N1z's Marine Journal
- Thread starter N1z
- Start date
Hey its been a while and well mainly due to ive got other things on atm and went away on holiday. And in now 4 weeks time im off to antiga! to do my qualifyin dives 
. But enough of that little update.
I lost my trachphyllia
just dunno why but it just slowly died, so stayin away from those brains. Urm fish are all good, before i went away some how my flame seemed to be showing signs of clownfish disease with excess mucus on the body, i told my mum to do a strick diet and it went! 
. Urm and i got 3 new corals at a steal down in Hove which i def will be going to again brillaint shops at good prices.
None the less here are pics:
Here i got another but different form of a red Lobophyllia and a 3 head anchor coral for only 70quid.
Then i also got some rare red zoos at £36 which is not bad where i go they wld be about 45!
And a while i got i my sun coral, not its going amazing as some times im stugglin to feed the thing so i havent decided on what todo on that part. None the less here is a pic one night a few weeks back before i fed it.
Main shot and a shot of my pink bar goby whos little brave now after 2 months lol.
Hope u like
. But enough of that little update.I lost my trachphyllia
just dunno why but it just slowly died, so stayin away from those brains. Urm fish are all good, before i went away some how my flame seemed to be showing signs of clownfish disease with excess mucus on the body, i told my mum to do a strick diet and it went! . Urm and i got 3 new corals at a steal down in Hove which i def will be going to again brillaint shops at good prices.None the less here are pics:
Here i got another but different form of a red Lobophyllia and a 3 head anchor coral for only 70quid.
Then i also got some rare red zoos at £36 which is not bad where i go they wld be about 45!
And a while i got i my sun coral, not its going amazing as some times im stugglin to feed the thing so i havent decided on what todo on that part. None the less here is a pic one night a few weeks back before i fed it.
Main shot and a shot of my pink bar goby whos little brave now after 2 months lol.
Hope u like
Wow, lookin REALLY good
rictheredneck
Fish Crazy
i guess this question is aimed at you n1z but anybody else with an imput id like to hear it (i know you have one ski) how do you find your elegance? im startin to draw up a coral list (once i get the hang of my calc and alk) and it is at the top of my list. nearly everywhere i read they talk about how the older specimens were much hardier just want to know how u are finding it? they cost alot and i dont wanna blow my money lol
tank is lookin ace btw!
tank is lookin ace btw!
Thank you ski and ritheredneck for ur compliment, glad u like it 
.
As for my cataphyllia, i love it! If your from the uk all of a sudden there has been tonnes of off shore farmed cataphyllia's. So they are alot hardier and seem to survive well, as im finding out. Now tbh ive been seeing ,many in each store and i will warn u ive never found some as healthy as mine ( but mine does have 2 areas of brown tenticles where it must of been hurt yet it doesnt seem bad). So i wld recommend reserving it and making the shop keep it for a extra week or two.
As for general things I just simply feed mine a cube of chopped muscles or cockles a week, and keep it under 4 t5s. Plus im still having calcium problems with it only reachin 360mgs if less yet it seems fine and its been like this for over a month or 2.
Also mines a TMC grown one i seem to remember so when u look at buying one ask where they are cummin from and find out if they are safe buy, unlike me just taking a huge £125 risk. But i seem to remember reading in PKF and marine world magazine they are all cummin out offshore farms and have high survival rates, so it still be a risk but a decent odds if u know wot i mean...
.As for my cataphyllia, i love it! If your from the uk all of a sudden there has been tonnes of off shore farmed cataphyllia's. So they are alot hardier and seem to survive well, as im finding out. Now tbh ive been seeing ,many in each store and i will warn u ive never found some as healthy as mine ( but mine does have 2 areas of brown tenticles where it must of been hurt yet it doesnt seem bad). So i wld recommend reserving it and making the shop keep it for a extra week or two.
As for general things I just simply feed mine a cube of chopped muscles or cockles a week, and keep it under 4 t5s. Plus im still having calcium problems with it only reachin 360mgs if less yet it seems fine and its been like this for over a month or 2.
