Turtle's 14g SPS Nano Build.

djreef · Aug 24, 2017

saltyfilmfolks said:
Personally , I find just leaving the frags and seeing what they do to be pretty amazing.

Please excuse the stressed coral.
This was a single stick I mounted horizontally.

An a 1/4 in nub I minted strait up. It's now platung.

Exactly. Stay the course - keep doing the things that you're doing and give the animals a chance to adapt. The others are doing fine, so there's no reason to thnk the Stylo won't turn around. I think you'll be pleasantly surprised at the resiliency of these critters when given half a chance.

DJ

SashimiTurtle · Aug 24, 2017

I did remember that stylo start to decline after I moved it. It was towards the back of the tank, on its own rock. But that rock made it to where I couldn't clean the glass next to it. So I moved the coral and repositioned the rock on top of another one. I put the coral closer to the light and it has been getting worse. Tonight I moved it to the back to the back of the tank to the rock it was on, just in a different spot on it. I had to rotate it to fit on top of the other one. Let's see what it does. The acro I decided not to move, it's doing well where it is, and it's only been there not even a full week.

SashimiTurtle · Aug 27, 2017

Everything going great still. Decided to bump my light up again. It's on a week long acclamation but after that it'll be at 75% for 4 hours with a 4 hour ramp up and down.

SashimiTurtle · Aug 30, 2017

Moved my rainbow BTA over here a few days ago. I had a very large poppulation of amphipods "bothering" it. I'm not sure if they were just crawling on it, or actually trying to eat the flesh, but it was severely ticked off and had gone underneath an overhang and was completely closed up. It moved into this little nook in the rockwork and has stayed there for the past two days. It's inflated and looks halfway decent. Hopefully it will recover and move into a more lit area that ISN'T occupied by coral.

SashimiTurtle · Sep 2, 2017

Just got back from CMAC 2017 frag swap... Guess what I got! Yea, you'll have to wait for pictures.

Oh I got to see Jason Fox Homewrecker in person... the thing is amazing. He had three frags, $800 for a single stick, $1000 for the double and $1200 for the tripple... ;Facepalm

SashimiTurtle · Sep 2, 2017

Also, I may have found the fiancee a hobby as well. Geckos! Someone had some crested geckos up there and her eyes got huge and had to hold one... now to try and find out what I have to buy to keep one of those things.

SashimiTurtle · Sep 2, 2017

Enough waiting, corals are acclimated, dipped, glued and have had time to adjust to the tank. I picked up three acros, and my fiancee picked out an acan she just had to have.

I think they called this one 'Joe's pink teddy bear' it's got a light pink color and crazy PE.

The next two are no names. The Mille had a hint of peach color on the tips, but it's been to MACNA last week and then to our little frag swap in Columbia this weekend. Might take a few weeks to get its color back.

This green one I have no idea what it is, but its BRIGHT. It's like a radioactive yellow/green, I can see it glowing across the room.

And lastly the acan my fiancee had to get. I need to look up how to keep these things now. Never looked into acans. Picture kinda washed out with blue, it's more orange in person.

Oh and we saw a 60g cube on display, she wants to get one for the living room to go where this tank is. Score! I get a tank upgrade and the old lady suggested it... only catch is I gotta get her a gecko terrarium now.

SashimiTurtle · Sep 3, 2017

My BTA finally came out of hiding! Acan is out all the way too. One piece broke off bringing it home yeaterday. Hopefully it heals up.

SashimiTurtle · Sep 4, 2017

Acan is all fluffy and bouncing around in the flow... why have I not gotten these sooner. All those babies need to hurry up and grow. I see a new obsession coming. Acans and acros, that would be a pretty cool tank.

