Coral Beauty One Week in Quarantine

At first, the coral beauty was not eating anything in my quarantine tank.  I fed some flake food and pellets, but no luck.  The next day, I tried the nori that my yellow tang likes so much.  But after a day the coral beauty mostly left it alone.

I called the LFS and he said they were feeding it mysis shrimp, but he thought it was also eating the algae in tank.  Since I didn't have any mysis, I decided to wait until the weekend to try that.

Later in the week, I noticed that the pellets were disappearing and eventually, the coral beauty started tracking down the pellets as soon as I dropped them into the tank.  Now, after a week, the coral beauty seems to be doing well.  It looks healthy and is eating.  If all goes well, I'll add it to the display tank at the end of this week.

Rose Bubble Tip Anemone One Week After Split

The anemone is looking good one week after splitting.  Both halves are almost fully formed again -- transforming from semicircles to complete circles around.  Also, the right half has finally moved out of the snail shell that it came attached to from the LFS.  I had to move it around a little and to lean it up against the top of rock, but I think it was also getting pushed around a bit much from the Turbo snail.  Here are some pictures from the past week.

Father's Day Present: A Coral Beauty

I got to check out a new LFS today and they had some Coral Beauties.  It's been on my list so I went ahead.  I liked the coloration of the one I bought, particularly the blue on the edges of the dorsal and tail fins.

This will be the first new fish I introduce via the quarantine tank.  I had a bit of a scare with white spots on my Yellow Tang the week I bought it, so I decided from then on out I would be quarantining all new comers.  Although the Yellow Tang seems fine, now, I figure quarantining is a good habit to get into.

I brought over the foam filter that's been sitting in the refugium of my display tank.  I removed some sponge fragments and detritus. I also turned the power head back on and added ten more gallons of new salt water.

Overall, the water parameters looked good.  Phosphates were a little high at 20 ppm, but pH, ammonia and nitrates were fine.

Fire Shrimp Molts Again

It seems like the shrimp has been molting every two weeks or so.  I'm not sure if this is normal or not.

Rose Anemone Splits

I woke up this morning and the first I see is that the Rose Anemone has split into two.  That's exciting at first, but I've also read that they sometimes reproduce like this when they are stressed in some way.  I'll have to research this.

In had been hoping it would soon release the snail shell it came attached to, and yesterday in had noticed that it had really started spreading out and widening it's base.  But wow.  Never would have guessed this was going to happen!

Rose Bubble Tip Anemone

I went into a LFS yesterday, looking for some more live rock and possibly a Xenia pulse coral.  I had read from multiple sources that Xenia is a good soft coral to start with, and that it's been shown to host anemone. They also have a fascinating pulsing behavior.  However, the LFS guy talked me out of it for a couple of reasons.  First, he said it grows like a weed, which I had read as well.  To contain it, he suggested keeping it on its own rock.  He noted that a lot of people start with it, and then eventually regret it after they get more established and accumulate more invertebrates.  Secondly, he noted that while they are fairly hardy, when something does go wrong with them they can basically fall apart really quickly and really cloud your tank -- or worse -- release some sort of toxins that can wipe everything else out.  He actually steered me towards getting an anemone, even though others in online forums suggest waiting for a year.  He pointed out that if you have the right lighting, water conditions, and feed the anemone properly, you should have no more problems than you might with starter soft corals.  So I thought about it for a day, did some more research, and then went back today and bought it.  Here it is.

Quarantine Tank and Totoka Live Rock

I've finally set-up a quarantine tank.  It's an old 29 gallon tank I've had.  I bought a sponge filter and a heater.

 

I bought about 12 lbs of Totoka live rock and watched it for a couple of days for stowaways.  They looked pretty clean, so added them to the tank today.