High Tide Aquatics

yaradartist's 36g

FTS's with no touch up from digital point and shoot. One is with all lights on the other with just the 18w actinic, and double led moonlights. Main lighting is 96w 50/50. The tank is about five months set up. I will be going back in my notes to fill in how the tank progressed to here. The aged rock, about 15-20 lbs wet, and now covered in hair algae came with the tank plus original fish, all of which were taken to LFS. The lighter rock, 9lbs dry, added.

Looking forward to comparing these later for growth measurements. The current tank threads are very encouraging.

One fish, scooter is filling out, and I hope to loop in a refugium to bolster its food source. One cleaner shrimp, blue leg hermits, and astrea snails on cleanup. Coral list coming.

Let the suggestions fly so I can learn the most possible. Richard
 
Greeted the tank this morning to find the favite, top center, toppled more than likely by an astrea snail, onto the side of a lobo. The lobo does not look touched, but the favite is shredded. I knew it was only balanced there. Wrong decision to not secure it. Richard
 
Thanks. The die back may stop short of a couple polyps. This would be a great feat to keep it alive. I added a rainfordi goby tonight from Aquarium Showroom. I am very glad the BAR meeting was there. Richard
 
The favite has stabilized. It is puffing up and eating better than it did before. The mouths are facing up for the most part letting the mysis sit there longer. I feed with pumps off.

Yesterday I found a new inhabitant. A snail that looks to be an abalone. The animal is less than an inch with about a three eights inch shell that it cannot get under fully. The oval flattened shape has a spiral of dots on the top. The color is light brownish and great cover in the live rock, with a bit darker feelers. It was out last night and again this evening coming home. Does not like spot light.

It is on a section of rock I can barely see, much less photograph. Pic as soon as I can.

My first attempt at dividing yuma is going well. The original is back to some normal. I cut a very small section of foot off as it was on a small pebble and stretched out long making it easy to slice. The entirely white frag has developed, after about two weeks, a ring of tentacles and a soft green fluorescence. It is about a quarter inch. The parent around inch and a half fully open. The parent is bright pink.
 
Good job on fragging your Yuma. :)

I used this technique on some reluctant mushrooms. I have a couple that don't put out babies, so I sliced a piece of the foot off (it wasn't stretched though), and ouila!
 
The Ca has been consistently high, testing this week at 490. Can it be too high? dKH tested 11.2 up from a consistent 9.8 or so the last couple months. I did make an extra water change.

The nitrate is around 12. phosphate, ammonia and nitrite all 0. The sg is 1.0255 plus or minus. I add water by hand after checking morning and night. The ph is back up to 8.2 after running plus or minus 8.0 for many weeks near December.

The 13g refugium is cycling and had live rock, and dry rock added on 2/13. Ammonia in steady decline, but not yet 0. I have a few zoos and chaeto, Caulerpa prolifera, and red macro in there with a koralia 1. I am moving the urchin hang on between the tank and fuge every other day until the two are linked. The light for the fuge is moved from the tank after it cycles off for four hours or so.

The blasto was seven half inch sized heads and is now over 20, some three quarters of an inch and smaller ones. The sunset monti has tripled in size and now running over the edge of the plug on one side.
 
Sounds like your corals are doing well despite the high calcium. The typical recommendation for calcium is between 420-450. Perhaps someone can figure out why yours is so high? I think you told me you didn't supplement?
 
The AoG's are great color and looking good I placed them high in the tank and noticed they have shortened just a bit. I will try them down some to see if they puff out as full as before. They stay fully open during day and moon lighting.

I got supplements thinking as the corals grew I would need to replenish CA and Alk because at about month three after set up the number seemed to be slipping some. I dosed the beginning suggestion for Two Part for a couple days and stopped. Have not dosed since November.


Also what looked like a slow leak, as the carpet was wet under the stand, looks to be flow on the outside of the return tubing. It was resting on the side of the sump with creep down the outside and damp cabinet floor. Will see if moving the hose stops the moisture. I have been too lax about drip loops in the electrical. I move plugs around constantly, and noticed some wet chords yesterday as well.
 
From the photo you can see the AOG during the day. It has not been opening for a week. It is also pictured currently down some in the tank and getting more flow. Just out of the picture, below is an opening in the rock where the K-1 is directed out. You can see the blasto has separated polyps from the flow.

I tested my refractometer to distilled, and am looking to test it against higher salinity. Can anyone help with this? It reads 1.0255. I want to make sure it is not higher than this.
 
Richard are you saying that your refractometer reads 1.0255 with distilled water or after you calibrated it with distilled water your tank water reads 1.0255?
 
Bryan, it is a tank reading from hydrometer at 1.0255. I took another refractometer reading today, and it is reading much higher at 1.028. Sorry I was not clear before.

1.028 is the mark Ian and Norman said was not good for Zoos. I will be bringing sg down over the next few days. No other zoos in the tank are looking stressed.

I would still like to confirm that my refractometer is calibrated correctly. I used distilled water for the original adjustment.
 
Distilled water should be fine. You might see if another member is near you (I have some but I am probably too far)
with Norm's salinity std that was given out at the August swap last year.

I would agree 1.028 is pretty high.
 
Thanks for checking back. I found a home made solution recipe online and have access to scales at work. I will try that tomorrow then see about next step.
 
I am breathing again. I divided my first coral with rotary cutter. The blasto is now plural. My hope is to have a frag for DBTC. After watching Jeremy on Saturday, I found a slight separation that was in a good straight line and took that portion off the mother. The pink is returning after less than an hour. I figured with the growth in the last months with me, if I really messed up it could come back from the uncut side of the mother. Will be counting polyps as soon as they open. There were about 25 from the original 7.

I also used a screwdriver and popped the sunset monti from its plug. The new growth from the uphill side stayed as I had hoped and I cut up the frag for my second DBTC coral. The growth down the side of the frag on the steep side had stopped and faded. I was able to cut this and flatten it out on the new rock chip. One frag was placed below the original plug to let the upward growth cover. I am using gardening techniques and will be checking to see how they translate. I might have cut the frags too small. The 2 lower sides were about a quarter inch wide so the frags are that quarter inch and about a half inch long.

I waited until everyone was gone for the day to use the shower stall to mess up and clean up. Thanks Jeremy so showing me how it would platter!
 
Good work Richard! You are braver than I. :D The small frags should survive. I have been given TINY frags in the past that have grown back. :)
 
The doubled frags were the ones shaded, and the polyps are starting to green up. The other frag in the first photo is very green and fully open, as is the frag I placed below the original colony. There was some orange color in the body before the cut. Will see if it returns. The color had been getting darker under my low lights. It was bright orange from ATL.

Blasto photos when they open fully. They took in mysis last evening even though not inflated.
 
The blastos are open and feeding well. I count about twenty three heads or so. Maybe lost two or three at the most in the chop. A couple are still out of round, but look like they will fully develop.

The AOG are back to open as the salinity is down to 1.026.

Sunset Monti are bending down over the cut edge. One of them had a large chunk of the flesh disapear down to skeleton. It looks like a shark bite out of the green carpet of polyps. No idea why and the polyps look like they will fill back in.

Last night I tried to hand feed all and then do a water change. I usually do one or the other. I made two errors in getting the water back running and had separate spills, overflows. One from the sump and then as I was mopping up from the fuge, about a gallon total lost to the carpet. There was a tiny spike in sg I think due to creep that the high water level found in the sump.

Maybe the fuge is working as the Nitrates are down to 5. My lowest reading before that, last week and for a couple months, was about 12.
 
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