The sulking sarcophyt

Around 6 weeks ago, I purchased a beautiful looking toadstool leather coral. It was a real highlight of the tank. But 3 weeks after purchasing him and spending alot of time marvelling at its beauty it decided to do what Sarcophyt's do.

It started to sulk, like a child not allowed into the candy store. The only difference between it and the child, is you can reason (read: distract or bribe) with the child. The coral on the other hand, you can't. It's been sulking for 4 weeks now and I have wondered on many occasions if its sick instead of sulking. But thanks to the experience of a number of members in countless forums, I believe that it is just sulking and not sick.

There seem to be 2 ways to determine if it is sick/dying. The tend to develop very dark spots on the body and trunk. These eventually result in the piece falling off. In my mind i am picturing coral frostbite. The second way is the sniff test. If you can take it out of the water for a short while and give it a sniff. If it smells like fresh fish, its all good. If not, you could have issues.

What to do if its sick or dying? To be honest, I have no clue. All I can think a person should try is go back to the corals basics: good lighting and a good flow to wash away any dirty or muck. Failing this, some people have fragged a good pice from the coral and started over with the frag. As i have no experience, I can't advise anyone on this. So you will need to trawl the forums for any advice on fragging and how best to revive a dying coral.

As for sulking, these corals have been known to sulk for a couple of days to a couple of weeks. They also tend to sulk often. This by no means that the tank conditions are wrong for it, although you should always maintain good water maintenance. Sarcophyt's sulk when they require a moult. When they moult, they are doing two things. Firstly, its to clean their skin of any dirty. And secondly, its their way of growing. Many aquarist have noticed that the leather looks bigger after a moult. So a moult can also be a good sign.

Another sign of moulting would be the characteristic waxy layer appearance on the corals surface. This waxy layer will require a good flow in order to help remove the layer and return your coral back to its former glory.

By the length of time mine has been sulking, I am hoping i will have a good increase in size.

2013 Filter Surfing Championships

The 2013 Filter Surfing Contest happened this weekend.  So much anxiety and speculation surrounded this weekend events, leading to much debate over who was going to take this renowned title. 

Some said Marco, some said Polo, others said it would take an act of divine intervention to make it out alive.

Let me give you a breakdown into this gruelling 3 week course:

•  3 weeks prior to event finale, re-landscape marine tank creating sand turbulence to achieve 'Novice tankmaster' status... see previous blog post
• Proceed to feed tank mates daily
• Observe feeding to establish whereabouts of contenders
• It is at this point that the bets are taken as some tankmates remain illusive
• It is around the 2 week mark that bets are finalised.

It is with the weekly tank clean (and a whole drama of its own)  that the results are verified, and we take this seriously folks, verified and audited , by a Chartered Accountant.  This is a serious contest and there's no fooling around here!

Under intense scrutiny from the clean brigade, The Wife, there in the combs of the 3rd chamber was Marco, or was it Polo?  Was he dead?!

The medical team was called in aka The Wife again!  She proceeded to remove the little Goby from the combs (after they had been out in open air for around 20min during the tank clean!) I thought for sure the little guy didn't make it but he swam off...like nothing had ever happened... straight up, back to the filter chambers!! He was determined to get back in there and did several times before we tried to net it off and deter him.

At this point only 1 Goby was seen all morning. You see The Wife has this amazing ability to see the smallest of details, like a tiny spot of orange appearing under a rock... yeah. crazy I know.  This meant Goby 1 was still in his hideout and left us in the undeniable position to conclude that the 2013 Filter Surfer Champion was GOBY 2, now known as Bruce Willis aka Die Hard!

After what I can only assume to be 3 weeks in the combs, he is slowly settling back into the main tank with the occasionally wonder upstream, no doubt he'll jump again. But I now know where to go looking!

My Yasha Goby

Some people who have been following my progress will have read that I purchased a pair of these awesome looking gobies few weeks back. We named them Marco and Pollo because we were always looking for them. Unfortunately Pollo is M.I.A and presumed dead. Many hours of tanking watching has yielded nothing, so its a safe assumption (unless he has achieved Jedi master rank at hide and go seek).

