I have always had a hankering to try a non-photosynthetic gorgonian, it's crazy I know because feeding them can be so hard but I think they are incredibly beautiful corals. Apparently out of all the species available Menella sp. is reportedly the easiest to keep however in all my years of running a reef tank I have never seen one for sale in a shop. Then amazingly a tiny frag became available online. I reasoned to myself that surely I could find somewhere to squeeze in something that small and before common sense could prevail an order was placed. 

The frag arrived looking great and the polyps were fully extended in the pot, I placed it on a frag rack whilst I pondered where on earth I was going to put it. It really is lovely, delicate yellow polyps extending from a dark red central stalk. I have been offering it a variety of dried and frozen foods not really knowing what it prefers to eat or is indeed the correct size for it to swallow. Out of curiosity I decided to film how it would react when I dumped in a load of live Tigriopus copepods in to the tank. I didn't really expect to see much so I was quite surprised to actually catch some action when played back. The footage is not great having been digitally zoomed in on my phone and then cropped on the computer plus the speed has been slowed down but you can actually see pods being caught and more excitingly being ingested! Keep an eye out for the pod that gets caught on the right hand side of the branch and at the time stamp 1.02 you can see the polyp actually swallowing it! Pretty cool stuff I think.

Time will tell if I can manage to keep this beauty alive long term. Now that it's fixed in place I should be able to track any changes be they good or bad.

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.

A few months ago I popped into my LFS to pick up some frozen food and naturally had to have a look around the livestock tanks. I spotted a nice Tubastrea micrantha (black sun coral) in one of the coral trays, I don't see many of these available and this one looked to be in good condition too with no loss of tissue (the polyps were not extended obviously). I was tempted to purchase it but space is tight and it's another mouth(es) to feed so in the end common sense prevailed and I walked away. Then weeks later we visited again, the coral was still there only this time it looked sad, flesh had stripped off from a number of heads leaving exposed white skeleton beneath, it was starving to death. Rashly I offered to take it off their hands but only if they discounted the price a little. Amazingly they agreed to this and I acquired myself yet another non-photosynthetic coral. It remains to be seen if this is a good or a bad thing.

When we got home I decided it might be a good idea to frag off the 'healthier' part of the coral and discard the section with stripped heads. However when I tried to chop it with some coral cutters I was barely able to scratch the surface of the coral. I passed it over to my husband but he could not frag it either. The skeleton of this coral is tough, I mean really, really tough! I have since read that  the skeleton of T. micrantha is denser than most other corals on the reef, so that explains that then, lol. So not only have I a sad looking, partially stripped coral but one that also has damage to the base of one of the branches too. Doh!

After acclimation I placed it on the sand for observation. I fed the fish and waited for some sort of a response which turned out to be a big fat nothing! OK, not unexpected since it was during the day but when I checked again after the lights went out there was still nothing going on. I fed the other NPS corals but the black sun remained just a motionless black stick, not a single teeny, tiny tentacle popped out to say hello. It must have been so starved that it couldn't rustle up enough energy to do anything at all, even at night. Clearly I needed to make a special effort or this coral was going to be doomed.

So the following day I decided take direct action. I had heard about the 'bucket method' (feeding of sun corals in a separate container outside of the tank). I have never needed to try this before but now was the perfect opportunity. I took the coral out of the tank with some water and placed it in a small jug then I sat the jug in a makeshift water bath. I did this to try and keep the temperature from falling too low during the feeding process. I don't know if this was entirely necessary but as I had the equipment available I thought I may as well use it.

I made a diary to document my progress.

Day 1: I raided the freezer/cupboards for every food stuff I had that I thought might be suitable. Mysis (PE & Gamma), Krill pacifica, mussel, lobster & fish eggs, Calanus, rotifers, Reef Roids and Reef frenzy. I mixed them all up in a glass and let them marinate in some Selcon for good measure. Then I pipetted the food mixture gently all around the coral and waited for 40 minutes. No tentacles appeared and I can't say with any certainty that any food was ingested so back in the tank it went, this time I placed it up in the sump for easier access, this coral was going to be in and out of the tank a LOT in the next few days/weeks (and maybe months!).

Day 2: I removed the coral for feeding twice today, once in the morning for an hour and once the afternoon. There was still no sign of any tentacles but a couple of polyps may have taken in some tiny bits of Mysis. I noticed that the food had to be in direct contact with the mouth for anything to happen. I decided, going forward, to lie the coral on this side so that as many mouths were pointing upwards as possible and then turn it over and repeat.

Day 21: The sun coral is starting to look a bit perkier now especially when it's undisturbed in the sump, some of the tentacles are already partially extended in anticipation of feeding time.

Day 24: It occurred to me today after looking at some of the original photographs of the coral that I could no longer see the area of the coral that we  damaged when we tried to frag it, plus some of the stripped heads are no longer visible either. The flesh has regrown over them, just a couple of bare areas remain now namely where the Aiptasia RX was used. Also it's becoming a little easier to feed with some of the tentacles able to capture food. 

Day 34: The coral looks ready to take its chances in the display tank. It's eating well and almost all of the heads are extending nicely.

