Cali Kid Corals

Randy's Red Sea Reefer 250

Flagg37 said:
I'll pass on the snails. It would cost more in gas to get them.
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Where abouts do you live? I work in Milpitas. If that's near you maybe we can plan to meet up somewhere before/after work.

The baby snails are starting to annoy me because they are everywhere; DT, plumbing, reactors, fuge. Slowed down the flow on my bio-pellets last night and today, they plugged up my fuge drain. Good thing I made an emergency overflow on my fuge.
 
RandyC said:
Where abouts do you live? I work in Milpitas. If that's near you maybe we can plan to meet up somewhere before/after work.

The baby snails are starting to annoy me because they are everywhere; DT, plumbing, reactors, fuge. Slowed down the flow on my bio-pellets last night and today, they plugged up my fuge drain. Good thing I made an emergency overflow on my fuge.
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I think Crusty the sump monstah took care of the snails that I didn't pluck out of the cheato balls. It was clean of snail when I went to make the cheato sandwich.
 
RandyC said:
Where abouts do you live? I work in Milpitas. If that's near you maybe we can plan to meet up somewhere before/after work.

The baby snails are starting to annoy me because they are everywhere; DT, plumbing, reactors, fuge. Slowed down the flow on my bio-pellets last night and today, they plugged up my fuge drain. Good thing I made an emergency overflow on my fuge.
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I live in San Jose but here in a few weeks I'll be on a project in Milpitas if you can wait that long.
 
Day 157

Had my first RTN ever. One of the first acros (maybe a hyacinthus?) that I started with in the first month of this tank birth that was recovering from being malnourished RTN'ed. It went from a very pale brown with flesh to the garbage can mostly white within 24hrs. I tried fragging one of the tips, but no luck. It's too bad RTN causes aren't known, but I took a look at my reef system to adjust some things that might have caused some extra stress on corals. I spread out my dosing from 3 times a day to 6 times which helped to lessen the pH and alk swings from dosing (it wasn't that bad before, but this def can't hurt). I also pulled back more on feeding more since hair algae and cyano is starting annoy me (it's not bad, it's just there and I don't want it). There's still no detectable nitrate or phosphate, but with hair algae and chateo growing, they are there. I looked for pests of any sort, but didn't see any or signs of any. All other SPS seem unaffected thus far.

I'm also getting some recession on one torch, my thick branched, purple yellow-tipped torch. Three things that I can think of that may have caused it. 1) flow was too much - though it's been in this spot for 3-4 months, 2) I have been increasing the intensity of my lights the past 4 weeks from 40% to 55% - it's in between my two xr15w pros, so it gets exposure from both lights, or 3) my flame angel has become an a-hole of the tank. I haven't seen the flame angel so much as pick at any coral since he's well fed, fat, and lazy, so I moved the torch to a low flow, lower light area. Hopefully, that will lead to some changes.

Other coral and fish are doing well. And of course, some pictures for you all as always.

Jack-o-Lantern Leptoseris
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Strawberry Shortcake Acro (Acropora microlados)
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Got this piece today, a Setosa Montipora
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Anyone interested in DBTC for this acro? I have one frag of this piece and will start a DBTC chain if there is some. I think there's room for this thing to purple up more at the tips. It's a maricultured piece from Aquatic Collection.

Top view of mother colony
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Side View of mother colony
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All pictures were taken under Radion XR15w Pro G4 @ 20,000K lighting
 
Jealous of your coloration. Once I get my coloring sorted out would love to start dbtc'ing. But don't feel like it would be responsible for me to start at this point. I'm sure someone will take it. Where did you get the setosa from?


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Gablami said:
Jealous of your coloration. Once I get my coloring sorted out would love to start dbtc'ing. But don't feel like it would be responsible for me to start at this point. I'm sure someone will take it. Where did you get the setosa from?


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Picked it up from Neptune's. They still have a larger, more flat frag and one smaller frag that looks kind of like a twig. The larger one looked liked the healthier specimen of the two.
 
Corals look great! :)
Welcome to the RTN club.... :(

I ended up taking a break from SPS because of frustrations with bottom-to-tips RTN.
You never know the real cause, but for me it was strongly correlated with two things:
1) Alk getting too low.
2) Cyano

I see the Cyano as both a cause and an indicator.
I tend to get it when I have slightly elevated phosphates, really low nitrates, and buildup of detritus.
That poor water quality is bad for SPS. But so is the Cyano itself.
 
Looks like corals are settling in nicely.

Dealing with some of that STN from the bottom at the moment as well. It affects only specific pieces for some reason and not others. Been monitoring alk as well since that was low and been slowly raising it (tank goes through way more alk than calcium or mg at the moment).
 
