Coral warfare/shading is a becoming more and more of an issue as you would expect for any reef tank approaching 3 years of age. Well perhaps not if the tank had been sensibly/lightly stocked but I guess this hasn't happened.  Common sense seems to fly out of the window where myself and reef tanks are concerned.

Most of what I'm going to post is kind of good really. Generally the corals are growing well but there are some that are losing the battle for survival.

The Stylophora needs regular trimming to prevent it from growing up to and touching the left hand glass wall. Its base continues to expand and kills off areas of contact with two neighbouring Montipora as it goes. It has also (along with the Pinnigorgia gorgonian) almost completely shaded out the Beach Bum Montipora. The Beach bum is fading away and there is nothing I can do about it, it's pretty much impossible to relocate. I try not to dwell on this fact too much, it's too painful. Big mistake. Big. HUGE!

I removed most of the green plating Montipora a while ago but it's making a comeback and shading the corals below again. I should never have introduced a frag of this in the first place, I just knew it would end up causing issues in a small tank but it was free and I just couldn't throw it away. On the plus side I must admit it is a lovely vibrant green colour.

I grudgingly accepted the loss of the purple tipped Acro frags to the Superman as they were not thriving anyway (due to the presence of red bugs) but it was harder to take the potential loss of the Acropora gomezi. Despite the parasitic bugs, the A. gomezi still showed nice colouration, not what it should look like under normal conditions but still nice. For months I gritted my teeth and watched this Acro be overgrown, but right at the last minute I decided to frag off the remaining two branch tips. I fixed both of them to the same frag tile and plonked it on the sand. A quick survey with the magnifying glass showed me that the tiny A. gomezi frags are still providing a home/food to the red bugs. I could remove and dip them (repeatedly if needed) but if the bugs are present elsewhere in the system then they will just become reinfested again. The frags have encrusted on to the tile but that's about all they've done at this point. One of the branch tips had a close encounter with the Scolymia thanks to a hermit crab, and got stripped. It's almost recovered bar for a tiny bit of algae covered skeleton at the very end. You can see one red bug highlighted but the arrow in the photo below.

The Scolymia continues to look good. It needs to be moved in the not too distant future as the Favia behind is creeping ever closer. I can't afford for those two to meet! Knowing my luck the (much) more expensive coral would be the loser if they clashed. 

The Favia has completely overrun the Cyphastrea that used to grow to the right of it and continues to bubble up towards the Acanthastrea to the left. There's been no full on attack as of yet.

The Acanthastrea are surviving but not really thriving. I know that they prefer lower lighting conditions but the plating Montipora above is shading them too much at present. I have been trying to feed them to try and make up for it but 9 times out of 10 Rei the Yellow wrasse steals the food.

The Oxypora keeps expanding ever so slowly, it is also somewhat lacking in light these days.

The Utter Chaos zoanthids are a complete nightmare. They grow so fast and don't seem to be bothered by anything (at least nothing they have encountered in the tank so far). SPS corals are fair game, they just reach up shade out an area of coral until the flesh recedes and then they colonise the dead skeleton. I'm sure that this is a familiar story to many other reef keepers. Having never kept zoas before this is a new one on me.  They have grown up the side of the clam and were beginning to reach over and shade the mantle before I decided to  scrape them off. A temporary fix as they are encrusting again. 

To be fair it's just the Utter Chaos zoanthids that are causing a headache, the rest are much slower growing (aside from growing out onto the sand which is making it hard for Lurch the conch to navigate round the tank).

The Heliofungia has grown to a lovely size but is really squashed up in the front left hand corner of the tank. It remains attached to the small rock and so cannot move around. This is possibly a good thing as I'm sure there would be carnage if it could scoot along the sand and relocate itself. It expanded so much that it was stinging the orange Dendrophyllia to the right of it. 

The Lobophyllia has been doing OK, it's really slow growing but since it's tucked away at the side of the tank with not great lighting then that's not exactly surprising. It started off with one head and now almost has three.