What can I say about these guys from my experience? Well, they tend to hide. A lot! I have tried to insert silicon pipes into the sand to give Marco a hole to accommodate. It hasn't been very successful. He relaxed in one for 2 days until he decided that a silicone home wasn't for him and he instead housed himself between the pipe and the rock.

The other interesting fact I learned last night was that Marco will bury himself in the sand when he is sleeping. I however overreacted when all I could see was his eye under the rock - thinking the rock shifted and he was trapped. I shifted the sand away to give him an escape and he duly complied. After that, I trawled the Internet and found that this is actually common behaviour. One hobbyist had his gobies pile up 8" of sand to be able to bury themselves in it. He sometimes saw them make a reappearance days later. I am not sure I could last that long. (Its that patience thing)

They are really awesome fish, but I am not sure my nerves and willingness to intervene are cut out for another one, should Marco join Pollo on the dark side. Dont let this however persuade anyone from keeping them, but rather a lesson: if you are a tinkerer, then these fish are best kept for when you can't tinker anymore. If you get them to early, you will spend alot of time worrying and trying to accommodate them, rather than letting them be. I am hoping to leave Marco as much as possible and not intervene all the time, as I think its causing more stress than doing good. It will also not let him settle in and stop hiding away from this enormous hand that keeps trying to find him.

Up and running for 8 weeks

It's been a while coming this update. So what has happened:

Firstly and most drastically was the rescape that we did on Saturday. The old scape was fundamentally good, but we struggled to see the fish and inverts alot of the time. In addition, we were running out of space to place corals as well as allowing them place to grow. So a major rethink was in order (it is also a dry run for when we move house). We removed two pieces of live rock that formed the base of the structure, and tried to create a few more overhangs. This is to help with swimming space as well as it gives us more coral placing space, surprisingly so. One of the rocks was moved to the first filtration chamber, while the bio balls that were there have been placed between the combs of the 3rd chamber. I did this so as to not change the bio filtration to much. The hope is to replace the large rock with live rock rubble and then replace the bio balls with some form of mechanical filtration. One of the sad events from the rescape seems to be the loss of one of the gobies. We are not sure if he is a fatality of the rescape or a casualty before hand as we had not seen both simultaneously 2 days before hand. The positive though, the surviving goby has housed himself under a rock that is more visible. If he survives the move, we may pair him up with a shrimp. All seems well so far. The leather is sulking big time, but I am hoping its just a prelude to shedding.

A new addition: we have made our first venture into LPS corals. On Saturday, we purchased a hammer coral. It is considered a moderately difficult coral to keep, but it will be manageable in our tank. They have been known to be surrogate anemones for clowns, and we are really hoping that happens.

The phosphate scare: after battling with algae, I finally decided to test the phosphates and see how bad it is (all other parameters were in the norm). What I saw was shocking - the phosphates were off the charts. So in with phosphate remover. I did it in 2 stages as i didn't want to shock the tank. I am happy to report that a week and a bit later, the phosphates are a little more respectable, but still some way off. But it's moving in the right direction at least.

Bye bye Aiptasia: after 3 weeks, the peppermint shrimp didn't even nibble on the Aiptasia. Also, I failed in my attempts to cover the hole with putty. So I resorted to chemical means (Aipex) and blasted them. It seems to have worked, but I will need to wait a while to confirm a good kill.

Mr Inquisitive

On one of my weekly trips to Birchwood aquatic centre I bought myself a skunk cleaner shrimp (yet to be named) as well as a peppermint shrimp (but it could be a dancing shrimp). The thought behind these purchases where two fold.

Firstly, I found 2 Aptasia's in my green star polyp rock. Peppermint shrimps are know to eat them. However they will only do so if there isn't any other food for them to scavenge. So far it seems that the shrimp is gorging himself on the fish food and not touching the Aptasia. So I may need to get some apt-x instead to weed out the 2 fellows.

