150 watts would still be fine for that size tank
Well I figured out if I put it to 73 it stays at 81 degrees. So glad to have figured it out now. Some how the levels have managed to stay the same even though there was that huge temp rise.
I moved the mushroom because he fell into a hole and he has expanded a little since the move, I have a tripod here so I will try to get a good picture of him soon I just got to find where I put my magnifying glass.
By the way, that pH meter is so nifty and handy. Thanks for the recommendation! I love it!
I would be surprised if a feather duster ate even newly hatched brine. Typically they eat very small planktons. Brine also wouldn’t be the healthiest foods for most marine animals, it is typically used just as a treat to mix things up or as something live to trigger something to have a feeding response while it is being acclimated to captivity from coming out of the wild. I had always believed in the past that feather dusters preferred phytoplankton over zooplankton anyways.(but then again have never seen a single article where someone actually cut up a feather duster or analyzed their waste to see exactly what they are eating.)
Hope all is going well.
Jon
Hrm, well how would know if they were eating them. I mean if I put in newly hatched brine shrimp and put them by the feather dusters will I be able to see them catching it? I might go to my fish store down here and see if they have anything interesting. Not going to get anything though until I get my refractometer and can tell exactly what my salinity is.
I don’t know that you could ever see a feather duster eat. they usually only eat micrscopic stuff like phytoplankton. They’re not sticky like anemones, they filter feed by catching things in the feathers and drawing it in to the mounth.
On a related note: If you decide to target feed a feather duster, do it from the underside of the crown and not the top.
Yeah, as Craig said, you’d be lucky to actually see it. I suppose the only way you could see if the duster put it in its’ mouth is if you moved it near the glass and purchased a digital microscope and watched it carry it down to the center of the “feather”. Even that wouldn’t really tell you a whole heck of a lot though.
I am sure dusters are like some corals and attempt to consume just about everything. You can think of them like toddlers. They will try to put just about anything into there mouth even if it is impossible for their body to digest it or even too large for it to ever fit in their mouths.
Careful experimentation would be needed to identify the exact food consumed by a feather duster and even with that there will be differences between species and possibly differences between individuals at different points in there life stages. The tests would have to be replicated with several different foods and a control. Most likely you would need to collect hundreds of feather dusters of the exact same species which would be incredibly difficult. During the time of the experiment you would probably have to cut up and examine the stomach contents of some of the worms along the way to see what they are consuming. The experiment would also have to be continued for over the course of a year as many aquatic organisms can go incredibly long periods of time with out consuming any food.
Even knowing that a feather duster had consumed something and stayed alive for a year may still not be enough to know if you were feeding the animal something healthy that it could grow off of. Many corals live in captivity for about a year and seem to mysteriously begin to melt away. This is beginning to change as some people throw a massive variety of planktonic foods into their tanks to try to keep animals alive that we were told in the past were impossible. If you have ever read someone posting that their corals eat better then they do… they are probably not joking at all.
Large Caribbean angelfish can survive in captivity to sexual maturity and perhaps even to full growth(many many years), but sometimes die young because they do not consume the marine sponges they require to live out their lives. Who knows if the same happens to feather dusters. I am sure no human has ever watched a feather duster from plankton size to death in the wild and recorded it’s live span.
All this said most hitchhiking feather dusters live many years in our aquariums even when no food at all is added. Many people, especially LFS shop keepers, will suggest feeding phytoplankton to your tank to help feather dusters. Some authors are now suggesting to add nothing additional to the tank at all for feather dusters as they will probably survive regardless of what you add.
Sorry I talk too much. Good questions deserve good answers.
Helpful fact from the recessses of my mind… feather dusters consume what they get on the bottom of their crowns, not on top. So if you do try to target feed, squirt it not on the crown but just a little upsteam so that it flows past the underside of the crowns. Now if you ask me for a source, im not sure I could find it, but it had something to do with x-mas tree worms, a close relative of your common feather duster.
Well very interesting facts. 
I went to my LFS down here and well… it is much more expensive compared to school. It would be cheaper to order corals online with the shipping and everything. However there was one Zoo rock that I really liked. They were metallic gold in the middle. Am I ready? They are having a sale of 15% off for the summer. I don’t want to get it til I test my water salinity and get the exact number but, I just feel like I have been waiting for so long I don’t even know when to begin haha! I did get to see a whipfin wrasse which was pretty. I also saw a possum wrasse. Cute little buggers.
Now again though I find my self in trouble… lol my nifty little metal piece I bought is now stuck to the faucet adapter because I forgot to put the O-ring between the two pieces. I have sliced up my hand trying to get it out and have tried about everything. I’m going to attempt to see if anyone else can do it but it doesn’t look good. So looks like I’m going to be in the market for another faucet adapter plus the small metal piece again. I might just buy the Faucet adapter set from Air, Water and Ice. This sucks cause of course I don’t have any extra water and I just got my new Auto Top-off and I want to try it out : Just my luck huh?
Oh and that mushroom has blown to somewhere in the tank. It never got attached to a rock and it was on a tiny piece of the tubing so it was very unstable. I’ll let you know if I ever see it again. lol
[quote=“bugbabe623, post:128, topic:596”]
Well very interesting facts. II have been waiting for so long I don’t even know when to begin haha![/quote]
Welcome to the addiciton side of this hobby. This is the best time to practice your patience. Waiting is essential to success in life (not just reefing…at least that’s what i tell my kids ;D)
Make sure your paramteres are stable and your salinity OK before adding anything, but if memory serves from following this thread, you’re probably ok.