Unfortunately one night it suddenly launched an all out attack on the Black sun coral. Before now it had been almost completely overgrown by the Utter Chao zoanthids and not retaliated but clearly the threat posed by the Black sun was a different matter. It stripped three branches of the sun overnight.

Since the orange Dendrophyllia and black sun both needed moving, plus I (still) had the Balanophyllia sitting in the sump I decided space needed to be made for them elsewhere. In the end I pulled out 100+ Utter Chaos zoas, clipped a few branches of A. hyacinthus and removed all of Seriatpora hystrix. The Seri broke into pieces during removal and I decided to keep just a single piece and reposition it a little higher up. This left a space big enough to just about squeeze in the sun corals, now I have quite a nice little cluster of NPS corals on the right hand side of the tank.

After spending over a year and a half in the sump the Balanophyllia is finally back in the DT once more and it's looking good, I don't know why I struggled with it so much. I wonder if perhaps it had some sort of infection that caused the flesh to recede before. It's good to see it back to full health (fingers crossed). I'm also thrilled that the accompanying hitchhiker bivalve is still alive too, I have no idea what that is eating but it must be filtering out enough as it has grown larger since introduction.

The yellow Dendrophyllia remains in place next to the Heliofungia, it has encrusted onto the rock work so I'm not going to mess with it. Eventually I expect it too will be stung but that's a problem for the future. In just over a year this Dendro has increased from 3 to 15 separate heads with another forming. Such a lovely looking coral.

The Pinnigorgia gorgonian goes from strength to strength, it grows so fast and always fully extends its polyps. I have cut off a number of branches of it already and need to trim it some more. The Muricea and Plexaurella gorgonians are much slower growing tucked away at the back of the tank.

That's it for now, I will post an updated full tank shot in  a few days' time.

Now for the coral round up starting with LPS.

​The Favia (Gonastrea sp.?) was such a tiny frag when first introduced, just three heads and now who knows how many there are. It has completely dominated the rock on which it was placed and has even expanded on to the sand on the left-hand side. There used to be a gap between the left and right rock structures that was wide enough for the conch to easily pass through but it's gone completely now. I fear that there will be a huge fight soon between it and the Acanthastrea. I did catch the two in contact one morning with mesentarial filaments extended, I'm not sure who instigated it but both survived the encounter and most of the time they coexist nail bitingly close together as seen in the photo below. Neither can be moved as they are well and truely welded to the rockwork.

Unfortunately the Cyphastrea to the right of the Favia has not fared so well. A tiny amount is still hanging on right next to the sand (hidden behind the Scolymia) but it's only a question of time before it's overgrown entirely, again it cannot be moved as it's also encrusted onto the rock work. 

Acanthastrea #2 (lava glow) is slowly getting bigger but is shaded at the back so can really only grow forward. It's looking much better since I fragged the green plating Montipora that's growing above it. I haven't bothered to feed it much recently because the wrasses steal 99% of the food before it's ingested.

The original Acantastrea (#1) was really struggling due to lack of light and that was the main impetus for me to take the cutters to the green Montipora. I am happy to say that it's looking a bit better now and starting to regain some colouration. I have been trying to boost it by feeding it but again it's hard to sneak some to it without the beady eyes of the wrasses noticing.

The Heliofungia is growing huge now and has filled the left-hand corner of the tank. I can't even fit the whole coral in when taking a photo from above using the lens dipper. When extended the tentacles sway worryingly close to the the orange Dendrophyllia, I haven't seen them make contact yet but the nearest Dendro head has looked damaged so I'm guessing it must have happened at some point.

I thought I had killed the Heliofungia recently when I accidentally dropped the algae magnet on top of it but apart from looking shrivelled for a day it seems to have bounced back again (touch wood!)

The baby buds continue to do well, despite them being shaded out by 'Mum'. I don't know how many there are but they completely ring the base of the coral. It would be nice if they detached but show no signs of doing so, I daren't try to frag them off as knowing my luck I'd kill the lot of them and 'Mum' too.

