KimP

Here's the FTS from this week I don't like the way some corals are looking and I have algae and cyano on the sandbed again. I'm ready to do a water change and thinking of pulling the Chemipure Blue and replacing with regular carbon and gfo reactors. This is the second time I've swapped one of the bags and had an algae and cyano outbreak. Could be a coincidence of course.

Awesome! Thanks for helping the club out!

WOW! [emoji54]

Naaa, "Dynamic Equilibrium"! We're dealing with competing and opposing organisms in a complex ecosystem. "balance"! Kidding aside, this has been a great, thought providing discussion! I feel like I've been fighting to find a lasting balance/DE/homoeostasis in my tank for a long time now. It seems to easily tip out of it with no apparent changes on my part. As far as having a lit refugium vs a cryptic one, how do you guys feel about keeping algae in the sump and the DOC's it might add?

Gosh, I'm so sorry about your fish! I hope the rest recover now that you've figured out what the problem is.

I'm trying to share this on freefuninaustin.com Can you or Mike let me know what parts of it are family friendly? Is there going to be anything for kids?

Great!! I'll be interested to hear if they work for you!

I'd definitely suggest giving one a try! Just keep an eye on it if you notice problems with any corals you have.

A few days ago I went ahead and did a water change on the egg container. I decided to just skim water gently and slowly off of the very top. Then I set up another spaghetti sauce jar and moved the remaining egg swirls into it and labeled them. Now I'll refer to them as jar 1 and jar 2, etc, etc. The aiptasia in jar 1 was looking a little rough yesterday and I can see tiny white dots all over the bottom of the jar without any magnification. All good signs. I was thinking maybe I'll just start a new jar every week and pull the egg swirls out of the 3g once a week. They hatch every 10-14 days so I'd have a rough idea of the age of the berghia inside this way. That's probably not important but seems like a good idea anyway to spread them out a bit. Everywhere I read it seems like the berghia don't need aeration. I'm still not sure about this but I have noticed the water is colder than my DT, so I am kind of considering moving the jars into my sump. Have them sit on a platform to keep the temp stable. Keep the lids on to cut down on evaporation, but I bet I could get away with a hole or two in the lid. Just need to decide if that won't be too much of a pain to get under my DT everyday to top them off. Water changes would be simple this way since I use DT water anyway. I only fill the jars up about half way so the surface to water volume ratio isn't too low. I'd keep the 3g tank out on my counter though because I have a heater for it I might just add. I don't see a good way to keep the jars warmer though, so that's why I thought of the sump. There's a couple articles on breeding berghia and that's about what they suggested. Today I'm picking up another little tank to start an aiptasia tank! I can't believe I'm doing it. The bucket seems more fitting but it's an eyesore in the kitchen and razor blades don't work to scrape the aiptasia off the side. I need glass for that. It'll be easier to keep an eye on it in a real tank. So next I'll be reading up on ways to get these things to spread, although I feel like I'm already an expert in that area according to my DT over the years Now the trick will be propagating aiptasia in a tank with no fish or coral, although I did think I should put a frag or two in there so the aiptasia thinks it's a reef tank, ha! Now I need to go make my own Julian's thing and start spot feeding the aiptasia!

I'm curious as to what the actual mechanism that alerts here. Would a pheromone like scent work in that manner? Likely not. Do they have eyes or some visual receptor that caught the quick movement? If so, how are they identifying between food and flight?Super interesting Kim! I'm really curious about it too!! One of these days I want to look up any research that's been done on them and see if someone's figured this out. This is what I've read too. The tassels are called cerata and that's where digestion (among other things) happens. So they eat the aiptasia and all the pieces go out into their certata. They turn from white to whatever color the aiptasia was. It's really neat! Apparently they even consume and utilize the zooxanthellae, in addition to using the stinging cells. To add to that, I think its partially a self-survival mechanism as well. Eat the stinging cells, incorporate, leave the base to regrow so you can eat more later. I've always observed many snails do something very similar with their rasping tongues on the glass. It clears out most of the film algae but leaves just enough so that it can regrow quickly to not deplete the food source. I was thinking this too. A couple of times now they've eaten off the tentacles of a couple aiptasia and it's grown back to be eaten again. When there was only one or two aiptasia in the tank they ate the entire thing though, so I guess it matters how hungry they are

