Happenings

The Mouth.. here he is partially open and has some purple flecks of coralline algae on him. I scrubbed him down earlier with a toothbrush... conventional? No idea but he looked dirty.


This is Ahnold... he's much happier now that Jean Claude is in the sump and can't tear off any more of Ahnold's limbs.



Close up of one of my gazillion hair worms.. he's built his own little mountain.



My Xenia has perked up... his arms/hands are all happy and pulsing but his trunk is still kind of squat.



I thought this was funny... this is the probing "thing" of my Nessarius snail... when I feed he sticks it up above the sand and if it's mysis he comes up all the way, if it's flake or pellet he goes back under. PICKY!



Ain't he a beaut??

Xenia's Fall

Last night one of the crabs knocked the Xenia over... when I got up he was laying down and in VERY bad shape! I don't know what to do at this time but he's looking pretty bad. Will keep you updated.






I did a small water change yesterday because things were cloudy... I also found a dead chromis in the filter inside of the sump... which means 2 of those buggers got through the overflow fish protection and sump dived... but one managed to jump into the filter after all of that. Had to have happened a few weeks ago too as I haven't lost any critters for 2 weeks (must be a record eh?)

Chaetomorpha Algae

The refugium part of my sump now has something in it! It has two pieces of Live Rock and a small clump of Chaetomorpha Alagae (aka/Chaeto). I have 60,000k daylight bulbs on it so hopefully the Chaeto will grow quickly.

Lastly I dumped in a bottle of copepods... my copepod population didn't come back after the infamous tank crash of June 12th so I finally added more, hopefully they'll grow in the sump and repopulate the tank.



My Xenia is SO happy! He loves his new spot and has even grown a bit in the last week. If you look toward the middle of the picture you'll see how some of his "hands" are balled into fists... that's the Pulsing part of the Pulsing Xenia and means he's happy.



Zoo's are growing slowly.



The mushroom has doubled in size! Hope he spreads soon, I wouldn't mind a huge mound of purple mushroom corals.



Picture of one of the oldest tank inhabitants, one of my MANY hair worms.. actually the first.



Butterfly is same as usual with his 2 Chromis friends.. they don't stay still long enough for a good picture but Snow White and Cinderella still exist.



Back by popular demand... a quick picture of the "mouth". He's kind of dwarfed lately by a huge featherduster at his rear but he's still there.

Happy Xenia

Thanks to the local fish store and a lot of advice from friends.. I was able to perk my Xenia back up! He got pretty sad for a while, hanging so low his branches would touch the rocks and then he'd close up all together. Seems I had an ammonia spike from some bad Chaeto. Got rid of the Chaeto and did some (3) water changes and now it's happy again.


I'm also seeing a lot more signs of the coveted purple coralline algae! I have some purple and some pink, I'm ok with pink! Here you can see it on my rocks.




Now the patience really kicks in. With the latest round of die offs (Jaq, Chromis, etc) I'm going to slow down a bit. I hope to let the coralline grow, let the tank mature a bit and then if nothing dies in the next 2-3 weeks I'll add something small... maybe a new coral or fish but only 1 thing. I do believe I'm moving the tank too fast so... sloooooooow going now.

R.I.P.

We found Charles Manson (aka/Manny) crunchy and stuck to the side of the cabinet. He apparently pulled a swan dive out of the tank a few days ago.

Here's my Pulsing Xenia today.



My tank's not doing very well... after tallying up my losses I've actually lost more critters than I have kept alive (that is counting the sump diver and Manny). Soooo... now that my Xenia is pouting I'm going to stop doing anything with my tank!! No more additions, no rearranging, nada. A good friend suggested I start using "Cycle" so started that today and if I can keep everything alive for 3 weeks I'll consider adding something small. Maybe adding Jaq 2.0.

Not much

Not much happening... at least not enough to blog every day. I did think I lost Jaq last night but come to find out he molted again! Here he is sans shell... kinda bland.





I also have an odd hitchhiker on my Pulsing Pink Xenia... it's a small coral or anenome maybe and he travels! At first he was attached to the stalk of my Xenia but last night he came loose and now he changes spots about every 5 hours. Here's a picture of it (bottom right corner)

2 baby snails appeared out of my new rock this morning! Sooo cute. The first one is center picture, hanging off of the rock. The 2nd one is center picture by the very jump Feather Duster, I swear someone breathes and he hides.




I also had a 2nd starfish appear, probably Asterina stars. I will watch them, I guess they reproduce like MAD! The original starfish from yesterday is in the lower right corner, the new addition is in the upper left corner. I love these things.

Lots of Goodies!

I had some killer finds at the fish store today! First off was this gorgeous rock! Little did I know when I bought it that it has all kinds of hitchhikers on it.. yay! Nice coralline eh? It has purple, pink and red algae on it.


First thing I found on it was this tiny little starfish, isn't he sweet??



Then I turned the rock over and found this mushroom coral... Ooooh new coral, gotta love that!




Tank shot...


I also found traded a light for this Xenia frag, I hadn't seen one this pink before.



Jaq had to go check out the new rock, hope he doesn't eat the baby starfish.


Not so exciting but I got 2 new snails too... my other snail is on the left, the new pair on the right, they are a little bigger...



Oh, just saw this on my new rock (Yes, I am a rock watcher) ... wonder what built that... guess I'll see in a few days.



My Orange Zoos are opened up, can't wait til they get bigger.



On a not so happy note... one of my Green Chromis succumbed to the call of the sump. Fish aren't supposed to be able to get into the overflow but he did and didn't make it. I also lost my candycane coral, I may try one again if I ever get Metal Halide lights, CC are supposed to be ok without them but he didn't live long.

Sump!

The sump is up and running! No rock or sand yet but I will soon, have the rock picked out. It's a tad noisy but hopefully we'll get used to it, the overflow gurgles in the main room. *ahem* Yes we used a Disney Princess tablecloth to protect the drywall from drips.




This is Sleeping Beauty along with Cinderella V2.0, Snow White V2.0 and Belle. Hopefully in a group of 4 they will stay alive longer. I also think I'm going to do some night vision recording on the tank to see if Manny is somehow killing them.



This is my CandyCane Coral frag... hasn't opened and not sure it's alive, we'll see.


I also replaced the orange Zoo's with this small frag, they haven't opened up yet either.



Tank shot with the overflow and Directional U-Tube instead of the filter and heater.