Saturday, August 22, 2009

Bubble coral imminent failure

The bubble coral isn't doing very well....it makes me sad. The bubbles haven't been out for about 5 days now and there is algae growing on the skeleton....sad sad sad.

I had to walk next door to hasting to look something up on the bubble coral. I have not been able to find any specific information online or at work. But luckily they had a book on marine inverts which stated that the bubble coral will retract its bubbles only when it is being poisoned by poor water quality or other corals...so I'm trying to fix that now.

Monday, August 10, 2009

Saltwater success


I'm way behind on updates on this one, there are lots of new additions and a rearrange.
First I got a great deal in June, two finger leather frags for just under 20 bucks, one has attached well and the other is taking its sweet time. But the polyps are extending so I hopefully they are doing ok.


The only concern was that in such a small tank, leathers have a tendency to poison other corals when they shed there waxy coating. They did this soon after i put them in and siphoned it off just in case, but by then I had already added the bio-zorb and was counting on it to do the trick.

About a month ago I added this guy, i had been wanting a peppermint shrimp and about the time I was ready to add something else he appeared at work so of course I snatched him up.


I decided to do a re-arrange when the bubble coral came in on a shipment to see if I could get it to fit, I actually researched it first unlike the finger leather coral. Shame on me.

And here is some random pics that came out nice.

Sunday, August 9, 2009

Garden Update 1

We will start with overviews of the three beds before we get into details and potted plants.

My first bed:

This year I have:
2 varieties of tomatoes
pees, which promptly died
cantaloupe, story to be told
a giant carrot
jalapenos
2 varieties of zinnias, one dwarf, one giant
white antler looking plants,Dusty Miller
snapdragons that refuse to bloom
sun impatiens
a giant onion
basil
bell pepper plant, very successful
mexican heather
chives from last year
a grapevine I was given, it dominates the picture because it has been trained back on itself ,many times for lack of a proper trellis


Bed 2:
This year I have:
more white antler things
the Rosemary from last year that has been pruned back many times
a little white flowering plant
a mystery plant
a red mexican bell pepper plant that is beautiful
a purple vining flower that refuses to climb, clematis bees jubilee
gladiolus
a maiden head plant
Cosmos that have refused to bloom until now




And finally the 3rd bed, the shade bed:
Caldniums
many hostas
club fern
a red plant
a rescued plant that my boss almost killed
and 2 varieties of fig plant


Ya know, two days ago i could have named all of these....I will have to go look at all the little tags when its light out.

Mistaken Identity

What I thought were Xenia, are in fact not:

I found a wonderful description here on Pet Solutions. The difference seems to be that Xenia has several heads or hands on one stalk, whereas Anthelia only has one head per stalk.

My new secret weapon

I LOVE this stuff:
It does a wonderful job of keeping the water free of toxins from corals and lasts for 3 to 6 months depending on your bio-load. As long as you keep your pre-filters clean that is. That is the only drawback I've seen, I have to rinse the pre-filters about every three days to keep from forming a nitrate spike.

Before I added the bio-zorb, I wasn't using any sort of sponge in the filter, just a back of carbon that I changed weekly. But this has definitely reduced my costs.