I can't be sure exactly, but it seems that now twice I've had an aiptasia eating filefish and they've done an amazing job. Last time I had one, I added berghia about a week later and soon enough all the aiptasia was gone. So I don't know where to give credit, maybe they all had something to do with it. That filefish didn't touch anything else in the tank and unfortunately he ended up dying. I don't remember whether he ate prepared food or not. I got another aiptasia eating filefish from Just Reef a while back and about a week or two ago I noticed a dramatic decrease in aiptasia in my DT, and I still haven't added a single berghia. That rock I posted a picture of up above ^^^ is totally clean now!! Not a single aiptasia in sight, it's really incredible. I assume it's the filefish although I haven't had any time to sit and watch him eat one. This time around I'm having some trouble with all of my acans, and nothing else, so there's a chance he's picking at them. I haven't seen him mess with them though, but I've been too busy to watch closely.

Hey!!! It's great to see a post from you!! Glad to see you're still in the hobby!

I brought my middle son to C4 when he was maybe a week old. It was just fine! He even got a photo with Charles Delbeek

FTS for this week:

Thanks!! I hadn't done anything in particular at all to the tank prior to the acans going downhill, but I was out of town for two weeks and came home to them looking like that. My husband was home feeding the tank and we did have someone staying over with him. I keep meaning to look back at the logs and see if anything was out of the ordinary during my trip. I agree it seemed/seems to be some sort of infection since the iodine made such a quick difference. I still have a couple looking rough but all of them have at least some puffiness to them now vs being totally drawn into the skeleton. It's so strange that nothing else was affected. I still have my eye on the filefish but haven't caught him picking at the acans. Thanks guys! The gorgonian is one I picked up that size from a fellow reefer, Big Clay. I love it too! I broadcast feed a lot of different foods, so nothing particular right on it.

Hey John, thanks for the compliment! I think the 1/2" will work just fine. Use some 2 part epoxy if you want, to hold it in the base like you mentioned. The only thing I can think of is you won't be able to tap it and screw in "branches" to your towers. I don't have any experience using acrylic rods but Timfish has mentioned that they can bend with weight on them over time. Good luck! I'm excited to see what you do with it!

The little berghia tank is trucking along just fine. All 8 adults still laying lots of eggs and occasionally munching an aiptasia. They've mostly been munching on a couple at once, not eating a whole one all the way down anymore. I'm guessing because I put about 8 of varying sizes in the tank. They will eat the huge aiptasia, which I wasn't sure about. They ate the tentacles off first and left the base. That was interesting. I've also noticed aiptasia from other tanks can look very different. I checked the egg container a couple days ago and found a bunch of empty eggs and lots and lots of newly hatched berghia! I'm still learning how to take pictures with this cell phone through the microscope, so I only have one blurry picture. They crawl fast under magnification, so by the time my phone focuses, it's out of view. I'll get better eventually! Now I have to figure out how to do a water change on the egg container with varying ages of eggs and newly hatched berghia. It takes a while for them to settle onto the bottom and begin feeding, so I could end up throwing out a bunch of newly hatched ones each water change. I don't know what I'll end up doing about this, maybe just skimming the top for water to throw away. I think I'll set up a new egg container, an additional one, and pull all the unhatched eggs out of the current one into it. That'll keep the bioload down since they're just in a spaghetti sauce jar. I bet I could put an airline in the original one at that point too. I switched to a glass container so I can see through it with the magnifying loupe and watch the little aiptasia in it for signs that it's getting munched on.

Wow that's a beautiful setup!!

Welcome to the club! I'm looking forward to your build thread.

**Found one, thanks ARC!** Looking for glass tank around 5 gal. Ideally with lid.

Thanks Chipp!

Very cool. I hope they survive, that would be awesome!

Welcome to the club!

FTS from 3 sides. I forget to take pics from the third side, even though I look down it as much as the other angles.

If you can get on the problem as soon as you see any aiptasia, that's going to be the best plan. I'm happy to give you some berghia when they're ready, of course! But in the meantime, try to get a handle on it by using a laser like Dan has, or injecting it with vinegar, or any of the other ways to get rid of them before there are too many. The berghia generally don't find every single little aiptasia, then they die off and the problem can return. I think the best plan is using several means of control.