gastone

Finally did some much needed tank maintenance in my son's room. @YHSublime's tank is set us as a fw planted tank. I know next to nothing about fw at this point so we started pretty simple. Right now there's a Beta (Pollito - my son's favorite animals are chicks), two mystery snails, and whatever hitchhiking snails I received from some Monte Carlo carpet that I purchased. I moved some shrimp into this tank but Pollito seems to have quite the affinity for shrimp. Pretty sure he murdered every last one of them in a matter of minutes. We are running CO2 (mixed using Citric acid and baking soda) from a kit I purchased on AliExpress. Sweet setup. Easy to use and dial in. We also have a few spider plants growing out as well as some Buddha decor. I need to figure out water top off. There's quite a bit of surface area, hence evaporation. Ultimately I'll probably go with an optical sensor and a 5 gallon tank housed under the nightstand to the right. Next we have the two gallon shrimp tank. I did a landscaping class at @CapitalExoticFish last summer which is when I got this tank. No fish in it now, just some neocardinia shrimp, red, yellow,.and blue. I've got a very small pico CO2 kit that I have yet to hook up, but I will once the Monte Carlo establishes in the larger tank and I can transfer some over. At school I'm going to do some revisions to my current phyto/pod culturing and I'm going to switch over a few of my pod setups to freshwater shrimp breeding. The students should get a kick out of that and we can setup a few tubs to try some crossbreeding and see what happens. I suspect ugliness. But that's something worth finding out imo. I'm using a little 500ml water bottle and a mechanical ato. Love it. Dead simple. Lastly is the SW tank. Not a terrible number of changes. Still only the two sexy shrimp. Have added a few random mushrooms, a small rock flower, a small lobophyllia, and a holy grail micromussa. It may not look great in the pics...it was wedged against the back wall and I'm afraid the back of the frag was suffering. Pretty sure it'll bounce back and do just fine. There's also a few random zoas.

Leo, welcome to WAMAS. I kept fe tanks in college...I wouldn't call it successful, but I did do it. Switched to sw and I'm now getting back into fw planted tanks. Of course I also have 11 sw tanks (all sub 30g). A nano like yours is a tough way to start. What are you doing for top off? Lights? Filtration/water circulation?

Stunning, Isaac!

Looks awesome, Issac!

I pulled the skimmer top off of the fw hob filter and the little goby took his chances in the current. Poor thing. The filter impeller then went to work on him Ouch! So we just have the two female sexy shrimp. Going to add a male and call it a day. Shrimp were sourced from Christina's Coral Cabin. We've added quite a bit of stuff in the interim. Sourced some Sunkist bounce, a superman disco, Godzilla bounce, a nice orange ric...I'm forgetting something. I also picked up a nice new tank from Isaac, @YHSublime, for my son's beta. Going to try my hand at a simple fw planted take and then turn his little 2g tank into fw shrimp tank. That's the plan.

Jack, came in this morning and the basslet was out. Fourth time I've seen him in over two months. I keep thinking he's got to be dead for sure. My room is very quiet. We are a small program with small class sizes (for a multitude of reasons). And even when the students are in here they are quiet and stationary. I was able to swing by Isaac's place this weekend @YHSublime, and through his unbelievable generosity we have some more fragging to do. Won't be until after Thanksgiving break and we do jump into SOL season here in VA (yay standardized testing!), but we'll find time to get together at least once if not twice before winter break. I'll make sure to update with a complete account of what we are doing and what Isaac supplied us with. Thanks again, Isaac! And if Tiny (and Sandwiches) ever need a babysitter, I'm your guy.

Welcome, Paige.

No real updates. I picked up some mushrooms for my son's shroom tank in his bedroom. OG Bounce, St. Thomas and a magic carpet. I brought them to school to settle in. His tank is fairly new and though I expect it to be stable as it was started with TBS live rock and sand from my school sump, I don't want to chance it as this was a significant financial outlay for me. The dual tank setup has a Trigger Emerald 39g sump, which I think is a nice piece of kit. One of the issues is that in in lieu of a standard 4" media cup holder, the sump comes with this: Little weird to be sure. I reached out on their website and they do offer a circular 4" basket holder for the sapphire sumps which they've told me will work on the emerald sump. But I just didn't feel like spending more money. So off to school to see what I could come up with using the 3D printer we have at our disposal. I haven't used CAD software in well over 20 years so I'm sure I spend too much time on Fusion 360 designing the media baskets. It's got some issues. I didn't lay it out before slicing so the holes overlap at the long axis. Shame on me. But overall they work. I ran into the building today to add water to my ATO reservoirs and que up another print. Two more and I'll be in business.

