ScooterTDI

Thanks guys, it must just be a coincidence then. I'm glad because I really like the gorgonian.

Yea, I've occasionally heard that gorgonians can be particularly noxious, but I've also seen a lot of tanks with both sps and gorgonians living harmoniously. When I mounted the gorgonian, it was quite smelly, so I'd believe that it might be releasing some volatile allelopathic chemicals. Here is a picture of the gorgonian: Here is a picture of the suffering purple tort:

Has anyone else seemingly experienced a irritation/growth slowing in their sps after adding the gorgonian that was distributed during fragfest? I was getting great growth out of all my sps until I brought home the fragfest gorgonian and blue ridge coral. Now, my purple tort constantly has it's mesenterial filaments deployed and looks as if it will RTN at any moment. The purple Stylo and frogskin seem to have slowed their growth dramatically. Overall, my alk consumption dropped 25% in the days following these additions. Does this sound like it might be allelopathy caused by the new additions? It's a small tank (12g), so presumably the chemical warfare would be more concentrated. I've been running carbon 24/7, but it doesn't seem to be helping much. Anyone else experiencing this or should I be looking elsewhere for the cause?

I'm culturing grindal worms and Tigriopus and I'm hatching artemia. They seem to be taking frozen calunus as well. I'm not too worried about the availability of food. They already seemed to be fattening up a bit.

Mandarins shortly after introduction (The one on the left is the very emaciated one): The less skinny of the two: The huge Rainford's goby: And this guy finally found his home (for a few minutes before presumably deciding the anemone was too small after splitting)

I picked up a pair of Biota mandarins (although I think it is two females) and a Biota Rainford's goby. The mandarins were very tiny which I had expected. One Mandarin was just skinny, the other was utterly emaciated. The Rainford's goby was gigantic which surprised me. The Rainford's goby burrowed under the rocks and hid out for several days before it felt comfortable enough to come out. I actually really appreciate him cleaning the sand under all the rocks. Pictures are forthcoming.

I've kept clownfish, blennies, gobies, dragonets, jawfish, pipefish and seahorses. I want to keep fish for which I can observe a close approximation to their natural behavoir at home. In the wild, all of those have a pretty small range in a given day. I generally avoid tangs, angels, butterflies, anthias, etc. Some fish are borderline and I would consider them in a large tank. In the wild, you often see groups of many different fish all clustered around a big brain coral head in the middle of a sand flat. If I had a 300g+ I would consider a pair of small butterflies and some chromis with a large bommie type aquascape meant to recreate that sort of lifestyle.

My principles are as follows: 1) Only keep relatively site-attached fish. After doing a fair amount of diving, I realized how inadequate our aquariums are for fish that may cover miles of reef on any given day. A giant swarm of blue tangs is amazing to behold and isn't something we can recreate at home. As such, I try to only keep fish that would stay within a reasonably small patch of reef on any given day. 2) If a fish/coral I want is available as aquacultured/captive-bred, I buy aquacultures/captive-bred regardless of cost. 3) I generally try to only buy wild-caught fish if there is a reasonable chance I could breed it. I'm a little loose on this one, but the sentiment is to avoid a consumerist attitude toward livestock.

After receiving a couple of outrageous quotes for custom glass pieces to make a lid, I just decided to add an extra light to cover more of the aquarium and reduce the likelihood of jumpers. I also wanted more even coverage of light as I was seeing my pink pocillopora lose its pink coloration near the edge of the tank where it wasn't getting a lot of light. As a bonus I got another free pump with the light. I was running the one eflux 660 at 100% on stream mode and just barely getting enough flow at the other end of the tank, so the second pump allows me to pulse the flow more. I've always disliked the thin bent rod mounts that came with the lights so I decided to make some flat aluminum plates for the tank mounts. I have an improved design for the light mounts in mind that would allow me to flip the lights up and out of the way more easily, but I need to order the parts for it. I made these temporary mounts to use in the meantime. I may eventually add a reefbrite LED strip to fill the gap in the middle.

Not much has changed. I've battled a little hair algae on the sand, but the tank is beginning to stabilize and I think I've got my carbon dosing figured out to keep nutrients where I want them. I bought a sea hare to cleanup the sand bed, but I'm having to feed it nori as there isn't really enough algae to sustain it now. With such a small aquarium, I've found it's more effective to just stir up portions of the sand every night with a turkey baster rather than rely on the sea hare. I'm having a couple glass pieces made for the top since I had a clownfish jump. The two glass strips will cover the top on either side of the light. I added some new corals a couple days ago.

Did that clown just find the anemone? How long did it take them to figure it out? I'm still waiting for my pair to discover that the tank is bigger than a few square inches in the upper corner.

The Icecap ATO broke last night after only about a month in operation. It appears the primary optical sensor no longer responds to the water level. The good news is that Coralvue support has been very helpful and are shipping a replacement sensor. The high-level safety sensor is interchangable with the primary sensor, so I can still use the ATO while awaiting the replacement.

Updates: The skimmer has broken in and seems to do a great job. Definitely works better than a Tunze 9002 I used to run on my old 27 gallon cube. The skimmate is even smellier than from my old MRC beckett skimmer. I added a RBTA and pair of clowns I bought from a local breeder. So far, the clowns refuse to leave the top corner of the aquarium. I added some easy sps frags (stylo and pocci) and a few heads of hammer euphyllia (Thanks Treesprite!). My test kits arrived and I found my nutrients we a good bit higher than I had anticipated based purely off of algae growth. I added a bioreactor filled with siporax (PVC tower on the left in the sump) to which I am vinegar dosing now to bring down nitrates. I also added some GFO because the phosphates were disproportionately high. I think I've figured out my stocking plan. The end of the peninsula is somewhat low-flow, so I'll probably have 1-2 types of euphyllia. In the middle, I want to grow out a small bush of Grube's gorgonian with a few types of zoanthids at it's base. The rock closest to the overflow box is pretty high-flow so I am planning to grow out a few different colonies of easier sps. Between work, school, and kids, I have a lot on my plate and I'm not sure that I want to deal with some of the more delicate acros. I might add a pair of bluestripe pipefish eventually, but I'll probably just stick with the clowns for now.