I just found 2 polyps on the back that are orange with green skirts so yay! Another form!
Right on, very cool!
Sweet! Nice collection of corals to start off and at a good price to! lol
The mushrooms are likely all the same species even the red one. Smaller offspring will look different until they grow out a little. I think those are Discosoma striata, but I could be wrong. One of the few mushrooms I could actually attempt a full scientific name on. For sure Discosoma which are probalby some of the hardiest corals out there.
Off to a good start. Keep us updated.
Jon
I’m still getting over it. Tehehe. I finally have a tiny reef. 
There are a couple “mystery” polyps on the rock that have yet to open up. Cross the fingers it is something else. 
I was just looking at Dr. Mac’s website and drooling over other zoas. I wish I could go to the trip, but I have an “Ag Ambassador Retreat” to go to. And of course it is mandatory. Oh well.
Good for you. It’s always nice to find hidden polyps.
^:|r ^:|b ^:|r ^:|b ^:|r ^:|b
Well I went away to my cabin for a weekend with my dad so that we could do some bonding, to come back to the fact that ends up my Coralife Digital Timer Outlet thingy decided it doesn’t like the timer feature… so it turned off the lights. Judging by when I checked it Friday afternoon, the tank hadn’t seen light from possibly 12 pm Friday til 6pm today. I wasn’t too worried though because I had read about tanks that didn’t have a problem with the lights out for 5 days when trying to fix a hair algae problem (which by the way is gone in my tank). Everything looked peachy after some lights on and I’m now doing the lights manually til I figure out another solution. I read now about the Digital timers and apparently this is a common problem, so I e-mailed Oceanic/Coralife asking about what to do and if it is still under warranty or not (I think I might be just out of reach if it is 30 days). I really hope they can fix it because I paid a pretty penny for that sucker and it only lasted a month! I’ll keep you updated on that situation.
But now I have another situation, it looks like one of the polyps has a gelatinous brown goo over it, it is just one polyp and I can still see it through the goo. Is this bad? I would think so but what do I do to get rid of it? Also it looks like I might have a bivalve in the midst of the zoa rock, but you can only clearly see it when the zoas are still retracted. I will try to get a picture of that and the goo tomorrow when I get the lights on.
Hum… Look forward to pics as it will be easier to say, but the brown goo could be some sort of bacteria or algae. If so try to blow it away by pointing a power head at it, pushing water at it with a turkey baister, or by lightly brushing it with your hands.(always wash hands before and after putting them in the tank, especially after touching zoas)
Timers can be a pain in the butt. When I went on vacation a couple of weeks ago I messed up and used an old PC to control my lighting modules and it had the wrong time. I think the lights were on only at a night time vs the day time, so it took them a while to get adjusted back to normal timing. No easy answers with that one except I’ve heard the reef controllers are pretty good at keeping things in line.(only $400-500 if I remember correctly)
Jon
Most of the digital timers I have used fail within a year. Even the indoor/outdoor models. I went back to the $7.99 manual with the red and green pegs and have not had a problem since.
Yeah so I have heard about the timers. Yes I loved my dinky $10 Superfresh one. I just gotta get a 3 prong outlet adaptor for it. But I think I fixed the issue with the power center, and it wa sort of my fault. The direction are VERY confusing and I think I understand what it was trying to tell me, and now I think it is going the way I want it. Not entirely sure yet, but we will see at 11 am lol.
Ok I will try to blow off the goo with the turkey baster. I think the bivalve was there but died, because it was closed up last night all of a sudden when the lights went out. We’ll see today when the lights come on. Also what do you think about bristle worms? I’ve heard they are ok then I have heard they are absolutely awful. I have one in the zoa rock. I pulled out one that I saw when I first got it and now I have either one large one or 2 smaller ones.
It all depends on who you ask. My opinion from reading not experience; Small ones are good if they get large squash um.
99.999% of bristle worms are good 99.9999% of the time. The bad rep they get comes from when they eat dead things. You can’t blame the guy who drives the hearse for killing a human and can’t blame a worm for cleaning up your mess.
Some bristle worms will bother dwarf sea horses, but you are going for a reef tank which will have too much flow for a dwarf sea horse and with the fish you have mentioned a sea horse would never have time to get the food.