Ok, that is a neat setup.

Beautiful tank, Isaac.

Looks awesome, Maegan. Ordered some cookies. Garrett.

A few moving parts. First and most importantly, my son. He's nine (ten in two weeks). Mildly autistic. Abnormally hilarious. Very bright, but perhaps not in a conventional manner. And we struggle to find ways to engage him. Six months ago I was running into Petco to grab some silicone for a quick repair and he saw the betas and expressed interest. I haven't kept a fw tank since 1996 or 97. Sometime in college anyway. So I picked him up a small nano for his room and a cute beta that he dubbed, "Pollito". His favorite animals are either chicks or kiwis, depending upon which day you ask him. Pollito is Spanish for Chick or Little Chick. He's been very good about feeding Pollito and cleaning the glass, also helping with water changes and the like. Next, I was invited to join Amazon Vine about 5 months ago. Sellers offer up items that you can request, with the caveat that you'll write a review. Without getting into it most things aren't free as you are given a 1099 at the end of the year so ultimately you get items for roughly 30% of cost. I acquire a lot of aquarium related stuff. So I ended up with a 16x5x11 tank, an led fixture, and a heater....hmmm. Thirdly...I jumped out of the hobby in 2008/09 or so. Got back into it this past Feb. All told I'm now up to 10 nano tanks, all <30g. The goal is to create specimen tanks or focus tanks of some sort. When I left the hobby, mushrooms were a plague in most tanks, especially mine. Times have changed and man are there some gorgeous shrooms out there and I figured I wanted to start a dedicated mushroom tank. So these three pieces collided and I decided to build a Vine-supplied-mushroom-aquarium in my son's room. Vine provided: Tank: AquaCraft 15x6x11 4g rimless (nice little tank. Clear glass, nice seams and very, very interesting dimensions. Lighting: Coralview A029 Aqua Knight 30w marine led fixture - spectrum isn't bad but not not ramp up/down ability, no timer... wouldn't recommend, but in the end it will cost me about $20 so I'm fine with it. Heater: Hygger 25w with built in probe and controller. It's a little bulkier than I'd like so I might downsize to a 10w heater soon. I've got a ton of Hygger stuff. Inexpensive. Some of it is meh, but most of it is just fine. Purchases: Filter: Wonderfactory HOB (this is to provide extra circulation as well as run filter floss, bio balls, and carbon) Water movement: ZKSJ 530gph DC power head (I've got like five or six iterations of these things and like them for nanos) ATO: Wonice smart ATO lite. stability is important, and challenging in a nano. So an ato was a must. These are re-branded a million ways from Sunday on Amazon, but they are all them same. I'm using a similar one on a Waterbox 15g nano and it works well. Bio filtration: I stole a few pounds of sand from other tanks, and a couple of pieces of small live rock as well. I've got some unsightly algae on some of the lr, but we'll deal with that later. Livestock: 2 sexy shrimp (Thor amboinensis). It was supposed to be three, but upon acclimation, one of them swam directly into the power head. Lesson learned. Turn off circulation when adding livestock. These two are females so I'll get a male replacement soon. 1 yellow clown goby (Gobiodon okinawae). About an inch long. Maybe. That's it. That's plenty. Corals and such: 1 jawbreaker showing red and green markings. 1 tequila sunrise that I'm fairly certain I'm going to frag here shortly. 1 no name mint green rhodactis that I pulled from another tank. This was placed in to make sure the tank was stable and could support more livestock. Won't be there forever. 1 small reddish rhodactis that's finding it's colorings. 1 bleached rhodactis that I'm waiting to color up. Green maybe??? Some GSP from my school tank. Thinking about running it on the back wall for a grass field look. We'll see. 1 rock flower anemone (just too pretty to pass up and it's way too small for my Caribbean biotope tank at school so until it sizes up some...) I'd like to add an OG bounce. Gotta save up. Those things are both beautiful and 'spensive. And we'll see if anything else catches my (or my son's) eye. Maintenance: weekly 50% water changes. That should more than suffice. The tank: Tequila sunrise: Jawbreaker: RFA: Reddish rhodactis: Sexy time: The two tanks together: The goby is shy and hiding. No pics until he gets settled.

