikers so they usually throw them in free if you buy something, so I bought two Trochus and got two Stomatella for free. Now I have like 12 Trochus and close to 100 Stomatella snails.

Sadly no Petco within 75 miles carries saltwater fish. Now I need to see if St. Louis has a petco that carries live saltwater critters. There’s also a bigger saltwater only store there. When my system is ready for a clam that’s likely where I’ll buy it.

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

I like Tim use a bucket as a reservoir. If I still have water made and the bucket it full, I just put it in the tank. not sure a gallon into 140ish will hurt that much.

I use a $10 plastic trash can (food safe plastic) from Walmart :cool:

 

[EeyoreIsMySpiritAnimal]

I got mine at Petco. Stomatella are hitchhikers so they usually throw them in free if you buy something, so I bought two Trochus and got two Stomatella for free. Now I have like 12 Trochus and close to 100 Stomatella snails.

Send me some stomas!! Please! Lol

 

[Fishy888]

Ok one last post for the morning. I have to get a little sleep after all LOL. I took some pictures of my GSP colony from the mushroom rock. It’s starting to grow like wildfire! I can actually see new growth day by day now. I snapped a picture of the new mat the GSP are laying down.

Ok so I snapped more than one pic. The circular area is new mat growth. It wasn’t there a couple days ago.

 

[Fishy888]

I use a $10 plastic trash can (food safe plastic) from Walmart :cool:

I was going to use one of those for an ATS at one point. I still might eventually.

 

[Fishy888]

Send me some stomas!! Please! Lol

Me too. Pretty please, with sugar on top. Seriously they could probably be sent first class in a ziplock as warm as it’s been here and survive. I would gladly pay the postage and give you a little something extra for doing it. If that sounds like a bad idea then it’s cool. I don’t want to cause you any headaches.

 

[Fishy888]

The RBTA looks awesome despite the small gape. Because my phosphates have been inching up a bit faster than usual (possibly a dead bristle worm or decaying algae although the algae still looks the same) I dosed some phosphate-e. It was enough to remove 0.04 ppm phosphates. I followed that after a few minutes with 0.4 dKH worth of ALK. The nem responded well to it.

The gape is steadily decreasing. It’s no longer alternating in size between half the diameter of a dime and a quarter the diameter of a dime like it was. Now it’s pretty steady state at the quarter dime diameter.

The system’s due for a decent water change. Hopefully by the end of the week I can get time (and the three tanks) to do it. Other than that I want the anemone to have things very steady state. I think that the water change will do the nem a lot of good (as long as my salinity doesn’t get anywhere near 1.028 again).

Now that my salinity is correct and everything looks good it’s time to let things settle out. Once the anemone senses the stability it’ll most likely stop gaping altogether.

My feeding regimen has been fairly consistent. I feed NLS fish pellets in very small amounts several times a day. Once and rarely twice a day I feed my DIY frozen mix, a cube worth.

I’m going to try target feeding the anemone today and see how it responds. That would likely help it feel a bit better assuming it actually eats. I’ll give it some of my DIY frozen food. If it eats for me I’ll feed it once a week. If it does well I’ll try target feeding it twice a week.

I should add that at night amphipods run all over the rock the anemone is on. I’ve seen them walk on it but there’s no feeding response from the anemone. Of course it could be that it eats one or two when I’m not there. Either way we’ll see if it eats today.

It’s hard to believe I’ve had the anemone almost two weeks now. What an amazing animal!

 

[Fishy888]

I tried feeding my nem about an hour ago. It appeared to send the food towards its mouth but I couldn’t see its mouth to know for sure if it ate. I know most anemones ball up when they’re eating. Mine acted like it was going to but it never did. I did get a picture of the mouth area about 20 minutes after I fed it. There’s no gape here. That’s awesome news.

So I’m not sure whether it ate or not or if I should try feeding it again later or not. For now though I’m leaving things alone.

 

[Fishy888]

Well I got this crazy idea in my head as I fed the tank today. I only fed an extremely small morsel to see if would take it. I got a small reaction but not what I expected so today I fed it again. It was a piece of fish that was about 1/4” x 1/8”. Of course I fed that in three pieces and the anemone gladly ate them.

RBTA Day 13 - it’s eaten well and is pretty happy.

This video was taken about a minute after the anemone ate. It ate more than I thought it would. It’s partially balled up here. After about an hour or so it’l...

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Today it balled up a bit. The video is how the RBTA looked about a minute after feeding. I’m going to see how it handles progressively larger amounts of food. My duncans for instance tend to distort themselves in order to make the food fit in their stomachs. The nem probably does the same by balling up while it digests its food.

