TheWB’s IM Lagoon 50

[jcolliii]

How often do you target feed?

 

[TheWB]

How often do you target feed?

Maybe once a week with small pieces of LRS nano reef frenzy or my chopped scallop concoction. I don't have any dedicated coral food but some is on the way. I ordered the 9 item mix and match deal from Indo-pacific sea farms and one of the choices is their Coral Heaven complete coral polyp food. Going to give that a try. I’ve heard good things about them and it seems like the wonder mud and live sand activator will be good additions for more biodiversity. Getting some snails and micro hermits too. My last order from Reefcleaners was almost a total loss due to USPS being 2 days late and then delivering the package to a hot mail locker instead if my front door. I’m pretty sure every snail died except for the tiny Ceriths. There were two Emerald Crabs as well that went in alive but I haven’t seen them since that day so who knows if they’re still alive. Decided to go with a package from IPSF instead. Hopefully FedEx does better on the delivery. Supposed to arrive on the 23rd.

 

[jcolliii]

Never had a bad experience with Fedex. (knock wood). Hope they arrive safely!

You've probably had some similar results with the corals that you have pictured - they're looking great, BTW (and glad to see that chalice coming back around) - but with all of my LPS, I've been feeding 2x (minimum) per week with reef roids and reef chilli (half and half mix), and I have an acan that went from a one head frag 4 or 5 months ago to an 8 head mini monster. The first polyp that it popped off is now almost as big as the main polyp, but that one is in a tough location to feed. Both torches look like they are starting to pop babies off (a bunch of tiny tentacles on one side) and all of my Platygyras have doubled or quadrupled in size, except the one I got last month - and that one is already laying down tissue on the 'form' that I made for it to grow over from purple epoxy. I mix up a fairly thick slurry, and let it sit for 10 minutes or so. I use a coral feeder to just drop it onto the polyp surface. They all slurp it right down - with some of them, 2 minutes and it's over.

Are all of the new foods you'll be trying frozen? The only frozen foods I feed my LPS occasionally are frozen mysis - they definitely like that too! Please keep me posted about the feeding responses you see with the new foods - always looking for something else to try.

 

[TheWB]

Never had a bad experience with Fedex. (knock wood). Hope they arrive safely!

You've probably had some similar results with the corals that you have pictured - they're looking great, BTW (and glad to see that chalice coming back around) - but with all of my LPS, I've been feeding 2x (minimum) per week with reef roids and reef chilli (half and half mix), and I have an acan that went from a one head frag 4 or 5 months ago to an 8 head mini monster. The first polyp that it popped off is now almost as big as the main polyp, but that one is in a tough location to feed. Both torches look like they are starting to pop babies off (a bunch of tiny tentacles on one side) and all of my Platygyras have doubled or quadrupled in size, except the one I got last month - and that one is already laying down tissue on the 'form' that I made for it to grow over from purple epoxy. I mix up a fairly thick slurry, and let it sit for 10 minutes or so. I use a coral feeder to just drop it onto the polyp surface. They all slurp it right down - with some of them, 2 minutes and it's over.

Are all of the new foods you'll be trying frozen? The only frozen foods I feed my LPS occasionally are frozen mysis - they definitely like that too! Please keep me posted about the feeding responses you see with the new foods - always looking for something else to try.

Thanks, I’m pretty happy about the Chalice, definitely didn’t want to lose it. Lately it’s only been frozen foods. I used to have some Hikari particulate food that you could mix to different consistencies. I believe the new stuff is also particulate but I’m honestly not sure. I guess I’ll see when it arrives. I’ll post updates on how it works and what kind of responses it gets.

 

[Pauliex77x]

Sure, here ya go
Probably shoulda turned off the tv first.

And one from the side just for the heck of it.

i feel like my Green stem Hammer should look like this frogspawn but it doesnt..... it doesnt have much if any green left. tank looks awesome too. looks like you got that GHA problem under control. for some reason im not getting alerts when you post on this thread.... ill fix that.

 

[intricate_reefer]

Again, no notifications lol. Man all the corals are looking so good. Awesome to see things start to fill in a bit. Sometimes corals just take some time to settle in before they start really growing. Do you feed the Blasto at all? They really like to be fed often like acans.

 

[TheWB]

i feel like my Green stem Hammer should look like this frogspawn but it doesnt..... it doesnt have much if any green left. tank looks awesome too. looks like you got that GHA problem under control. for some reason im not getting alerts when you post on this thread.... ill fix that.

Thanks, I’m liking the look of the tank lately but there’s more algae in there than it would appear. It’s weird how it grows on the natural edges of the Stax rock but not on the cut flat areas. I’ll have to search your thread for a picture of the hammer, I don’t remember it very well.

 

[intricate_reefer]

Thanks, I’m liking the look of the tank lately but there’s more algae in there than it would appear. It’s weird how it grows on the natural edges of the Stax rock but not on the cut flat areas. I’ll have to search your thread for a picture of the hammer, I don’t remember it very well.

That is strange, how is that tang with eating the algae. I have been thinking about one of those or maybe a yellow for my tank

 

[TheWB]

Again, no notifications lol. Man all the corals are looking so good. Awesome to see things start to fill in a bit. Sometimes corals just take some time to settle in before they start really growing. Do you feed the Blasto at all? They really like to be fed often like acans.

