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Anonymous
Guest
That stuff is spectacular!
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Anonymous
Guest
Heh. I'm fortunate in that the pistol shrimp in my tank chose to dig his burrow under the rock that's closest to the front of the tank. Assuming he and the goby pair up, they'll be center stage.
Thanks Tracy. I'm finding it to be a fairly slow grower, although that honestly could be more because of the very small size of the frags I've been able to get so far than anything else. I'm hoping that with a decent sized colony to begin with it'll spread at a more reasonable pace.
Thanks Tracy. I'm finding it to be a fairly slow grower, although that honestly could be more because of the very small size of the frags I've been able to get so far than anything else. I'm hoping that with a decent sized colony to begin with it'll spread at a more reasonable pace.
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Anonymous
Guest
I really can't win with this tank, it seems. Just got a call from liveaquaria, seems the package with the sympodium made it as far as Memphis today before getting grounded due to electrical storms in the area. They don't expect the package to get to me til monday.
Someone remind me why I set up a reef tank again?
Someone remind me why I set up a reef tank again?
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Anonymous
Guest
...for the relaxation a hobby provides :wink:
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Anonymous
Guest
..and the second package they sent, which DID make it to brooklyn and has been on the truck for hours? The driver couldn't find my street so marked it down as a bad address with no delivery.
Honestly I give up.
Honestly I give up.
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Anonymous
Guest
Sorry to hear about your latest delivery problem.
I almost always have my packages "held for customer pickup" and the local fed-ex office. That way I can pick it up as soon as they open and the package is never on the delivery truck, where most damage happens.
Louey
I almost always have my packages "held for customer pickup" and the local fed-ex office. That way I can pick it up as soon as they open and the package is never on the delivery truck, where most damage happens.
Louey
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Anonymous
Guest
I would, 'cept living in NYC my wife and I don't have a car and the 'local' fedex station is a$40 cab fare hour long trip.
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Anonymous
Guest
cjdevito":2b4fgans said:
Ouch. That blows.
Louey
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Anonymous
Guest
...and that's exactly what I ended up having to do. Though fedex had told us the driver would come back to deliver my package today, he decided to take it back to the local facility instead. So Mer and I hopped into car service and picked up the box from them.
Goby looks good, though he almost immediately dove for the rockwork and I expect it'll be awhile before I see him again.
The three new thick stem xenia look a bit the worse for the shipping (two have nearly peeled off the rocks they were attached to) but I think all three will be fine. What's really interesting though is that they aren't all the same species... there's at least two, possibly three, different ones.
Going to let everything settle in for a few days before I mount any of it permanently. Pictures by next weekend with any luck.
Goby looks good, though he almost immediately dove for the rockwork and I expect it'll be awhile before I see him again.
The three new thick stem xenia look a bit the worse for the shipping (two have nearly peeled off the rocks they were attached to) but I think all three will be fine. What's really interesting though is that they aren't all the same species... there's at least two, possibly three, different ones.
Going to let everything settle in for a few days before I mount any of it permanently. Pictures by next weekend with any luck.
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Anonymous
Guest
I'm glad you were able to get them. Usually you're screwed once you miss a Saturday delivery then the livestock dies.
Louey
Louey
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Anonymous
Guest
Good news/bad news kind of night...
The good news? The second box from liveaquaria came, the one with the sympodium. Water was ice cold and there were a number of dead hitchhiking worms in the bag, but the sympodium.... may not be a write off. I've spent the last hour warming it up and getting it into the tank. We'll see if it makes it or not. Also on the good news front the three thick stem xenias that arrived on saturday are all doing very nicely.
The bad news? When I came home I noticed that since I left for work this morning something had ripped a three inch stalk of xenia elongata right off the rest of the colony. Literally just tore it off, the gash runs 2" long by a half inch wide on the part of the stalk that remains. A bit of searching turned up the missing part.... jammed halfway down a hole leading to the pistol shrimp's burrow. I think he's my problem.
There's been other evidence that points to him, now that I'm really thinking about it. When the ricordea I bought was loose I kept finding it getting pulled into his burrows... I figured it just floated free and the current put there, it was never jammed in or anything. Then about a week ago the only ricordea that hadn't yet attached went missing. I went searching for it and eventually discovered it in the shrimp's burrow under a rock. Tried rescuing it but it was in so deeply I couldn't get it with my forceps and I reluctantly figured I couldn't rescue it. Now that I'm thinking about it I don't think it could have gotten in as deep as it was without being dragged.
So now I'm going to make a home made trap out of a small soda bottle and bait it, see if it catches anything. Fortunately I have some lose xenia at the moment courtesy of whoever ripped it apart, so I'll use that and some other food and see. I guarantee I'll have all five sexy shrimp in there by morning... but hopefully the culprit as well.