I also noticed that the mouth was barely gaping this morning. I’m wondering if that last little bit of gape may have been because the nem was hungry. I guess I’ll find out over time this week. I’m going to feed it every other day for this week and see how that goes. I know I wasn’t going to feed it that often but if it keeps the anemone thriving I’m all about it. As small as it is I’m thinking lighter feeding’s every other day may be of more benefit than huge feedings once a week. Of course I’ll have to watch N and P like a hawk but I do anyway.

I also target fed my duncans while I was on a roll. They’re doing awesome. Out of the three newest polyps two have stubby tentacles. It won’t be long and those polyps will start looking more like their older peers.

 

[Fishy888]

The anemone came back out and looks happy and content. The gape is gone. I just took this video a little bit ago.

 

[Fishy888]

I know I’ve been posting a ton about my RBTA but hopefully if the anemone ever gapes again I’ll be able to refer to this. It’s my hope that it will help others if their anemones are in the same predicament mine was in. I still need to be vigilant though.

This picture is from the video I took in my last post. The video, and this picture, were taken this morning about 45 minutes after the anemone was fed.

This was taken about three hours ago.

I also took a picture of my duncans’ newest polyps this afternoon.

The third baby polyp is obscured by one of the largest and oldest polyps but it’s to the right of the larger baby polyp. In a couple weeks it too should have some tentacles developing like these two do.

 

[Fishy888]

It looks like I’m getting a chalice coral this weekend. Thankfully it’s only $15 bucks. When I first saw it I thought it had a pink rim with green rims around yellow polyps. I looked more closely at it. The coral is still alive but there should be much more green around the rim. The yellow centers are still there so there may be hope for it.

That’s what it looks like now. I want to try to nurse it back to health. I just don’t know how realistic it is. The fact that much of each polyp’s still intact bodes well I would think.

This is most likely what the chalice should look like.

Orange/Yellow Eye Chalice

Orange Eye Chalice. LPS Coral. size: .75"

reefloungecoral.com

Like in the link above, I can see the orange/red on one or two of the polyps in the picture of chalice I’d be getting. Anymore $15 is insanely cheap for coral. Especially when it’s this colorful. I just want to make sure it has a reasonable chance of getting healthier.

Once (if) I get it I’m going to acclimate it very slowly; even more slowly than I did the anemone. I’ll leave it on its frag plug which I’ll glue to a rock. There are a couple of places I have in mind for it. One has more light than another but neither place is directly under the reflector.

The person who’s selling the coral is holding it for me until Saturday since he won’t be available until then.

 

[Fishy888]

After really thinking about it I decided I’m not getting the chalice. I just don’t want to go almost an hour away for a coral that at best has a 50/50 shot.

The RBTA is doing nicely. I believe it’s grown some.

RBTA Day 16 - The anemone’s expanded a bit and its tentacles are a bit longer.

The anemone appears to have grown slightly. It’s tentacles are a bit longer and the oral disk seems a bit larger. The nem still has its bubbles and doesn’t a...

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It’s about 2 inches or so in diameter fully extended. It was about 1.5 inches in diameter fully extended when I got it. The feedings are definitely helping it. It’s been a couple of days since I last fed the anemone so I’ll either feed it today or tomorrow.

 

[Fishy888]

Say hello to the newest denizen of the deep….

I haven’t seen one at our LFS in close to a year and the price was definitely right. They had two and I would have taken both if I could have today. I will get more though. That’s a promise. The worm is one hour into its acclimation. It’s likely to go next to the rock my Kenya tree is on. That rock also has several bright red micro feather dusters on it.

 

[Fishy888]

A strange thing happened yesterday. I had my biggest mushroom either move or melt. It was in its normal place yesterday morning. My wife noticed it was gone when we came home. Sure enough it was gone. I know mushrooms can move if conditions no longer meet the requirements of that specific coral. I guess it’s part of the growing pains of a system for lack of a better way to put it.

I’m hoping it just moved somewhere darker. It’s not on the rock it was on anymore. That much I know. I think it’s unlikely to have melted because at the very least the water would be cloudy. I imagine all sorts of ammonia, phosphates, and nitrates would have been released and the fish would be breathing heavily. They might even flash frequently.

The Hawaiian feather duster’s doing well. I stirred the sand a bit to bury the part of its tube that was buried. Here’s how it looks today.

It’s in a place where it gets a moderate flow most of the time. It does get some higher flow when the wave maker gets to the peak of its cycle. It should get plenty of particulate matter where I placed it.

 

[Lost in the Sauce]

A melting mushroom is very unlikely to spike parameters or cloud the water in that size system.

Chances are, it released, balled up and rolled around. Keep an eye around the base of rocks.

You may also consider pulling back on the feeding of the nem. With that massive lamp over it, it really shouldn't be needed.