FarmerTy

I call him... Cyphastrea face!

I let the videos inspire my musical selections. Haha.

Here's another male urchin I caught a couple days ago doing his thing... and yes, those are fire and ice zoas on its back. There is a brief cameo from my new flame angel as well in the video. I apologize for all the particulate matter in the water... I had just fed the tank.

Those sesame seeds are just retracted polyps. Mine has done that before. How are your parameters? Only thing I can think of is to double check all parameters. If I had a wild guess, I'd say high salinity.

They're spawning!!!

I feel romance in the air. My bets are my clowns spawn tonight. I've already moved the webcam over to the action for anybody interested in seeing it live. Sorry if the banghai cardinal keeps webcam-bombing but he's fascinated with the webcam. I'll update with another post if I see it starting. http://107.207.77.238:8080/browserfs.html Username: jeeperty Pass: corals

I think that's similar stuff to the stuff ol aggie and I found at the MT supermarket right down Lamar from the Hana Market. Worked for us.

Here's the male urchin video I made a couple months back to hold everyone over until I can catch the female again.

Yeah, the males I've witnessed in my tank practically ooze it out of the surrounding areas near the anus so the description matches up well. The female releasing the eggs was totally unexpected. It was a very coordinated movement of tentacles and expulsion of a ton of microscopic eggs. If 90 microns is the average size of urchin eggs, then it is an appropriate description of what I saw... basing this on a grain of salt being about 100 microns. I'll have a fully charged phone awaiting the next session Tim.

Welcome! Very cool to have you on board. Great tank!

If it is, buy me one too! Time to dust off my old ebay account! Bigsby, just FYI, I put a purple monster acro frag in your stocking but you can't open it until Christmas Eve. Rules are rules!

I think ORA had first dibs on naming my echinata colony... though the name does have a nice ring to it. Ty's Hawkins echinata!

JCAB, how much for your mystery wrasse? [emoji41]

I'd be surprised by that since Neptune does MAP (minimum advertised pricing) with retailers. If he was selling it that low, they could get in trouble with Neptune. Maybe they meant they had the full version for that price... not the gold package that retails for $800.

You just broke my heart with that information Bpb. I haven't researched wrasses yet but that one was on my list. [emoji30]

Tim, I have 5 urchins that poop everyday so I got a pretty good idea of what that looks like and this was distinctly different. I appreciate the input though.I'm pretty sure it was eggs. They were so small that the chromis didn't even realize they were there to eat like they do with the mandarin eggs when those are released. It was so fine that only in the right light could I see the hundreds of tiny projectiles coming out of the urchin. The males releasing gametes are just as interesting. It's not too disimilar from a tube of toothpaste being squeezed the way it comes out of the urchin. Once it squeezes out, the current disperses it quickly and it appears as though the urchin is smoking.

I can spot a nice wrasse a mile away! Alright, enough of me being cheeky. [emoji38] It's right in the middle if the tank by the royal gramma.

I know my CaRX better than I know my wife! That's awesome you dialed it in so close so quickly and that 10# bottle definitely should last more than a year. So the only real work you need to do is top off media 1-2x a year. I hope you'll be the next convert. They are really that simple once up and running.

Mystery wrasse is looking good in there!

How about I guess your pH correctly for an eye of it?

If that's who the acros and montis want to be with... who am I to get in the way. The polyp wants what the polyp wants.

My wife and I have officially married off all the urchins, snails, clownfish, mandarin gobies, and pods so Sin Salt City it is not.

Go figure... I find a fish for you and you kill it and feed it to the anemone. [emoji12] Tank is progressing nicely! Your phosphates aren't as terribly high as I remember when you brought by your water last time. Some of the purigen must be helping out a bit.

Autofeeder Mcguyver skills fail! Some water must have gotten into it... otherwise, there's no way the pellets should have stuck there. I'll chalk it up to a fluke, clean it up, and let it be. Got a decent shot of the clownfish eggs... you can see their eyes and egg yolk. Interesting observation, I've been seeing my male urchins releasing gametes into the water for some time now the last couple of months. It just basically looks like they are smoking. What I have never witnessed though was a female releasing eggs. Then the other day, I saw one urchin perch really high and grab on to an sps branch and the live rock (like a spider in the middle of its web) and start pulsing all its tentacles towards the center and then back out... over and over. It was amazingly coordinated... all in the center, and then push out. It was almost hypnotic. I wish I had recorded it but my phone was dead. While trying to figure out what it was doing, I started seeing little tiny eggs coming out by the hundreds. Then I observed all my sps release their mesenterial filaments... a basic feeding response. Very interesting to catch in action. It's exciting to have my own urchin SPS autofeeder system. Btw, I'm enamored by the flame angel I added. The first two days he was entirely covered in ich... I mean on the fins, flesh, everywhere! By day 3 he was completely clear. This is where I tend to stick to my thought that ich is temporary if all conditions are in-line in your tank and there are no additional stressors such as an aggressive tankmate. Just leave them be, feed lots, and it'll be alright. After getting him, I had the realization that all my fish tend to just swim, swim, and swim... looking for food... grazing here and there. He's the only fish I have that fills the niche of cruising the rocks all day and picking at the algae and pods. The mandarins are similar but are on the less exciting side and more the beautiful delicate side. The flame angel is just shooting about always looking for a snack... cruising in and out of crevices... his activity level is hypnotizing. Great buy!

Man, I'm all about creative aquascapes and unique ideas but something about that just doesn't seem right. Kind of like seeing a floating head or something... the body is kind of critical. I applaud the creativity though!