kmacc05

Looks to me the could just as easily be a small brisstle worm in the 2nd picture as a nudibranch. As far as your clown hosting your frogspawn I doubt getting an anemonie will stop it even if they spend time in the anemonie. It should not bother your frogspawn. Animals with nematocysts have chemical cues in their slime which keeps the nematocysts from triggering when tenticles brush up against each other. The pick up the chemical cues in thier mucus coating when they wallow in the tenticles so the hosts nematocysts do not sting the clowns. As far as the frogspan is concerned the clown is just another polyp waving around. Keep in mind these animals typically inflate and deflate daily and may also occasionaally do so at random. And FYI amphipods species range from 1 to 340 millimetres (0.039 to 13 in), copepods 1 to 2 millimetres (0.04 to 0.08 in), rotifers are 50 microns to 2 milimeters and isopods 300 micrometres to nearly 50 centimetres (0.012 in to 20 in).

Ok cool. I just dont want the frogspawn to get messed up or hurt in any way. They are one of my favs. I really want one of the purple tips! Is it strange that only one of the clowns is acting this way? Maybe the frogspawn is too small for both of them.

And yes, there is def a nudi there. Dark red in color. Its the only one i saw during dipping. Going to dip it again tomorrow.

My candy cane i have been worried about is now gone. Gave it back to rca. I didnt want it to die. Also got a water test, and all of a sudden i have a little spike in ammonia and nitrite. Dont know how. Did a 15g wc. Hopefully it will dilute it. Also added some bottled bacteria to try and combat it. Hope it goes away soon, dont want to lose anything else.

What they said K.

Nudi, prolly nudi eggs, maybe a sponge.

Dipping is probably needed more for stuff from LFS tanks than other hobbyists, but needed on stuff from everyone.

I'll definitely be dipping everything I get from now on.

How small can a QT be? Girlfriend says no more tanks. She thinks 3 is enough. Pfffft Maybe I can convince her to add another really small one if it is used for QT.

Also, there's nudi eggs to the left of the nudi, above and slightly left of the bristly worm, in the 2nd photo. You should get this piece out of the DT completely and into QT. These guys are bad, bad, bad. Most dips will not kill nudi eggs.

Props on the high res photos.

I don't have a QT is there anything else I can do? I plan to dip the pieces every other day for a week or so. If I get them off with a sharp utensil of some sort would that be ok? Thanks for the comment on the pics. I try and get the best quality photos I can. I hate when people ask about something and upload a pic taken with a potato

See, this is why the community is great... tons of talk and I just stopped at the first nudi didnt even look further into the pic. After Ty and Jestep pointed those others out its crazy obvious.

+1 to the above comment on the pics. Thats the key, you got great high res close ups made it almost like a fun nerdy where's waldo for me

Yes! This community is awesome. I have learned so much from this forum!

Yeah that is why I haven't got a nem. It is only two months old or so. Everything else is doing great. The Frogspawn was doing superb. Then the clown started rubbing all over it and sleeping in it at night and now it stays pretty much closed up all day. It used to extend out and look really nice.

Alson one other thing that is my mind. My biggest clown is doing what appears to be hosting in my frogspawn. And the frogspawn doesn't seem to be too happy with it. Since the clown started doing this, the frogspawn hasn't opened nearly as large as it was before. Is there any way I can stop the clown from this or help the frogspawn out in any way?

And I have been wanting a harlequin shrimp. Just heard they are hard to keep alive since they only eat starfish. And chocolate chips starfish can be an expensive diet

rotifers look like TINY TINY TINY spec in the water, pods look more like mechanical pencil tip size to me, and amphipods are just crazy. Crazy Cajun Patrick in south Austin has pods in his system that are easily 1 inch long, they are CUC and do amazing work.

to me the next to pics look like 1 asterina star (good in moderation IMO but a harlequin shrimp will hunt them when there are too many)

second could be a sponge growth, not sure... whats its true color and feel? I wouldnt bring ti out of water into the air incase it was a sponge though.

WOW! 1" long that's crazy. I'll keep a closer eye on those in the future.

The sponge like thing feels almost like the surface of the rock but of course with all the little bumps on it. And it's color is just white. I've noticed it since the start up of the tank and it doesn't seem to have grown or moved so I haven't been overly worried about it. I'm just able to take photos again since I found my charger and so I want to get out any questions I have thus far. Thanks

The ones that look like silverfish are copepods and are excellect to have in your system.

