OrionN's 320 Reboot

[OrionN]

Better pictures of the three clams in my sump at home

 

[OrionN]

 

[OrionN]

My Radiant Wrasse. All healthy, no spot now. She is gaining weight. I am not sure why Radiant wrasse is not as popular as it should be. IMO, they are the most beautiful of the Halichoeres wrasse. Certainly the most unique in coloration.

 

[OrionN]

Purple Tipped Green Frogspawn. I got to give this guy a name. He is a looker.

My Red Base Yellow tipped Magnifica, much better and without infection. He in in my DT next to my Purple Magnifica. I think he will continue to color up.

 

[OrionN]

I like this little girl more and more. She is a looker.

 

[OrionN]

Normally they open more but taken the shadow from the phone cause the to close up a bit

 

[OrionN]

My new Magnifica is very Red with bright yellow tips. Need to have better picture once he regain his colors.

My new Red wrasse, the Radiant wrasse

 

[OrionN]

My new Red base Yellow Tipped Magnifica. I got this one from Petco on Black Friday. Treated and healthy again, other than still very light but not completely bleached, and is in my DT. He is next to my Purple Magnifica.

 

[OrionN]

My Blue Haddoni is a pain in the butt right now. I got him all healthy, colorful, growing and got too large in my sump. He was shading my Purple Haddoni so I put him into my DT in just a perfect place for him. He proceeded to crawled into/under the darkest corner, right under a 3 feet shelf of LR. There is absolutely no light there, under all my LR. Basically I have the shelf just several inches above the sand. It is a fish and sponge space with no light. I was hoping that he will crawl out but it does not seem to be so after 3 days of complete darkness.
My temporary solution is:
I put a spot light from the side which give him some light. Let see how long he is going to be there. If I see that he is decline in health, I have to bite the bullet and dismantle the rock structure on that side of the tank and dig him out. I have to bring him back to the sump if this is the case.
What a PITB anemone.:mad:
It is so dark there, without the spot light I cannot even see him.;Shifty

 

[Acropora52]

that's annoying about the blue haddoni; hopefully it'll find it's way out without dismantling reef. The new red mag looks great!

 

[OrionN]

Better picture of my Red Magnifica

 

[OrionN]

 

[OrionN]

I really love by Yellow tentacles Red Magnifica. His color is really bright, brighter than I can capture in pictures. He really remind me of a Yellow Magnifica I had 20 years ago. I have been looking for this color tentacle for a long time. When I bough this one, It was due to the bright red base. I did not think the tentacle was anything special, but as he regain his health, the yellow really brighten up.

 

[OrionN]

These are a few observations from my tank over the last few days. I got some time off for Christmas vacation. We were going to travel, but COVID sorta shut that down. I have informed my staff about the time I take off, so they all had plans. I did not feel right to cancel their vacations at the last minutes so we just stay home this Christmas.

My Male Meleagris Leopard today. I got picture of him during Nuptial display. The color is brighter, but specifically there is a supple change in coloration of the spots. 4 rolls or so of the spot near the caudal and ventral of the fish change color from blue to green. This is what cause the coloration to be more distinct and beautiful. Also the dorsal fin extended showing the bright red and back of the front of the caudal fin.There are some dark, back area around the front and back part of the dorsal fin, and the dorsal area of the fish under these area. The blue to green shift is not clearly pick up by the (my) camera. Enough of this color change is pick up by the camera, but not as mark as in real live. Our eye are such a remarkable organ.

Normal coloration

early stage of nuptial display

These last two are full nuptial display. In full display, the male have a tendency of swimming head down tail up. Very unique motion that it cannot be anything else, as show in the last picture. Also the area where the spots turn green is clearly seen in these pictures.

 

[OrionN]

Some of my anemones. Quick pictures with my cell phone just now

 

[OrionN]

My male Onyx Percula have turn almost completely black. Only fins with a little orange center is the Anal fin and two Pelvic fins. Hard to take picture to show these since this pair is in my sump which i can only take top down pictures. The last picture is the female which have normal Onyx coloration. The male is a wild caught Onyx Percula. This is a very nice pair I vane for several years. The male just get more and more black. There are three anemones in my sump. A Haddoni, a Gigantea and a Gigantea/Haddoni hybrid.

 

[Pbh-reef]

Just wanted to wish you luck with this tank - one of my favorites here - as I say goodbye to r2r.

I didn't join this forum in order to be pushed back into a closet, I joined in order to laugh at the funny 3d printed hats people make for their sea urchins and to share my love for marine life.

 

[Hot2na]

nice mag..I wanna know why MY local petco isn't that stupid..lol all they ever get is condi's.;Singing

 

[OrionN]

Knowing the accurate size of your fish is useful, in keeping accurate observation regarding the health of the fish, in discussion with other reefers on line, in selling your animals and many other things that we addicted reef keepers do in our day to day caring and boasting about our fish.

Over the years, I often surprise at how far off my estimate of my fish size are so inaccurate. Daily looking at the fish I have an estimate of the fish size. Once in a while, one of my wrasse would sleep at one of the back corner of my tank. Having my tank in a fish room, I can get up really close to the fish that sleep there. In these situations, the fish often looks much larger. Whenever I have these opportunities, I often grab my ruler and measure the size of the fish. I am often surprise that the fish is often at least 20%+ larger than what I think his size is by just looking at him from the front of the tank.

Lately, I have been doing things a little different. Knowing that I have the tendency to underestimate the size of the fish, I tried to accurately measure the size of some of my fish and use these measurements to estimate the size of other fishes in the tank as they swimming about and come in close contact with each other.

One way I find that I can accurately measure the size of my fish is tape a 3X5 index card on the front glass of the tank. Then I would take picture of the fish using a telephoto lens from across the room, as far from the tank as I can as the fish swim nears the index card. The closer the fish to the index card the better. The optic of camera is such that there are distortion regarding the size of the objects relative to the distance that object is to the camera. A picture of 2 objects of the same length, but object A at 1 foot and object B at 2 foot from the camera will show object A have twice the length of object B in that picture. Because of this reason, having the fish next to the index card and the camera from 10 feet away from across the room, the size distortion is neglectable.

Below is a demonstration of this method that I used to measure the size of my fish.

My 4 yo Purple tang, I estimated to be just about 4 inches but using this method, I measured him at just over 5.5 inches.

Powder Blue tang at 7 inches

 

[OrionN]

During the last storm, a bunch of black mangrove seeds wash ashore here in Corpus Christi. I collected a few and put them into my sump. I had three that germinated. My mistake was I put them too deep, only one mange to reach the surface and thrive. The other three ran out of energy and died.
since I have read up more on how to germinate these plants. Seem like it is very easy, either just in pots or put it in very shallow sandy salt water. The leaves will not be able to produce much energy for the plant until it is above the water.
Here is a picture of my black mangrove in my sump. It is doing well and growing well.