The Oxypora is a coral that just is, it sits there minding its own buisness, silently growing larger bit by tiny bit. To be honest it's not in the best position and has plated out into and interesting shape to the rear, growing upwards along side the gorgonian.

The Scolymia is the coral that immediately draws your eye, I love it and it's so easy to care for. I'm not sure if it's growing but it certainly expands much more than it did on first introduction. I feed it every now and again at night when its tentacles extend. I have seen videos of other Scolys that feed during the daylight hours but mine never shows a single tentacle when the lights are on, perhaps mine can be trained to do so but there's not much point since the ever patrolling wrasses would spoil my fun. I am forever vigilant to its well being and do sometimes worry when, on the occasional day, it's not as big. It's the most I've ever spent on a coral so losing it would be a hard blow. Then it'd be no more Scolys for me.

The Lobophyllia ​was the first LPS coral to be added to the tank (along with Acan #1).  Initially it was placed on the sand in the middle of the tank but I was advised to move it due to its aggressive nature (stinging all other corals in the vicinity) so I moved it to the front left-hand corner and then the right-hand corner but no matter where it went the snails kept knocking it over. In the end I had to glue it down to the base rock in the rear right-hand corner of the tank, tucked away from pretty much everything. The lighting is not great down there and it's got worse since the corals have 'grown in' so it's not surprising that growth has been minimal. Over the months (years now) the Utter Chaos zoanthids have marched their way ever closer to it (and everything else for that matter!) I fully expected the uber aggressive Lobo to keep them in check but no, when contact was finally made the Lobo did nothing at all. So the zoanthids just kept coming until the whole left hand side of the coral was hidden under a matt of polyps. Eventually I took pity on the Lobo and removed the  encroaching  zoanthids it was only then that I discovered the that Lobo had split into two separate heads. This coral is clearly made of tough stuff!

The most problematical of all of my LPS corals has been the Balanophyllia. It was the first non-photosynthetic coral that I introduced to this tank, I chose it mainly because it was a single head hence small and I'd never kept one before (I had kept Tubastraea sp. in the past and found them easy to care for). It started off looking fantastic but gradually the tentacles would extend less and less and the flesh began to recede at the base. I tried everything that I could think of to make it happy. I moved it to different locations in the tank in case it was a lighting issue (too bright perhaps?) or maybe it was flow related. I tried feeding it more frequently and also less frequently but still it continued to decline. Eventually I pulled it from the DT and sat it on a frag rack in the sump so that I could take better care of it. However as the months passed by still nothing much changed, it just hung on and looked rather sad. I tried all sorts of different food stuffs in the hope of stimulating it to open as it once did but the tentacles remained short and stubby or often absent entirely. I must admit there were periods when I would ignore it entirely but I always came back to it determined not to give up. Finally after much chopping and changing I settled on a different feeding regimen, instead of offering it small amounts of food  regularly (daily or every other day) I changed to offering food only twice a week at which times I would swamp it. On Wednesdays I would offer it a good amount of LPS pellets and on Sundays it would get a smorgasbord of frozen food, reef roids and coral frenzy all soaked in Selcon. It now looks better than it has done for absolutely ages (I've had it for just under two years now), the change was gradual, the tentacles extend a reasonable amount and recession has stopped, in fact I think it may have even grown a little.

The bulge on the right-hand side of the head in the photo below is where the tip of the coral used to be. At one time the flesh receded right to the top and it lost tentacles on one side. Now it has a full ring of tentacles that extend, if not as much as before but definitely much improved. The colouration isn't as good as it once was so I assume I still haven't got the nutrition quite right but hey baby steps.

As you can see the hitchhiking bivalve that came attached to the base of the coral is still alive and growing. In addition, the rock base has gained quite a few 'friends'. There are a number of ball anemones, sponges, fan worms, vermitid snails (of course) and even three baby Tubastrea polyps that have settled out on to the base.

​I'm at the point now where I'm thinking of introducing the coral back into the DT but hesitant to do so in case it starts to fade once more.

