FarmerTy

I should have my own animal planet television series on catching fish!

I have never been stung either. It's been confirmed, you have soft hands.

In!

I snacked on some the other day in your tank when you weren't looking.

I'm here to point out all of Sascha's faults.

I consider them good.

Oh I saw him, but no witnesses. Lucky for me, my word is golden with myself.

Let's just throw Rambo in your tank and you can report back to all of us if your zoas are just tiny nubs. What a team player Brian is. Haha.

Welcome! We love pics here on ARC!

Nice! Heads up, I think you meant to put 50% off freshwater fish.

The mandarins eat about 1 pod every 10 seconds. It will deplete it fast in most systems. The pods you are seeing are probably amphipods, which the mandarin does not eat as they are too big. Your sixline will probably eat them though.

I'm coming over to the house then! Who's with me!!!

Well, the macro experiment ended very quickly. It was mainly trying to tempt my new powder blue tang but he wouldn't have it. I'll feed the rest of it out and be done with it for now. Quick updates: 1) Some of my SPS have been STN'ing for some unknown reason in the old tank (all parameters in normal ranges). Not very quickly but it is still happening. 2) Starting moving some more SPS colonies over to the new tank. Figured it can't get worse so might as well move them and hope for the best. 3) Rambo, the awesome filefish, was evicted from the tank after I realized he was the one who ate all my Tubb's blue zoas and not the powder blue I suspected. Sad because he was one of the cooler fish but I'm a coral guy, not a fish guy, so out you go buddy. I replaced him with a fairy wrasse. He also destroyed some cyan colored zoas and my cherry bombs/zombie eyes. All should hopefully grow back. 4) Borrowed a fish trap and went fishing. Caught me a 7" desjardini sailfin tang and a 5" foxface, heck yeah! 5) Picked up an awesome new skimmer for the tank, Skimz SM201, rated for more than the old skimmer and also a lot smaller and its whisper quiet. Like I don't even know its on half the time. 6) Also scored a way oversized return pump (old Iwaki rated for 1350 gph, new Reeflo Hammerhead Gold rated 5555 gph... yikes!). Jeremy also threw in his awesome manifold setup. Didn't take me long to break my new toy. I modified the manifold for my uses and then wanted to rotate the orientation of the effluent pipes. I had cleaned out the pump and was reinstalling the manifold, when I heard a pop... and snapped the volute (piece that hold the the effluent and influent connections on the pump). Need to ease off on the body building. There was a brightside to this. Reeflo customer service was amazing. They are shipping out a new volute (half the price of the one's found online) and told me that I could also just switch out the impeller to the "barracuda" impeller and run at 4680 gph. That would save on electricity and I wouldn't have to dial down the flow as much as I would have in the hammerhead mode. Doesn't hurt that the impeller was way cheaper than I expected. 7) I plan to have everything moved over before March 1st. 8) I am getting paranoid about my repair of the front pane of glass so I am going to have a welded frame around the entire rim of the tank and also two cross braces running across the middle to assure that I get a restful night of sleep from this point forward. 9) Been brainstorming ideas for the canopy. Need something accessible from the front and the back, without inhibiting my access. 10) Skinning the stand will be the last step, as well as organizing all the electrical components. Alright, that's all I got for now. I'll leave you guys with this: Look below and to the right of the large aiptasia and you'll see a smaller one there... spoiler alert... but not for long!!!

My wish came true! I expect there to be more brisket tomorrow Travis! That stuff was tasty!

Awesome grand opening Travis and Chris. The atmosphere was perfect, the livestock was amazing, the food delicious, the prices were great, and the company there was awesome! Let's do it again tomorrow! Who's in? Haha.

Hooray Kim! The project moves forward!

Will do spacemoses

I can help lift it and load it bud if you need more bodies for Sunday.

I have always had the experience of birdsnest being too finicky. For being considered "beginner" SPS corals, they sure do get mad for no reason and die. I have SPS that are way more sensitive to conditions and they are bulletproof but I breathe wrong on a birdsnest and it dies. Odd.

All gone! Well, except for the one Sherita is picking up.

I think all that have responded have some sort of automated dosing. My parameters never swing which is 100% the reason why I have had the success up to this point with SPS. Like I said, the tank upgrade has caused a lot of extra variables that are usually not there though my maintenance routine has stayed the same.

Jestep, that's interesting that you observed continued growth as well. All the one's that are Stn'ing are still growing and the polyps are 100% out until the stn line gets to them and then they pull in and die.

I'll start first. Been established with SPS for I've 3 years and have not witnessed any periods of stn and rtn over that timeframe, other than from possibly new frags that didn't transition well or my one episodic salinity drift that RTN'ed one coral overnight. System has been pretty bulletproof for SPS. Currently going through an upgrade as many of you know. There are too many factors and variables to pinpoint a cause in my tank but about 5 pieces have been experiencing STN within the last 2 weeks. All parameters are in check which is the oddest part of the mystery. The STN will generally stop when I frag the STN'ING portion. I have been experimenting with moving any colonies that are stn'ing to the new system and that has generally halted the STN even though more time will be needed to confirm those results. Is this my tanks way of telling me to hurry up with the transition already? Biggest guesses would be more than usual amounts of gfo and biopellets used to combat all the extra nutrients as I extract rocks and corals from the old tank. But again, too hard to pinpoint as so many variables have changed with the tank upgrade.

I've been hearing and seeing so many instances of SPS corals STN'ing/RTN'ing over the last 5 months that I wanted to take a unofficial poll of how many people have had this experience. If possible, can people share their experiences and their timeline of their events and if it is still ongoing? Please keep this to established populations of SPS and not just from adding a new frag if possible. I am curious to see everyone's experiences and if there is a possible commonality between all the episodes of STN/RTN.

Bump, this guy is literally over a foot long! He's hungry and would very much like to clean out all the junk in your sandbed.