Tina's Nano Journal

[kelwoo]

Some great pictures! Your bubble coral is great, love the colour never seen one that colour before, and the feeding tenticles wow! Never seen it before thanks for the pics.


Great tank - looking forward to the next set of pics.

Kelwoo

 

[JoshH]

Really nice pics Tina!! Can't wait to get some of my own fish in lol, roll on tuesday

If I were a fish I wouldnt want a shrimp pokin me in the gills I dont think!

 

[TigerIssey]

Thanks josh and kelwoo.

Am sitting in front of the tank most days so will be another set shortly.

To be honest josh, the goby has spent all day today avoiding his cave, this is due to the fire shrimp being parked outside ready to jump on him again.

Don't think the goby is very impressed at all.

Clowns are really funny they watch with complete bemused looks on their faces.

Andrew even commented on how much he saw the goby today, he might get used to it, just not very impressed at all at the moment.

The funniest thing at the moment is the goby attacking the clowns if they go anywhere near his cave entrance, and I thought clowns were supposed to be the aggressive ones.

 

[TigerIssey]

Having had my 4 headed branching hammer for about 10 days now, it has gone from 4 heads to 6 heads.
Here are the photos.

Bubble coral showing the mouths

I am sure the Bubble coral is actually budding, what are your opinions on this.

 

[Trod]

Lovely pictures, My cleaners have given up with my fish, none of them are interested and just do a runner, they are now just content to do my hand everytime its in the tank

 

[TigerIssey]

Thanks Trod, I think this shrimp went after the Goby in particular because there is a small area of damaged surface tissue, this has been like this since I got him and I believe it was probably the way he squeezing under the rock in the display tank. The shrimp has removed any dead tissue and the area is beginning to look much better, you may be able to see it some of the photos. The area has never looked ulcerated or infected in any way so I have not worried about it all.

I have a few more pictures for you.

The bubble coral feeding, I have also made these available in the new Bubble profile.

A few others

My hammer has tonight expelled its gastric contents or excess zooxanthellae, I am failry certain this is just an excess expulsion as the coral looks so healthy and has taken food after the event.

 

[JoshH]

Nice pics Tina

 

[TigerIssey]

Okay, time for an update.

In all this time I did not get any baddy hitch hikers, when watching the tank on Wednesday, I saw one of my polyp frags moving, on closer inspection I found a crab AAAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH

This is where it is hiding.

I want it out!!

I have set a trap but it appears not to be interested, Andrew tried breaking a bit off rock off earlier and we saw the crab, it ran under some zoas, you guessed, I moved the zoas for andrew to catch it with the forceps, wrong, he missed the damn thing. Trap is still set, if it is not caught by tommorrow night, the rock is coming out for some drastic action.


I went shopping yesterday, after weighing up Trods advice about Emerald crabs (I really wanted one, think they are really cute) I decided I may not have the same problems as my rock pieces are so large so I am trying one out. The final straw was the bubble algae and hair algae that started to pop up everywhere, he is on probation and so far is an absolute star. I have purchased more epoxy to make sure corals are fastened down incase he starts to move anything about.

Here he is

Akhenaton

Whilst there I decided I need to get another coral.

I have a list of ones I have researched that I like and will eventually be added, I wanted one to go in the centre of the pyramid shape as it was looking like it was unfinished that way (its far from finished but this adds to the shape).

I ended up having the lfs lady and THE BOOK plus my list going through her LPS stock (had to be lps as this spot was reserved for one) looking for the correct coral for higher light and ok flow.

The choice came down to 2, a Caulastrea and a Galaxea. The lady pursuaded me to wait for the brighter coloured Caulastrea (TMC call it Ultra) so I came away with the Galaxea. Not the easiest of corals but with a healthy specimen such as this it is reasonably ok once accustomed to the tank. I also seem to be doing quite well with my other LPS so decided to try this now.

Here we are

There is also a couple of polyps of a freebie growing at the bottom right, looks similar to a star polyp, need to look it up.

Here it is again under blue light.

Here for the moment is the Full Tank Shot

This may change slightly tommorrow if I have to take out the large rock on the right to get Mr crab. There will be much RO squirted in the holes and perhaps some boiling water and if that does not work I will end up resorting to the hammer and chisel.
This may affect how the rock is placed back in.


I have also got to pay another visit to the lfs on Saturday, I have ordered a wrasse to complete my planned stocking (may add another fish later depending on water tests) there are 2 fish coming in, took ages to choose which stock TMC had to order as we had to get the ladies books out. She has an amazing book with all the pictures of every fish in you could imagine, there were pages and pages of fairy and flasher wrasses.
They did not have carpenters in stock but we have narrowed it down to 2 that I will have to choose between when I go on Saturday.

Really loooking forward to that, Saturdays is really busy but I will be there with my crutches batting them out the way so that I can examine my potential fishes.
I offered to buy the Carpenters out of the display tank and she would have sold it to me, the day before however at feeding time the tail spot blennie had grabbed the wrasses tail and kept shaking, the result was that the poor wrasse had no tail left. She was not sure whether it would make it so ordered these for me instead.