Secondly the skunk cleaner shrimp was bought as it seemed Lemon had a few white spots and was constantly scratching himself on the rocks, sand and leather coral. The cleaner tends to pick any parasites off the fish, so I treated the fish for marine ich and skunk would sort out any itching that could have been caused by parasites or other diseases. Am happy to report that the skunk is fat and healthy as well as all the fish look pretty healthy. The skunk has made himself so at home, that he keeps wanting to hitch rides around on my hand every time I stick it in to move some rocks around or placing algae blocks. It is rather frightening when your not expecting it and you suddenly get your hand tickled by him...

Trip to Aqautic design centre with the Mrs

This has been a rather laid back week for me and the Mrs as we took the week off as annual leave to get a few things done around the house. On the first day, the Mrs agreed to make the trip into London to see why I rave about Aquatic design centre. She was a little disappointed after the first 15 mins to be fair. Not by the store or what it had to offer, but rather from the owner and the manner in which we felt we being looked down upon for our humble little reef aquarium.

Luckily he walked away before a few choose words came out of my mouth regarding his customer service and I went and sought the advice of an employee I dealt with previously. She managed to salvage my view on the place and gave me some really good advice regarding corals and my algae issues. We also walked away with 4 mushroom corals (2 red, 1 blue and 1 green) as well as a rock of zoa's and a hairy green mushroom.

On our return, we got to thinking about the protein skimmer and the reason it did not seem to be working as efficiently as it should. After an hour working through drawing of skimmers and how they are supposed to work, we figured out that the shop who set it up for us in the first place had swapped a part around and thus it was not working properly. After switching it around and playing with the air inlet, we finally got our first bit of skim mate!

As for the new corals, we really struggled to place them. What makes it worse is that these corals are some of the easiest in the business. But after a couple of days of moving around, we finally found a place for the mushrooms that make them seem a little happy. Did have a scare though as the hairy green expelled a long "tentacle" from his mouth. Apparently they do this when they are not happy. We have moved them again and I haven't seen this happen again, so fingers crossed its only a once off. I tried feed them some mysis shrimp, but none of them wanted to close. Either I didn't do it right, or they are not interested. I will try again in a weeks time to see if they want it then.

The 2nd outbreak of algae

During the 2nd week of the tanks life, it went through a diatom bloom. It turned a really ugly brown and I thought there goes my idea of a nice clean tank. But with some good circulation, water maintenance and patience, the diatoms died out and the tank cleaned up.

I am now experiencing the 2nd algae invasion. This time it is a green slime algae that covers the sand bed and has started to creep up on the rocks. At the first signs of this algae, I wasn't to concerned as I thought my clean up crew should be able to handle it. Unfortunately, its not just about having a clean up crew and letting them get on with their business. A person will need the right cleanup crew to deal with the problem as well as provide a helping hand like Mother Nature does.

So I have 3 choices. I can treat the water with chemicals to get rid of the algae (not my preferred approach), I can expand on the clean up crew (this may not be enough on its own and can cause compatibility issues later on) or I can increase the flow in my tank (specifically on the substrate).

My current power head turns over the tanks water 20 times an hour. This is what most reefers require. However, the jet of water that it is shooting out is a very focused jet and I can't get it to "sweep" the gravel very nicely without creating a huge hole in the substrate. It is therefore recommended that a person gets a circulator that produces a wider stream. This stream will move a large mass of water and you will most likely prevent you from creating craters in your substrate.

That is the first option. Another option for movement is to add a 2nd power head that shoots water in the opposite direction to create a turbulence in the tank or just a 2nd stream to catch the dead spots. Most people put these alternating power heads on timers and try and create a sort of tidal action. The idea is that you have them on for 6 hours and off for another 6 while the other power head kicks in. It is even better if you create an overlap that will result in turbulence where the 2 streams meet. Have corals, I thought this is a no no, but I have been advised that the turbulence kicks up the substrate and some nutrients hiding in there for my corals to feed on. It will also help prevent the worry of gases building up in my substrate waiting to explode and kill all my inhabitants. So I ordered myself a Newave 1.6 adj to try and see if this will help.