Also mines a TMC grown one i seem to remember so when u look at buying one ask where they are cummin from and find out if they are safe buy, unlike me just taking a huge £125 risk. But i seem to remember reading in PKF and marine world magazine they are all cummin out offshore farms and have high survival rates, so it still be a risk but a decent odds if u know wot i mean...
rictheredneck
Fish Crazy
thanx for the heads up!
Mine's been doing great as well. Like N1z said, there are many new elegance coral farms popping up in indonesia and australia that are actually growing these corals out, fragging them, healing the frags, and then selling them. They appear much hardier than the disease ridden ones of the earlier part of this decade. I've been searching for info on the new specemins and some people on their way home from MACNA (wish I could have gone) offered me some info that was useful. I've been told that most of these new specemins were shallow-water collected species while those that struggled were deeper water species.
This makes sense to me because shallow and deep water corals have different zooxanthellae algae which are capable of using different wavelengths of light. Shallow water zooxanthellae can use many shorter wavelengths of light in the blue, green, and yellow spectra while deepwater zooxanthellae are only capable of using really purple wavelengths. It has been hypothesized (although not definitevely proven) that because these deeper water zooxanthellae are so specialized in the light that they can use, that their mortality rates were so high in captivity while the shallow water zoos were adaptable and survive in captivity. Therefore, the deeper water corals were bleaching, running out of photosynthetic energy, stressing out, lowering their immune system capacity, and opening the way to parasitic and bacterial infections to take hold and ultimately kill the coral. Their shallow water counterparts (popularly collected in the 90s, and again within the past year or so) had adataptable zooxanthellae algae which survived in captive lighting, thus allowing the coral to remain healthy.
That being said, when selecting a specemin at a shop you should still take caution to insure its healthy before you buy it. Things to look for:
Relatively long tentacles. Those with short stubby tentacles, are allready diseased and doomed to failure.
Non-swollen oral disks. Again, big oral disks, short tentacles, bad.
Good coloration. The coral should not be bleached or pale looking. Patterns in the oral disk should be prevalent and tentacles should be vibrant.
If in high-flow the tentacles should be fat and almoast bulbous (like a bulb tip nem)
If in low-medium flow the tentacles should be longer and thinner
Look for tissue recession at the skeletal break. These new elegance corals are often fragged at the farm in indonesia. Most come through the fragging process just fine, but some begin to recede away from the break-point. It's always very obvious where the coral was fragged (if its fragged). One or both edges of the colony will be dead straight, almoast as if cut with a chisel/saw. So long as the skin is not receeding or peeling away from the coral there, its fine.
Also one word of caution when keeping them. Do your best to keep calcium, alkalinity, and magnesium levels appropriate. When I allowed mine to dip to exceedingly low levels just before switching tanks (<300ppm calc, <7dKH, and <1100ppm mg) my elegance started "bailing out" of its skeleton. Mercifully, returning chemistry to more appropriate seawater values ended the bailout and no polyps or mouths died, but the full recovery process will be slow I'm sure. Its slowly re-attaching to the skeleton. Anyways, just don't make the same mistake I did
And ritch, I'll leave you with first an example of my old diseased specemin which died (note all the examples of disease above), and my current 8 month old healthy specemin
This makes sense to me because shallow and deep water corals have different zooxanthellae algae which are capable of using different wavelengths of light. Shallow water zooxanthellae can use many shorter wavelengths of light in the blue, green, and yellow spectra while deepwater zooxanthellae are only capable of using really purple wavelengths. It has been hypothesized (although not definitevely proven) that because these deeper water zooxanthellae are so specialized in the light that they can use, that their mortality rates were so high in captivity while the shallow water zoos were adaptable and survive in captivity. Therefore, the deeper water corals were bleaching, running out of photosynthetic energy, stressing out, lowering their immune system capacity, and opening the way to parasitic and bacterial infections to take hold and ultimately kill the coral. Their shallow water counterparts (popularly collected in the 90s, and again within the past year or so) had adataptable zooxanthellae algae which survived in captive lighting, thus allowing the coral to remain healthy.
