FarmerTy

Good luck in Houston Chris! That is nice of you to pay it forward to ARC.

Nice coloration... man... those are some giant snails!!!

I'm on the not broke bandwagon... the conditions were right to bring it back from the dead... I would just leave it be. I'd rather risk slow recovery than move and accidentally cause a condition for no recovery.

Nice, digging the utter chaos and skittles stylo.

I will pitch in $20 to anybody who orders the first frag pack if I can have the statburst goni. Lmk. -Ty

Hey bartender, I'm going to need a 2ml/min drip of vodka... stat!

Here's a good... but older article on goniopora. http://reefkeeping.c.../nftt/index.php You more than likely have Goniopora stokesi or Goniopora lobata. They are unfortunately the type that usually lives in darker, dirtier water that is hard to replicate in a reef system. Unless you have a large, natural refugium-based system with a large volume of water (like in the 300 gal + range), they will more than likely die on you. I keep an assortment of alveopora and encrusting red goni's in my SPS tank (I think you might have seen them in the left corner when you came by last) that are doing well in my system. The long-term health is still to be determined but most have been there for at least 8 months and showing tissue growth so... keeping my fingers crossed. I do not supplemental feed them. -Ty

That looks like a monti spongades or monti confusa. I never really knew the difference but pretty hardy, high light and higher flow should keep it happy and bright looking. The flowerpot goniopora usually has a dismal survival rate, even more so in newer tanks. Pretty as all get out but pretty hard to keep alive and typically starts withering away slowly in about 6-9 months. They say its easier to keep them alive now with the availability of smaller food sources (DTs, cylopeeze, oyster feast... etc) but I still haven't seen one alive in someone's tank for more than a year. And with the food sources, you'd almost end up having a phosphate or nitrate problem with the amount of food you need to keep in suspension in your tank to keep it alive. The red encrusting goni's have a better survival rate than the flowerpots. If you want to keep a goni, I would look in that direction. Start with alveopora also... they are way hardier and I've seen several reefers in our area keep those alive and they are growing and dropping babies colonies all the time. Does anybody on ARC have a good experience with the flowerpot variety of gonioporas? I mean, keeping it alive for more than a year? And maybe not just alive, but actually growing?

Don't know if there is an exact way of preventing it, other than having a good system of phosphate and nitrate removal in place. If its there, cyano/dinoflaggelates/algae will aim to grow in your system. My cyano was from running biopellets... can't exactly lead to how the dino's took over after the cyano disappeared but more than likely its not going to happen in everyone's tank the same as it did mine. It was just a word of caution from my own experience. I still don't have cyano but that was with me running less biopellets in my reactor and more aggressive use of GFO.

Run your protein skimmer without the cup (basically let it bubble over). I ran both my biopellet and GFO reactor during the treatment to make sure all water in my system was treated. Just be cautioned, I ran off my cyano after the treatment and dinoflaggelates replaced them instead. I would much prefer cyano.

I have both dark and light and have not noticed different behaviors between the two color variants in my own tank. I read an article a couple years back about the dark one's being the zoa predators but have not noticed that behavior in my own tank.

Oh good one Mike, thankful for a fiance that puts up with me always having one hand in the tank and having a million people come over to buy frags all the time.

Since it is in the spirit of the season... I am thankful for this forum and all the wonderful people I have met and chatted with over the years. I am also thankful for a place online where we can all get together and share insight into our hobby, ask questions, look for help, and pick up a frag here and there. Approximately 70% of my tank came from small frags I got locally from people on our club. Each one of our tanks are the accumulation of the effort that we all put in together on ARC and in the hobby. Thanks all and pass on the good will if it pleases you. -Ty

125 gal @ 81.5F (aim to keep temp around 81-83) Lights been running for 5hrs Current House temp: 73F Tank Material: glass Tank pumps: 3 koralia 4's, nano wavebox, mag 2, mag 12, sedra 3500 250 watt heater

Ah, gotcha Tim. Just passing along what you observed. I appreciate the insight.

I look at them as beneficial. Does nobody else?

