OK... To stimulate conversation:
The state of my tanks
1) Cyano / Dinoflagellates:
I seem to have a problem with the right front corner of my 45 gallon tank, where flow is curtailed and a sheet of either cyano or dinoflagellates keeps shoing up. I say or, because upstream from this are two spots on my rock where a dark burgundy crud has taken hold. It does not form sheets like cyano, but instead forms fine fibers that move in the current a little. Blasting it with a turkey baster has not historically blasted it free as has happened when I had a cyano problem. Both of these issues occur on the sheltered side of rocks, where my oscillating current never hits them with a direct flow. Rearranging the rock or powerheads will be difficult until I'm ready to start moving things to my 125. I'm currently working to raise the pH and see if that changes things until I eventually start moving some corals to the 125.
2) Urchins:
I used to have people express amazement at the sheer amount of coraline algae on my rocks and its diverse colors. Now it's mostly limited to my glass, because the swarm of baby sea urchins that were on a zoanthid rock I purchased from EWOF are starting to grow up. I think they are Pacific rock urchins, but I'm not 100% sure. They hide in crevices and tiny caves during the day and come out after the lights go out to munch away at all my
coralline algae. The largest when I got the rock was under an inch in diameter. Half a year later, most of them are at least an inch in diameter. They are pretty interesting and I get to play a fun game trying to findthem during the day, but at night they are hard to miss if I turn on the lights outsidse the tank.
If anybody wants one in the future, I suspect the easiest way to transfer them is for you to give me a rock with plenty of coralline and small caves or crevices. When I give it back, it would have an urchin in it.
3) Clownfish
We have added the last fish to our upstairs tank, a small saddleback clownfish. He is predominately black, with white stripes and a yellow face and pectoral fins. Very cute little guy who I hope I'll be able to breed a few years down the road as his colors are quite striking. He was not happy that my tank did not have an anenome, so he spent a few weeks hiding behind powerheads. I'm not kidding. He'd move into the 3/4" to an inch between the powerhead and the glass and stay they until the day was over. Then he moved to the other side of the tank. For a while he was nesting in the Xenia at night when the big fish weren't out. Then he finally built up the... something... and moved into our sinularia finger leather / colt coral. It was annoyed for a little while, but both now seem happy and the bigger fish leave the little clown alone.
4) Coral beauty & Sixline
These two are now the bruisers of my 45 gallon tank. They have driven the Brazillian Gramma (previously top fish) to make many displays of aggression to keep it's much smaller territory. They keep my neon goby in near perpetual hiding.
They also harassed the clownfish until it moved into the leather coral. However, they have always shown a lot of deferance to our two
pajama cardinals. Both sides sort of pretend the others don't exist as near as I can tell.
5) 10 gallon nano
I have a healthy crop of Xenia in here and a couple mollies.
6) 125 gallon
Sand, water, salt, refugium, and some seed LR. Now we wait a bit longer until I have time for constructing the hood and finishing the plumbing.
7) Goldfish
We won a 29 gallon in a contest from EWOF. It is now fully set up in the living room with a few small lionhead-type oranda goldfish in it. Not extravagant, but they are cute and the whole system wound up being pretty cheap. My favorite is one that is near black on it's upper body and bronze-gold on it's lower half. Very different from the typical goldfish, IMO.
I've been meaning to take pictures for the past couple of months, but then I get busy and forget to clean the glass, etc.
Would anyone else in the club care to talk about the current situation of their tanks?
