melev

First of all, everyone continues to ask me what is going on with the crated tank in my driveway. The trucking company and I finally made contact today, and they are going to show up tomorrow to take it to Indiana!



The past few days, I've been looking in the 215g at the livestock. As I told you, I lost most of my SPS corals, and had maybe 5 pieces hanging on. Three are birdsnest corals with skin hanging on. Over the last few days, I'm seeing tiny white sharp tips emerging all over these corals, indicating new growth. It's nice to see some improvement, honestly. I'd pretty much resigned myself to the fact that the majority of what I had is gone, and that I'll be starting from scratch with the 400g when I set it up again. This change for the better does give me some hope that I'll have broodstock to start with, keeping the lineage of what I've owned for so long still continuing with me in the future.

Not everything is in dire straits. The anemones are fine, the fish are active and colorful, and much of the LPS are fine. I'm seeing new margins along the edges of chalices, for example. Here are a few pictures to help you visualize.

Two different birdsnests




Here's what remains of my Blue Ridge coral that I've had since 2002.


Look how much of it died. The living patch is in the lower right.


This was a cool surprise. I was watching the anemone and clownfish, and spotted something new.


Eggs! This is probably the first clutch this pair of clowns have laid. Last year, I lost four of my six clownfish to Brooklynella disease, and thus these differing clowns were paired up after their mates had perished. You may recall how tiny the one was that I added to the other. He's grown rather quickly, and the pair are apparently in the mood to get busy.



I've moved a few more corals into my frag tank. I like to hand feed these corals, so this makes it easy.


At night after the lights are out, I flip on my tiny Reefbrite 2-LED fixture to see what I'm doing, turn off the Vortech MP10 and the flow to the frag tank, and feed each hungry mouth some thawed food. Acans, lobos, tubastrea, and more get their share daily.

Sadly, my lovely dark green branching Tubastrea started peeling off tissue about three weeks ago, for no good reason. I'm not sure what was going on, but I knew that the best thing for me was to leave it alone. In the end, it stopped. The polyps wouldn't open up to accept food, but I just hoped for the best. This past week, the survivors have been opening up night, and I'm feeding them. I may end up cutting off the healthy sections later, but for the time being I'm not touching it.


This is that beautiful Lobophyllia I picked up at Frank's anniversary sale, the one that has attacked the orange suncorals twice. Gorgeous, right?!


Yesterday at our club's meeting, Wes brought me two Mini Carpet anemones to replace the ones I used to have. I'd shared a lot of them with others, and he found two on a small rock that made it easy to get to me.


The Wire coral is doing pretty well, although there is a bare spot where it touches the substrate.


The small Red Anemone I brought home from New York hasn't moved, and accepts food instantly.


I moved the Dendros and the Duncans into the frag tank. Here are the Duncans.




I think I got this Chalice at Next Wave, it has remained in excellent condition.


Blastomussa polyps were obtained at the same time as the Chalice.


You know I love my suncorals, but these acans have done me proud. I got them last year at CRASE in Oklahoma, and I put them in the front of the frag tank. I've had a few people ask me if I'm selling them; I can't wait to place them in the new 400g set up.






I know you guys love to give me hard time about the valonia (green bubble algae) in this tank, but it sure made it easier to do color correction in Photoshop when processing these images. The tank is lit with a 14,000K Evolution LED fixture from Reefkoi, and the images were quite blue right out of the camera. I wanted to show you what I see with my eyes, with their true colors. As I adjusted the RGB, the valonia was an easy way to verify I'd gotten it right.