taking a new direction - Page 19

Here is the first house we went to, about 1 hour north of where I live.  That's the guy and his wife in the second pic.  The larger tanks in the first pic are all 60 gallon breeders.

Here's the second joint we went to.  This is the garage of a guy who is a member of my reef club...

And here are the frags I got for $18... Two staghorns and a bonsai.  The stags look great.  One is about 2.5" and the other is around 4" tall.  The bonsai is a little shifty looking with some tissue regression in the middle of it.  Obviously it's too early to tell for sure, but I am pretty confident that it will make a turn around.  Keep in mind these pics were taken within a minute or so of a 15 minute ReVive dip...

Smaller Blue Stag                                                               Bigger Green Stag                                                             Bonsai

Essentially what happened was I split a 5"X5" colony of the green stag with my buddy Klaus for $35 + tax.  We took it to Gregs garage and he cut it up into 4 pieces.  Klaus and I gave him two of the smaller pieces that didn't look so hot, just as a friendly gesture and for fragging it for us with his coral saw.  He gave me the blue stag and bonsai in return.  I'm definitely lucky to know such great fellow reefers.  

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gemmy 

OMG, I am SOOO jealous.

I try not to take it for granted because I think of how hard it would be for folks like Meowzer to be a lone reefer in the middle of nowhere (no offense to Meowzer, but I've read her comments on her NSLFS). 

The frags I got are still looking good.  The bonsai is starting to come around.

For the last few days my devils hand has been pissed off.  I think it may have started when the reactor pump overheated.  Usually it has it's polyps fully extended but the last few days parts of it has turned yellow.

All of my other corals have been looking fine until this morning.  I woke up and a colony of pocillopora was half dead.  I think that some of the sloughing of the devils hand settled on the poci and irritated it.  I gave both corals a 15 minute dip and swish in ReVive and fragged the death off of the poci.  Here's a pic of it compared to the size of my fist.  

I am now more than ever motivated to get the 30 Breeder up and running...  http://forums.saltwaterfish.com/t/390687/30-breeder-reef-build

Quote:

Originally Posted by SnakeBlitz33 

Ouch. Sorry to hear of your troubles!

It is what it is, and it's part of the hobby.  I was given two staghorn frags today, which was a nice pick me up!

I'd love to share pics of the new frags I got, however the site is not allowing me to post new pictures for some reason 

Krista, thanks again for the offer. That was a pretty awesome thing to do.  Fortunately, the forum is again recognizing my new images.  So....

Here is the blue acro frag I got for free (foreground)  I had two frags glued to that plug but one fell off so I just stuck it haphazardly into a rock.  The bonsai is in the background and is looking good, though it is not in focus in the picture.

Free green acro.

I like to mount corals sideways on frag plugs because it provides more surface area to glue and also more surface area to grow upwards.  If I had good fragging tools and the frag was thick enough what I would do is cut it lengthwise down the center of the stalk and glue both halves of it to a single frag plug.  This way it will encrust the plug faster and has more area that will turn into stalks.

The devils hand has made a turn around.  I assisted it with it's shedding via a turkey baster and it seems to be on the recovery side of things.  Hopefully I will be relocating all of the softies to the small tank either today or tomorrow and I will post pics of all the frags in their new locations.

Well yesterday I snapped off a large branch from the big teal staghorn I have and traded it for 6 frags from one of the frag farms I posted picture of... the pictures aren't very good because my glass is dirty and I just snapped them real quick to share my excitement with yinz guys...

This guy has beautiful teal polyps                                        Purp body w/ bright green polyps                                         Blue/green echinata... super excited about this one

                                                                                         Green body/ blue coralites/ lime green polyps                       Cream body w/ green polyps

Also snagged a box of reef crystals for $45 while I was there.  I'm going to mix up a w/c and do some grade A service to the tank on Wednesday.  I'd like to start placing the frags where I would like them to go now that I have more room without the softies being potential problems.  I do have a colony of purple mushrooms that have started to take over on one rock that has a nice blue acro growing on it.  Luckily the rock is removable so I will go to town on that, too.  Will post pics once the tank is ready.

Here's a better picture of the bonsai acro I got a couple weeks ago.  Bright blue stalk with lime green polyps

I was wondering where his birds were and he said since it was a nice day out, they were enjoying the nice weather... no leashes or anything.  That was crazy to me.

Yeah, they scare me, too.  Those beaks can do a lot of damage!  

I'm excited about the frags.  I can't wait to see everything grow in.  I'm thinking about getting a chiller.