More fun from today (11/7/24). Added a new student. Lost a few. We started by measuring our two remaining cabbage frags. They are in separate closed systems. One of them wasn't looking hot, the other has put on obvious growth. Both are attached to their plugs. Much to my chagrin, one actually lost mass, and the other was the exact same weight. Impossible! At least visually. We didn't break out the calipers as it's encrusting over the edge of the plug and even underneath. We used the same scale, tared twice to verify. The anemones we sliced continue to do well. I fully expected that only 1 half of the RBTA would make it as I was sure we didn't get a piece of the mouth. Both halves of the GBTA are doing well. They've attached (one of them on my lr as it has escaped containment.... grrrrr) and are both showing good feeding response. On to today's festivities. In my previous reef keeping life, mushrooms were the bane of my existence. Some 15 years later there are some beautiful shrooms out there. In fact, I recently started a 4g pico in my son's room that is going to be a shroom tank. So I figured, let's get going on fragging these things so I can practice on some el cheapos before I look at attempting to slice up my jawbreakers. When I purchased the initial 5 tanks, to include the IM 30L, it came with a few softies. Among them was a small colony of pale green rhodactis. These things survived my overdosing event as I forgot about them when I was on my rescue mission. They were in water with a pH well north of 9 (as high as 9.6), for about 36 hours. So what harm could a razor blade do? Talked it over with the candidates as always. Safety first. We spoke primarily of the difference between splitting anemones, where you have to include a portion of the mouth (we had evidence of what happens when you don't). With rhodactis, who most commonly multiply in our tanks via pedal laceration, which is to say they move and leave behind part of their foot. This foot develops into a new shroom. So today's goal was going to make sure we included both foot and whatever it was attached to. Tools would be scalpels and bone cutters. The students were tasked with making the slices with the scalpels before I stepped in with the bonecutters. If the shrooms were mounted to a disc it would have been fine for them to mash through them. But they were attached to a piece of thick, solid, lr, so I figured I'd take on that task myself. This discussion of where we'd slice and why we'd slice there. Our new contributor. First timer. Nice, bright young man. Said, "Man, we never got to do anything like this at our base school. I might have paid attention more." Don't be fooled, he's very bright and clearly paid attention in school, but Mr. Werner (my cohort), and I love getting positive (and not so positive at times) feedback. Next up... This is our anemone killer. Of course we don't refer to him as the Anemone Killer, but his was the imperfect slice. It's okay. They are learning and though we certainly don't wish to lose any of our livestock, it's part of the process and ultimately the rbta did survive. It just lost some weight in the process. He genuinely felt bad about the anemone and was hesitant to get back in there and cut again, but we spoke of success and failure and learning. Good stuff. And he did it. And did great. My turn to hack away. It's 11/8 now. Didn't finish the post yesterday. The little shrooms look fine. Tissue is still viable. They are under fairly indirect lighting and not getting too much flow. We'll monitor them to see how they progress. Here is the smallest frag. About 3/8" square or so. So what's next? If we can isolate some more BTAs, we can get to work on propagating more so I can pass them out at the next WAMAS event, along with the cabbage frags and when they are ready, the shrooms as well. I've got copepod and phyto cultures that needs upkeep and maintenance. Not as sexy as the aquariums, but necessary components none-the-less.

Craig, Can you use an overflow cover? I know with the small openings they can get clogged up fairly quickly. I have to clean mine with a toothbrush a few times weekly, but I can't see a nem making it though. Then no concerns about the ato in the return chamber. https://www.etsy.com/listing/907409754/overflow-covers-for-aquarium-filter?gpla=1&gao=1&&utm_source=google&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=shopping_us_-pet_supplies&utm_custom1=_k_Cj0KCQjwsoe5BhDiARIsAOXVoUud40hHodU9fxGn1u6gXT8rp2T0sb9r0pUthtN7iu6Bn7cQIR7D2jYaAq3sEALw_wcB_k_&utm_content=go_12665398257_121762925993_511610210343_pla-314535281500_c__907409754_12768591&utm_custom2=12665398257&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQjwsoe5BhDiARIsAOXVoUud40hHodU9fxGn1u6gXT8rp2T0sb9r0pUthtN7iu6Bn7cQIR7D2jYaAq3sEALw_wcB