In comparison to the Balanophyllia the Sun coral (Tubastrea sp.) is easy to care for, feed it and it will grow (and reproduce!), it's released planulae larvae more times than I care to mention. The whole tank is littered with baby sun polyps now. They have settled out all over the rocks, on snail shells, in the weir, on the pump heads and even on the siporax in the sump to mention a few places. There are now too many to target feed so I am leaving them to fend for themselves. 
I haven't been feeding every head of the main colony like I used to so it may be a little smaller than it used to be. At least that's what it looks like when I compare it to the older photos, it's either that or it wasn't fully extended when I took the most recent photo. From what I've read the heads do not share nutrition so if one doesn't get fed it fades away; I'm not exactly sure how true that actually is however.

The first baby sun polyp that I discovered in August 2017 is just over 1.5 years old, wow! It's still just a single head but seems to have developed a calcified base now. To be honest I'm quite surprised it's still alive as I haven't target fed it for ages, it's probably been over a year since I offered it food. It just got too difficult with the Seriatopora growing above it and also it became obscured by (those rather annoying) Utter Chaos zoanthids. Clearly it must be in a position to be able to capture enough food to keep it going. 

The black sun coral (Tubastrea micrantha) seems to have well and truly settled in to life in my tank. It looks really amazing at night, I know that for most people that's not their cup of tea but come on it does look cool, right? I have seen it start to tentatively extend some tentacles during the day after the fish have been fed so if I offered some food to it directly then I think it would extend during the day. If only it weren't for those pesky wrasse, lol. I couldn't say if it has developed any new heads yet but the flesh has been encrusting downwards to the rock on which it's attached so I take that to be a good sign.

Amazingly a while back I found a couple of baby black sun polyps lying in the sump. I think these have developed from bits of flesh that fell off the main coral after my disastrous fragging attempt. I thought about trying to rescue them and fix them to a small rock but decided I had enough mouths to worry about already so they will have to take their chances in the sump.

The two Dendrophyllia are doing great, popping out new heads slowly but surely. The yellow one started with 3 heads and now has 14 and the orange one has gone from 3 to 9. Unfortunately there is a small problem with the orange one as I mentioned above, the head of the Dendro closest to the Heliofungia does not fully expand its tentacles any more and sometimes it looks a bit damaged. I should move one of them but the Heliofungia is too large to go anywhere else and the Dendro has just grown down and made contact with the rockwork plus it looks fantastic alongside the yellow one and there's not much space elsewhere for it either, arrggh!

That's it for now, I think I'll tackle the inverts update next before moving on to the rest of the corals.

Firstly another equipment change to report. I finally decided to change out the Beamswork EVO refugium light for a Kessil H80 Tuna flora. I had been considering replacing it for quite a while now, not because I was unhappy with the light but because the metal stand was rusting in all four corners where it sits on the top of the refugium. I'm not sure if this has caused any metal contamination in the tank yet or not but I wasn't happy with the situation so it had to go. The reason I opted for the Kessil is because it's pretty much the only light that I could find small enough to fit over the refugium, everything else was either too big/long and would have caused a huge light overspill issue or excess heat in the small sump area. To combat at least some of the light spill produced by the H80 I have added a small piece of black acrylic sheet between it and rest of the sump. The red light is something that does take a bit of getting used to but if the macro algae grows well under it then I'm happy, time will tell.

Now for a Fauna Marin Skimbreeze update. The FM media lasted two and a half weeks before needing to be replaced, about the same amount of time as the most recent ATI 1l disposable unit. I'm not that keen on the design of this reactor itself as air is preferentially pulled from the side the outlet tube sits (as can be seen in the photo below). So when changing out the reactor some media is still unused. I think I will try rotating the cylinder next time to see if I can reduce the problem. To refill the reactor I used the Spherasorb media, it looks exactly the same as the FM stuff but costs a lot less. 

As for the livestock well everything is ticking along. Acropora growth is slow to nonexistent thanks to the red bugs but at least they are not dying. The exception to this is the  A. hyacinthus which seems fine (with a rather odd growth shape it must be said), I've accidentally fragged it with the algae magnet a couple of times now because it's growing too close to the front glass.

