cardsfan12

I have several sps frags that I am currently growing in my tank and always planned to get more down the road, once the ones I have are growing nicely. It recently occured to me that, in a year or two when these are really starting to look nice I don't want to have a bunch of little frag racks blocking the view. So I thought I should get more now so they all mature into colonies together. Anyway I was hoping that I could get some suggestions for some good frags to get and maybe if anyone knows where I could get the frags at a good price. I'm on a budget, so I can't spend a fortune. Here's what I have already: Orange Monti Cap Purple Monti Cap Cali Tort Acropora Tortuosa Blue Tenuis Pink Jade (Tort?) Ponape Birdsnest Green Birdsnest Hammer coral Kryptonite Candycane coral Starpoyps Kenya Tree Pulsating Xenya Assorted Mushrooms All of these corals are very small. I have plenty of room in my 140 gallon. I also have a tiny piece of superman Monti that doesn't seem to be doing well. I've had it for a couple of months and the blue base has faded. I had basically given up on it until a few days ago It seems to have new poylps around the edges. Maybe it can be saved. It's pretty high in the tank, does it need to be lower? Maybe I should start a separate topic for saving my super. I love the Monti Caps and know that I would like to get a brite green one if anyone knows anyone fragging them out.

yeah it does look like that. Like you said free food.

That's the first thing that popped into my head, too. If that is the case I assume it would just be more tiny things in the water for my corals to eat, right. I wonder if they would have to have another one in there to reproduce or are they a-sexual? I don't know.

I have a rather large diadema sea urchin and noticed that it spews out a milky substance occasionally. I, of course, was concerned as to what effect this would have on my tank inhabitants. He has been in there for awhile and so far there are no visable signs that anything is wrong.

I had a green bubble tip in a 55 with 50/50 power compacts for 4 years. It split three times in that time. Unfortunately one disappeared one day. I assume it went into my filter or something. I never saw any trace of it, kind of a mystery.

Nice pick up! You probably couldn't get the same amount of live rock and sand from a LFS for that price. Craigslist is great!

That sucks! I just had one of my clients(I do tank maintenance and cleaning) have her foxface suddenly start acting goofy. When I got there it was laying on it's side barly moving(ofcourse behing rocks in an impossible to reach spot with out moving rocks). Anyway I checked everything out and the were no obvious reasons for his demise. She had me get him out and by the time I moved the rocks he was D.E.D. dead. poor guy. Same thing though no signs of anything that would have caused his sudden change in health. A week ago when I had been there he was happy as a clam. I looked around the tank to see if anything else was stressed and all her corals, tangs, and other fish looked happy too. I guess thats just what fish do sometimes.

I have a few porcelain crabs in my tank and love them. They just find a rock with a decent current and stick out their tiny arms with what looks like little fans and filter stuff out of the water. I've never had a pom pom crab because they are hard to come by, but have since stopped trying because I was told that unless you have a tiny tank you will never see them. They appear to be cool little guys though. Lets see, I have had arrow crabs and loved them. They will go to town on any bristtle worms you have. My sally lightfoot is amusing as it scampers across the rocks constantly picking at them. I think of all of them the Sally would fit into the cleaner category the best, because like I said they are constantly grazing on the rocks. I did have a fire shrimp that was not doing well when I recieved it in the mail. I acclimated it and added it to the tank. As it sank in the water twitching I guess the sally sensed the weakness and before it hit the sand he was on it. It was going to die anyway so I got over it pretty quick. Anyway the more crabs the better. I think they are my favorite part of the minireef.

Ehh...seems I pushed a button or two. Sorry, just going off of personal experience and it was just a theory to explain why the one fish never gained in size, while the other grew quite large in a shorter time period(the large one leveled off in size after just 5 or 6 months while I never saw the small one gain much size at all). The hippo tang at the fish shop I work at, they had for 15 years never reached the "max size" and was 6 maybe 7 inches long. If you look at most online dealers They will give you a minimum tank size. I just googled it and checked the first three or four I saw. The minimum tank sizes noted are 55 and 75 gallons(have to take this with a grain of salt because they are trying to sell you stuff on these sites). Anyway, I see the point GKarshens is making. Basically, when you are setting up your tank you are basically trying to replicate the inhabitants natural environment. So more swimming room would be better for a fish that has the potential to grow fairly large. Unfortunatly I think very few fish in captivity grow to their maximum size. I don't think you should go into it thinking that the fish will die before it outgrows your tank, but I do think that if you keep this fish for many years and it eventually does out grow your tank then you will either be so addicted to this hobby(like most of us are) and be more than ready to upgrade to a larger tank or you can sell a "Show fish" of that size off and at the very least be able to replace it for another juvenile if not a nice chunk of change(Show fish can be very valuable). I wouldn't hesitate to place a hippo tang into a 75 gallon tank, but you should do your own research(this forum is part of that) and make an educated decision that you are comfortable with. The great thing about a forum like this is you can soak up other peoples experiences and see their differences in opinion and make the best decision that works for you.

That tank looks awesome! He only had four fish though, so if unless you can avoid the desire to stock up on critters( I can't) I'd get a skimmer.

I'm going to mooch off of this forum and ask for any advice for a first clam. I do want something that is going to add some color to my tank, but I am on a budget. I have corals(soft, LPS, and SPS) in my tank already, so I guess if I'm keeping them alive I should be ok with clams, right? Care tips and where to purchase would be greatly appreciated as well. Sorry I'm not sure what to say about the bungie jumping clam due to a lack of experience with them. I would guess I will re-adjust itself though.

