Coral Frags / Clowns / Questions it me!

What size tank? What kind of lighting? Are those ricordia? How long have you had your setup?
You might want to hold off on the iodine for a while to see how things respond. I think you only need iodine in trace amounts. Unless you have a full-blown reef, filled to the gills with corals, you may not even need to dose iodine.

Ooops. Forgot to add:
Nice looking tank!

Oh. And one more thing. I believe just feeding your tank normally should be enough for those corals. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

The mushrooms are Ricordea Yumas and do better in higher light. If they need more light they will let you know by stretching themselves upward. The ones up top should be fine with your PC lighting but the one on the bottom left may need to be moved up but since your tank isn't very deep it may be fine where it is. Middle to top placement is generally a good place for Yumas but it depends on lighting. I recommend leaving everything where it is and just keep an eye on them. Yumas do not multiply as fast as Florida Ricordea but they reproduce the same way by splitting. When they reproduce you might notice the parent laying its polyps down on the rock and sort of tearing away to one side. A day or two later there will be a baby ric left behind. If you get any Florida Rics in the future you can be placed closer to the bottom.

The zoanthids (zoas) are fine closer to the bottom as well and don;t worry about them not spreading because they will.

Another tip is that when you get new frags place them on the sandbed for a couple of days to let them get used to your lighting and if the coral is more of a light demand species move it up after it acclimates. Also I try and wedge frags in my rockwork before I glue them in place to ensure its happy with the flow and lighting in that spot.

Are you dosing Lugol's solution or iodide? I would stop dosing now unless you have a mechanism to test for it. You can use the lugols for a dip prior to adding to new frags to your tank but I would strongly caution you about adding anything to your tank that you are unfamiliar with and/or are not capable of testing concentrations. Dips are usually done when there is a concern about potential pests on frags or the coarl is declining in health. You can spot feed the yumas with mysis shrimp. The nipple looking thing in the middle is the mouth. Just drop a piece or two on the shroom and if it want it it will flod its polyps in to draw the shrimp to its mouth. Feedings are not necessary though.

Do you have an algae scaper or a razor blade? That should take care of the algae on the glass. If you can't get the algae in the curved portion you can use a regular old stainless steel spoon or an old credit card that will bend. You can use a Scotch Brite pad on the back of the tank if you want. Just make sure it is a new plain pad with no chemicals/cleaners bult in and that you rinse it out good before you use it. A lot of us use mag float alage scrapers too. Easy to use and if you use it daily (takes about a minute) you never allow the alage to build up. You will likely need to scrape coraline that grwos on the galss with a blade/spoon/card.

HTH

They look like they are doing ok to me where they are now so unless you start seeing something odd I think you can leave them there. Yumas are generally more desireable than Florida Rics due to the variability of the colors on each polyp. Some Yumas are very bright and can go for a premium. Not sure what you paid for your but I agree they are very pretty and will probably look even better as they get more settled into your tank. Same with the zoas.

The big thing now is "designer" or limited editon corals such as those distributed by or under the (for lack of a better term) "brand names" of ORA, Tyree, Jason Fox, etc. These corals go for a lot of $. Many of these corals are just stunning and the added benefit is that they have been aquacultured for several generations so that they are generally more hardy that those harvested and sold straight from wild reefs. If I had the money I would love to have some of these pieces but I have been luck enough to find some nice frags at much more reasonable prices. Basically, buy what you like and can afford but most importantly buy what you know you can care for taking your system into account.

Checkout some online vendors such as www.worldwidecorals.com, www.cherrycorals.com and www.juicycorals.com and you will see some of the higher end corals. A great way to get nice pieces is to join a reef club or attend frag swaps if you are fortunate enough to have them around you. Unfortunately I don't .

Your tank is looking grat and you've made some some good choices and asked all the right questions. Just continue to take your time and enjoy watching your tank grow out and mature.

I am not an expert of dosing chemicals but feel that unless you are running a large system and/or are trying to keep demanding corals, I don't feel its necessary unless there is a particular concern over health. Keep in mind that small changes in a small tank and equal big problems. Again, I don't see any need for you to be dosing iodide in your system but that is just my opinion.

That was a good deal! Hurry up and get that basement done ! Sounds like you got a great girl there. I did some more looking around today on dosing iodine/iodide and found this article which you may find useful:

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/mar2003/chem.htm

Its pretty scientific and you sort of need a chemistry degree yo understand much of what is said but I have read several articles written by the author on water chemistry and have learned a great deal by doing so. Here is an excerpt that somewhat applies to what we have been talking about:

What About Dosing?

It makes much more sense to give dosing recommendations after presenting iodine depletion rates and showing what impact, if any, supplementation has on some common organisms, so I will hold off on that all-essential discussion until next month. Nevertheless, there is one important piece of advice that I can give now.

I would strongly advise people to not try to maintain 0.06 ppm iodine using supplementation and a test kit.

Why you ask? Isn’t that what we do for most other chemicals of interest? Well, if we could easily and accurately determine the concentrations of the different forms of iodine in aquaria, then I would recommend doing just that. However, if you combine the complexities of having multiple iodine species present with the uncertainty of having hobbyists use very complex test kits that may readily yield incorrect or difficult to interpret results, the stage is set for people driving their total iodine to levels far from what they actually intended. I do not know what levels of iodide or iodate become apparently problematic to real aquaria, but the risk of overdosing in this fashion is not insignificant. Both of the ICP studies reported above found some tanks with substantially elevated total iodine levels. I have no way of knowing how those levels got there, but overdosing of a supplement is one likely way.


Why such different reported effects of iodine supplementation?

There is a huge disparity among aquarists about the effects that they have seen in their tanks with and without dosing iodine. Some say they very clearly see certain effects when dosing iodine (an effect that often stops when they stop dosing), and other aquarists report not seeing those same effects. Often this is used as evidence that iodine supplementation cannot be having the effects observed in one tank if it does not have the same effect in another tank. Without claiming that iodine has any particular effect, I contend that such logic is flawed for the reason given below:

Since iodine appears to be fluxing massively through aquaria relative to the natural levels in seawater (close to 100% turnover every few days as noted above), it would not be surprising if, in the absence of supplementation, some tanks had much higher levels of iodine than others. While some tanks may stay pegged on the low side of 0.06 ppm without supplementation, it may be critical whether these are holding steady at 0.02 ppm, 0.001 ppm, or 0.00001 ppm. Few aquarists can detect and quantify these lower levels. Other tanks may have total iodine levels above 0.06 ppm due to feeding of high iodine foods. And even within the same total iodine level, different tanks, with or without supplementation, are going to have different relative amounts of iodide, iodate, and organic iodine. So the differences that people report in their tank’s response to iodine addition may be the result of:

1. The fact that hobbyists are not especially scientific observers of their tanks, and they may be mistaken about the observed effects (or not) of supplementation.

or

2. The natural amounts of the various species of iodine present in marine aquaria without supplementation vary considerably, and so the different observations reported may reflect different starting points. That is, some tanks may have enough iodine naturally present that additional iodine has no effect, while others may start so low that added iodine pushes the iodine level up to the point where certain new effects can be observed.

Do I know which effect is real? Or is it both? No, I do not know. But aquarists should be aware of these issues when discussing the effects of iodine supplementation. In next month’s article, I present some results of iodine supplementation on macroalgae growth. Regardless of the outcome, these experiments have little bearing on how iodine supplements impact other organisms, from shrimp to Xenia sp., but it does make a start at understanding what effects one might realistically expect from iodine supplementation.

lookin good!