Turtle's Fairy Tale

[SashimiTurtle]

Im Jealous you have Joe in the neighborhood. I have a couple of his chalices. nice acros too

It's a 2 hour ride to Charleston, but I very much enjoyed yesterday. They are talking about having quarterly get togethers and I'm already excited about the next one.

Columbia has a reef club, but it's not for me...

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Im Jealous you have Joe in the neighborhood. I have a couple of his chalices. nice acros too

Speaking of chalice, I snapped this one in his display tank. If I could get them to grow like this I'd have them all. Unfortunately, he did not know why this one was growing into the cup and the one next to it was just plating outward.

 

[Scurvy]

That’s a nice one! Would love to go bare bottom someday and get chalices to cover the bottom pane like a tie dyed t-shirt.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Water test Sunday!!! I know we all just love testing water....

Ok, ok... put the pitchforks and torches down. I'm kidding, but it's a neccessary evil when growing corals. Were not keep corals after all, were keeping water.

Ca, back where I want it. Will monitor drop over next week and see if we can figure out a dose.
Alk, dropped by 0.4 since last test. I dosed enough to get back up to 8.0, and determined we need a 4ml dose per day. I decided it was best to set up the Jebao doser to handle this task.
Mg, dropped some, I'll hand dose this back up to around 1400.
NO3, 4ppm or slightly less. Same place it was before.
PO4, dead on 0. Both the Hanna and Red Sea tests came up with 0. Chaeto is working overtime now. Going to back the H80 to ~50% power but still 12 hours reverse cycle.
Specific Gravity, *cringe*... 1.023!! Turtle, calibrate your refractometer EVERY. TIME. YOU. USE IT. Cal fluid is cheap! We're going to try and help this with a WC and continue to mix some salt into the ATO reservoir.

Y'all commented on how the tank is looking better in my last quick video, and it is for the most part. Manually removing most of the GHA from the rocks and scraping the back glass and catching it in the filter sock allowed the chaeto to take over and take control. My nutrients are still low, despite me trying to feed the fish into obesity. The remaining GHA is slowly melting, and chaeto is bigger than ever. Corals are showing a little sign of stress. I'm making up a fresh batch of salt to do a WC and try and bring up my salinity... it's a tad low, still. We may have had an out of cal refractometer.

As stated above, all my fish are fat and happy. No agression except for the brunneus wrasse and the sapphire damsel like to chase each other from time to time, It usually ends with the damsel retreating, which is exactly how I want it. This is the Fairy Tale not the damsel tail... no monthly FTS just yet. Waiting on the new flipper to get here so I can clean the glass better, but here is a teaser.

View attachment 20180826_140822.jpg

 

[SashimiTurtle]

@%!&#%!$!&@*$^#%! :mad::mad::mad::mad:

 

[Scurvy]

Glass too thick or just angry about the landing spot?

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Glass too thick or just angry about the landing spot?

Glass is way too thick for the Flipper nano. It's meant for 1/4" glass and this tank is 1/2". Also, I have to stick my arm in there to retrieve it. Oh well, I need to rearrange some acans anyway.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

;Happy

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Water change done. Estimate 20%. First one since setting tank up. Not needed for nutrient export, but to try and get salinity up and because I felt like it was needed. Everyone I talk to locally that doesn't do scheduled water changes says the tank will tell you. Well, it was screaming at me.

I've bottomed my nutrients out. That's a good thing for the GHA that was growing. But horrible for my corals, that were growing. Most of the GHA is dying off and melting. Bryopsis isn't spreading, but isn't dying either. Some corals are better than others, I suspect them to have higher zooxanthellae concentrations, or they are just hardier corals. Maybe a combination or that's why they are hardier. Zoas are great, trachy looks a little pale sometimes then I look again and it blows me away with color. Trumpets are the worst of the LPS. They look shriveled and half deflated.

The plan is to back off the intensity of the H80, and to simply feed more. I already have alk automated because I forget to dose manually. I remember to feed fish but dosing slips my mind. Plus, I like fat happy fish. When I see corals start to turn around, or not, I'll assess my nutrients again. Right now I'm feeding the equivalent of one cube of frozen a day(was half) and every few days I'll feed Red Sea reef energy or Reef Roids. Almost out of the reef energy, so it'll be reef roids after that.

FTS after 20% WC and settling time.

I rearranged some of the LPS. Acans are on the right, in the beginning of a garden. Ricordia will be on the left in what will be a garden. The trachy splits them both as the center piece. Yes, it's swole... been hitting the gym or something.

Acans

Lonely ricordia...

View attachment 20180826_200300.jpg

I also decided to attach my bi color frog spawn. I tossed up selling it(as euphyllia isn't my thing), but just couldn't come to part with it. I promise, it's half purple and half green in one polyp. It's just turned to the purple side. I got this thing as an oops frag back when I had the 35 going. It had barely any skeleton to glue to a rock, now it has a 1/4" of skeleton and nice tissue growth.

No post is complete without a trachy close up.

View attachment 20180826_212859.jpg

 

[Amoo]

If I had to choose, euphyllia and Blastos would be a close tie for me in terms of favorites.

Also didn't raising your numbers, then raising salinity make your numbers even higher?

 

[Katrina71]

Try being a 5'6" girl. We are happy to JUST get an arm in when we drop stuff in the tank.

 

[Amoo]

Try being a 5'6" girl. We are happy to JUST get an arm in when we drop stuff in the tank.

I'm sorry I still can't hear you over the sound of you not having a build thread still

 

[Katrina71]

I'm sorry I still can't hear you over the sound of you not having a build thread still

I have been busy getting soaked in my son's today. Can't I just be the friend that sleeps on the couch for a few more weeks? Lol

 

[Amoo]

I have been busy getting soaked in my son's today. Can't I just be the friend that sleeps on the couch for a few more weeks? Lol

LOL this is exactly the response I was going to use after you said, "insert excuse here"....darn you

 

[Katrina71]

LOL this is exactly the response I was going to use after you said, "insert excuse here"....darn you

He got some zoas and a chalice today, but I get it.

 

[NY_Caveman]

Awesome. If Chalices grew into interesting shapes like this regularly, I might have more interest in them. It almost looks like a Turbinaria.

 

[Katrina71]

@Amoo does it help at all if I still have a full bottle of this?

 

[Amoo]

@Amoo does it help at all if I still have a full bottle of this?

No the fact that it is full is completely a problem. This is of coarse assuming it's not an installed spare.

 

[Katrina71]

I'm really funny when I drink, but I have no filter. That's the problem.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

New toys came in. Flipper and aquatop media reactor. I was too excited to get the reactor put together and fill it with carbon that I forgot to take pictures... I did get these tho. The regular flipper cleaner works wonderfully. Magnets are strong and the blade clears the film right off. The nano just couldn't hang onto the 1/2" glass and it skated right across film algae.

I'll get pictures of the reactor later, but initial impression is very good. Nice construction and assembly. Does not look like a $30 media reactor, especially one that includes a pump.