There is one bristle worm out there that can seriously hurt human beings, but we just about never ever see them in captivity. Actually with the thousands of thread posts about people panicking about bristle worms in there tank I have never ever seen a photo of that type of worm in captivity. I would have a photo of them out in the wild, but I left my camera home on that particular day.
Some people spend a good bit of money on traps to catch and remove bristle worms. Some people spend TONs of money on fish that might possible eat the worms. Some people pay good money to buy bristle worms from people. As Al said it is mostly a matter of opinion, and from my stand point most of the people trying to remove them aren’t removing them for the right reasons.
Jon
Ok that is what I figured… why would people consider it bad if it eats dead things? Thats just nifty. Unless they think they hurt the fish and killed it? I don’t know. Yeah I was considering sea horses at one time. I REALLY wanted them but realistically I can’t have one since the tank is going to be sitting by itself for two week. Unless… I were to have a tank at home that was ready for them. Which mom would not like at all. It would have to be a tank that I set up when I come home, and have to completely break it down when I leave. Which doesn’t really seem doable. Maybe I will turn my 2.5 into a dwarf seahorse tank some day. But for now I need to get the hang of saltwater in general and make sure I can take care of this tank before doing anything else.
The goo isn’t aparent any more… which is confusing. But the lights are still off so we will see soon. The bivalve whatever it is is definitely alive, because I put the baster in to see if I could see any goo coming out and he was open and he closed up from surprise. I have a dentist apointment so I will try to get pictures when the lights just come on and I will post them whenever I get back.
[quote=“a1amap, post:148, topic:596”]
Most of the digital timers I have used fail within a year. Even the indoor/outdoor models. I went back to the $7.99 manual with the red and green pegs and have not had a problem since.[/quote]
+1. 5.99 at walmart and unless you bump it or the power goes out you’ll never need to reset it again.
Hey bugbabe if you are looking for any more rock for your tank let me know. I have some extra in my sump that needs to find a home soon.
If you want to take the time to read this thread
http://reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1375191&perpage=25&pagenumber=1
It has awesome ideas for small tank setups. The links are some of the best small tank threads on Reef Central.
A while back it was asked about a auto top off that would look good. The same guy who is responsible for the tank above had this in his photobucket account. 
It is easy and can be far away from the tank. The only 2 requirements is that it must be elevated above the tank and sealed.
Almost there!! Most posts and almost the most views.
Ok well I fixed the timer… it was my own fault. I just can’t understand their directions. Oh well I will use it til it stops working. I have another timer just in case this thing dies.
Ok picture time
The big circle is the bivalve I found. The smaller circle is the polyp that now looks like it has a white crustish thing over it. Some pods have been all over it recently now.
A closer shot of the same polyp
Another polyp that has some egg things attached to it. I traced one with red.
I have tweezers if I need to pick anything off. I also have this thingwhich I believe is a stomatella. It came out of the rock and looked like a garden slug and it had kinda half a shell looking thing from what I can see. I also have this goo starting to cover the rock. You can kind of see it to the left of the polyp in the 3rd picture. Oh and it seems I have something in the rocks that shoots out feels all over and shoots in and comes out another hole. I believe they are spaghetti worms, and they are irritating the zoas around themselves. Should I just frag the zoas off the rock and put them on another rock and get rid of this rock? It seems to have a bunch of random stuff. lol Should I worry about the spaghetti worms? and attempt to move the zoas away from the holes the worms come out of. I’ve read about fragging zoas and it looks simple but I don’t want to attempt it unless someone feels it might be neccessary.
Hahaha about most posts and most views. Didn’t mean to take up the entire board but I have so many questions lol
As for the rocks icy… I might take you up on that. The DIY rock is going slow, I think I’m going to cure each piece and put them in very slowly.
Al that thread from reef central is nifty. The way he made walls are AMAZING! I might want do something similar in the future. PREEEETTTY.
I dont like you bug!!!
You stole the one thing I had here. LOL.
That rock has to be the most active rock ever.
[quote=“Gordonious, post:138, topic:596”]
[glow=red,2,300]It’s sad how little some of them can speek[/glow] [/quote]
You go for a summer job in Tehran and see how you make out. >LOL<
PS- This thread is a whopper, at what point will it, “automatically split due to performance issues”?
Hahaha I’m sorry rawdawg. And yes the stuff I have listed is only the stuff I have mentioned. It came with lots of larger pods, a couple bristles, and I found some chitons today. It was a nutso rock lol. Who knows what else it has on it. Only time will tell.