KarenM

Hi, Cindy. No sump. You should see my mushrooms. I finally captured the blue one and it's looking great.

It's just sitting in the trashcan with salt and a powerhead. It just looks like it's cooking, or simmering. My algae problem only last a few days. I did a water change and vacuumed up a tiny bit of it (I have a sand bed, so I can't vacuum up much), cleaned the glass, and it seemed to go away.

Thaks for the reply. I stopped by RCA this afternoon because I was in that area anyway. I picked up some DI water, and they said that was more pure than RO water. It's "cooking" in the trashcan with some salt overnight and then I'll put it in the tank tomorrow afteroon. I'll see if I can see any difference. I think they charged $1 for 5 gal, which is .20 per gallon. Can't beat that!

Do all LFS sell it? What do theyb charge for it? Who has the best? (PM me so as not to hurt any feelings).

Mine is always out in the open, especially at feeding time. Have you tried feeding them to see if it would show up?

Great. Thanks, Yun.

If no one else can take him, I will. I have 2 conch snails, but I rarely see them so I'm guessing they're OK down there.

Speaking of the pods, should I be feeding them in the little mini-fuge or do they come out and eat and go back in? There are plenty of holes for them to get out and go back in. Will they set up a home outside of the "shower caddy" or will they pretty much stay in there unless they're washed out by the water coming out of the power filter?

But I don't want to loose my pods. They're the reason I set up the mini-fuge in the first place.

It's about 4 months old I guess. But I cycled it with bio-spira, if that makes any difference. The small algae outbreak the tank had a week or so ago only lasted a few days. How would I tell diatoms from just random "slime"? My 12 yr old is at home and says it looks like slime.

Oh, well, then, this one is still a baby. I was comparing her size to the larger ones I've seen, which weren't very large at all.

I could have a coating on it, I'll have to check closer tonight. If it's just a coating, would that be good or bad.

So last Friday I set up my "mini-fuge" a-la-Captain Bob in the clear shower caddy stuck to the back wall of my tank with suction cups, just under my power filter. I filled it with chaeto, which was a gorgeous medium green color and looked "clean". Now it's beginning to take on a brownish color. Is it dying? Is it too close to the light? Also - I've read both on here - that it helps decrease nitrates, and that it harbors nitrates. Which is it?

Poor snails. I can't believe my tank didn't have an odor. But all is still well this morning so I think we survived, even though the anemone didn't.

After looking at her/him, I think it might be a little taller. I'll try and take a pic tonight and send it to you. I don't know if it would be considered an adult or just really close to it. And the orange/brown spots are fading. I think Bob is right - it's just eating too much protein.

I almost gagged. You guys could have warned me about the smell.

Not too bi, maybe 1 1/2 times what you see in the local chain stores. I guess it's about 2" tall.

The new anemone was dead after all. And I mean really dead. I poked it with the turkey baster to see what would happen, and it was already "melted". Pieces went everywhere. I grabbed rock and all and threw it out in the back yard. OMG, the smell was horrible. I rinsed the rock with RO water, but it still smelled. That rock is history. So I did a 25% water change, trying to vacuum up any pieces I saw, and I put 10 gal of RO water in the trashcan to be ready for another 25% change tomorrow. All the livestock seems OK, but that sure was a mess.

Thanks, Bob. I hope she's OK. But she likes the shrimp as much as the others!

I'm still trying to rehome this pretty girl (guy?), if any of you are interested.... About a week ago she started developing orange blotches - at the base of her tail, and some sort of on her sides. The blotches seem to be mirrored on both sides. They're not dark orange, just barely visible with the bright lights on. She still extends all of her fins, swims, eats fine. She exhibits no unusual behavior. It occurred to me that I'd changed their food about the time the blotches started showing up. I got some of their "usual" food Friday, and I think the blotches are fading. I normally feed whole, frozen food like mysis shrimp and the paper-like marine algae. The food I suspect might have caused the orange blotches is a combination of several foods, pureed and frozen, and is a dark brown. This fish is a voracious eater - eats anything and everything. Could food be causing the orange blotches?

It doesn't appear to be doing anything. No lacerations, no internals spewing (other than the dark brown stuff that originally came out. Could that have been internals?). The "foot" kind of spread out, covering the tiny green tentacles. I can see bumps where the tentacles are, but it basically looks like someone stepped on a wad of gum and smashed it flat. it's still attached to the rock, though. A couple of crabs have cleaned up the rock around it, but didn't touch the anemone itself.I'll see if I can get a pic tonight, but it's so small I don't know if I can.

I got it at Horizon. I don't know what kind it was. It's very small, about the size of a nickel. And it had bright green tentacles.

I'm in no hurry, just let me know whenever you're ready.

Friday I bought a very small bright green anemone. It looked like it had just "eaten" something, because some very dark brown stuff was floating out of it. Anyway, I acclimated it about an hour and then put it in my tank. It wasn't happy at that point, and just kind of turned into a little blob. More dark brownish stuff came out, and I later found my BTA eating that. As of last night, my new anemone was still just a little flat blob on the rock and all of the green "arms" are covered by it's foot. I think it may still be alive because it's stuck on the rock and not floating free, but it's not happy. What should I do?

Thanks, James. The little rocks in the front are actually zoo frags - blue and orange. There is also a nice lavender zenia and some mushrooms in there, you just can't see them yet. Very small, but they're growing fast. And as soon as I can rehome the tang, I'll get some more rock and fill in those big holes. This time next year, it should look very different.