NonSequitur

As I understand it, the Ich parasite exists in most saltwater tanks, but tends to flare up from time to time, often in times of stress. Many people suggest supportive treatment (garlic extract to help encourage eating, careful maintenance of water quality), and the fish will often recover on their own, particularly if you can keep them eating. Now that the parasite is in the water chances are high that she'll get reinfected if you take her out and treat her.

Others have more experience with this than I do, but other things that I've heard are helpful: UV sterilizer in the tank to kill the free-floating life stage of the parasite, freshwater dip for the fish (very stressful for the fish and very hard to watch, not recommended).

pm sent on frag

Maybe worth trying to increase the amount of algae available to him? I know mine is so crazy for caulerpa that if it's available he won't eat anything else until he's hunted down and devoured every last bit.

My rabbitfish does this frequently.. I often cycle rocks from my small tank into my big tank to let him eat the overgrowing macroalgae, he'll strip the rock clean in a matter of hours, then swim around bloated for a while, then be back at his algae clip begging for more within a day. As long as he's eating, moving like normal, not hiding or showing stress colors he should be ok.

Showing her the AAF auction site resulted in a near addiction for both of us.

Same here.. Now she checks the listings, and on Thursday morning she asks me "another auction date tonight?".. yep.. so after we put our daughter to bed we sit in the living room with our laptops.. "are you bidding on the <whatever>" , "no", "why not?", "I am now", "good."

Oh wow, that's gorgeous! Waiting to see if the chalice I got from AAF thrives in my tank, but when I know it's going to make it I definitely want a frag of that!

I had a black brittle star in my 12gal for a while (moved him to my 55 to augment the CUC).. didn't see much of him since he lived under the rock, but it was very cool to see his arms reach out and grab food whenever I'd feed the fish.

I've got plenty, I'd be happy to cut a frag for you too.

There is plenty of beautiful corals to drool over.

Oh yeah.. whenever I go I have to bring my wife with me to act as my external conscience, make sure I don't come home with way more than I set out for.

I put 7 of these in my 55 to attack a hair algae problem, and in a week and a half they've almost completely eliminated it. They're bulldozers, but definitely effective.

I have tone box/probe tool for tracing the wire, would be happy to lend it to you.

My kenya trees are rapidly fragging themselves into a kenya forest, so it's time to do a little trimming. Also, I have a couple of devil's hand leathers that are candidates for the knife. Both are easy to keep, they survived in my tank when nothing else would.

If you have any interesting zoas, softies, or an easy sps you'd like to trade, that would be great, but not necessary.

PM me if interested.

Leather:

Kenya:

Oh yes.. looks great in person as well, saw it when I was there last Sat.

...Unless it just smothered it.

Agreed.. look up the "Chicken liver sponge." Nasty beast, fortunately those pictured look like garden variety yellow sponges.

Those look like sponges. Mostly harmless, but some can be invasive. I had one overrun a set of zoas, ended up having to remove the rock and scrub it off with a stiff bristled brush.

I don't have any chaeto, but I have plenty of something else.. I think it's a caulerpa variety (profilera or serrulata possibly, based on a very brief search) that grows amazingly well in my fuge (and is readily eaten by my foxface rabbitfish) .. never had it go sexual under a 12 on / 12 off photocycle.

I have a frag of kenya tree and one of finger leather I'd be happy to share.

The snail looks like it could be a variety of cowrie, particularly the way the mantle covers the shell. When it's retracted, is the shell very smooth, polished looking? If it is a cowrie, I'd keep an eye on it, some are reef safe, others aren't.

I'm going to try to make it, if I get out of work on time.

Nice! I'm going to have to steal the idea for the next time one of my users breaks his computer. "This computer has completed it's life cycle..."

If nobody on here has any to spare you can probably order some from berghia.net, though they're often out of stock.

I remember wishing I had aiptasia after browsing their site, berghia's sure look nice.

I usually get my HVAC parts from Johnson Supply:

9416 Neils Thompson

#100

Austin, Texas 78758

Map/Directions

Phone: 512-977-0100

Fax: 512-977-0275

Toll-Free: 800-779-6436

Email: [email protected]

Store Hours

7:30 am - 5:00 pm, M-F

You can also try Morrison Supply, which is right down the road from RCA:

Morrison Supply

(512) 219-8335

12301 Roxie Drive

Austin, TX 78729-7123

17.56 miles away

Well, I didn't find any anemones, but I did get some good stories. Sat. evening we ate at Pier 99, right by the Lexington.. wow, that was good. After we ate we walked out on the pier that runs toward the bow of the lexington and came across a group of people trying to catch something in the water.. It turned out to be a flying sea hare:

. I hadn't expected to find one of those. I got to scoop it up, explain it to them, then release it to go on it's way, but kind of wish I'd had the equipment with me to bring it home.. I got home to a rather unsightly bryopsis outbreak.. something must have died in the tank when I was away.

Then today I was out on the Port A jetty looking for rock anemones. I was walking back and saw three people looking down into the crack between two rocks, then one of them jumped down into the crack. I walked over to see what was up and they excitedly exclaimed "There are clownfish down there! Tons of them! See the little black and white fish?"

A puzzled moment passed as I tried to figure out what a clownfish was doing down there when I realized they were talking about what looked like sargeant major damsels.

First, welcome to Austin and ARC. There are a lot of really good people here and in Austin in general. Any of our sponsors will take good care of you as far as livestock and equipment. I'm particularly partial to Fishy Business.. Shane's never steered me wrong with livestock and advice.

Ooh.. I want one! so far the one I picked up at RCA this week doesn't seem to be thriving. Plenty of pods in the tank, but he doesn't seem motivated to eat.