As far as your three suspicions I would say too much flow is least likely the reason. The angel is possible but you should have seen bite marks. In my experience low/unstable alkalinity has always been my cause of rtn. Lighting can also be the cause but I would suspect that after I ruled out water chemistry issues.
 
Alk hasn't dropped below 8.5 in months. Thoughout the day I'm usually somewhere around 8.8-9.0 dKh, but I suspect with the amount I dosed before changing to 6 times a day was allowing a swing of 0.4-0.5 dKh.

What would bite marks from an angel fish look like? Some of the flesh was kinda of curling up from the bottom and looked like pinhead size balls of really thin spaghetti. I'd get a picture, but torch still fully extends and it's in between two heads, so hard to get a pic unless it's fully retracted. Will try to get one tonight.
 
RandyC said:
Alk hasn't dropped below 8.5 in months. Thoughout the day I'm usually somewhere around 8.8-9.0 dKh, but I suspect with the amount I dosed before changing to 6 times a day was allowing a swing of 0.4-0.5 dKh.

What would bite marks from an angel fish look like? Some of the flesh was kinda of curling up from the bottom and looked like pinhead size balls of really thin spaghetti. I'd get a picture, but torch still fully extends and it's in between two heads, so hard to get a pic unless it's fully retracted. Will try to get one tonight.
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I suspect my coral beauty might be nibbling
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Day 168

I had another acro RTN. This was another of the original acros I got (a strawberry shortcake on a frag plug) that was malnourished when I was too low on nutrients. I'm hoping that this does not become a trend.

I had a number of things all fragged up for the swap coming up, but turns out that I won't be able to make it.....what to do, what to do? DBTC? Trade 'em? Sell 'em? This is what I had expected to bring to the swap.

- Acropora Lokani - I think it's a Lokani (Mostly lavender with light green)
- Millepora (Bronze w/ light purple highlights)
- Acropora sp (Green with purple tips)
- Sunny D Zoa
- Vamp in Drag Zoa
- Rasta Zoa
- Mohawk Zoa
- Mystic Sunset Montipora
- Green with purple tip Frogspawn
- Indo Gold Torch (almost ready to frag)

FTS - haven't given a FTS in a while.
Day_0168_20170218_0055.jpg


Here's an update on two of the initial pieces that were paled-out from being malnourished. These two got to the point where they were a very light brown, heading towards white with zero polyp extension (think most of the polyps even died), but since I've been purposefully overfeeding, they have completely rebounded. They are coloring up and getting some nice growth and encrusting.

Day_0168_20170218_0083.jpg


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This wild caught Strawberry Shortcake Acropora I got around 3-4 weeks ago is getting some serious pink. I thought it would get more red and green and lose the pastel-ish colors like your typical strawberry shortcake, but the colors on this one are looking pretty good.
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And here are some of the items I picked up from the Coral Farmer's Market

WWC Hippie Juice Acropora - This one is supposed to purple/pink up a lot, hopefully it'll do what it's supposed to.
Day_0168_20170218_0011.jpg


WWC Helios Acropora - Camera cannot capture just how yellow/gold the tips look under 20,000K lights.
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Flashlight Zoa
Day_0168_20170218_0018.jpg


Ricordea Yuma
Day_0168_20170218_0067.jpg


Fruit Loop Zoa
Day_0168_20170218_0070.jpg


Rainbow Millepora
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All pictures were taken under Radion XR15w Pro G4 @ 20,000K lighting
 
Well if you decide to sell or give away, count me in! I don't think I'm ready to dbtc yet and don't have much to trade at this point. But man, still jealous of your colors! How's the gha doing?

Also random comment, for some reason I've got it in my head to avoid wild harvested colonies. Why go wild when I feel like aquaculture has a lower risk of bringing some crazy pest into your tank? Is this fear unfounded?


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Gablami said:
Well if you decide to sell or give away, count me in! I don't think I'm ready to dbtc yet and don't have much to trade at this point. But man, still jealous of your colors! How's the gha doing?

Also random comment, for some reason I've got it in my head to avoid wild harvested colonies. Why go wild when I feel like aquaculture has a lower risk of bringing some crazy pest into your tank? Is this fear unfounded?


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GHA is definitely not getting worse. I'd venture to say it's getting better, since I haven't had to go in and pull longer strands out (1-1.5" pieces). I picked up a couple of Mexican turbo snails a couple of days ago so we'll see if they live up to their reputation of being voracious GHA eaters. They better not knock anything over!

Ehhh....I think your worry is probably unfounded. Might be true if you had a LFS that only dealt in aquaculture, but things are so mixed in their tanks between wild, mariculture, and aquaculture, you really probably have the same chance. Kinda like they whole QT everything or only QTing fish debate though.
 
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