SashimiTurtle · Sep 9, 2017

I think I mentioned that I bumped my light up to 75% using the acclimation setting on the Kessil controller. 75% was too much light for my duncans and the BTA. The duncan heads that face straight up towards the light were staying closed and the heads that are more out to the side weren't open all the way. My BTA went completely outside in. He looked like a beach ball stuck to the rock. The acan didn't seem to be as effected, but wasn't as fluffy as I've seen it. I changed the schedule back to 4 hours at 60% with a much less intense "morning" and "evening." I have the lights on a 11am to 11pm schedule. Everything was back to normal by the following day, but I'm noticing a bit more algae on the glass that I'm having to clean. Nothing that doesn't come off easy but I seem to think it was about the time I changed my carbon out,(Sept 1st) and I didn't add as much back as I had in there. Upped my carbon in the media basket so hopefully it'll pull the extra nutrients causing the extra algae growth.

SashimiTurtle · Sep 9, 2017

I moved my coral banded shrimp over here from the 75...
It's hard to believe just 6 months ago this guy was about the size of a quarter, now he stretches out about the length of a dollar bill. I grabbed him after lights out the other night. Pinchers hurt for being so small compared to crab pinchers. I was needing something living, besides coral, in the tank. He hangs out under the rock durring the day, moves around at night.

Katrina71 · Sep 9, 2017

He's cool looking.

SashimiTurtle · Sep 9, 2017

Yea I like him but he's an ******. Get near him and he puts his claws up. Stay there and he pinches. His antennae are probably 8+ inches long now and he's got 6 of them. Arms are probably 4-5" if he stretches them out all the way. Doesn't move around a lot, which is why I was ok putting him in here.

Katrina71 · Sep 9, 2017

The pretty ones are always like that.

SashimiTurtle · Sep 18, 2017

Haven't updated in a while... lots going on. The 75 is out of commission. Too many things wrong with the whole build, the stand had trapped water under it from an RO spill, the plywood had started to mold... fish are safe and happy in the 40g. I need to do several large water changes in there to remove the copper and then I can add the snails and pin coushion urchin. All corals have moved over here, to the 14g... it's looking quite full now.

The acans are growing really fast. The babies have doubled in size since I got them. The little piece the broke off has healed into two separate acans, one on the original piece and One on the frag, with bonus babies on the frag as well.

Purple pallys, frogspawn, and hammer coral(behind the frog).

Rhodactis mushrooms

And I fragged two very small pieces of birds nest when I moved it. It was growing towards one of my acros, and it had two small spikes right at the bottom. They kinds just popped off when I popped it off the rock. Decided to glue them to plugs and see if they'll grow. Both of them have good color and PE a few hours after glueing.

I'll keep these corals in here until I get the 90 cube, and get it set up and cycled. I've learned a lot in the past 8 months, I think I can put together a really nice tank now, the right way, with patience. Not that rushed failed abortion of a 75g... lol.

SashimiTurtle · Sep 18, 2017

And the latest, super blue, FTS

SashimiTurtle · Sep 23, 2017

Went out to the closest LFS today to get some more nori sheets for my tangs... and they were closed to go to MAMAX. So, phone call to Plametto Reef across town and they are open! Get all the way out there and they have no nori... but they had corals, and I'm addicted to corals. Bought a garf bonsai, the real deal no imposter. There were two small aptasia on the under side of the plug. Saw them before I even bought it. No problem tho, scraped the foot off with my pocket knife then dipped the frag in Coral RX Pro. It's encrusted most of the plug, so rather than disturb it, I cut the bottom of the plug off. I love bonsai...

SashimiTurtle · Sep 25, 2017

So I've noticed a few of my corals haven't looked quite as colorful as a few weeks ago. I haven't really changed anything, except for I've gone to weekly water changes instead of twice weekly. The foundation elements are still stable with the once a week change, now that I have my dosing pump dialed in, and it's much easier on me with working shift work to just change water every saturday.

I tested all my parameters last night and came up with this.
Ca 450
Alk 8.1
Mg 1320
NO3 2ppm
PO4 0.08ppm

My phosphate is high. Could be cause for bland looking corals... the LPS sure is loving it, but my SPS isn't looking colorful. Currently, all I have is carbon in a bag for filtration. I think I need some GFO. I have two ideas. First is to buy bulk GFO, and add it to the bag of carbon. Second is to give the chemipure elite another try. First go with it I had bleaching corals and STN, so I'm leaning towards a small amount of GFO in the media basket.