Jack! I've seen him 3 times now... in 5 weeks! He's in a 30g tank fwiw. It's not like he's got 180g and 200# of lr to hide in. First thing in the morning each time that I've seen him. He'll randomly appear, gobble down some breakfast and then disappear again. Tankmates are a pair of non-aggressive Ocellaris (the male can get a bit chippy with me, but the female is a sweetheart), a Salarias fasciatus (lawnmower blenny), another pig, but again, not aggressive, and a Synchiropus splendidus (mandarin dragonet). Plenty of fish in there, but I don't find it to be overcrowded. The male has taken up residence in one of your rbtas, though the female is indifferent. They still stick to that corner of the tank outside of feeding time (which is often). The blenny perches most of the day and the mandarin cruises for pods. The Sphaeramia nematoptera (pajama cardinal) is in the 20g cube with another pair of Ocellaris and Synchiropus picturatus (target mandarin). That pair of clowns aren't quite as sweet, though they really stay confined to their corner and the cardinal only gets chased by the female when being fed. Again, plenty of fish for a 20 but I am thinking about getting him (or her... haven't sexed it yet) a mate. The pair of Ocellaris that you gave me are at home in one of my nanos. I'm up to five pairs of clowns. Another pair of Ocellaris and a pair of Amphiron biaculeatus (gold stripe maroon and formerly classified premnas biaculeatus which I still can't get used to). Outside of the maroons which have always been my favorite, I'm not even a huge clown fan. Yet here I am with ten of the darn things. On a side note, just before (make that during...literally during) my appendectomy, I participated in a group buy with plans to finish stocking my mangrove Caribbean biotope tank. I ordered three fish, a centropyge argi (pygmy cherub angel), and two Opistognathus aurifrons (yellowheaded jawfish). Well, the angel looked really bad upon arrival and passed within a few hours. One of the jawfish was shortly behind. Ugg. The other made it through quarantine and is now in the forever home with two others (one of which I haven't seen). KPaquatics has offered to comp me the things that passed so I'll get another angel and I think I'll shoot for a Gobiosoma oceanops (neon goby) for a small, 4g nano that I've set up in my son's room. That or a pair of Priolepis hipoliti (rusty gobies). I can't say thank you enough to the WAMAS members that have contributed to our little part of the reef. The students are really enjoying the opportunity to learn and engage with the aquariums.

Thanks, Nikki! Ok, so back at it. We had 4 toadstool frags. One was given to new member @achansek (how's it doing Aravind?), one melted (boo), and two have survived, have attached themselves to their plugs, and are putting on growth. The two frags are kept in different tank systems so it's a fun way to see if we can identify differences. Flow is fairly similar, but one of them gets a heavy dose of intense lighting, while the other is under much more moderate lighting conditions. Growth (measured by weight), was similar for both. We saw a 238% in one and a 214% increase in the other. One of the young men was able to deduce that some of the weight difference may be water weight from the plug itself as they originally attached them to dry plugs and now the plugs are saturated. Fast forward to last week... BTA splitting time. Where's Chip @flowerseller? Watching Chip cut an anemone in half circa 2006 or so was the first time I saw it done. Entacmaea quadricolor split regularly in home aquaria. This also makes them good candidates for propagation. @dfos00 provided me with 4 nice green bta's at the last meeting and @howaboutme kindly donated a good amount of stuff when he broke down his system, to included a haul of RBTA's. The RBTA's have split some and moved a bit. I think I currently have 11 or so from him originally. I've isolated the green btas and one of Jack's splits of the rose anemone in a small box. Of course, two of the green guys snuck out and have now attached to rockwork....grrrr. Alt Ed programs are very transient in nature, with a constant influx and efflux of students. Also, absenteeism. Mr. Werner, our resident Biology teacher, brought up two young men for the festivities. One was a returnee and one was a new student. We picked out to candidates for propagation, one green and one red bta. As we had a new student (he's been up a few times to my room for exposure purposes and to talk about reefs, aquaria, and propagation) we started by identifying anemone anatomy. Pedal disc (foot), column (body), and oral disc (mouth and...). Next up safety, followed up with a YouTube video on manual propagation of nems, and a thorough hand washing. The focus was on cutting through the mouth with one motion (if possible). We had a few different scalpel blades available and eventually a utility blade that I was able to located hidden in the confines of my desk. Identifying and removing nems to be split. We settled on a scalpel with a #23 blade. It is nice and long with a bit of a curve. Time to practice one nice, consistent slice with good pressure. All hands on deck. We gave up on the scalpel as we felt it wasn't working well. I found a snap off Olfa blade in my desk from my college years. Sharp and long. Perfect. Into the NSW with the two newly sliced green btas. The individual nems were starting to reform into nems just minutes after being split. Moving on to the rose. We had some issues with the cut and I don't believe he got it though the mouth. No bueno. It looked rough immediately after going back into the water. We didn't quite have two halves... more like a 60-40 split. And the 40 side seems to be missing it's part of the mouth. Here you can clearly see the obvious difference in size. Not ideal. Good news first. We can say that we have clearly have 3 formed nems. The smaller slice of the rbta still appears to have live tissue. But I'm still not convinced that it has much of an oral disc with a mouth. I am fairly certain it's a goner, but not just yet. Tissue is still hanging on. The three definite (for now) survivors are doing great. They've reformed themselves and would be hard to differentiate between them and an anemone that hadn't been split recently. This was done on 10/21 so 8 days ago. I'll probably offer them so food here in the next few days to see if they are able to eat. We discussed exponential growth, given 100% survivability and one divide per month. After 12 cycles, we'd have 4096 clones of each. The students were quite impressed by that number. Our hope is to start passing around the Phoenix anemones at WAMAS meetings and for WAMAS members. More to come.

