KimP

My DT is now aiptasia-free and I need to send the filefish onto a new home! My DT was completely infested with aiptasia and this little guy cleared it out in 2 months. I actually need some aiptasia for an unrelated project, so that's what I'm looking for in return. You can bring loose aiptasia or an aiptasia covered rock and I'll trade the filefish for it. He is the perfect tankmate, never picked on anyone and eats whatever food I put in the tank. I have a hunch these guys still need aiptasia in their diet to be healthy, that's why I'm passing him along. I live far south and I'll catch the filefish as soon as we have arrangements for pick up.

Welcome to the club!

Glad to have you back!

This is a tricky thing because even though I've been around for years , even attending most meetings, I frequently don't know who the new people are from the ones who've been around a while. I definitely think we should do name tags! We used to have lanyards with our membership card, that said who we were on ARC, but I haven't seen anyone use theirs in a long time.

My GPS is suggesting you go down MoPac and exit Slaughter. (There's a wreck on 35) Head west on Slaughter and turn south on Brodie Ln. It dead ends at 1626 and take a right to head west. It's a curvy road so just follow it past 967. It's a big intersection, so go strait through and you'll be close at that point. Watch for it on your left.

Happy belated birthday!

Where are you coming from?

Another one going down

Thank you!

Oh no!! I'm so sorry! What an awful thing to come home to! I'm glad some of them survived.

Yes that would be great! If it's easy to remove I'll certainly take it. I can bring a clean rock from my sump to trade.

Urchins are such a great cuc addition but man they sure can tear things up! I'm glad things are starting to clear up for you, good job getting ahead of it!

FTS Things are going alright in spite of a really big alk spike. I accidently hooked up the wrong jug when I thought I was setting up the doser for Ca. It was actually the alk supplement. Big oops! I have it back down as of today but my Ca is testing at 290 tonight. I ran the test a few times, all with the same result and a nearly brand new kit. I'm dosing Ca (for sure now ) so I'm not sure what's up. I'll try to track down the problem in the next day or two. I've been dosing Mg for a while now and it's slowly coming up. Everything looks good though, I don't see any visible signs of a problem....yet. Here's what I got tonight: Ca 290 Alk 150 Mg 1270 PO4 0.18

Things are still going along as usual. I think the dark cycles really help to cause the aiptasia to send off little buds, because after a couple of days with ambient light, I'll find several tiny ones on the glass and sand. So if you have aiptasia, maybe don't do this! Yesterday I discovered 2 adults had gotten into the little tiny filter I had in the tank. Not sure how they managed to get up in there because there's foam and some carbon to get past, but maybe they crawled up along side of it. Bummer. So I'm back to an air pump and airline on the adult tank (3g). Better to just keep things simple. I tried to get a picture of what's going on in this jar. If you can tell, there's a tiny aiptasia holding onto the bottom of the jar. Can you see all the little dots concentrated around it? Those are the baby berghia! Plus some egg shells. I thought that was kind of cool. I put a faint red circle around it. Yesterday was a big day for the first offspring! I only pulled out the biggest 4 to move over and see how they do. I'm surprised by how fast they are growing. It's only been 5 or 6 weeks. New generation of berghia in the 3g! I can see the juveniles in Jar1 really easily, and in Jar2 with a little bit of looking, and even in Jar3 I can easily spot where to put the loupe and see them. I set up Jar4 with a whole bunch of new egg swirls yesterday. The adults had gone on an eating frenzy and cleared every last spec of aiptasia about a week ago and then layed a bunch of eggs. I wonder why they had a lull, where they were only munching the tops off? I wonder if it's just a natural cycle they do, or if the water quality had slipped a bit. I did have some trouble keeping up with topping it off but any swings were minor, like from 35 to 36 or 37 at the most.

Welcome back!

Brad's on his way. Should be there right around 2. He has the dolly.

The rock is beautiful and the aquascape looks great! I like the 2 channels and plenty of room for coral growth.

Do the feet turn? Maybe they are leveling feet? If not then you'd have to shim under them.

My husband will help and can bring 1 dolly. Any weekend is fine although a few days notice is helpful.

+1 ^^^^ this guy knows his stuff.

Thanks

Finally had some spare minutes tonight to check out the jars. I kept trying to swirl jar#1 and squirt the inside with the pipette and do all these things to try and get some berghia into the pipette, because I wasn't finding anything in the water I was pulling out. I started thinking maybe they all died or maybe I accidently got an amphipod in there. Eventually I just picked up the jar and held it up to the light with my bare eyes and couldn't believe it when the inside of the jar was covered in berghia about a quarter of an inch long!!!!! Smaller sizes also, but I was missing them because they're big enough to hold on to the glass tightly, crawl all over not just sit on the bottom, and I assumed they were still tiny. Boy, times have changed when the big excitement on a Fri night consists of slugs and a microscope I'm pretty happy with these pictures. I pulled out 2, one larger and one of the smaller babies. These are of the smaller one. You can hopefully tell it's just getting it's cerata: The big one was too large to really see under the microscope but here's a neat shot of its cerata full of aiptasia bits. It looks exactly like the adults in proportion now, just smaller. And here's the big one on the microscope slide for scale.

That sounds incredible!!

What about just dipping the lower part of the skeleton where the algae is growing, and not let the healthy tissue get touched by it? I'd just frag it and start over if it were me though because I think you'll still end up with algae in there again eventually.

That tank looks great! I love the dimensions.