The Utter chaos zoanthids are becoming annoying as they keep detaching and floating around the tank ending up in spots where I don't want them in or sucked on to the powerheads. Since I don't have anywhere to place frags (and hate the look of frag racks in the DT) I've chucked the loose ones I've found so far.

The sun coral is still releasing planulae and I keep finding baby polyps popping all over the tank. The more I look the more I can spot, they've even settled out on the clam shell. The larvae are fascinating to watch, tiny orange tear shaped blobs that wiggle around the tank until they find somewhere to settle out. It's very cool!

As for the Balanophyllia now living down in the sump, I can't decide if it's doing better or worse. There is one thing though, I happened to knock it over whilst trying to feed it and when I set it straight again I noticed it has some tentacles poking out the back, my initial response was Oh ****!  Aiptasia!! But on closer inspection it actually looks like a baby Balano bud.  I'm not sure if this a good sign or a bad one? Is it failing so badly that it's sending out buds as a last ditch attempt to survive?? I surely hope not.

I'll sign off with a few photos.

And finally a FTS..

Not much new to report really, everything seems to be ticking along and there have been no new additions.

I harvested a load of macro algae from the refugium as the upper half was a completely solid mass. I think I might have been a bit over zealous with my pruning as the algae growth seems to have stalled somewhat since then. A knock on effect being that the nutrient levels within the tank have risen slightly. On the 9th January phosphate tested at around 0.046ppm and nitrate 0.35ppm using the Elos low range kits. When I tested again on the 10th January the phosphate level had crept up to 0.08ppm and nitrate to 1ppm. Hopefully once the algae growth picks up again the levels will stabilise as I don't really want the phosphate level to get any higher. I must get into the habit of harvesting smaller amounts of algae on a more regular basis.

I've also been chasing the male pintail wrasse round in the hopes of capturing a decent photo of him displaying to the female but boy, he's really fast! I have multiple shots of just his tail or the rear half of his body, lol. I am very persistent though, thank goodness for digital cameras or I would have probably given up by now.

I finally relented and moved the Balanophyllia to the sump, it was on the fast track to coral heaven if I left it in the DT thanks to the Pintail's attentions. It's so much easier to feed down there now, especially during the day as the refugium is reverse lit so it's nice and dark. The good news is whilst the flesh on one side has receded quite badly due to the earlier infection it doesn't appear to be getting any worse and it's certainly happy to start eating again. It's a pale shadow of what it once was, the photo below shows how far the tentacles currently expand (and the receded skeleton). I hope it improves and opens up fully again.

The green tentacled corallimorph was looking a little more extended than I usually see it during the day so I whipped out the camera for a quick snap of that too (with flash). It looks like an anemone (and is commonly called a ball anemone) but actually is a part of the mushroom family. It hitchhiked into my tank on a small piece of zoanthid rock and doesn't appear to have spread much in 8 months time, mind you neither have the zoas either, lol. I think it actually looks rather attractive. 

I'll sign off with another short video. It's not much different than the last one I posted tbh but hopefully still enjoyable to watch.

100%! Apparently I have a full house, everything is in balance although to be honest the salinity is a bit higher than I would like. I must try harder. The conductivity probe had drifted out of calibration. The tin contamination is gone at last but I seem to have a reading for iron this time round. The only change between now and the last test is that I have begun to soak the fish food in a vitamin supplement, I wonder if that’s the source? Something (else) to keep an eye on. I still can’t get much of a nitrate reading despite adding a couple more fish and feeding loads. I wonder if running the tank for 5 days without a skimmer has raised it at all?

Moving on to the corals, the warfare continues. The Favia continues to batter the Cyphastrea relentlessly. I thought it might stop once the leading edge was dead but no, the dead area seems to get larger every day. I would move the Cyphastrea if I could but firstly, it's well encrusted, and secondly I have nowhere else to put it.

