FarmerTy

Bigmike, when you pick up your corals today from me, I will be happy to answer any questions you have about dipping, QTing, and nudibranchs. -Ty

Nice meeting you Glen! Good tank talks! Get those aqua gloves man!

Red planet is by far and away one of the most beautiful SPS I have seen and one of my favorite in my tank. Great price on that one Kim. GLWS!

Zoas colonies, they are predators of zoas and that's their food source so they probably came in with a colony you bought.

I would turn off your light, let all your zoas close up or agitate them, then shine a flashlight on the closed polyps and look for those little buggers between the polyps. Look carefully as they will blend right in with the polyps. You can remove them physically with tweezers or by hand. Another idea is to treat with with Bayer insecticide dip if your zoas colonies are removable. See link below: http://www.austinreefclub.com/topic/21699-unorthodox-coral-dip-bayer-advanced-complete-insect-killer/

Looks like a zoa eating nudibranch to me. Remove it and check all your zoa colonies for more. They can wipe out your tank of zoas.

Nice find! I wonder if the colonies are maricultured or collected? Have you always had pretty good success with keeping big colonies happy during the transition to an enclosed reef system? I never tried but I am curious. -Ty

Big fan of 2 coral plus, 1 purple plus, and one blue plus. 14k color with a good pop for reds and greens. I am not a fan of too blue of a tank. I actually have 4 bulbs I bought last month during the last BRS group buy and ran for a week before going back to only MH setup. They have been used a week and then taken offline. Currently offered to someone but if they don't take them, I will post on for sale thread. 2 blue plus, 1 coral plus, 1 purple plus -48"

That would be my best guess. If there is a shadier part of the tank, I would try moving the frag there and then slowly move it into higher light, giving it time to acclimate.

My money is on the LED swap.

That's your polyps dumping their zooxanthallae. Was there some type of light overexposure lately? Or did you happen to buy those like that?

All PMs answered and quantities updated. Sorry TexasRob, not cutting that beauty just yet, it's too symmetrical to mess with right now! Haha. -Ty

Hello ARC crew, Part 2 as promised, SPS frags-a-plenty. Used representative pics when needed as I have only a phone cam. Pickup Sunday or some time during the week after 4pm. Thanks! Pink Jade - 2-3" frags ($15) - 4 available -all pending Pink Jade - 1-2" frags or 3 small frags on one plug ($10) - 7 available - all pending Pink Jade - base frag plug that I cut all frags off of ($5), random 3/4" piece leftover ($5) -pending representative pic Forest Fire digitata - 1-1/4" piece ($15) - all pending[/b][/color], 3/4"-1" pieces ($10) - 3 available -all pending representative pic Tricolor valida base frag plug - ($15) -sold representative pic Setosa - 1" multibranch ($15) -sold mother colony Encrusted Purple meridiana rock, no branches - $10 -sold representative pic Blue polyp digitata - 1-2" frags ($5) -available Blue polyp mini colony - 4" multibranch ($15) -available ORA Jeremy's Digitata (rare) - 1-2" frag ($20) -all pending, 2" multi-branch frag ($25) - 1 available -sold , 1" frag ($15) -sold representative pic Warp speed monti - ($10), 3 frags available -all sold, mother colony Green, cyan, tan favia - ($15) frag 1" x 1", 4 available -3 available Unknown Acro colony - tan with green polyps and light blue tips, 16 linear inches of coral, stands 4" tall, 6" wide ($60) - available Bright green cap - 1" x 1" ($5) - all sold Red cap - 2" x 1' ($5) - 1 frag - all sold Cali Tort - base plug piece ($10) 1 frag available Unknown frag grab bag - ($10) for all three unknown frags - 1-2" frags -sold

Its interesting to see everyone's dosing and maintenance regiment. They are as individual and unique as each one of our tanks are. I just wanna throw caution out there that what works on one tank may not necessarily work on another.

I use the Arm media, extra course that you can get from BRS.

I haven't done a water change in 2 years and only dosed Mg once while running my calcium reactor. I have a ton of SPS btw. -Ty

+1 for the red sea Mg kit. I have been using a Calcium reactor for almost 2 years now and have had to dose Mg only once during that time to supplement. BRS has Mg and their own instructions say to dose once a month I believe so daily dosing I think is more often than needed but I don't see any problems doing it through your auto topoff either except for the aforementioned issue of specificity with the ATO method. I believe are are products to put in with your Calcium reactor media that doses Mg as well.

I would be happy to be a tester for your home brewing endeavors however... sign me up!

I went into Austin Homebrew to get my CO2 cylinder filled for my calcium reactor and was almost blown away by how much went into the brewing process... they had so many options for everything. I figured my tank keeps me occupied enough so maybe I will start home brewing one day when my tank decides to crash on me or something... or when my APEX decides to take over entirely and just lets me watch from that point on. -Ty

In my defense, that 60% is when I have my hand in my tank. -Ty

Haha, I say relish in being human. I am a self-proclaimed idiot 60% of the time, and the other 40% pure genius! LOL.

I have no idea what you are even talking about Planedan... I saw nothing!

also Ty someone liked my post therefore I am right. I tried to like my own post... but it doesn't let you do that. Ty = -1 Dave = 1 Ooazarkawater- be happy to donate some zoas to that challenge if someone has a tank with no zoas to experiment with it. The zoas may not be pretty but they should be tasty to hungry zoa-eating asterina stars.

Still a supporter of the problem is with the zoas dying in the first place already and the starfish are just cleaning up. Of course, I don't doubt there are some species out there that do eat zoas. Just in my experience with my tanks, it has always not been the case of zoa eating stars. I probably have close to 700-800 zoa polyps in my tank and a conservative estimate of 400-600 asterina stars in my tank. When a colony of zoas starts to decline, the stars are all over it, doing what they are supposed to be doing, cleaning up. If I ran with the theory of zoa eating stars in my tank, I don't think I would have 700-800 polyps still in my tank... they would have decimated my zoa population a long time ago with those numbers. But if I overexposed a colony to light and they started dying or had an alk spike and some started melting, those stars are on them like white on rice. I guess there could be an argument that they could have recovered without the starfish on them but that is a theory for now until I can experiment with it. As always, just sharing what I have observed over the years in my tank... doesn't mean it applies the same to everyone's unique tanks. -Ty

Looks awesome James! I want one! Haha. Planedan, maybe just stating the obvious but did you click on different parts of the pictures to have it refocus on that part? Sorry if I misinterpreted your comment but wanted to say something just in case. -Ty