Started to read through you last build. Very impressive. Looking forward to seeing this one come together.

Available that Saturday? Could swing by before or after. No worries if you can't. Another time.

Thank you. We are doing the first round of measurements this coming Friday. We ended up with a total of 5 little frags. The fifth one was just a little castoff sliver of cabbage that I stuck on a plug. Color is awesome on that little guy. Hopefully they are starting to atttach. We'll see. And thank you for your offer of trumpet. Are you going to the meeting on the 5th? I'd love some. As a side note, we are culturing phyto here at school. If you are interested, we could offer you some as a trade. We've got tetraselmis chui, chlorella, nannochloropsis and a nice diatom phyto, thalassiosira. On a side note, I'd placed a group order from KP Aquatics this past week to close out the stocking on my Caribbean biotope. One pygmy angel (centropyge argii), and two yellowhead jawfish (Opistognathus aurifrons). The order was placed Monday morning to hopefully be shipped Tuesday for Wednesday arrival. Which was all well and good until I woke up 1:30am Tuesday morning with appendicitis. Off to the hospital for an appendectomy. The order shipped and was slated for delivery Wednesday. They kept my overnight Tuesday as things were a bit messy in there and wanted to keep my overnight again on Wednesday. Wasn't going to work so off I went to rescue the delivery. @Almoe and @MaeganWink both drove to the house to pick up their offerings (Maegan brought us lasagna so we wouldn't have to stress over dinner - Thank you again Maegan. It was fantastic and made everything much easier that evening). I felt bad that I wasn't in much shape to conversate. After that my wife drove me and my stuff up to school. Into the quarantine with the fish. Into the tanks with the inverts. Unfortunately the centropyge looked rough from the get go and didn't make it through the night. One of the jawfish only lasted a few hours later. I'm quite disappointed, but the other guy is still in quarantine as of this morning. Changed out a few gallons of water on Saturday and I'll hope to do another water change tomorrow. I still can't make water here at school so I have to bring it from home and being on a lifting restriction (<10lbs), bringing in water is a bit of a challenge. That's where we stand as of right now. I'm back to work officially this morning, though I did come in Friday afternoon for a staff meeting.

https://youtube.com/@fixreef?si=1fL6OU7lSxPtlds4

I do know that there is a guy on YouTube who diagnoses and repairs kessils. I've come across him once or twice as I have a kessil that won't fire up and tried troubleshooting. Let me see if I can locate him

Welcome back!

Don, Can't help you on the leak front. But a free bump anyway. Also: Garrett.

Thank you! This endeavor has been years in the making. I'm glad I finally decided to run with it, my administration has supported it, and most importantly, the students are excited. Jack, thank you for your kind donation. I just received an an acclimation box from Amazon so my next plan it to split some of those nems you so graciously provided us with.

So this past Friday we introduced a few students to fragging. These young men had next to no prior knowledge of coral reefs coming into the year. The biology teacher has been working with them in advance of Friday's festivities. They were excited to learn about coral propagation. I identified a nice neon green cabbage that was a prime candidate for fragging. Then I used a scalpel to show them how we would slice. We removed 6"x 1.5" piece of cabbage from the periphery of the coral. Each student then had the opportunity to slice off a piece of coral for their individual frag. The corals were affixed to plugs using rubber bands and they chose which of two tanks to place them in and under what lighting conditions. We took measurements of each frag including size (using calipers), and weight in grams using a digital scale. Every two weeks we will pull the plugs to take new measurements and talk about progress and the tank conditions that influence them. We'll let the students drive the discussion and formulate their own conclusions. This is a group of students that hasn't had much exposure educationally. They were excited, polite, inquisitive. As they were leaving one of them said to my co-worker, "I feel like we just stepped out of the Great Barrier Reef." He and I are looking forward to ongoing work and collaboration.