encideought

cool, my first plate coral. I thought you might have a pretty good idea Sam since I got this frag from you a while back. Do you have any pics of what the larger plate you have looks like now? I think I'll just leave it alone and see what happens.

I just noticed this thing the other day and I really don't know what it is. I first noticed that the zoas near it seemed a little irked, then I spotted what looks like a polyp of some kind. I thought it was an anemone, but it has a hard skeleton. You can see what the polyp looks like in the first pic, and then I poked it and you can see the skeleton in the second pic. It just showed up recently and I've had the zoas in the tank for months. Any ideas? Sorry the resolution isn't so good, I had to zoom in pretty close. Thanks for looking! Nick

wow, your tank looks really nice, and great pictures!

Ha, no, he never became a meal. We did call him Thermidor though (as in lobster thermidor). He was only ~4.5" from tip to tail, so...not much meat.

Submitter: Nick, encideought Location: my old 7-gallon minibow back in Madison, WI Camera: Nikon Coolpix old junko...I don't know actually, it was only ~3MP Subject: my old buddy the purple lobster

Another cool article. Not tons of info, but still kinda cool. Baby corals dance their way home

Science Daily - Copepod good stuff...

I still want to trade this cool deepwater japanese bam bam orange zoanthid frag for another cool zoanthid frag (or maybe a really cool mushroom). The green bay packers frag is spoken for. There's probably almost 20 polyps on it by now since the pic is old.

Oh Bob, you're not a very good influence... Some day I want a really big FOWLR tank for all those cool non-reef safe fish. Actually, I want two giant tanks. One big saltwater tank for sharks and barracuda, and one giant freshwater one, for a couple arowana, Pirarucu, and I don't know...maybe an electric eel. Then I just need to catch James bond and toss him in (and his love interest in the other tank of coarse).

Thanks for the tips. I'll look into getting a battery powered air pump and try to find a cooler. I could probably still use a couple buckets if anyone has a few I can borrow in a few weeks. Thanks, Nick

Hi Everyone, Well, my wife and I are moving to a bigger place at the end of this month and that means in addition to all our stuff, I need to safely move my tank. We're only going ~5 miles up the road, so thankfully it's a short move. My tank is also only 24 gallons (plus a 10 gallon sump), so there isn't a lot to move. I'm getting all the moving logistics in order and I'm trying to plan the best way to move everyone in my tank while causing the least amount of stress possible. What I plan is to: -keep as much water from the tank as possible so when I get it to the new place I can get it running again -put all rock/corals into 1 (or 2) 5 gallon buckets, while putting my 1 lonely mandarin and it's little shrimpy friend into individual bags before tossing into the buckets -making up ~10 gallons of new saltwater a few days before so I don't have to put the water from the livestock buckets back into the tank (I'm assuming it'll be "stressed" water from agitated corals) Hopefully it'll be nice and warm out so I won't have to worry about the temp of the livestock during the move, and I'll plan on transporting the buckets with livestock in the car instead of the truck...just to make me feel a little better. I suppose if it's not nice and warm I can throw heaters into the buckets until they're loaded, and plug them in again as soon as we get there. My tank is basically all softies (zoas, palys, shrooms, leathers) and a few small non-photosynthetic LPS. I'm thinking 2 buckets is better than 1 just to try and prevent corals from getting smushed during transport, since I know things will shift, but I really don't know another good way to keep the rocks from bumping into each other. Put them in 1 gallon bags that are filled with water maybe? Not sure if that's a good, bad, or useless idea. Essentially all the coral in the tank is attached the rock with a few exceptions. Any other ideas or suggestions from people that have gone through this before? Should I worry about circulation (battery powered air pump) for the 2-6 hours (?) that they'll be in the buckets? Also, if anyone in the NW DC area has any buckets I can borrow I would really appreciate it as I only have 2 now. Thanks! Nick

Yeah, I haven't researched it very thoroughly (probably not much info out there available), but the ones I've seen for sale seem to be photosynthetic (more like a duncan than a dendro). There is a hole in the bottom of the coral where a peanut worm lives and helps carry it around. Pretty freakin' cool!

Has anyone ever had one of these? Heteropsammia cochlea It would be kinda cool to take your coral for a walk around the tank

really? "starlight"...are you making stuff up?

First Animals to Live Without Oxygen Discovered This is pretty awesome, they apparently don't even have mitochondria.

This is pretty amazing! Cool news!

Thank you all for the really helpful advice! I'll keep some live food on hand to make sure she doesn't go hungry, but I'll just keep trying the different foods you suggested until I find something she likes. My wife always loves going to the asian markets, so this will be a fun excuse for the trip. My wife is actually pregnant, so hopefully both my wife and the mandarin will have nice big bellies soon! Thanks!

Wow you guys are fast, thanks for the quick replies. She (I think) is the only fish in the tank, so there shouldn't be any competition. I was thinking maybe she didn't want the live brine shrimp because she was good on the pods, or she just didn't like me, yet. I have a version of a turkey baster for feeding, so I'll keep using that and hopefully she'll learn it's not so scary eventually.

Hi All, So, I never thought I would, but I ended up getting a mandarin dragonette a little over a week ago. I got it from a guy who had it in his 34 gallon tank (no sump) for ~ a year. I assumed he was feeding it live/frozen food, but he told me that he never fed it anything! It seems healthy and doesn't look like it's wasting away at all. He had quite a bit of live rock in his tank, and some macro in the back chamber, but nothing special. I have a 24 gallon tank with a 10 gallon sump/refugium that has a good amount of LR and macro. The mandarin still doesn't like me and hides pretty much anytime I come near the tank, but it's getting more adventurous in my tank and I've seen it scooting around when I peer from across the room. It picks at rocks (eating pods I'm assuming) and I've been putting "fresh" macro from the refug. into the main tank every 3-4 days to try and keep it's food supply up. It doesn't appear to be wasting at all, but it certainly doesn't look fat (looks about the same as when I picked it up). I really want to wean it onto frozen foods, not only to make it easier for feeding, but just to make sure that I can see it eat and that's it's well taken care of. I bought some live adult brine shrimp recently and I've been squirting some into the tank, but the mandarin couldn't care less, which surprised me. So, I'm thinking in another week or so I'd like to put it into a breeder net and try to force it to eat live brine, then switch to live brine/frozen mysis, culminating in all frozen mysis. This seems like the best way to wean a mandarin onto frozen foods from what I've read, but I figured I would query the board and see if anyone has any thoughts. I worry a little about isolating the mandarin from the pods and trying to force it onto brine, but I don't see how else to get it to start eating what I want it to eat. Any thoughts? Oh, and I have read quite a bit about caring for these beautiful fish, so please don't respond if your feeding advice is to "give it someone with a bigger tank"... Thanks, Nick

PM sent on ric rock

I'd love to be able to get a fromia sea star at the show if possible.

They are adaptable to a point, I think a lot of people's concern at the moment is the speed that things are changing, which is apparently faster than other large scale ecological change that is known. So, some of the hardier species can surely adapt, and given a long enough time scale, a lot more species probably could adapt, but how many won't be able to? I'm also not an ecologist, so don't take my word as anything other than speculation.

Ancient Corals Hold New Hope for Reefs

science daily article pretty interesting article about different algal species that reside inside different corals on different reefs...

sounds good, I'll bring him and you guys can arm wrestle to see who gets to take him home