Great pics b. Zoos and shrooms look great!

www.pacificeastaquaculture.com/Zoa-Zone-Prodlist.html

50% zoas!

That is a dangerous game sharing that link! We just picked up a gnarly couple frags and rock from petco so we are letting those acclimate, and letting the tank catch up. I will try and post some pics soon of the tanks newest additions.

Time for a much delayed update.

Things have been going smoothly with the tank. We have added a few new zoas since my last post, and battled with bryopsis algae. The algae started with the addition of a chuck or LR with glove polyps attached to it from Petco. It took a month or two for the algae to spread throughout the tank and attach itself to some of the zoa coral plugs. We removed it manually for a while, but when it started overgrowing some of the zoa colonies, it was time to find a solution to remove it. My first inclination was to use Kent Tech M to raise magnesium levels and kill off the bryopsis this way. However, I knew it would be a bit of work to constantly monitor the Mg levels in the tank, and of course I was also worried about hurting corals. Further, many people noted that it was some other component of the Kent Mg supplement that was reducing bryposis populations. That much uncertainty made me uncertain about the method. Instead, I found reports of using a fungal medicine for fish to remove bryposis called Fluconazole. I found some on Amazon called ReefFlux and it has worked wonderfully. The directions said to add 1 pill per 10 gallons. Using the product was a little odd though, because you had to cut the capsule pill open and dump the contained powder into the tank. I have progress shots of the first few days, and I can attest that it worked well clearing out the Bryposis. I will hopefully get to posting those pics eventually, but I need to migrate them to flickr first.

Now for some updated pictures of the tank!

First is the rock we got from Petco, it had all sorts of macro algaes on it and the glove polyps. This is the guy I am sure brought some bryopsis into the tank. In addition to the glove polyps there are all three rhodactis mushrooms. You can see one peaking out just below the glove polyps.

Next up are the eagle eye zoas that were most negatively effected by bryopsis. Over the course of a few weeks the infestation got much worse, but I have photos to show how much they improved. Behind them out of focus are the fire and ice zoas.

Here are the fire and ice zoas, there weird macro algae hat has disappeared to somewhere. They managed to avoid the infestation luckily.

Here are the Ricordea mushrooms perched upon a rock in the front of the tank. I don’t know much about how they split, but there are three mouths, but the stalks of the mushrooms are still attached. I don’t know if they will ever fully split, or if that is the extant of propagation in this species.

Here is a more recent shot of the Petco rock and the rhodactis mushrooms on it. This is also near the peak of the bryopsis outbreak. As an aside, I have become quite fond of the red bubble algae in the back.

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Here is a semi-FTS during peak of infestation. Sorry for the window in the background!

These are some of the new zoas we picked up a week ago or so. They are called scrambled eggs zoas, and as of right now there are 10 heads on the plug, with a few new ones starting to form.

In the front left you can see our other new zoa, an Utter Chaos Palyzoa. There is only one head for now, but it looks like it is about to bud a second one, which if it does I will post some photos.

This is about a day after dosing the tank with ReefFlux to treat the bryopsis. The drug works by breaking down the cells walls of the alage, and it was interesting to see the chlorophyll condense into little green balls as the cells walls disappeared.

Finally, we have an actual FTS from last night. Notice the reduction of bryopsis algae on the eagle eye zoas! It has been about 4 days since we dosed the tank, so the rate in which the bryopsis has been removed is absolutely remarkable.

Also, if you haven’t noticed the copepod population has gone through the roof (they are the little white dots on the front of the tank). I am debating taking the algae scraper out because I haven’t had to use it for weeks because the snails and copepods keep the glass that clean!

Another update -- No photos just yet

Things have been running smoothly for the last few weeks. I am behind on my water change schedule, but with no fish the nutrient levels aren't moving too much, so I'm not going to sweat it just yet.

We added a couple more things to the tank. We got a good looking candycane coral and a kenya tree coral. We lucked out that the kenya tree had a neon green toadstool hitchhiking on the rock it was attached to. Funnily enough I was torn between getting a different toadstool frag, but didn't want to drop too much money. Owner of the LFS picked up the Kenya tree, laughed, and said I am getting a toadstool anyways because one was hitchhiking on the rubble, and he was fine with me just having it.

Everything else in the tank has been doing well. The eagle eye zoas are starting to spread onto the live rock which is cool, because in my first tank I couldn't keep zoas alive to save my life. The Utter Chaos paly has developed 6 new heads in the past 3 weeks I need to find a place to put it when it overgrows the plug in a few months. Definitly exited to try and get a whole rock of utter chaos

I will try to get some photos of the new things this weekend and post them.

Cheers,

-B

Tank is looking great B! Glad to see it working out for you. Looks like you were able to skip right past the cyano algae phase? Mine was nasty!

I was happy to skip past that cyano stage. I think one of the reasons may be that I didn't add any nutrients to the tank during the cycle, I just threw in some rock knowing something was going to start dying off, thereby giving a small bit of ammonia. I figured adding a lot of nutrients to the tank would a) become difficult to remove, and b) I knew I only wanted corals so I didn't need to build up a big community of BB.

I will post some updated pics in the next few days, the gf is away on business so I have plenty of time

-B