Day 36: The big day! The black sun coral is finally fixed into position in the display tank.

I'd like to say that it's all plain sailing from here onwards but that's not strictly true. Firstly this coral will NOT extend its polyps when the lights are on, not even right after the fish are fed, at least it hasn't to date. So I have to wait till after dark to feed and then because well, it's black(ish) in colour, the tentacles are almost impossible to see (unlike the bright orange Tubastrea polyps). So unless I want to squirt food all over the tank I need a light to see what I'm doing. So a torch is required and then the tentacles start retracting again in pretty short order, argh! This is frustrating but I usually manage to feed 60% of the heads which is not bad. I understand that this coral shares nutrition throughout the whole colony so not feeding all of the heads shouldn't be too much of a problem.

In closing this NPS coral is certainly harder to care from than the Dendrophyllia or the orange Tubastrea but naturally looks pretty amazing when open. Long may it continue...

Apologies for the delay in updating this blog. I'm pleased to report that Tinker the male Pintail wrasse DID survive his cave diving experience after all. He refused to eat for three whole days following the ordeal but then on the fourth day he tried sampling a couple of small pieces of Mysis and then on subsequent days he ate a little bit more at every feed. He was feeding pretty much normally again after two weeks. His wounds (lost scales and shredded fins) repaired themselves in short order once he began eating again. I hope he's learnt his lesson not to go wedging himself into small holes in the rock again.

Jessie the Rainford's goby continues to do well. He is such a sweet little fish, keeping to himself  whilst going about his daily business hunting for pods and sand 'chewing'. I think he's grown a bit since introduction. 

On the 18th December, Edna the Possum wrasse will celebrate her second birthday in the tank. She is visible much more than she used to be, the corals have grown in and she can weave her way through, under and around them without exposing herself to the scary open water too much. This doesn't apply at feeding time when she's out ready and waiting to sneak a choice piece of her favourite food, PE mysis. 

Hop the Nudus goby celebrated his second birthday on the 3rd December, he may have lost his mate back in March but he is still going strong along with Al, his shrimp partner. Red Spotted pistol shrimps are reported to only pair with Whitecap gobies but after mine sadly jumped out (through the mesh of the tank lid) the remaining shrimp accepted the Nudus pair instead. They have been together for well over a year now.

Before I sign off for today I'll leave an updated shot of the two Dendrophyllia ​sp. because why not! They are just so pretty.  Notice the Pintail wrasse sleeping under the rock.

I hope to update more fully in the next couple of weeks. I have just one new coral addition to report.

I'm amazed to report that after just 29 days the new Dendrophyllia is already growing a new head, I guess that means it's happy with its location and receiving enough food. A stunning looking coral! 

Update: I just realised after posting the above that there is another head developing on the right-hand side of the same polyp. It's hidden when the coral is extended.

First the not so good news, I think it's time to hold my hands up and admit defeat when it comes to growing Acropora in this tank. As soon I discovered the first red bug I feared the worst and that certainly appears to have been the case. I had hoped that the corals would be able to survive the parasitisation and for a while they did, growth was slow but steady and colouration looked OK but that's certainly not the case now.

To recap, patient zero (the frag that initially infected the tank) was removed leaving a small amount of encrusted base in the tank, it looked like was going to recover and regrow but progress was so slow that the neighbouring Montipora (Superman) completely overgrew it. The second casualty was the Purple-tipped Acro, this suffered from STN (slow tissue necrosis) and had to be fragged. The remaining frags encrusted onto the rockwork but again showed little upward growth and were in time also overgrown by the Superman Montipora. A tiny bit of encrusted base still remains but I fully expect it to fade away or be overgrown eventually. The A. loripes suffered from RTN (rapid tissue necrosis) whilst I was on holiday and the Red Dragon joined it shortly after. The A. echinata frag also suffered from STN and was fragged but the stress of it being chopped up caused the remaining branch to strip overnight. So this leaves me with Acro #1 which has browned out and is soon going be completely overshadowed by the green plating Montipora (I never actually wanted any plating Montipora in this tank but this was a freebie coral that came in along with an order of encrusting forms and I, like an idiot, assumed it was encrusting one too, duh!). I also still have Acro #3 which is struggling for space next to the large gorgonian and A. gomezi. At first glance the A. gomezi looks OK but is actually covered with red bugs and has put in no upwards growth since its introduction almost 18 months ago!! There is one Acro however which appears unaffected by the Red bugs and that is the A. hyacinthus (aka Red Planet), this has grown relatively well and in fact has to be fragged because it keeps growing too close to the front glass. I cannot find any trace of red bugs on this coral. So there you go, it's no more Acropora for me, perhaps I'll be able to restock one day when the remaining Acros have gone and the red bugs have died out without a coral on which to host.