Always dip your corals when you get them regardless of who you got them from. Even members with healthy looking tanks. I found that out the hard way. And that lesson was learned from a frag I got from a friend who had no idea about the pest he had in his tank.

first pest pic is an amphipod and those are great to have in the tank, often people buy packs to load their tank with them.

Second looks like zoa eating nudibranch... those are bad.

wow ok. I thought pods of sorts are really small and hard to see? Guess I was wrong. Oops. They just looks like something bad so i got them off of there. Now I know

The nudibranch was wicked looking.

I also just noticed what looks to be a little starfish and some sort of what i guess is a type of algae. Anyone have an idea on these?

Thanks to everyone who has been helping me out. I learn so much from these forums!

So I went back to Aquatek last night and talked to the owner Bruce. Really nice guy. Anyway, he went ahead and replaced the carpenter wrasse I was talking with you all about yesterday without even seeing it! I thought that was really cool of him to do. I later came home and found remains of what was the one we were all talking about yesterday. I guess the CUC got to him before I could move anything around. Yes! Rock work got to stay the same, CUC got a little snack and I got the dead one out and replaced with a brand new healthy and lively one. Thanks again to Bruce at Aquatek.

Now on to the reason I started this thread. I have heard of people talking about dipping frags before putting them into their tanks, but I always figured that was referring to frags got at swaps or out of other people's tanks. Well I decided to ask Bruce about dipping yesterday while at AT and told him about the candy cane I am having problems with. He suggested I buy some dip and give it a try along with relocating the candy cane. Then I started looking at the frags they had (because I can never walk in and walk out without buying a frag of something, that would be crazy) and came across some pretty cool little colonies of zoas that had a very good price on them. I decided to get those two pieces and head out with my new fish and coral dip. So I got home and prepared to dip the candy cane while the new wrasse was acclimating. Dipped the candy cane and replaced it in the tank hopefully in a better spot and decided since I have the mix of dip and water, I might as well go ahead and dip the new zoas I just bought. Threw them in and holy crap!!! Little critters running everywhere. They looked kind of like a sliverfish in a way and did everything they could to get back to the zoas. I also noticed this red thing crawling all around that looked quite scary. I don't know if it was just an adult of the little ones I saw or a complete different type of pest, but I got them all off. Then I noticed there were several different sized little clams wedged in the branches of the zoas on the bigger piece I got. Are they anything to worry about? I left them there and haven't found much info on them. Next thing i noticed was some flat circular shaped slimy little things. About three of them. I didn't bother since they didn't look harmful. I then rinsed the pieces and put them in the tank. They are still closed up for the most part but a few polyps are starting to open. Also, those slimy round things have an incredible color on them. Two are bright orange and the other is a really bright green. So I started thinking they are mushrooms. But they look different than the mushrooms I have seen. Anyone have an idea of what they are? These are a few pics that I was able to get last night.

Pests

.

Mushroom looking things with a little clam that was on there.

New wrasse

New zoas

oh ok, will do thanks.

Hey Ty, I have only been in the hobby for a few months, but I will gladly trade wallet frags for coral frags! I think I might be in the early stages of the same problem. But I will try and help you out lol. What do you have that you are trying to frag out?

it does look a little pissy (receded so you can see the skeleton, sloughing). Try changing the position of the piece to higher/lower light and/or flow. Move it every few days till you find a spot where it puffs up.

Ok I'll try moving it to a different spot tonight while messing with the tank. When it "puffs up" does this happen quickly? Will it be obvious to know if it is happy?

Cleanup crew looks solid. I'd be surprised if most of that fish wasn't gone already.

The candy cane does look pretty pissed. Don't know much about your setup but generally too much light or flow is to blame. 3rd problem may be water quality if not the first two.

Mine generally don't like much flow. They don't like to be blasted with lights but can be acclimated to it over time.

Maybe the lighting is the issue. I have recently turned the lights up about 15% and it was only in it's place for about two days. I have a spot in mind where I can sort of tuck it out of the way of bright light and high flow. Funny, I never would have thought that high flow would ever be an issue with my current setup only having one MP10.

On another hand, since we have been discussing bad stuff in the tank. Can anyone look at the candy cane in the second pic and tell me if you think something might be wrong with it? It's not looking as good as when I bought it. I thought it might have been a result in moving it around, so I've left it where it is at for a week or so and it doesn't seem to be getting better.

I've had fish disappear in my BC29 with no adverse consequences. Just do a big water change in a few days if you can't find the corpse, and you'll be fine.

Doing a water change tonight after I hunt for the lost fish. I hope I can find it.