I can't for the life of me think of what else it could be. I've seen the pistol and he's definitely a pistol, not a mantis. But the hitchhiking brittle star never leaves his spot and he would have eaten the coral where it was, not dragged it off. The redspot cardinals couldn't have done it, the goby (who I haven't seen since adding him saturday) wouldn't eat coral, the pistols aren't capable of it due to their size.
The good news? The second box from liveaquaria came, the one with the sympodium. Water was ice cold and there were a number of dead hitchhiking worms in the bag, but the sympodium.... may not be a write off. I've spent the last hour warming it up and getting it into the tank. We'll see if it makes it or not. Also on the good news front the three thick stem xenias that arrived on saturday are all doing very nicely.
The bad news? When I came home I noticed that since I left for work this morning something had ripped a three inch stalk of xenia elongata right off the rest of the colony. Literally just tore it off, the gash runs 2" long by a half inch wide on the part of the stalk that remains. A bit of searching turned up the missing part.... jammed halfway down a hole leading to the pistol shrimp's burrow. I think he's my problem.
There's been other evidence that points to him, now that I'm really thinking about it. When the ricordea I bought was loose I kept finding it getting pulled into his burrows... I figured it just floated free and the current put there, it was never jammed in or anything. Then about a week ago the only ricordea that hadn't yet attached went missing. I went searching for it and eventually discovered it in the shrimp's burrow under a rock. Tried rescuing it but it was in so deeply I couldn't get it with my forceps and I reluctantly figured I couldn't rescue it. Now that I'm thinking about it I don't think it could have gotten in as deep as it was without being dragged.
So now I'm going to make a home made trap out of a small soda bottle and bait it, see if it catches anything. Fortunately I have some lose xenia at the moment courtesy of whoever ripped it apart, so I'll use that and some other food and see. I guarantee I'll have all five sexy shrimp in there by morning... but hopefully the culprit as well.
I can't for the life of me think of what else it could be. I've seen the pistol and he's definitely a pistol, not a mantis. But the hitchhiking brittle star never leaves his spot and he would have eaten the coral where it was, not dragged it off. The redspot cardinals couldn't have done it, the goby (who I haven't seen since adding him saturday) wouldn't eat coral, the pistols aren't capable of it due to their size.
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Anonymous
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Never heard of one doing that!
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Anonymous
Guest
I know. But I really can't think of what else it could be. A worm large enough to that I'd have seen. Dwarf octopus would have been on my floor, what with the open top. A mantis would have gone after my snails long before xenia, and none of them and none of the sexy shrimp have gone missing.
It couldn't be the nassarius, could it?
It couldn't be the nassarius, could it?
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Anonymous
Guest
Not IME, never had snails do that type of stuff. No sign of a decorator crab in the tank?
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Anonymous
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Lawdawg":2utgxcz3 said:
None. Nothing's been torn up but xenias (and really, how unpalatable is xenia? Hardly anything really does eat it). But you're right, it -is- their kind of behaviour. Well, we'll see what the trap turns up.
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Anonymous
Guest
Several days of trying the trap (first a home made one, then replaced with a store bought one with a piano key doorway) turned up no surprises. Caught every nassarius snail and sexy shrimp, but nothing else.
There's been no further damage to anything in the meantime and the bits of xenia that had been torn lose have all just reattached elsewhere with no worries. In the end all that's really happened is that stuff I'd intended to spread around to far corners of the tank got a head start ahead of schedule.
The sympodium that was delayed in shipping seems to be recovering. A few individual sympodium mounds are on the way out, but most remain okay.
The hi-fin goby has been making repeated appearances over the last several days. He's shown zero interest in the pistol shrimp so far, but seems to be doing well and is taking pellet food.
Just placed an order for some pink zooanthids, blue snowflake polyps and green star polyps. I'll use them to fill in the gaps on the rockwork. That'll finish off the tank.
There's been no further damage to anything in the meantime and the bits of xenia that had been torn lose have all just reattached elsewhere with no worries. In the end all that's really happened is that stuff I'd intended to spread around to far corners of the tank got a head start ahead of schedule.
The sympodium that was delayed in shipping seems to be recovering. A few individual sympodium mounds are on the way out, but most remain okay.
The hi-fin goby has been making repeated appearances over the last several days. He's shown zero interest in the pistol shrimp so far, but seems to be doing well and is taking pellet food.
Just placed an order for some pink zooanthids, blue snowflake polyps and green star polyps. I'll use them to fill in the gaps on the rockwork. That'll finish off the tank.
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Anonymous
Guest
at least until you see/find another specimen that sparks your fancy...are reef tanks ever truly finished?cjdevito":141q7q83 said:
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Anonymous
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budhaboy":sysnlgeh said:
I'm pretty good at resisting "Just one more coral..." syndrome, mostly because I really hate the look of tanks that have frags scattered willy-nilly all over the sandbed and on shelves, etc. About the only thing that would really tempt me right now would be if I found some genuine sansibia. But really, I have enough white in my tank already
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