Thanks Rob. I’ll just start pm’ing people when I update, Seems like multiple people don’t get my updates, it’s a conspiracy for sure
The newer corals do seem to be settling in. I do feed the Blasto, in fact I just fed it a little while ago with some chopped up LRS Nano Reef Frenzy.

 

[TheWB]

That is strange, how is that tang with eating the algae. I have been thinking about one of those or maybe a yellow for my tank

I feed too much for any fish to be a good algae grazer. They don’t have to work too hard for their food. I actually like the Tomini Tang a lot more than I thought I was going to. It’s been a model citizen fir the most part. It’s got plenty of algae to feed on if it wants some and it does actively pick at it all day but I was expecting it to eat more than it does. Likes to nip stuff out of the sand as well. I think a yellow and a Tomini or a kole would be a good combo for your SR80.

 

[Pauliex77x]

I actually just added a lawnmower blenny and he seems to pick at everything when I do actually see him.

 

[TheWB]

I actually just added a lawnmower blenny and he seems to pick at everything when I do actually see him.

I’ve thought about one of those but I’ve heard they are hit or miss on eating much algae, especially if you feed a lot like I do.
I think I forgot to mention that I did add a couple of Peppermint Shrimp on Tuesday to try and get some natural aiptasia predation started. I can use aiptasia x for the bigger ones but I’m hoping they start taking out the smaller ones.

 

[TheWB]

I received my order from Indo-Pacific Sea Farms right on schedule today via FedEx. I did a 9 item Mix and Match Special. The order was well packaged and everything was double bagged. Here’s what it looked like.

Micro Hermits and Littinorid Snails packaged together.

Wondermud

Strombus and Nerite Snails

Live Sand Activator

Pods

Liquid Nitrate Reducer

Coral Heaven dry mix coral food.

I was very happy with the packaging and the timeliness of delivery. This should give my tank a nice boost of biodiversity and hopefully make it more stable. I’m looking forward to seeing how these additions turn out.

 

[Pauliex77x]

What's in the LSA and what's the mud for?

 

[TheWB]

What's in the LSA and what's the mud for?

From the IPSF website:

Activated Live Sand
Biologically active live aragonite sand taken fresh daily from our reverse-flow biofilters, supplemented with a diverse mix of MicroHermits (6 specimens), tiny worms, tiny 'pods, and grazing gastropod snails (6 specimens). Use immediately after unpacking your shipment. Contents are alive! Mix sand and invertebrates with existing sand substrate in new or established marine aquarium tanks.

WonderMud
A seawater-based slurry of fine-grained calcium carbonate-based sediments, shell fragments, aerobic organic detritus, beneficial bacteria and marine micro-invertebrates taken fresh daily from our Salt Pond Ecosystem Tanks after more than five years of exposure to continuously flowing, unfiltered reef seawater. Each bag of WonderMud contains several to many specimens of Reef Amphipods, Mama Mia Worms, Baby Bristle Worms, baby shrimps, baby snails and as a very diverse assemblage of reef phytoplankton and zooplankton. Add WonderMud to existing sand substrate in new or established marine aquarium tanks to increase micro-biotic diversity. Add entire contents of bag including shipping water. Use immediately after opening shipping box. Contents are alive and perishable.

Basically it’s a couple of bags of Hawaiian biodiversity. I should have actually started my tank with this stuff since I wasn’t using live rock. Not saying it’s a replacement for live rock, just that more diversity from the beginning couldn’t have been a bad thing. Lots of people seem to like this place so I thought I’d give it a shot. So far everything I put in the tank was alive, unlike another recent shipment I received, and the worms, pods, etc.. were obviously moving around and visible. Got some pods one time from another vendor and I swear the jar was empty.

 

[Pauliex77x]

Gotcha. Thought the mud was something like refugium mud. So you just mixed both them into your sand bed. What was the reason for picking those species of snails?

 

[TheWB]

Gotcha. Thought the mud was something like refugium mud. So you just mixed both them into your sand bed. What was the reason for picking those species of snails?

Yep, mixed them right in.
Those are all the snails that they sell. I wanted the Mud and Sand and the Mix and Match is the best deal so I filled it out with other stuff I could use. My snail population has been depleted and all the nerites I was supposed to get in my last Reefcleaners order were killed by usps. I still need to get some nassarius and one or two turbos next time I’m at the LFS. I’m not doing business with anyone who ships usps until the moron currently in charge of usps is bounced and normal reliable service is restored.
You should check out the IPSF site, they have some interesting things.

 

[Pauliex77x]

Definitely gonna do that tonight. May get a few bags of that stuff for both tanks

 

[TheWB]

I would say that this is now officially working. The question is now is it actually helping?

 

[TheWB]

Big thank you goes out to @ludnix and Eel River Coral
https://eelrivercoral.com/
for my new, much nicer, light shade for my Radion XR15. The one I was using before was a homemade eyesore made out of cardboard and black gorilla tape. The new 3d printed shade is much nicer. I highly recommend checking out his website.