Nice setup K!

Thanks Robb! That GSP you gave me is doing great!

For sure, get that dead fish out of there. My clean up crew destroys anything that might have died but I aim to remove if possible. In a larger tank you might not notice the ammonia spike but in smaller systems, it may be disaster. If it is stuck somewhere I can't get however, I am confident in my clean-up crew doing its job and just aim to do a water change in the coming days.

If you can't blast the fish out, put that turkey baster into full suck mode!

-Ty

This is in a standard 55 gallon. If I can't find him, do you think the tank is big enough to not suffer from ammonia spike?

also, does the CUC I listed earlier in the thread seem reasonable? Or should I have more of something?

Got you on that. $35 is an expensive crab/shrimp snack. If you don't have much algae growing in your tank for the crabs to munch on, don't be surprised if you can't find him already.

I hope this is not the case. If so, well you win some and lose some. It sucks, this is a fish that I have wanted for a long time and I finally picked out a beautiful one and he got the bad end.

plus, why add more nutrients to the tank than are already there? If you can get the dead fish out, you should.

Agreed. I will be on the hunt as soon as I get home from work. Starting with the fish then a WC.

Yeah, it's like an odd law of reef tanks. You move the rocks and your aquascape will never be the same again. It's like a reef commandment. Thou shalt not move live rock or else bear the punishment of your aquascape forever lost!

I'd get a turkey baster and just blast the heck out of the area between the rocks until your dead little fishy comes out. At least they could be a good first try before having to move your aquascaping.

lol yeah I hear that. I have never been able to make it the same unless only one rock is moved. As for the baster, I don't know if he will get shot out. He is so deep in there I almost can't see him.

That turkey baster idea is a good one. I feel that the less we mess with our reefs, the better they do, and aquascaping is a pretty intense change. Although it is definitely hurricane season...

Yeah, I try not to change mine at all once I get it where I like it. But there is always something getting knocked over by a darn turbo snail or my big hand. Then it's over. Complete change!

If you have a sufficient clean up crew, there is no need to get him out. Food for everyone including beneficial bacteria. I had a fish die about 6 months ago and within 24 hours only the skeleton remained.

What would be considered sufficient? I have about 8 snails, 6 hermits (small) 1 cleaner shrimp, 2 peppermint shrimp and 2 emerald crabs.

I just don't want an ammonia spike to happen because of his body decomposing. Also, if I can get it out, I can get full credit at LFS. That's $35 I don't want my CUC to dine on.

Thank you. And yes it is a standard 55g 48"x13"x20"

excellent song!

either way, i like the look of it alot.

Thanks!

Has an ethereal look about it... almost as if you were diving and came across a secret coral reef that nobody has found before. Well, let's say a miniature diver.

lol I like that description. This is probably the 8th time I have rearranged the rock work. I would like to keep it the same, but anytime something needs to be moved, I can never get it to the same way it was before. I'm going to have to tear it down tonight because of a newly added flasher wrasse that I think is dead. He has been in the rocks for 3 days now. So deep in the rocks I can't even see him. And before that he wasn't eating and his mouth seemed stuck open. He got stuck in the net at LFS when they were putting him to the bag and I think it broke his jaw or something. Sucks. But hopefully I can put the rocks together the same way again. I really like the way it looks now.

Thanks, pre-cultured from Aquatek. Expensive as hell, but I didn't know about RCA at the time or about dry rock.

I like the way it's turning out though. I have about 15-20 more pounds I want to add.

Finally found my charger for my camera. So I decided to snap a few shots last night when I got home from work.

FTS

Blenny

Solar Wrasse

Zoas

Scroll

Torch

Frogspawn

GSP (Thanks Robb!!)

Lagassi the Emerald crab

I was going to go up there and get that piece just because of the rbta on it!! Good find. I loved the bright orange color of it

ok, this morning they weren't there anymore. From what I was able to read, the "nets" were out for feeding because I was moving rocks around and debris was floating around. I'll keep an eye on them and if they come back out, I will take action to them. I noticed a few of the tubes were on the bottom and got covered by the DD Epoxy that I used to stick it to the rock. Will those be suffocated or will they be able to grow out of the epoxy? I'm glad they were gone this morning.

That's a scroll coral, also called a ridge coral, ruffled coral, turbinaria, and cup coral. It will plate and scroll in a very pretty pattern. Moderate grower, not particularly aggressive.

Thank you!!! That is what he called it, Scroll lmao I just couldn't remember it by the time I got home. So now the question, is it an SPS or LPS??