Two of the Montipora sp. (#2 & 3) are now clashing with Acropora loripes and both are losing. Montipora #2 is also being hammered at the back by the Stylopora.

Despite religious feeding the Balanophyllia has still not been doing so well, It was only after I made the decision to move it that I discovered that it was receding very badly at the back where I couldn’t see. There was a white band of what I assume to be a bacterial infection at the receding edge. I relocated it to the rear of the tank but in hindsight I should probably have placed it in the sump because as soon as the Pintail wrasse were added, feeding it became nigh on impossible. They just kept stealing its food. Fortunately the Sun coral continues to do well and has grown multiple new heads. Feeding it can be a battle with the wrasse but it can be done with a little perseverance.

Moving on to the red bug problem, with no plan of attack they are obviously still present but the Acros seem to be coping with them for the time being. I fully expected the afflicted corals to be failing by now but they still have reasonable polyp extension and colour. I'm sure that they could look better as could their growth rate but at least they are not dead. The watching and waiting continues.

I've indicated some of the red bugs present on the Acropora below with red arrows there are more shown in the shot but you get the general idea.

As for the fish, Edna the Possum wrasse passed her first anniversary in the tank on December 18th and Kylie the Pink-streaked wrasse will have her first anniversary on the 28th January 2018.

A few more photos of the Pintails (Tinker and Belle) and Rei the Yellow wrasse too.

A few other random coral photos. I had hoped to have more shots to share but Christmas preparations got in the way. 

Thanks for following my blog, I hope you all have a great Christmas! Hopefully I have more photos to share next week.

My tank is exactly a year old today! Wow, where has the time flown to? I've been a bit lax with the updates recently so there's lots to catch up on.

First lets get the bad news out of the way. I'm afraid that I've lost the lovely Tridacna maxima clam, it simply never thrived in my tank. Before adding it I carefully checked the shell looking for any nasty hitchhikers but I never found any. I must have missed some (or their eggs at least) as I started to notice some pyramid snails feeding on my precious Trochus and Turbo snails. Nooo! I checked the clam regularly at night with a flash light but never found any of the little devils feasting on it. After two and a half months it finally it became clear that the clam was doomed so I decided to remove it before pollution became an issue. I checked it over again when it was out of the tank and still couldn't find any pyramid snails on it. These guys are so small and clearly hide really well! Later on three teeny tiny ones did emerge from inside of the clam, it's hard to imagine that just three could have any impact on an animal so much larger than they but clearly over time they do. Unless of course the maxima was suffering from something else too? 

At this point there's not much I can do about the pyramid snails, I am removing any that I see every day and I've become quite adept at spotting them now. On average I remove about 10 per day. The wrasse are sadly not eating them, come on guys I could really do with a helping hand here, sheesh earn your keep why don't you!! At least I haven't lost any of the snails yet and my original Tridacna crocea clam seems to be doing fine, it's laying down new shell so I take that to be a good sign for now.

The other blip on my reefing horizon is the Balanophyllia. It just doesn't look as good as it once did and I can't work out why. Am I feeding it too much or not feeding it enough? I had been offering it a piece of food once per day (at night), generally PE mysis, clam, Krill or lancefish, perhaps that wasn't enough to sustain it? So I decided to up the feedings to multiple times per day (anywhere between three up to a maximum of five a day) but this seemed to make no difference at all (in fact the coral looked a little worse) so now I'm trying less food. It's really frustrating because the sun coral is looking fantastic on a single feed per day.

Apart from the above everything else seems to be doing OK. The fish are all good, Rei the Yellow wrasse eats like a horse and is noticeably bigger. The best news is that my Tomiyamichthys nudus gobies have finally paired up with the Red Spotted pistol shrimp so I get to see them all much more now. The male goby still goes MIA every now and again but always resurfaces at some point. The gobies and pistol shrimp do not naturally associate together in the wild but I suspect they have done so in my tank because there are simply no other alternatives.

The corals are getting bigger and  some are starting to get close to each other already, war is on the horizon I expect. 

