Derry

The last two editions of Advanced Aquarist online have articles on what skimmate is made of and how much DOCs can even be removed by a skimmer.

My understanding was a captive lifespan of 5-6 years, easy.

So I take a look at my tank this morning to see one of my green chromis dead and pinned to the side of a K4. No warning whatsoever. All params are within the normal levels, and I've not made any recent changes to the tank. The chromis is one of the original fish in the tank and has been there for almost 3 yrs. It has been eating well and has shown no unusual behavior. Body mass looked good for a slender fish like a chromis. No gill inflammation, no lesions, no bite marks, no torn tissue or missing scales (although spending the night stuck to the k4 roughed up one side, but no major damage was visible). The only thing I saw that was out of the ordinary was a small chunk missing from the gill cover on one side, but the gill underneath looked undamaged. This was my first fish loss in over a year. It's bad enough when someone goes carpet-surfing, or if you find out about a hitchhiker crab when fish start disappearing. At least you know the cause then. I have NO idea why this little guy went belly up, and that always fires up the paranoia machine.

If yours went bungie jumping, a while back I had one go skydiving off a rock about 8" off the bottom. It stood itself up and acted like nuthin' happened. Apparently, it didn't like the strength of the new currents went I added a couple of koralias.

If visiting cyrus is too far a drive, I need to thin the Caulerpa prolifera in my seahorse tank and can get you a decent handful.

If you need a plan b for the big rock, I'm interested.

Pm sent re the steel blue/purple slate zoas

Mine did the same thing when it came in as a 2" frag. Give it another week or two, and those bumps will turn into nubby spikes.

Any time btwn 2 and 4 on Sunday is fine. Still got my phone #?

The prolifera is on me. Come on over.

They CAN develop leaks. I didn't realize I had a pinhole leak on the back side of one of mine until the carpet "squished" at me when I walked up to it. It squirted about 5 gallons of new salt water onto my carpet over the course of 24 hrs, and it was less than two years old with relatively casual use. My other two have held up fine, but I'm now in the habit of doing a quick visual inspection every time I fill one and making sure I've got a precautionary towel underneath.

Help! My thread's been hopelessly hijacked! The little white stars are asterinas. Most asterina species are reef-safe, but a few have been reported to eat zoas. The zoa-eaters seem to be fairly rare, though. Asterinas have also been known to reach plague proportions, but they can be controlled by a harlequin shrimp if their numbers start getting out of hand.

My tank is FULL of microstars. Long, skinny legs? They're good cleanup crew members.

PM sent to K.Fritsch

Khoa, PM sent.

Done!

Orange bam-bam zoas. 9 polyps on a piece of rubble. Actual frag (poorly) pictured, but the color is a deeper orange. $10 Eye of Ra zoas. 20+ polyps on a frag plug. Fragged last night, but the polyps have opened just fine this morning. Mother colony pictured. $20 Purple and blue mushrooms. The brighter the lighting, the more sky blue highlights. The dimmer the lighting, the stronger the burgundy lowlights. I have one on a frag plug and two on rubble remnants. Actual frag pictured. $5 each Pavona cactus. I've listed this incorrectly in the past as pectinia, but recently got a proper id on it. I have five frags, two mounted and encrusting and three fresh unmounted. Mother colony pictured. $10 each Trades are strongly encouraged! Make me an offer of equal value, and we'll go from there.

I've got a couple of small frags that might help someone who's still getting started or who's willing to be patient and grow a colony out. The first is a frag plug with one medium and two baby green palys (mother colony pictured). The other is a frag of brown acro that's about the size of the top of the frag plug (actual frag pictured, but the color balance is off - it's not that green). Both are free, first come first served, but quid pro quo trades are always welcome.

Discounting the chunks that my trigger has broken off, mine has more than doubled in the 18 mos or so that I've had it.

I was going to jump in an disagree since it looks just like a coral I have that was sold to me as Pectinia. However, in digging around a little, I think mine was misidentified by the retailer. The whorls on the growth edges of the Pavona pictures I found online look just like my coral, so I'm throwing in my long-winded vote for Pavona.

I'll take the suharsonio. Derry

Mighty Putty is the same thing as Aquamend, just with a different branding. Bed, Bath and Beyond is selling 3-packs for $9.99.