I had a hippo tang in a 55 for 4 years until I lost it when I had to move the tank. It started out about the size of a quarter and within 5 months it was about 7 inches long and fat. It stayed about that size until, well, it died in the move. At one of the LFS I used to go to, in the display tank, they had one again about the size of a quarter that never really grew much. After years it maybe grew to be 2 inches. I always assumed he was replacing it, but after talking to the owner he was as puzzled by this as I was. My theory is the arrangement of the rocks is the determining facter in how much size the tangs will gain. In my tank I had many large caves and over hangs along with plenty of room to swim, where as in the LFS the rocks were piled in there with lots of little caves and holes. I think that tangs will not outgrow their environment. Not saying that you should throw one into a 20 gallon tank, but I do think that a 75 should be fine. I haven't done much reading on the hippo tang since I got into the hobby about five years ago, but I read up on them prior to getting one myself and everything I read said they would be fine in a 55, so in my opinion your tank should suffice. I also had a mandarin dragonet in there that dip well, but I would definatly make sure your tank is in great shape first. As far as algae, I hope you don't have hair algae and if you do nip it in the butt early. I battled that stuff in my old tank. Pain in the butt! lawn mower blennies will eat it when it is "new", but once it is long and established the lawnmower blennys seem to ignor it. I read somewhere that it has a bitter taste to it when longer that the lawnmowers don't like. Not sure how they determined how it taste, thats just what I read. Lettuce nudibraches will go to town on it for a while, but they typically aren't long lived in the home aquarium. No matter what kind of algae you have, I would stock up on hermit crabs and other "janitors". It seems like half the living things in my 140 gallon reef are there because of their functionality, not for their looks(even though most of them look pretty cool too). So I suggest you research your individual problems and see if there is a natural solution, but make sure the critter you add isn't going to turn into another problem down the road. Oh I just thought about my diadema sea urchin. This guy goes to town on my rocks, scraping it clean of all algae in its path. Unfotunatly it eats the good coaline algaes too, but you win some you loose some. If I could go back I would have gotten a small one(yeah I know eventually it will get big) to slow his progress. Anyway to sum up this long winded post. Research everything you ever put into your tank and never impulse buy. Sorry I didn't give you any sources for the info I gave you.

Thanks for the input guys. I put it into my refugium last night and gathered as many of my hermit crabs I could get ahold of to pick it clean as well. All seems well today. I just gave it a visual check, so hopefully it really is fine.

ok either I was the only one in the chat rom or something wasn't working right. Anyway let me know what you guys think about the live rock scenario.

Good idea. I'll try to be there.

Hey guys, I got about ten pounds of live rock in the mail today with a bunch of macro algae on it. I know I'm supposed to cure live rock, but I was wondering if I could get away with adding it to my 140 gallon tank with out curing. I already have about 1oo+ pounds in there along with three plus inches of live sand. I also have a refugium with a deep sand/mud bed. My protein skimmer works great. Right now I have it soaking in it's second bucket of water out of my aquarium(water change). The first I rinsed it and got all the loose debrie off of it. The second is clear and just soaking. What are your thoughts?

I would definately use a skimmer. I do maintenance on other peoples tanks and have seen a wide variety of protein skimmers. From my experience you get what you pay for when purchasing a skimmer, and they are worth every penny. I wouldn't just find the cheapest one available, make sure you read as many reviews about a product prior to puchasing. I couldn't tell you how many people go to petsmart and buy the cheapest one there and never see much of an effect when installed.

I almost think we should start a new thread just for "Oops I flooded the house stories". Mine goes a little something like this. I was living in downtown St. Louis, in an old warehouse that was like 80-90 years old and had been recently converted into lofts. I had the original hardwood floors that really looked great and added some character to the place. Unfortunatly, they were not water tight, so if you spilled a glass of water it would leak through to the loft below. I was going out of town for a couple weeks on a snowboarding trip and informed my room mate that he didn't need to do anything to my 55 gallon minireef set up. I read somewhere that you were better off not feeding them at all for a couple week period rather than risk having someone who doesn't know what they were doing over feed and cause big problems. So about a week in, I was cruising through the terrain park and my phone rings. I get to a stopping point and check the voicemail that was left. My roommate in somewhat of a panicky voice explains that the tank was making a funny noise, so he started messing with it. Here we go. Turns out it was my prizm protein skimmer(would never buy one of those ever again) making the noise. So what does he do? He pulls a hose out of my canister filter while it was still plugged in and managed to pump 30 of my 55 gallons out onto the floor before he unplugged it. He said when he ran to the loft below us to see if it had leaked through he could already hear the poor girl screaming when he approached the door. When she opened it he said it looked like a monsoon downpoor right in the kitchen "area"(since the floor plans are basically huge open rooms with a couple bedrooms attached). He then went to each loft underneath and all the way to the ground floor it was the same rain storm. We lived on the fifth floor and managed to flood four other lofts. So I thought ok this sucks because we are going to have to buy our neighbors allot of new stuff, but more importantly my reef is going to die and I can't do anything about it because I sitting on the side of a mountain halfway across the country. Fortunatly my roommates girlfriends dad breeds fish and knew a little something about the hobby, so he came over and fixed it right up. I didn't loose a single fish! And we were never asked to replace anything from our neighbors. Lucky Lucky. If you made it to the end, sorry so long winded.

awsome! That was what I thought was going on, just didn't want to learn about a disease or something after it was too late to treat.

I don't think you should upgrade. I think you should keep both! Same as what the others said, just more glass and cash.

I know it would be helpful, but no pic.

I've had this frag for about a week or so and noticed a bunch of white bumps on the branches. I'm hoping that these are new branches being formed, but wanted to ask the experts if I should be worried about anything.

Damsels are a pain in the backside. Too aggressive when they get bigger and by then if you decide to remove them you have to disasemble your entire reef.

Where are you in killeen? I could come by tomorrow and check out what you have. I guess much of this stuff is spoken for so I'll tip toe around that.