Sherita

I've loved the coast my whole life. The smell of saltwater, the pounding of the surf, the creatures, the fishing. For years, I've stood on land and looked out there. And I always said, that one day, I would be out there too. Free from fishing strictly from land, away from the drunken hook slinging fools, idiots in trucks, and hordes of people. Well, now I WILL be out there. I brought this home today. It's all mine.

FYI, that is my 6'8" son in the picture. He's pretty excited that Mom bought a boat. We gonna have some fun, for sure!

Chiton, good guys.

Ok, hopefully I won't get in trouble for this

This is the one I bought. The guy still has some of them for sale.

WaterPik

I pm'ed because I wasn't sure if I could put ebay links up on ARC (that's where I got my waterpik from).

Mods, can I post an ebay link on here to show which waterpik I got?

Woods, sending pm.

Yeah, sounds weird don't it? Well, just follow along, if you will.

I've
got three colonies that have refused to open up no matter what. They've
been with me for over a year, so it's not like they are new here or
anything. I tried the usual, dipping, turkey basting, moving to
less/more light/flow. Nothing worked. To me, they still just looked
grubby, and would not open. So........

I bought a cheapo waterpik
knockoff just to see if anything else might wash off of them. I thought
that perhaps the pulsing stream that is more concentrated to a single
area might get the colonies "cleaner". I modified the tip by heating it
and enlarging the hole a little, to cut the water pressure down a bit.
After I assembled my experiment, I grabbed the first tennis ball sized
colony. Now bear in mind, I just dipped this colony, and turkey basted
it like crazy yesterday. They have been closed for over two weeks. I
flipped the switch on the waterpik and..........EWWW. Lots of nasty
looking grot came off from around the polyps. This was stuff that I
couldn't get off even blasting it with a turkey baster. No bugs or
nasties like that. Just dirt, detritus, mucus. My zoas had dirty feet.

I
waterpiked them this morning. And this evening Every Last Polyp is
open. This is not an anomaly, because the other two colonies responded
exactly the same way. I tried it as well on a few colonies that were not
really sick, just not opening up like they should. They ALL are open
this evening. And the waterpik washed out a good bit of yuck, even from
the colonies that had just been blasted with a turkey baster.

YMMV, but it sure made my zoas happy.

This
might not cure what ails your zoas, but it's sure another tool in our
arsenal of weapons to keep our zoas healthy and happy. I know the
waterpik will now be standard treatment any time I'm dealing with sick
polyps, or polyps that have closed up and won't open again.

Clint,

The above photos were shot in manual mode, flash OFF, f/5.2.

The white balance is a sticky wicket. On my camera (Rebel XTi) I use a custom white balance. It still looks funky when downloaded, but I let photoshop do the final adjustments for white balance. Sometimes it's just not right, no matter what. I haven't quite mastered the white balance portion of the program. Actually, there's a lot I haven't mastered, but I just keep fooling with it until I figure it out (or get irritated).

FTS I can do. Full room shot, not so much. Room is in the midst of a VERY slow remodel.........almost two years slow, and looks like, well......a construction zone

I will have some of the clove polys at the fall frag swap. And a lot more

LOL, y'all are hilarious!

The two tanks that I routinely photograph corals in are shallow tanks, only 12" tall. The lights are suspended 24" above the top of the tanks, so it's easy to stick my head in there and get pictures Now, my two taller tanks (140g brick and 72g custom), that ain't happening. I might not drown, but my camera would get mighty wet

There's nothing special about my setup

I use a kit 35-70mm lens with three diopters (camera>35-70mm lens>stepdown ring>4x>2x>1x) stacked on the front for magnification, and an underwater photo barrel that mounts to the lens.

I prefer the photobarrel to a top down photobox. I don't find it nearly as awkward and I can still adjust my lens if I need to.I shoot using a custom white balance, macro mode, auto focus, flash OFF, in jpg. I don't care for shooting in raw, it takes too long to transfer the data to my computer.

Hope you like them!

