Post Your Nano Reef Pix

[steelhealr]

Cutiewitbooty....that coral is a sun coral...they are not photosynthetic and need to be fed. SH

 

[CutieWitBooty]

oh duh lol, you know whats funny I'm going was going to pick up a sun coral today. I know they are a little difficult, but i think i can care for them. Manualy target feeding each polyp wouldn'y be a problem for me. What do you feed yours and how often? It would be my first coral, but i think i can do it. My tank has read 0 amm, No2, No3 for about 5 weeks now so i'm going to go for it. This is my 3rd tank, just not reef Wish me luck

Also from my tank pictures above, where do you think would be a good place to place it?

 

[steelhealr]

It's not they are hard, per se, I think maybe the right word is tedious. Each coral head has to be fed or it will die. They usually open up near lights out, tho', you can get them to open during the day. They need a shady overhang since they are not light lovers.

The main problem is, that, if you have a frag with 20 heads, and you feed each one, that means nitrates. These can bump up your nitrate level. Also, your inverts will learn about feeding time and try and pick open the coral heads.

Some people pull the frag out to feed it; some cut a plastic coke bottle up and put a 'ring' around it when feeding. I feed mine alternating mixtures of mysis, enriched brine and cylcopeeze. I tried squid, which worked fine, but, high protein and my nitrates bumped up

You could put the frag under either ledge.
SH

 

[CutieWitBooty]

Ok i bought one Here is a pic, tell me what you think, is it healty and everything? I have never bought a coral before, so i hope it's ok. I can't wait for it to open

 

[bunjiweb]

Awesome pictures! Beautiful! I espically like the picture of bunjiweb's decorator crab!

Actually its just a normal red hermit, except he's gone alot lighter coloured since his last malt. He has some lovely coraline, a tiny duster worm and a polyp attached to him though lol.

CutieWitBooty, it certainly looks alive and not retracted. Do the yellow polyps extend quite alot or do they only seem to come out at certain times when the light is off? You should ideally be target-feeding the sun coral once a day with things like daphnia, brineshrimp, plankton etc.

Ben

 

[trekbear]

I would like to THANK EVERYONE who commented so nicely about my tank pics! And as promised here are the latest tank shots of the 24 gallon NanoCube DX. This tank has 2 Hydorflo's and 2 Powerheads, Dremeled Overflow teeth, and upgraded lighting to 144 Watts PC Total.

Here's the tank now @ 10months. The only bad thing about the shots are the Frogspawn is piXXed off and the greenstar polyp rock has moved down (I fixed it after the pic) Will post updated pics later this week.
Now the good part about the FrogSpawn being piXXed off is .... Tada, you can see it making 4 heads out of 2. I fragged one head off 3 weeks ago and it's dividing into 2 heads now too in the 25Gallon frag tank.

Hope you like 'em!
TrekBear

Full Tank Shot 1-28-06

Center View of Tank

One of my favorite Inverts

Mushroom Island

Dividing Heads of the Frogspawn

And look closely at the different stages of division in this candy cane (Funny how you don't really notice it sometimes)

Ok, Now the tank will go thru stages of lots of Xenia and some of not so much . IT DOES GROW LIKE A WEED!!!! LOL! I usually update photos monthly, I got a bit lazy as of late but I will get back to it.

If you have any questions please feel free to ask.

TrekBear

 

[Siamese Fighter05]

Its looks even better and i don't know how it could
What is that red invert that's one of your favourites? It looks really cool

Dan

 

[CutieWitBooty]

thats a coco worm, kinda like a feather duster, but alot prettier and alot more expensive.

 

[steelhealr]

...and a lot more difficult to care for. My question to trekbrear....your corals seem to come up to water level...how do you do water changes without being chronically exposed to air? SH

 

[trekbear]

Thanks SF05 for the compliment. I believe anyone can have a great looking reef and there really is no wrong way to display it as the reefs are as diverse as our tanks. Just takes time and patience and good friends on forums like this to help us out from time to time .

You are correct CWB, that's a coco worm. Yep, they are about 3X as much as a Hawaiian feather duster. Their tubes are hard (calcium carbonate), not soft like the Hawaiian feather dusters and they are more colorful in general too. I don't know about being difficult though. I haven't done much except water changes and feeding the tank DT's, and Rotifers, and Cyclopeeze and Mysid shrimp.

And for SteelHealr's question about the corals being exposed to air during water changes. That cannot be avoided. I drain about 2.5 gallons to 4 gallons from the tank depending on my nitrates at the time and that generally takes 1/4 of volume from display tank and the corals are exposed to air for about 5-10 mins while I complete the change. I do turn the lights off to minimize shocking the skin from UV exposure. Oer than that... they are treated almost as they would be in the wild.... these corals come from tidal areas Xenia and Leather and starpolyps are generally what are exposed during changes. They seem to handle it fine though


Thanks again!
TB

 

[steelhealr]

That looks like a healthy tubastrea....to get it to open, spray some of the juice from the food you dissolved on it......it should be open within the hour after that. Then you can feed it. SH

 

[CutieWitBooty]

Here is a couple more pics of some stuff i got today I got a f. percula (if it wasn't for my kids i wouldn't have one, but they wouldn't leave me alone about it) and i got a pipe organ coral, it looks alot like a GSP,b ut a little differnt.

Here is the pic when i first put it in the tank

1 hour later

My new clown, next to my still unopened sun

 

[steelhealr]

If you polyps opened that quickly, it's a good sign that you have good water condtions. Good luck with your first corals. WTG. SH

 

[CutieWitBooty]

Thanks!! I was so happy that it opened up soo good too, seeing as my sun won't open for nothing quite yet. This was about an hour after the last pic on there, it even opened up more, it looks 10x better than it even did in the fish store, i'm extreml happy with it!!

 

[Clownfish11790]

Can you get us a whole tank shot now that you have added your coral?
_CF