[quote=“bugbabe623, post:128, topic:596”]
Oh and that mushroom has blown to somewhere in the tank. It never got attached to a rock and it was on a tiny piece of the tubing so it was very unstable. I’ll let you know if I ever see it again. lol[/quote]
Oh you’ll see it again, right next to your new favorite coral, and there won’t be just 1, you’ll find 20 scattered throughout the tank :-)lol
Hahaha yeah that is what I figure, it will probably pop up randomly and then I will have a bunch all over my tank and I will be so confused lol!
Well the faucet adapter isn’t looking so hot :BB) so I’m going into the market for another faucet adapter. Do they sell these at lowes? I didn’t see anything but I could have missed it. Marine depot has one that is cheap. Ends up I was wrong about the Air, Water, and Ice kit, doesn’t look like they have one. But I’d prefer to be able to go to lowes to get it soon.
Hopefully the refractometer comes tommorrow, if not though I might go and look at the zoo rock again. It looks really nice and would be a cool one to have. Fairly big rock with lots of polyps so that might be why it is pricey. But it would be a neat one to frag eventually
Hey bugbabe, I have a faucet adapter that you can use till the new one get here. It is brand new. If you buy the part from air water ice, I will give you this one and when it comes in you can replace mine.
This is the exact one I have.
http://www.airwaterice.com/product/FAUCETADAPTOR/Faucet_Adaptor.html
Well I’m in Richmond, VA now. But thanks for telling me where the piece that you have is! That is what I was looking for. I might ask if there is a version of it for sale at Lowes but I will get that one most likely.
I have never seen it there. Not many normal plumbing requires that setup.
bug
all you need is a pair of channel locks. it doesnt matter how stuck it is you can get it apart with channel locks. you may need two pairs but you dad or neighbors should have them laying around. very common tools.
Hahaha I love my dad. I handed it to him and he got the monkey wrench and a pair of needle-noses, I thought he wouldn’t be able to do it but he did it. Yay dad for saving me $15! Whoooo!!
My car has to go in tommorrow to get fixed (a bicyclist ran into me at a stop light in Bethany Beach <_< ) so I might go to the fish store and pick up something. They get 2-3 shipments between Tuesday and Friday so they should be getting one tommorrow. Excited now. I saw a black clown goby there too, very cute looking. I like the look of them. Same with that possum wrasse, not a lot of color but lots of little personality.
I know it about patience. I’m caught between I want something but at the same time I want to wait to make sure it is ok but at this point I’m going to wait until next year 
Not a bad thing but I want something interesting, not that it isn’t interesting, in fact I’m seeing my first “reef bugs” showing up on the glass and crawling on the rock work. Also my DIY rock is very close to being ready. Hopefully if I keep up it’s maintenance this week, it will be ready to go in by time I move back. Then I shall have all the lbs of Live rock that I need. whoo hoo!
Add the DIYS rock slowly. As with just about everything else doing things too quickly can throw your chemistry off. You could for sure add some zoanthids or mushrooms now, but I would wait on fish if you can till you know what your salinity is. I would especially wait if the reason you are holding off is because you don’t have the extra cash for the refractometer.
Just curious, was it a drunk biker or just a little kid? lol
Jon
Cool well I’m running to the store and I will see if there is something now that catches my eye. Yeah I don’t want to add fish yet until I get back to school. I have a refractometer and it should be here today I hope. Plus I intend to spot feed the zoas, so adding food to the aquarium in a “constant” form should help my bacteria to hopefully build a little more.
Hahaha, as for the biker, as far as I could tell it was a foreigner. I was at a yield right turn that had a median between the straight-away and the right turn on red lane. I guess he thought I was still going to stay there but I could go and he ran right into the side of my car. I say a foreigner because when i stopped he kept moving and when I tried to stop him he waved me off. Of course I was freaking out thinking I hit him but when I thought about it he hit the side of my car and he was on the wrong side of the road and on the sidewalk (which is illegal from what my bf’s mom was telling me). So I didn’t feel as bad but I was just mad that he didn’t stop. Oh well. My parents are paying for it since it wasn’t my fault and a freak accident. :
Yeah it was the bikers falt and it is probable that it was a foreigner. They are down there by the hundreds. Most of the small shops down there have two stacks of applications at all times. One of the stacks is the people capable of having a clear two minute conversation. The other half are usually the ones who can say, “I need job” and leave… It’s sad how little some of them can speek, but they live in small two bedroom apartments with 15 of there friends and at least 2-3 of them speak clear english and help the others out.
If you end up getting any corals or anything else make sure to take pictures.
Jon
I HAVE CORALS!
Well I went in and I saw these green stripe flourescent mushrooms and that was that, I fell in love. I told the guy and he pulled the tape off saying the price and what nots, then someone came in who ended up being Andy Roderick’s brother and the owner of the store’s son. They talked for a half an hour and I was stuck there. I started looking more and more and then all of a sudden he realized I was still there apologized profusely and the owner’s son felt bad for taking up the time that he took out a small zoa rock that I had been drooling over and said I could have it because he felt so bad for making me wait for so long. I didn’t object, it had at least 5+ polyps of 3 types on the rock. I’m floating the bags as we speak! Pictures soon to follow. :o
EDIT: As promised pictures!
There are about 10 mushrooms that I’m aware of, I think there is a red one under the 1st mushroom picture.
Are these palys?
They are really nice. The green and orange Zoas are really nice.