Yodle Pico

SPS Samurai · Nov 27, 2012

newcoral1 by SPS Samurai, on Flickr

SPS Samurai · Nov 27, 2012

The eyes on the Tyree Dragon's Breath are turning bluer by the day! :xd:

newcoral2 by SPS Samurai, on Flickr

SPS Samurai · Nov 27, 2012

newcoral3 by SPS Samurai, on Flickr

SPS Samurai · Nov 27, 2012

My pipefish is hard to photograph. Got to work on my i5 skills.

newcoral4 by SPS Samurai, on Flickr

SPS Samurai · Nov 27, 2012

I can't get over the fact that the font type for my watermark is called "Bleeding Cowboy." :wink: Bwahahaha! H-town is the #1 team in the NFL. Bulls on stampede! :wink:

newcoral5 by SPS Samurai, on Flickr

jbb_00 · Nov 27, 2012

I'm loving the pipefish . Cant wait to see this one fill in, those are some nice new pieces.

skinz78 · Nov 27, 2012

Nice looking Chalice's!

SPS Samurai · Nov 27, 2012

newcoral6 by SPS Samurai, on Flickr

SPS Samurai · Nov 28, 2012

I appreciate the interest in my project. Like I said, I'm not a big chalice pro (hence my username), but at the same time I'm not about to pass on a killer coral. I think chalices are fairly simple to care for too. I really have to thank the big homie and legendary reefer Tim Plaza aka TFP for hooking me up! These gems are in safe hands :angel: Had some extracoelenteric digestion going down in the tank. The frag in the background basically got a big slime ball spit on him by the pink hologram colored one. It'll have to sit in time out over in that hole until it can muscle up and hang with the rest of the reef. Can you believe the look on my co-workers face when I told her, "My coral are fighting?" Her: "Oh, do they move when they fight?" Me: "No" Her:

oh:

I still haven't removed the first fiberglass screen from the lid. Taking this light acclimation very, very slowly. Once the screens have been removed I'll rearrange the frags in order for them to have their individual space and let them grow out. These LED's seem extremely intense under this array and every action taken on a reef at this scale has to be calculated.

The chalice in the center is by far my favorite. It looks like a solid 24K gold nugget. It's so bright that my i5 refused to capture it's true color. The shine was too intense without a macro lens and white balance correction. :jaw:

newcoral7 by SPS Samurai, on Flickr

SPS Samurai · Dec 1, 2012

I've been debating something and I would like to get some of the members opinions' on it. I want to start a culture of pods to cut down on the cost of feeding and make this task more practical for ensuring my fish have food at all times. I'm currently having to make frequent trips to my LFS, buy pods then come back to closely monitor the Pico to make sure the fish are eating vigorously. Although I'll never starve my fish and everything is extremely healthy at the moment, the task of feeding is becoming tedious and expensive. So instead of allowing something so simple to suck the joy from reef keeping I think I have an idea.

I read an article several years back of a reef tank in Holland that had a phytoplankton reactor. It was a very simple piece of equipment, but it served its purpose. I was considering building a zooplankton reactor. Something similar to a refugium, but not quite since I don't want it plumbed into the Pico 24/7 where pod water can just flow freely into it. That way if there was ever a die off from the pod culture only the pods would be affected. This way my fish always have live food on hand and I can knock out water changes and testing on both systems at the same time.

Of course the design needs to be extremely sleek with a small footprint. I was thinking about glueing acrylic sheets into an ultra thin box, painting them black then pressing the box against the Pico. I can run some airline tubing from the reactor to the Pico and use those tiny valves (the one's we've all owned at some point in fish keeping but never had use for) to control the amount of water streams injected into the display. The design needs to be as undercomplicated as possible. The less the better. What I'd like to do is raise the zooplankton reactor slightly higher than my Pico. This way it'll operate off gravity and I can flow pods into the system like an iv drip. Any air pump or circulation pump for the pods can be hidden in a compartment under the elevated box. I have to admit I don't know anything about cultivating pods, but the requirements are probably even less complicated than how a fuge operates. I definitely need to put some more thought into this.

skinz78 · Dec 1, 2012

Hmm sounds like it should work. I have also seen people take those little shower schrunchie poof ball thingys and use them as a refuge for pod production. I'm thinking of hiding some in my tanks and see if that makes a difference.

SPS Samurai · Dec 14, 2012

The tank is doing well and I'm anxious to head back to H-town and pick up some more Acro's from T&T. Q has some very unique deep water specimens that I just have to have. It wasn't easy convincing him to bust out the frag tools on em' either. In the meantime I've noticed a strange morph going on with my Tyree Dragon's Breath chalice. It's actually starting to branch! Now I'll be the first hobbyist to admit I'm no chalice expert, but I know this is not normal. From what I've seen in chalices a lot of them have pronounced ridges and nodules, but nothing like this. These protrusions are sprouting similar to the Leng Sy cap. That white spot that I thought was a bleached area seems to be a new branch or eye developing. The big nodule in the left has several branches rising from it and even has one starting to grow from the tip. These things look like dragon horns with their yellow tips. I'm not sure how this thing is going to turn out, but this chalice is definitely making an effort to go vertical. Sorry for the crappy pic. Let me know what you guys think.

Dragon Horns by SPS Samurai, on Flickr

SPS Samurai · Jan 7, 2013

Shot a video with my I5. Haven't really played with the features too much, so some of the footage goes out of focus here and there. The last fiberglass screen should be removed by next week. The SPS definitely need their full spectrum.