Coming up on 7 inches of rain, and I'm bored. So here are a few pics I snapped today. Hope you enjoy

The big one is a trash paly. But the smaller ones with the blue dots are most definitely not trash palys. I don't know what their name is, but they are VERY nice.

I will be there, for sure. I won't be road-tripping with the group, since I only live an hour from Abilene. I just need to know where to meet up with everyone else.

Any word on this? Really looking forward to it

I've got an entire tank full of wrasses. My cuc consists of huge turbo snails for algae and a tiger tail cuke to keep the sandbed. I've also got elephant snails that come out at night to help with algae and such. Being nocturnal the wrasses don't bother them.

If I'm not mistaken, they are kinda rough on inverts like snails and crabs. Now, if you don't have any of those then you are probably good to go.

They are beautiful fish, for sure.

It's not illegal to collect gorgs from the coast. They don't want anyone collecting the stony corals. And you can't take anything from the offshore reefs like Stetson bank.

Wow. At 175 going into your system, I wouldn't expect more than 3 coming out of your membrane. 34 is way high. Something is very, very...........not right at all.

I have 379 going into my system, and 5 out of the membrane.

Sumpthin ain't right here.

I'm assuming you have a 98% rejection rate on your membrane. Correct? If that is the case, you should see no MORE than 4 tds coming out of the membrane.

34 out of the membrane is high. Do you know what your tds is going in to the system?

Example:

I have 379 TDS going into my system, 5 TDS coming out of my membrane, 0 out of di resin

The first thing you need to know is the tds coming out of the membrane. DI resin should last much longer than yours is.

^That^

What is your TDS going into the system, and also coming out of the membrane?

Rapid loss of DI resin points to a high TDS on the output side of the membrane. The most common cause is the membrane not being seated all the way in the housing. The second most common cause is the input/output lines being in incorrect positions (but if you didn't mess with them, this can be ruled out).

Did you by chance lose the flow restrictor when you changed the membrane?

I use the color changing di resin from BRS on my 150 gpd system. I can normally make about 1000-1200 gallons of water before I have to change it.

Tell us more about your system. How many stages? And what filters are you using? City water, or well water?

Peach Pops 6+ polyps $20 SOLD Haze152

Purple Cat Eyes 4p $20 SOLD wardlaw

Red Ninjas 4p $65

Screamin' Orange NEW RELEASE!!! 9p $75

Strange Magic 9+p $75

Unknown #1 #10 SOLD wardlaw

Unknown #2 Incredibly bright! 10+ polyps $30 SOLD Haze152

Unknown #3 $10 SOLD wardlaw

Unknown Gold 8 polyps $20

The END

AOG morph 4+ polyps $15 SOLD wardlaw

Black Cherry PE 3+ polyps. $25 SOLD

Bottoms UP! NEW RELEASE!! 4+ polyps $50

Combo Rock #2 $20 SOLD wardlaw

Cornflowers 10+ polyps MUCH more blue in person, unusual $30

Daisy Dukes 4+p $25 SOLD wardlaw

Pink Hippos 9+p $50 SOLD Pham

Hornets #2 8+ polyps $45 SOLD Pham

Mohawks colony $15 SOLD Haze152

More to come...........

Ok, I'm coming to Austin on Sunday, July 14th. Corals can ride down with me then. Paypal to hold. I will go in order of requests.

Please don't post until I am done putting up the listing. I've got a lot of z's n p's to list, and it's impossible to keep up with

First up, the "misc".

Chalice #1, red with yellow eyes and a weird yellowish rim. 2"x3" $20 SOLD Dustin Pedretti

Chameleon chalice, very similar to Green Army Men. Just weird. 2"x2" $25

Meteor shower cyphastrea. This is a huge brick of a colony. 2 1/2" x 2 1/2". Off on the sand. $50

Duncan NOT WYSIWYG. Parent colony pictured. I have one frag, single head $10

Favia colony. Green eyes with purple. 3" x 4". $35

Kryptonite candy cane #2, 2 heads $15

Zoas and palys are up next.