Elizzy

Yes, somewhere among the madness..one of the first coral I had and somehow it just melted away. So sad (was probably due to poor lighting). LEDs are the best!

This is my first Pico, so I am up for any advice or suggestions. Thanks.

After 9 years experience? We're going to be coming to you for advice

Behind the scenes at the Atlanta Aquarium:

Whale sharks are my fave fish! And of their 4, this is the largest (26 feet). Each have their own colored feeding bucket, so no one gets confused.

http://smg.beta.photobucket.com/user/elizzy824/media/Coral/IMG_19991_zps17ea0028.mp4.html

Oh sea dragon, if you didn't require so much live mysis, you'd be mine:

These little guys spend their whole lives where they've burrowed:

Ok I think I've responded to everyone, as of right now everything is spoken for, but don't worry, there will always be more. (As soon as I changed out my lighting to LEDs everything started growing like crazy)

Thanks again for all your interest, can't wait to see the sandbed again!

-Elizabeth

Thanks all - got quite a few responses, you'll be getting details from me this afternoon (busy morning).

Best,

-Eliz

Sorry I couldn't figure out how to make the photos smaller, however...see that big leather coral shedding? I've got 2 big babies mounted on cement plugs ready for a new home - see 2 in foreground. One is going to come with mushroom coral (also in foreground). See that bubble algae? Pretty sure it's the biggest in Texas...Don't worry, that's staying here. Second picture is GSP...it's covering a rock about the size of your hand. As you can see, it's trying to take over the zoas next door. (If you want some of those zoas, I can give you some!) Looking to give these corals away to a good home because I'm running out of room. Moving in August, at which point I hope to upgrade to something bigger than a 30 gallon. If there's a lot of interest in the gsp, I can scrape sections off the glass. Seriously, I started out with a 2 inch square.

Want to donate some Xenia? I've been interested in getting some more since I lost the pulsing xenia what I had early on in my saltwater venture.

We'll be home Friday afternoon and available for you to come by then. PM me, we'll figure out logistics.

Disclaimer: This coral may contain bristle worms and gazillions of pods.

Sorry for the delay in posting - it is all gone, but I promise there will be more!

I've got some gsp I removed from my sandbed (not on a rock). My gsp started off with a 2 inch square and quickly took over every living thing in my tank. If you want some - it's got some zoas mixed in, because it's trying to take those over too.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2012/apr/02/hermit-crab-lego-shell-legoland?fb=native&CMP=FBCNETTXT9038

I'm gonna try this!!

Too cool!!

http://whatsnext.blogs.cnn.com/2012/02/23/a-real-time-seaview-of-the-great-barrier-reef/?hpt=hp_bn6

I went with pro strips - one of each flavor (actinic, 12k and a mix) be sure to only use 3 per power supply. They do come with mounts. Initially I was going to mount them to my hood, but just decided to use them solely. Made a huge difference - all corals thriving now!!

I have a short tentacle that I haven't killed! It moved around in the sand bed until it found good lighting. I spot feed it mysis and marine snow. It's one of the happiest corals I have

I went with Current USA - some discussion here

Is your light the Coralife lighting fixture? If so, I noticed a big difference with my zoas when I added some LED strips in addition to the fixture. Eventually I removed the fixture all together when I got 3 strips and everything is doing so much better. Unfortunately, my zoas had almost all died off, but 1 polyp eventually became a colony again (amazingly!). I thought something was eating them, turns out it was bad lighting.

Is it eating your snails? If not, you could leave it - or try to snag it with extra long forceps - that's what I do...when the bristleworms get too big.

Last night I saw the polyclad flatworm eating a turbo. I raced to the kitchen to grab my turkey baster and net -- I’ve been on a mission to capture this thing for months. Raced back to tank and tried to suck the worm up in the baster, it wasn’t working, the worm was retreating into a rock. [insert expletive here] So I just took the whole rock out. I brushed at the worm and poured club soda on it. This resulted in pieces of it falling off... Since most of it fell off, I put the rock back in the tank (after pouring rodi over it)… But then I saw the pieces moving around. Like perfect little flatworms.

My God, what had I done.

I sucked up all the pieces and pulled the rock out…

The rock now sits in an empty bucket, drying in my garage.

My question – would it be ok to return the rock to my tank after some time has passed (ensuring everything is dead)? I thought if I scrubbed it real good, it would be like introducing a mostly dead rock. It’s a large rock, it –was- covered in coralline and a few zoas I was willing to take the hit on the zoas to rid my tank of this pest. I definitely don’t want to do anything that would cause a major upset to my tank’s balance…I’d expect a smallish cycle, but maybe the best route to go is with a sledgehammer…

Thanks!!

http://io9.com/5861969/watch-this-octopus-heave-itself-onto-land-and-walk-around

So cool.

Wonder if you could throw a cleaner shrimp in there with her? I swear by them only because they saved my goby...

Throw a cube in on the last day! I've read on here about fish surviving for 8 days, mine have been fine after 4.

Aquatek has some trochus snails (as of last weekend) in stock -- those suckers ate my cyano!

p.s. Pailines - all that's required after chemiclean is a WC...20% after 48 hours iirc.

My personal opinion is to use dry rock. You dont end up with pests this way usually but will take longer to cycle. Maybe get some of that bacteria in a bottle that Mark talks about, not sure where to get it.

+1 to what Derrick says. If I could start over, I'd do it with dry rock. The polyclad flatworm was a nightmare...

Bought some snails yesterday, so far, all are alive. I *think* I found remains of the 4" polyclad flatworm stuck on my powerhead a few weeks ago.

Here's hoping!

The goby is almost completely healed. The hole has filled in and the cleaner shrimp has really helped a lot.

She is AMAZING!!! (and only 11!!) Wow.

You know, America's Got Talent will be in Austin in January - she oughta give that a shot.

I used to buy Petco boxed saltwater...crazy, I know. But it worked, and I recommend it an emergency. Now I have a small RO DI system (thank you Buckeye Field Supply) and I fill two jugs to the 3 gallon mark (I marked off the gallons using empty milk jugs filled with water and dumping them in). I add the appropriate amount of salt (1.5 cups dumped right in, I was using coralife, now using Kent.) and then slide each jug back & forth on the counter vigorously for about 10-20 seconds. This mixes everything up great. I do my water changes this way and there is no undissolved salt. I have a tds measurer so I can be sure my RO DI water is 0 tds. I don't know if RCA has a tds meter, but you could ask about that.

I've been doing it this way for about 9 months. Minus the polyclad flatworm from hell, everything is doing great (adding new lights helped out my previous problems with leather coral).

Best of luck,