[flash=http://www.flickr.com/apps/video/stewart.swf?v=109786]width="400" height="225" flashvars="intl_lang=en-us&photo_secret=158a0c7bdd&photo_id=8358287429" bgcolor="#000000" allowFullScreen="true"[/flash]

SPS Samurai · Jan 7, 2013

That's strange, the link is not embedded. Let me just posting the direct URL.

trim.MLg6QI | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

alberthiel · Jan 7, 2013

SPS Samurai said:
The tank is doing well and I'm anxious to head back to H-town and pick up some more Acro's from T&T. Q has some very unique deep water specimens that I just have to have. It wasn't easy convincing him to bust out the frag tools on em' either. In the meantime I've noticed a strange morph going on with my Tyree Dragon's Breath chalice. It's actually starting to branch! Now I'll be the first hobbyist to admit I'm no chalice expert, but I know this is not normal. From what I've seen in chalices a lot of them have pronounced ridges and nodules, but nothing like this. These protrusions are sprouting similar to the Leng Sy cap. That white spot that I thought was a bleached area seems to be a new branch or eye developing. The big nodule in the left has several branches rising from it and even has one starting to grow from the tip. These things look like dragon horns with their yellow tips. I'm not sure how this thing is going to turn out, but this chalice is definitely making an effort to go vertical. Sorry for the crappy pic. Let me know what you guys think.
Dragon Horns by SPS Samurai, on Flickr

That is odd indeed ... it should indeed be knobby and curling up at the edges somewhat but not growing pillar like structures. Do you have a real close up pic of it showing the inside .. that would help to see better what is going on .. Thanks

alberthiel · Jan 7, 2013

SPS Samurai said:
That's strange, the link is not embedded. Let me just posting the direct URL.

trim.MLg6QI | Flickr - Photo Sharing!

I saw it in the vid but not enough of a close up .. am trying to see whether it really is what they sold it to you as because that growth you describe is odd indeed

SPS Samurai · Jan 7, 2013

I got it from Steve Tyree and he got his piece obviously from the OG colony at Reefer's Cove. Reefers Cove doesn't even have pics of it up any more, but here's a link to Tyree's description. I don't think it was ever marketed as a branching chalice, I'm just saying it is taking on a very odd vertical growth pattern. I should probably contact both Steve and Reefer's Cove to see what theirs looks like. Oh yeah, shout out to Reef Farmers, I want to wish you many years of success in your Texas based location! I will try and get a closer pic tomorrow. My bad, my photography skills suck.

www.reeffarmers.com/limitedrcdragonbreathchalice.htm

alberthiel · Jan 7, 2013

SPS Samurai said:
I got it from Steve Tyree and he got his piece obviously from the OG colony at Reefer's Cove. Reefers Cove doesn't even have pics of it up any more, but here's a link to Tyree's description. I don't think it was ever marketed as a branching chalice, I'm just saying it is taking on a very odd vertical growth pattern. I should probably contact both Steve and Reefer's Cove to see what theirs looks like. Oh yeah, shout out to Reef Farmers, I want to wish you many years of success in your Texas based location! I will try and get a closer pic tomorrow. My bad, my photography skills suck.

www.reeffarmers.com/limitedrcdragonbreathchalice.htm

Thanks. I entered the link in my browser and I had seen that one before which shows the way that I would it to grow as you probably did as well. Odd that it is not growing that way and talking to both as you suggest is probably a good idea to see what kind of growth they are getting as if it is now branching then that is certainly a very interesting development.

Thanks for taking some more pics tomorrow. ... BTW I am a bad photographer too ...

SPS Samurai · Jan 8, 2013

I shot a few more pics with a better resolution, but its hard to get a shot directly in the center. Here's another video for now.

The Dragon's Breath by wesleyboyette

alberthiel · Jan 8, 2013

SPS Samurai said:
I've been debating something and I would like to get some of the members opinions' on it. I want to start a culture of pods to cut down on the cost of feeding and make this task more practical for ensuring my fish have food at all times. I'm currently having to make frequent trips to my LFS, buy pods then come back to closely monitor the Pico to make sure the fish are eating vigorously. Although I'll never starve my fish and everything is extremely healthy at the moment, the task of feeding is becoming tedious and expensive. So instead of allowing something so simple to suck the joy from reef keeping I think I have an idea.

I read an article several years back of a reef tank in Holland that had a phytoplankton reactor. It was a very simple piece of equipment, but it served its purpose. I was considering building a zooplankton reactor. Something similar to a refugium, but not quite since I don't want it plumbed into the Pico 24/7 where pod water can just flow freely into it. That way if there was ever a die off from the pod culture only the pods would be affected. This way my fish always have live food on hand and I can knock out water changes and testing on both systems at the same time.

Of course the design needs to be extremely sleek with a small footprint. I was thinking about glueing acrylic sheets into an ultra thin box, painting them black then pressing the box against the Pico. I can run some airline tubing from the reactor to the Pico and use those tiny valves (the one's we've all owned at some point in fish keeping but never had use for) to control the amount of water streams injected into the display. The design needs to be as undercomplicated as possible. The less the better. What I'd like to do is raise the zooplankton reactor slightly higher than my Pico. This way it'll operate off gravity and I can flow pods into the system like an iv drip. Any air pump or circulation pump for the pods can be hidden in a compartment under the elevated box. I have to admit I don't know anything about cultivating pods, but the requirements are probably even less complicated than how a fuge operates. I definitely need to put some more thought into this.

Here is a link to how to cultivate pods : The Breeder's Net: A Simple How-to On Home Culture Of Copepods — Advanced Aquarist | Aquarist Magazine and Blog