Khemul's 120 Gallon Tank

[Khemul]

Well the ich is just about gone.

It appears everything has become extra happy. Saw one of the urchins spawning last night. Then saw a bundle of Sea Hare eggs under a rock. I moved them to the refugium, but I doubt anything will come from them. It is probably like the Crown Conch, which keeps dropping egg cases that never hatch since there isn't a male in the tank.

 

[greech]

:headbang2::dance2::thm:

 

[Khemul]

Noob lesson of the day; in a refugium macro algae can grow too thick.

Guess I should have known that from experience with planted tanks. But got a little busy and didn't have time to really look closely. This week I've been noticing almost an algae bloom. Algae on the glass was growing faster, algae on equipment was growing faster, then the corals started to get upset. Turns out my taxifolia was so thick it wasn't working as effectively and nutrients crept up. Managed to remove four handfull of the stuff while pruning, and now it is back to the thickness in the picture posted a little way up in the thread.

With that hickup out of the way, hopefully things will go back to normally quickly.


Will get some pictures once things calm back down. We also added a couple Chalk Basslets to the tank, which seem to be doing really well. Otherwise not much in change.

 

[greech]

Noob lesson #2 of the day. Think carefully before you dose! I almost dosed some baking soda to raise alkalinity simply because I read my test kit wrong. Every kit I have is made by Red Sea except for alk (Salifert). The RS kits require you to subtract in order to determine the amount of reagent used whereas the Salifert table is reversed so you just read the number on the syringe. What I thought was 6 dKH was actually 10 dKH. So glad I did another test!!!!

 

[Khemul]

Well odd surprised. Bar gobies. Well, bar goby.1 is confirmed dead, it came out a week ago for one day just to die. But now a second one, this one looking less starved has started showing itself the last couple days. Not sure about the third one, although I swear the current one looked skinnier a couple days ago so maybe they are both still alive and coming out one at a time. Still scared of their own shadows so who knows how that'll progress.


The Octopus Frogspawn is being weird. Basically I was moving powerheads around a few days ago and accidently pointed the MJ1200 straight at it for a short time. I thought at the time it only tore a small piece away from the skeleton, but over the weeks it has been shrinking back and I poked it with a stick (gentlely) tonight and noticed that half of it is detached from the skeleton. I'm not sure if that is simply the original injury or if it is slowly getting worse. Is there anything to do when these things happen or is it just a watch and hope it recovers type thing?

 

[greech]

You can try a Revive or Lugol's bath. I'm betting that's the original injury. It doesn't take much to tear the flesh on Euphyllia (been ther done that). You could just cut that head off and dip the damaged polyp but the dip won't harm the healthy coral.

 

[Khemul]

Figured that might end up being the case.

Will have to pick up some of either of those when I get a chance. Gonna be a pain since I would either have to pull it out of the epoxy holding it to the rock, or pull out the whole rock that has things living under it.

Would it be risky to cut it and let it recover on its own without a dip?

 

[greech]

Cutting a branching euphyllia is not hard at all. Their skeletons are honeycomb'd and very brittle so if you have a pair of cutter big enough to wrap around the branch you should be able to snip it off while the coral is in the tank (or pull the rock and make the cut). Not that you should but you could snap a branch off with your hand alone very easily. My experience with epoxy is it is strong as long as you don't mess with it. I have never had a problem separating an epoxied coral from a rock with just a little pressure. Be careful though with this one and get your fingers down to the rock where it is held in place and give it a twist. Don't pull from the branches (again, they will break). The dip will kill everything on or in that rock (if that matters).

IME, no it will not be risky (to the remaining colony anyway) to just cut off the damaged polyp and place the single in an area where it can recover.

 

[greech]

This video is by no means meant to be an expert demonstration on fragging (or counting for that matter ) but it will show you just how brittle these corals are...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHEvSDahi7s

 

[Khemul]

I'm sure I could get it out of the epoxied spot pretty easily. It is getting it back into the same position without redoing the whole spot that I'm not sure about. :laugh:

But this is a single polyp euphyllia. It hasn't grown any new branches yet so the damaged polyp is the whole colony. So in that case, would it just be a matter of leaving it or dipping it and letting it recover on its own, or would some of the damaged area need to be cut away? I'm just not sure if they heal on their own or if the damage spreads and needs to be cut off.