In case there was something going on with the water quality that I wasn't aware of, I did send off for an ICP analysis but nothing stood out as being particularly troublesome. Strontium, Barium and Manganese were on the low side. Nitrate and phosphate were 3.02mg/l and 0.09mg/l respectively which is the highest they have been but not excessively high, I think (maybe someone may correct me?). Still, I have decided to run a little Rowaphos to bring the phosphate level down a touch. Full results can be seen via the link below.

lab.atiaquaristik.com//share/b48ad381479dbd88fe1c

Now for the better news the rest of the livestock for the most part appears to be doing fine. The Stylophora, Montipora and Seriatopora are all growing great (a bit too great actually). The lovely beach bum Montipora is thankfully still with me and finally showing signs of growth too. Unfortunately it's becoming harder and harder to see with the ever increasing Stylophora situated to the left of it and monster green plating Montipora to the front. Very poor planning on my part! I can just about catch a glimpse of it from the top but I suspect that won't last long. I would really love to move it to somewhere viewable but I doubt that I could get it off the rock even if I had somewhere to move it to which I certainly don't.

The Superman Montipora has completely filled in the space I gave it and is also growing up the side of the Crocea clam shell. I'm not sure if I should be worried about this development or not. I hope it doesn't impede the opening and closing of the clam.

I had to remove the original frag of the Cyphastrea as the Favia next door was remorselessly attacking it every night and anyway I never liked the look of the horrible frag plug. Since its removal the remaining encrusted part has been doing much better, it's still very close to the Favia but seems to have fallen under the radar for the time being. As for the Lobophyllia I had always been led to believe that they are super aggressive corals but the Utter Chaos zoanthids are creeping ever closer without any form of retaliation at all. I had rather hoped that it would keep them in their place.

Sadly the Sunrise Goniopora frag is not doing very well at all. To begin with, it looked great and was encrusting on to the rock it was placed but then it started to lose colour and not extend as much. I tried moving it to the back of the tank where it was less bright but that didn't seem to make a difference. I can only assume that it hasn't been finding enough food, I do target feed it Reef Roids and Goniopower but generally not more than once a week. I am ever conscious of the size of the tank and nutrient levels.

​Here are a few recent photos:

Now on to the new stuff!

With the loss of a few of the SPS corals I was needing a pick me up and a new coral (or two as it happens) does the job. For ages I had fancied adding a short tentacled Fungia to the tank and since we had a trip to London planned a couple of weeks ago, a visit to Advanced Aquarium Consultancy was in order. I couldn't believe my luck when I found out the night before that they were having a sale on some of their corals. I thought "fantastic", I can save some money for a change, lol! However instead of saving money I spent more as I ended up buying a Scolymia instead of a Fungia. Oops! It's funny how that happens when shopping for corals. Needless to say I could have spent more, waaayy more, thank goodness I live too far away for AAC to be my LFS. 

Apparently it's a Reverse Bleeding Apple Scoly (more red colouration than green) and here it is after 4 days. I've been watching it like a hawk, worrying about its health because frankly it's the most I've ever paid for a coral even with 20% off. Oh but it's so pretty.

I had to remove 4 Asterina sp. starfish from the base of the coral after acclimation, I felt bad about killing them but really, I have enough pest issues to deal with as it is. It's a shame because close up they are quite nice to look at and I love starfish but I can't take the chance that they may become a nuisance. Although it would be cool to have a Harlequin shrimp...

Here is the Scoly in night feeding mode.

Just after the addition of the Scolymia I discovered an online seller was offering frags of Dendrophyllia sp. Now I really love sun corals (well, non-photosynthetic corals in general) and my current Tubastrea is doing great so I convinced myself that I could squeeze in an itty bitty frag of a Dendro too. The coral was listed as yellow/red in colour with the polyps opening up in the day time as well as the night. However as you can see the coral is a uniform lemon yellow in colour with not a hint of red at all (unlike the one shown on the website). No matter though it looks healthy and really rather lovely, it opened up much faster than I expected and is taking in food already which is excellent. I can confirm in my vast experience of one week that it does indeed stay open during the day. I'm not convinced that it's a Dendrophyllia sp. however, it could alternatively be a branching Tubastrea sp.  Only an examination of the skeleton will determine that for sure and since I'd really rather it didn't die I'll be content without a positive ID.

Here's a full tank shot to end this update.

It's been almost 5 months since I first discovered the sun coral had released planula larvae and I am happy to report that they are all still all alive and kicking, if still quite small. One is actually doing much better than the rest, mainly because it settled in a better location enabling it to catch more food. It's actually big enough to feed directly now so I've started offering it tiny bits of mysis and krill. Unfortunately the zoanthids growing below have begun to obscure the view of it from the front so it's becoming quite difficult to photograph. I poke them with a pipette but they are opening right back up again before I've even managed to grab and point the camera. Eventually I expect they will grow right up the rock and maybe smother the sun coral completely which would be a pity, perhaps by then it'll be large enough to fight back?

Additionally I discovered today that the original Sun coral has been at it again! There are at least five more new babies dotted about the tank now and I'm sure there are probably more hidden away in there too. It must have happened fairly recently because these larvae haven't even developed any tentacles yet. The one below runs the risk of being overgrown by the Montipora above in a very short space of time.

As for the baby Heliofungia buds, they continue to do well and in fact the entire underside of the coral is ringed by them now. I am not exactly sure how many there are at this point but probably at least six. They show no sign of detaching yet.

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.