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Reef safe recordia2/3/2024 ![]() As shrooms do, they walked around as they grew and the corals above them started to shade them. ![]() The ricordia were about 5 inches away from a red and yellow chalice. I got two dime size ricordia from a friend and placed them in the main cave on the left of the tank, where they could still get light. Let's start with coral conflict with an expected outcome. Apologies in advance these photos are not particularly good, but I didn't really want to setup the big boy camera, macro lens, and tripod for these quick shots unless people are really interested. Some discussion of coral warfare came up in my DMs and inspired me to post a little about some usual and some unexpected coral warfare which I have found in my tank. I will have to take a new video in the coming days with the current tank its quite different from where it was in the last one. Unfortunately I lost the remaining venusta when the sump leaked but I have some new angels in the sourcing stage. the only down side was they said the fish was a little over 3 inches and it came in more like 5+". Came from NY aquatics who I was surprisingly happy with, I had avoided ordering from them before because the high shipping costs and high minimum for free shipping but the roa was packed amazingly, bag larger than a 5gal bucket filled an entire styrofoam box. ![]() The modesta was a great snag, I feel like you rarely see any true Roa in the west, and when the opportunity to complete the trio of deep water butterfly groups came up I had to pounce. I for sure am first and foremost a fish guy, but I don't think I could forgo coral completely which sorta means chasing crazy corals is a way big gamble. I got really lucky when I first bought rock from another reefer I got some good pieces of old Tonga rock, which combined with some shape rocks and marco rock really made a nice scape easy. Those two have been in my display for about a year now, I have only seen the aculetus eat perhaps 5 or 10 times, one of those times included eating dry pellets.Ĭlick to expand.Thank you! I am really happy with how the scape has turned out, good balance of coral Realestate, nps spots, and sleeping areas and territory for fish. It had been over two months in qt and the aculeatus had continued to put on weight, and I couldn't picture there being enough of a pod population to sustain a butterfly in a 20gal qt tank, so I assumed that the aculeatus must be picking leftover food where it couldn't be seen. finally saw it eat for the first time with mastic mixed with mega marine angel smeared over a rock. mastic, frozen, flakes, pellets, all nothing, the fish was putting on weight though. live brine, black worms, white worms, tubifex, nothing at all, one curious nip maybe before spitting it out. The aculeatus was misery to acclimate, recovered from shipping stress quickly enough, but was the worst fish I have ever dealt with to get eating. As is typical the burgess bounced back quickly and was eating dry and frozen within a day. I ordered the butterflies early November and they came in looking dead in the bag, both bags had leaked and lost most of the water in them. I have gotten away with some fleshy lps, like blastos, chalices, lepastrea, one acan echinata, so there is a bit of trial and error in what can be kept.Īfter allowing the tank time to recover I got another burgess and the aculeatus butterfly. While I have gotten away with a good mix of SPS, LPS and some softies I have avoided large fleshy LPS like lobos, trachy, scholy ect, and I don't keep gorgonians cause the blenny eats them. In general this type of stocking requires some special attention to the corals and fish. I have an auto-feeder setup with a mix of food sizes, to feed at the tanks "midnight" to feed any corals which wont come out during the day. I do get very little day time polyp extension on my SPS. Right now the starry, roa and burgess have learned that I spot feed the nps each time I feed the tank, after grabbing some easy to get food from the water column they go to the nps and steal food. The frequency of closing slowly caused the zoa frags to slowly wither however the established colonies survived because they were large enough to sustain small patches closing. Then there is food associated nipping, like the first burgess who killed several small zoa frags, there was never any sign of damage to the zoapolyps, no tissue damage at all, but the burgess would frequently pick at pods between the heads, and that would cause them to close. The nipping stops when the issue is solved. I really only see the nibbling directly on the corals when one is unhappy usually some rogue mushroom is growing into the coral or a colony is getting too much or too little flow. Click to expand.So the nibbling doesn't regularly damage the corals.
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