Roll on Saturday

The other good news is that coralline is starting to out compete the cyano on the rocks, I can see purple popping up in places.

 

[JoshH]

Just reread the entire journal lol!

You've come on quite a journey eh! Hope you have some luck with the crab catching, it's looking really good now I can only dream of my tank looking anywhere near as good

 

[TigerIssey]

Nice to know its read and reread, I wanted to document as much as possible, similar to Trod and Seffie as I found their Journal so helpful when I was researching. I like to add lots of photos and document every new addition. Would you believe for each new coral I add a page in my tank log book and make notes on all the requirements and care including fragging so that I can quickly compare the requirements of just the corals I have in the tank. I also note the date purchased and where from.

This was the impetus for me to write the Bubble Coral profile, I had all the notes I had made and it just meant writing it up in the correct format and checking a few more details. I also had some amazing photos that I did not want to go to waste.

Looking at the tank now, I have some really beautiful corals in there, and hope I have placed them, to their requirements and best place aesthetically. I just hope I can continue to get the growth I am getting now and continue to find some more beauties to add. I know alot will eventually outgrow this tank, at the back of my mind is always the thought that in a few years at the most, I will have a larger marine tank. (If I have anything to with it, I will have a much larger tank as well as the four foot freshwater much sooner than that). I honestly thought it would be the fish that attracted me more, it is not, I can honestly say I need to find the local Corals Anonnymous

 

[SkiFletch]

Goin with some highly aggressive corals there huh TI?

Galaxea's are actually pretty easy to keep as far as hard corals go. They're very similar in requirements to hammer and frogspawns. Do beware their nighttime sweeper tentacles though... Even longer and more deadly than the bubbles

 

[TigerIssey]

Goin with some highly aggressive corals there huh TI?

Galaxea's are actually pretty easy to keep as far as hard corals go. They're very similar in requirements to hammer and frogspawns. Do beware their nighttime sweeper tentacles though... Even longer and more deadly than the bubbles

You could say that Ski My problem is that the corals I like the most are also the most aggressive, good job I do my reading and know that in advance

I have done lots of reading and found that if I keep the flow as low as possible, the tentacles will not be as long. That is why I also moved two of the corals on either side. Have been having the red spotlights on at night and as I am not sleeping too well have been watching out for the tentacles. So far, they have not gone longer than about 1 1/2" so hopefully I can keep it that way. I can always alter the flow slightly. I did read that some of the best corals for neighbours were the torch, frogspawn and hammer, I do want a torch aswell at some point so that will probably be the closest neighbour eventually.

I did want a nice centre piece for the top and do think that it fulfills that criteria quite nicely. I have since read aswell that the Galaxea do not like hairalgae at all, in this respect, my Emerald Crab was a very good purchase, he is at present ensuring there is no hair algae any where near the Galaxea. I have been very surprised at how gentle he is when cleaning around the polyps on corals, he can actually hold on to the button polyps with the polyps remaining open. The YWG did go up to inspect him when first added, it was quite funny as the crab just stuck one pincer out as if to say "talk to the hand" (whilst still muching on algae), the YWG just flew off.

If I get too many problems, there is always then an excuse for the larger tank sooner rather than later.

 

[seffieuk]

Really enjoyed reading your last few posts and the photos are amazing - you always seem to be in the right place at the right time, they are fasinating

Seffie x

 

[Truck]

amazing pictures...amazing corals and amazing fish.

love reading this journal, keep up the good work

 

[TigerIssey]

Really enjoyed reading your last few posts and the photos are amazing - you always seem to be in the right place at the right time, they are fasinating

Seffie x

amazing pictures...amazing corals and amazing fish.

love reading this journal, keep up the good work

What very nice compliments. Thank you

Tonight due to the fact that the only inhabitants my trap caught was a Nass. vibex and the largest hermit crab that got stuck before it could get to the bait, Andrew and myself extracted the largest piece of live rock from the tank in order to remove the bad crab. I was very organised, I had a bottle of RO, some hot water (not boiling), a hammer and large flat ended screwdriver at the ready along with a syringe and a large sterilised bowl to put the rock in. We first tried pouring RO water into the holes, there were so many tunnels and crevices it was untrue. This unfortunately had no effect and the crab did not emerge. Next I got the syringe and filled it with hot water and started to squirt the tunnels and holes, I did this for about five minutes but again not a sighting. Andrew started to squirt more hot water whilst I got the hammer and screwdriver ready when suddenly out popped a crab from the bottom of the rock. Whoooohoooo, my rock was still in one piece too.

It appeared on inspection of the crab that Andrew was closer to catching it last night than we thought, somehow it had 3 legs missing.

Here it is, very small at the moment but notice the dark pincers.

In light of the fact it had legs missing, soon after taking this photograph, I put it out of its misery.

I am perfectly sure that this would have grown into fish killer, so am incredibly pleased he is no longer in my tank.

Tommorrow is LFS day again to go and choose my wrasse, am quite excited about that now.