astroboy

I know that as of about three months ago Larry was no longer working at Roozens. Does anyone know what's become of him? One of the most knowledgeable people I've run into; got no end of good advice from him.

I tested the oxygen in both the tanks I had the elegance in and the water was well oxygenated, even when the temperatures were around 87; I don't recall the exact numbers. My guess is that the high temps stressed the elegance to the point that the neglect while I was out of town, such as variations in water level/salinity, lack of feeding, etc., put it over the edge. Still I do wonder if alleopathy of some sort didn't have something to do with it also.....

Just to make an end to the story, I was out of town for a couple weeks, leaving the care of the tank to a friend, and when I returned the elegance had died. I had been running fans which kept the temperature at about 78-80 degrees; other water parameters were pretty good. I had been using chemipure, which looking back had outlived its useful life: the water tended to have a very faint tinge from time to time. All the other corals I had did OK while I was away, a few had noticeably grown. It could well be that the high temperatures earlier in this saga damaged the coral to the point where the slight degradation in conditions, such as alot of RODI water being poured directly in all at once, were enough to tip the scales. Thanks for the info on all this. Using fans I was able to lower the temperature of both my tanks and the corals I have which weren't looking 100% definitely perked up. Except the elegance. Oh well....

Unfortunately, they're all on rocks I can't remove. The only thing I'm doing is consistently running Ca at 350, KH at 3, temps at 80-81, 360 CF lights on 75 gallons. Also have a mild slime algae problem. So, short story, I'm doing most things wrong, despite my efforts to fix them. I'm going to add a few inches to the deep sand bed and see if that helps.

Quite a hiccup. How come that never happens to my bank account?

For what its worth, I've found that to get rid of that oily film on top the water level in my overflow has to be such that its an inch or two below the surface of the water. That is, there's a small waterfall going from the tank into the overflow. The only thing I can think of is that in a waterfall the top lay of water picks up a certain velocity or momentum. The water in the waterfall moves downward, of course, but it also moves sideways, into the overflow. This sideways movement seems to be limited only to the top layer of the water. When the water in the overflow and tank are level, or nearly level, the water seems to flow into the overflow from both the surface and deeper levels in equal proportions: no particular sideways motion, at least not anything limited to the surface layer. When you have the waterfall effect the top layer moves sideways a bit, whereas the lower levels don't. I suppose surface tension is a player in the game too. I'm supposed to know some of this stuff for my job, but I don't.... There's probably a patent somewhere for someone who builds an optimized surface skimmer...

Does anyone know the reasoning behind the membership numbers? People who joined prior to about 2006 seem to have numbers less than 1000. I joined in 2007 and my number is over two million. Are there alot more members in the club than I see at meetings? Just curious.

Hello. My green start polyps are starting to get out of control. Is there any wisdom on how to control (kill) them? Thanks! I should add that I'm thinking along the lines of -simply trying to cut them out, or, -nuking them with Joe's Juice, neither of which really seem do be doing the job. They're on rocks I can't remove from my tank. I was wondering if anyone had tried something that worked well for them. Thanks!

I seem to recall some discussion, probably by Eric Bourneman, where he measured temps into the upper 80s in reefs during the day, dropping a few degrees in the night, and figured mid-upper 80s were OK over long periods of time as long as the temps changed slowly. Not sure if I believe that, nor am I tempted to experiment with my tank. I'm glad its cooler now and I'm grateful for the advice. Let me state the situation with the elegance more precisely: The elegance didn't open up hardly at all for three weeks, with temperatures ranging from 83 at night to as much as 87 on some hot days. It ate anything that came its way and seemed healthy (for the time being, at least) otherwise. After lowering the temp to 78-70 degrees for two weeks it opened only a little more. I then moved it to a smaller tank with the same light & water parameters and fauna, except this tank usually runs around 84 degrees. Its only 30 gallons, no sump, so its hard to cool with fans. The larger tank has alot of starburst polyps, the smaller tank has none. After two days the elegance really started to open up, and has looked better every day since (one week). A rather dramatic change. The only real difference I can see is the presence of the starbust polyps or lack thereof. I was wondering if anyone has ever heard of any allelopathic problems between starbursts and (Australian) elegances. From my reading I had the impression starbusts were fairly innocuous, although I suppose with alot of them the overall levels of the compounds they secrete might accumulate over time to where they might be a problem for some other corals. I'll note that I was very good with water changes and activated charcoal and chemi-pure with the original tank, so if allelopathy was the problem it was occuring at fairly low levels, I'm imagine. Of course, the change in the elegance could be coincidence or due to some other cause. I just thought I'm ask if anyone had any ideas and just make the observation about the starbursts, for what its worth.

Interesting results: The fans lowered the temperature of my main tank (75 gallons) to about 78-80 degrees, and the elegance opened up to some degree, but never all the way and the tentacles in particle remained retracted. Not good. I finally decided to move it to my 30 gallon where it opened up dramatically over a period of 4-5 days. The only significant different between the two tanks as regards flora, lighting, local current and water parameters is that the original tank had alot of starburst polyps. Has anyone ever heard of an allelopathic problem between elegances and starburst polyps?

Hello! About six weeks ago I bought an Aussie elegance coral, and while it seems to be healthy and eats everything it just won't open up very much at all. I had an elegance that died from the standard mystery disease a year ago, and I don't think my present elegance has that. My tank is at 83 degrees. Is that too warm? Also, I had a leather toadstool coral which I put into another tank a month ago and did 3 30% water changes, thinking that there might be some allelopathic problem, but that doesn't seem to have made any difference. Does anyone have any experience or thoughts on this? If there was an allelopathic problem, how long would it take something like an elegance to clean the poison out of its system? Assuming that would happen.... The current where I have the elegance placed is fairly low; it seems ideal for the frogspawn nearby. I've tried upping the current a bit but that doesn't seem to make any difference either. Do elegances need more current than I'm thinking? Thanks for any thoughts. Mark 75 gallons, 360 watts compact fluorescent,100 lbs live rock pH 7.9-8.1 temp: 83 degrees, sometimes a bit higher KH: 3-4 dkH Ca: 350-400 Mg: 1200 N03: zip Inhabitants: 2 clowns 2 cleaner shrimp large pearl medium frogspawn lots of mushrooms 1 duncan 1 montipora 2 acropora alot of zoo's 3 torches 1 hammer 1 chalice The tank's been running for 18 months, except for the elegance everything is doing great.