Jestersix

40g ADA move and upgrade

The hardest part was that initial tear down and scrape to get the algae below critical mass so the clean up crew could squash the rest, but it's a huge relief to actually have clear rock area to put new corals on.
 
Coral farmers market purchase update: the inexpensive ricordia is doing great. However the hallucination paly disappeared last night. The larger one was damaged in the bag on my way home (the paly was upside down with the coral plug sitting on it for 3 hours) and then I had to double-dip and bludgeon the rock it was on to remove the last pest. That resulted in a white spot on the paly that grew and consumed it. Next time I'll bring my own coral packaging, like the ones Cherry Corals uses, and look harder for aiptasia in the display tank. But at least I didn't get aiptasia. Anyway, so I'm back in the market for hallucination palys - if you have one for sale please PM me.

Next, the rainbow chalice... after putting it in my tank I noticed some skeleton sticking out. Not sure if I missed it or it was also damaged on the way home. It proceeded to show more skeleton then bleach, but recently looks like it might have started healing. If it makes it, for sure this would be the most dramatic comeback I've seen in my tank lol!

Aug 6:
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Aug 7:
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Aug 11:
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Aug 18:
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I've learned to use my acropora as indicators of water quality. All my corals colored up, especially montipora, after removing GFO and carbon a while back. At one point the polyp extension was not good for two days, so I panicked and decided to add a small amount of carbon back in temporarily. As I did this, I noticed my Tunze skimmer had slid down under the sump water level, dumping all the skimmate back into the water (plus my skimmer cup was super dirty) and of course no skimming was happening. The situation quickly cleared up and acros look happy again.

I've also been adding Fuel or Acropower or coral food almost every day. Without GFO or carbon even this coral that I got in Feb swap is starting to show some maybe blueish tones. Can anyone ID it? It looks sort of like a browned out Garf bonsai, but in the pictures I've seen Garfs don't have green tips. First it pooled out, then the branches seemed to merge into one, maybe the last phase is coloring up?
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Green is usually the recovering color before the actual colors comes in. The growth shape is slightly different from the bonsai. Could possibly be a tricolor valida.
 
Ok I went to my garage to look at the writing on the plastic containers from the frag swap. I think this other one is the tricolor valida. It came from @Mattsid labeled "valida". The one in question came from @anathema just labeled "acropora". Or I might have mixed that up.
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Don't give up on the chalice. I've been surprised many times thinking something was sure to perish only to make a full comeback.

That really sucks about your hallucination. I think Patty has some. I don't remember her screen name. She is the one that started raising clownfish recently and came from nvr I think.
 
I agree on not giving up on the chalice. I brought a rainbow chalice back from the dead. It was reasonably sized and had a number of eyes on it, but the tissue was receding and the tissue seemed to be very thin on top of the skeleton with hardly any color on it. I sealed the receding edge all the way around with superglue, fed each eye Mysis 1-2x per week, and kept it shaded. Not sure if any of this applies to your specimen.
 
To celebrate the first monthaversary of survival in my system, the tiny little rainbow chalice chip was finally committed to a rock in the aquarium.
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@Wlachnit I thought about what you said about trying to feed it, but it's so tiny that I just baste it with coral food and hope some of it sticks.

Besides zoas the only corals that seem to really appreciate feeding are my acros. I caught one catching and eating eating regular fish flake food the other day!
 
I start my tank update with the story of how I used my Sep '17 frag swap bonus coral ticket to get a frag of a coral I apparently already picked up at the Feb '17 swap, from the same person (@anathema)! Apparently I really like multicolored acropora tenuis. Some of the more colorful acroporas are tenuis: Honewrecker, Walt Disney.

Here is the piece I picked up in Feb, photo taken last week:
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Here is the piece picked up in the Sep. swap:
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At least I can feel confident that the new tenuis should do OK, since the old frag has persevered through six months of my noobiness and two heat waves. The big challenge will be ensuring the mini colony gets adequate flow and and adjusts from halides to Kessils.

Since my display tank algae finally disappeared for good since April (thanks to upgrading my chaeto light to a Kessil H80 and adding emerald crabs), I've been experimenting with feeding corals more in an attempt to increase growth rate. Feeding has helped a lot. I recently discovered the tank iron levels were low and started supplementing. Potassium and iodine are ok, Ca Mg alk have been good and constant. However, my nitrates are stuck at 0 and phosphates are pretty constant at ~0.1, those were measured right before a water change. I'm thinking about trying nitrate dosing up to 2ppm to see what that does. Does anybody suggest a particular nitrate supplement or other method to increase coral growth?
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Adding nitrate test (since the color changes are highly subjective)
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Holly smack! :) Great job! You got the magic touch. Mini colony from a frag in 6 months is more than what most of us can do. Looking forward to the rainbow chalice grow out.
 
The rainbow chalice is one of the reasons I'm hoping to improve the growth rates :) The colony is the one I picked up at the recent swap in Sept, the frag is from Feb (but the photos are both from Sept). No magic...
 
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