The zoanthids are spreading nicely especially the Utter Chaos, these are reproducing at a phenomenal rate and unfortunately over taking some of the original slower growing morphs. Whatever was afflicting the Red Tuxedo zoanthids seems to have subsided and I've not lost any more recently,  I hope that's the end of that.

After a bit of a slow start the algae in the refugium has really got going now and the amount of life in there is incredible. It's amphipod, mysis shrimp and brittlestar heaven! Charlie the hitchhiking crab is alive and kicking and still growing. She was such a tiny thing when I first noticed her in the DT hanging out in the Seriatopora, now she's huge in comparison.

Life in the refugium.

Whenever I harvest any algae, I spend the following 30 minutes rescuing brittlestars from amongst the fronds. Well I can't just throw them out can I? It's easy to see how they are reproducing by division. 

My first canister of ATI Carbo EX came to the end of its life in September, it lasted just over 3 months which I don't think is too bad. I have decided to continue with the CO2 scrubbing and have replaced it with a fresh cartridge.

Last week to celebrate the fact that the tank was approaching its first birthday I decided that some new additions were required. There was a gap (left by the T. maxima clam) that was just crying out to be filled. OK it didn't really need to be filled but what can I say, any excuse to shop for new corals.

I decided another encrusting Montipora sp. would do nicely and since it was likely to be the last addition (never say never tho) I wanted something special. I decided the Beach Bum (what a name!!) Montipora would contrast nicely with the three that I currently have. Since I was mail ordering from a fellow reefer I found I couldn't just buy the one coral so I ended up with frags of Hawkins Echinata (Acropora echinata) and a Sunrise Goniopora too. My name is Lisa and I'm a coral addict, lol!

Here they are on the sand awaiting fixing (squeezing!) in place.

Phew that was a marathon (are you still with me?) before I sign off I'll add a few more updated photos. After all who doesn't love a bit of eye candy?!

I was studying the rock work this morning with a magnifying glass as I tend do on a regular basis (I'm weird that way) and I came across an unknown polyp on the rock work. My initial reaction on seeing suspicious tentacles waving around in the tank is generally, uh-oh here we go, Aiptasia again, but I quickly realised the colour looked wrong for it to be a glass anemone. Out came the camera for a closer look and what do you know! It's a baby polyp of, and this is where it gets tricky, either the Balanophyllia sp. or Tubastrea sp. corals, I'm not sure which. Further scouring of the rocks turned up one additional baby polyp tucked away under an overhang. There may be more hidden in there just waiting to be discovered, I will be keeping my eyes peeled.

I've had the Balanophyllia for just shy of 3 months and the Tubastrea for just under a month. It seems too soon for it to be the sun coral but I guess it could have released larvae shortly after it was introduced. I have no idea how long it takes for a baby sun coral to grow into a recognisable polyp. As you can see it's still pretty small at the moment, those are vermatid snails and spirobid worms scattered over the rocks next to it for size reference. More research is required and questions asked I think. No matter what species they turn out to be I'm very happy to have discovered them in my tank. 

Just a quick snap of the Balanophyllia taken today with my iPhone after lights out. I've settled in to a routine of feeding this coral once a day now. It's not fussy what it eats, PE mysis, Krill, clam and mussels (which seems kind of wrong since there is a live mussel located right below it!) are all eagerly consumed.

I've been really pleased with the progression of the tank recently, the fish seem settled with no argy-bargy between them, coral colouration continues to improve with each week and things are generally looking healthy. I hope by saying that I've not just jinxed everything now.

As a consequence I have been on the look out for a few more corals to add a bit of extra interest to the tank. It's proven hard to source the last few bits from my wish list as they don't seem to be readily available or the pieces I've come across in the shops are just too big to squeeze in my tank. Regular readers (if there are any out there? Ha ha!) will know that I've been trying to stick to small frags so that I can enjoy watching them 'grow in', plus buying aquacultured corals has always got to be a good thing, right? After 7 months of keeping my eye out I resorted to shopping online (my second favourite pastime). I never thought I would actually take the chance of buying corals online but so far my experience of it has been all great with no losses to date.