That being said, when selecting a specemin at a shop you should still take caution to insure its healthy before you buy it. Things to look for:
Relatively long tentacles. Those with short stubby tentacles, are allready diseased and doomed to failure.
Non-swollen oral disks. Again, big oral disks, short tentacles, bad.
Good coloration. The coral should not be bleached or pale looking. Patterns in the oral disk should be prevalent and tentacles should be vibrant.
If in high-flow the tentacles should be fat and almoast bulbous (like a bulb tip nem)
If in low-medium flow the tentacles should be longer and thinner
Look for tissue recession at the skeletal break. These new elegance corals are often fragged at the farm in indonesia. Most come through the fragging process just fine, but some begin to recede away from the break-point. It's always very obvious where the coral was fragged (if its fragged). One or both edges of the colony will be dead straight, almoast as if cut with a chisel/saw
. So long as the skin is not receeding or peeling away from the coral there, its fine.Also one word of caution when keeping them. Do your best to keep calcium, alkalinity, and magnesium levels appropriate. When I allowed mine to dip to exceedingly low levels just before switching tanks (<300ppm calc, <7dKH, and <1100ppm mg) my elegance started "bailing out" of its skeleton. Mercifully, returning chemistry to more appropriate seawater values ended the bailout and no polyps or mouths died, but the full recovery process will be slow I'm sure. Its slowly re-attaching to the skeleton. Anyways, just don't make the same mistake I did
And ritch, I'll leave you with first an example of my old diseased specemin which died (note all the examples of disease above), and my current 8 month old healthy specemin
rictheredneck
Fish Crazy
thank you both for your imput, ski yeh that makes common sense about the zooxanthellae just a couple more q's, ive read that they prefer a diffused light erring on the t5 side and i only have a halide how detrimental would this be. the 2nd is flow, is 32 times turnover rate too much? it will be provided by 2 koralia 4's
Healthy specemins with appropriate zooxanthellae are exceptionally hardy and adaptable. Mine currently lives 24" down in the sand bed of my 65 under twin 175watt 10k halides and is doing just fine there. Its in a pretty low-flow area of my tank although overall I have 30 times turnover in my system. I have one powerhead at the top for surface agitation and another halfway down as well as the sump outlets also at the top, so the sand bed in my tank is pretty docile for the most part. Another member of my reef club has an exact color morph of mine living 10" under twin 250watt halides with LOTS of flowrate.
Remember, the shallow-water versions of these corals in the wild are often found in the sandstorm behind the reef. Some days they see massive surge, and others they see nearly stagnant water. Some days they see nice clear visibility and are blasted with sunlight, while others they're covered in sand... The deeper water varieties however exhist on the front side of the reef and see only a few wavelengths of light and are rarely covered in sand. Two very differently adapted individuals.
Edit: Heck, mine's so adaptable that it's survived 1/3rd of the mouths leaving the skeleton due to calcification stress, none of which have died yet...
Remember, the shallow-water versions of these corals in the wild are often found in the sandstorm behind the reef. Some days they see massive surge, and others they see nearly stagnant water. Some days they see nice clear visibility and are blasted with sunlight, while others they're covered in sand... The deeper water varieties however exhist on the front side of the reef and see only a few wavelengths of light and are rarely covered in sand. Two very differently adapted individuals.
Edit: Heck, mine's so adaptable that it's survived 1/3rd of the mouths leaving the skeleton due to calcification stress, none of which have died yet...
rictheredneck
Fish Crazy
cheers skin and sorry niz for hijacking lol
RobHimself
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N1z, could you post some more pictures of the Red Spot Flymo Blenny? Does he have a very long body? I'm trying to figure out if my Blenny is the same.
Proud Texan
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Cool reaf tanks rock
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