Same, never bothered by any of them. At worst they graze some of my coraline algae but that stuff grows so fast, no biggie. They are the first to clean up anything that is rotting in my tank so I give them a big thanks for doing a good job. I'll see them on a zoa... my opinion is they are eating one's that are rotting and dying, not attacking a healthy one. If they were attacking healthy one's in my tank, I would see it more often... just my 2 cents. Only one's I see them on were colonies that weren't doing so well in the first place. Who knows though... whole chicken and egg theory, which one was first? Rotting Zoa or zoa eating starfish... with over 1,000 polyps in my tank and hordes of asterinas in with them... my money is on the rotting zoa. -Ty

Haha, thanks Rob. I will be posting some more stuff probably in early December for people to give themselves early X-mas presents for being such good reefers this year!

Bonus? Can you paypal me $1.25 please? Just kidding, it was nice meeting you and your husband. Thanks for the Aggie good luck charm that morning. You guys will have to come over prior to every football game! -Ty

Well, if they are pretty and not harming anything, I say congrats on your dentists nice tank of pretty green things. Haha. That is funny that they look just like duncans without the skeleton.

I figured my frag introduction process was a little abrupt for most corals, kind of akin to unplugging someone from the matrix. But with a very low mortality rate, it hasn't gotten me to change my ways. I will see if a more gentle acclimation process would work next time I try a frag. Timfish, how come you suspect the lighting? I always thought I had decent lighting in my system with a 250-watt halide and 4 additional T5 bulbs (no pure actinic bulbs) over each 2' section of my tank. The lights are only 8-10 inches off the surface of the water and the tank itself is only 16-18" deep. Curiosity makes me want to test it with a par meter but I just always assumed it was a lot by normal standards.

Hi All, Want to pick the ARC collective brain. My current SPS population is growing like mad, I can literally see growth on a dialy basis. Coloration is great after the dinoflaggelate recovery so all my colors are finally coming back to me. I have a population of approximately 50 different SPS species, ranging from easy to keep to quite finicky. The thing that confuses me is the addition of new SPS corals. The hardier types come into my system and they are okay from day 1. The more sensitive corals I have noticed come into my tank just fine, but then start to STN very slowly at the base, which progressively gets faster until 3-4 weeks later, I'm staring at a white skeleton. The three types I've noticed this on are specifically blue hoeki, reef raft millie, and AquaSD strawberry shortcake. These are all more sensitive corals so it is understandable that they may STN, but just curious if anybody has had the same experience. I actually have a Vivid Aquarium strawberry shortcake in my system that is doing great and growing like mad in my system, but the new one that is introduced begins to STN the next day after introduction. I would blame flatworms but its only on new frags, older frags would show the same symptoms if they were present. I would blame my alk but it's pretty stable. Only thing I can think of is my introduction process. I dip in Bayer Insecticide dip (worked perfectly fine with the introduction of all my other SPS frags), then I move it into the tank and leave it on the sand, then I move it slowly up the rock until I get it where I want it. The process doesn't allow for drip acclimation for the SPS frags, so once they leave the water they came from, they are introduced to the insecticide dip, then tossed into the tank with the new water quality parameters. Perhaps the shock causes the STN. Thoughts? My params are stable: Ca- 450ppm Alk- 8.0-8.4 dKH PO4- 0.015 ppm (Hanna) Mg- 1400 ppm pH - 7.9-8.1 (Ca Reactor keeps it lower than average) Salinity - 1.026 Temp - 81-83 (keep it higher purposefully) Lighting Schedule: 6hrs halides (3 x 250 watt) 7hrs T-5 (ATI blue specials, coral plus, and purple plus) 12hrs of blue LED stunners (aestetics only) Equipment/Maintenance: ASM G-3 skimmer - run 24hrs, empty 1/week GFO reactor - replace media monthly biopellet reactor - run 1/2 the recommended amount carbon bag - passively run in sump Feed fish once daily -Ty

Hey guys, Sorry, didn't update this weekend but I found someone yesterday that will do the Air Water Ice order with me. -Ty

Briansrock is going to be all over this!

If you are only doing a FOWLR tank, I would imagine you are fine with the equipment you have. I don't know much about FOWLR systems but maybe someone who does can chime in. For a reef system, I would highly recommend a sump for the 150g tank and you would pretty much have to buy all new equipment (larger skimmer, larger return pump, lighting upgrade?, larger circulation pumps?, etc...). That's going to cost some coin. Usually the tank itself is is just a small cost of a tank upgrade when you factor in more live rock and new equipment sized appropriately for your water volume. You have any specs on your lights you have now and possibly what type of system you want to keep (i.e. FOWLR, fish and softies, some LPS, some SPS)? -Ty