Yesterday the postman brought me not one, but two packages, it was a very exciting day.

The first package contained 3 corals. A Balanophyllia sp., possibly my new favourite coral. This is non-photosynthetic and will require feeding by hand but it is so very, very pretty. I had originally wanted to source a small colony of sun coral (Tubastrea sp.), as I've kept those in the past and found them easy to care for but have not seen any for sale, They used to be regularly available but not any more it seems. Anyway this species is very similar (and fits in the small size theme) so I decided to give it a go. My research has suggested that they only extend their feeding tentacles at night but this one seems happy to open up no matter whatever the time of day which is wonderful, more time for me to admire it! As a bonus there is a mussel attached at the base, although I haven't ascertained if it's still living or not. I do hope so but keeping it that way may prove difficult as it's a filter feeder.

Check out all those nematocysts!

Then came a baby plate coral, now I knew that I wanted an LPS coral with swaying tentacles and had originally considered a Euphyllia sp. but I know these can get very large over time so I finally settled on a plate coral. When I saw this baby one available I knew that I wouldn't have a better opportunity to purchase one, it really is tiny measuring just 2cm across when the tentacles are expanded. Normally these corals are free living on sandy or muddy substrates but this one presently has a 'stalk' and when it arrived was glued to a flat frag plug. Unfortunately the frag plug was covered in tiny Aiptasia so it just had to go. The base was duely chopped off along with as much of the original superglue as I dared (and there was a LOT!), then it was fixed it onto a spare piece of rock I had in the sump (I just knew that I'd find a use for that rock eventually, lol!). Now I am hoping that this coral is indeed a long tentacle plate coral, Heliofungia actiniformis and not a very small branch of a torch coral, Euphyllia glabrescens. They do look rather similar when small. I guess time will tell, if it grows and detaches from the base to become free living then it'll be a plate coral, if it develops new branches then it's not!

The final part of this order was a Sunny D zoanthid (plus a baby bud), during transit the polyp had worked itself free of the frag plug so clearly it had been fragged very recently. My first response was one of annoyance but as I hate the look of frag plugs in general it proved fortuitous, it was a simple matter to dab a bit of glue to the base of the polyp and fix it to my live rock. It opened up within a few hours of introduction and is still there today so hopefully it'll survive. I think it's fair to say I'm now a fan of zoanthids, I'm up to 7 different types now, how did that happen?! ;o)

My second online order came all the way from France, how brave was that!! Ever since I added my first gorgonian I knew that I wanted to introduce at least one other species. I had been waiting to purchase the purple frilly gorgonian that Reefworks supply but as it hasn't been available for months I started searching elsewhere. Sadly gorgonians seem to be a bit of an afterthought at most LFS I have visited. The SPS corals are lined up neatly in tanks but the gorgonians seem to be plonked in without any care to their wellbeing at all, most ending up lying on their sides and being stung by something more aggressive resulting in stripped branches or worse. Fortunately for me I discovered Eco-Gorgs, sustainably-produced aquarium sized Carribbean gorgonians, perfect for me and only a few clicks away. OK, admittedly a bit of a journey was required to get them to my tank but worth the chance i thought.

First in my basket was a small frag of Plexaurella sp. and very fluffy looking it is too.

This was followed swiftly by Isis hippuris, though I have to say it doesn't look anything like images of this species online but what do I know?

...and lastly Muricea elongata because it seemed a shame to only order just 2 corals when they were coming so far. This is the only one that has not fully extended all it's polyps yet. I had to leave all 3 gorgonians on the sand for a few hours after acclimation whilst I went out and when I got back this one had been knocked over, typical! There seems to be a bubbling issue with the two branches that had been in contact with the sand. Fingers crossed it will recover in a few days time.

That's it for the time being, I'll try for some better shots of the new corals later on in the week when they've fully settled in and maybe even a new FTS.  If you've managed to read all the way to the bottom of this post then top marks, you must be a sucker for punishment!