It’s so weird how your coral encrust so much and mine barely do at all.
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Fishfoo's IM170 EXT (1 Viewer)
- Thread starter Fishfoo
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OP
OP
It most certainly is! Yeah this thing encrusts like no other. And yeah the seam of the tank is a no-go area for myself as well.@Fishfoo has to be your heartbreaker
Thanks for the recommendation I’ll check it out.
OP
OP
Some do and some don’t. I think some of it has to do with the tank but a lot of it is the coral in my opinion
Ya not sure what I’m going to do :/ for now…..leaving it
OP
OP
WOW! that is right up against it. Looks beautiful though
When I do finally chip away at the encrusting, I'm going to figure out a way to elevate it so it can't repeat what it's already done twice now
I’ve been mounting all my acros on a small rock and then use rigid airline tubing as a peg to keep them modular. If they ever encrusted enough they would have to wrap around into shaded space before making the connection. This doesn’t help either of your current situation I realize haha
Davy Jones
Senior Member
I also get really heavy entrustment on my SPS before any real growth, I have not figured out why it goes to increase the upward growth and less encrusting. To this point I let the coral do their own thing and sometimes they just grow over each other
OP
OP
I've seen this teqnique used and like it a lot
Yeah it's not a common hting for me, just a couple that go rogue and want to takeover an entire rock structure. It is weird how some choose to more than others
I think it might have to do with amount of flow the get. If they are in super high flow they would encrust more to ensure they have a strong anchor to prevent the upward growth from falling off the rock. I personally have only had a couple that grow crazy based and these few happened for be where flow from two pumps intersected and was more chaotic than other parts of the tank. Mine ended up stopping as they would meet the base of other acros.
This is just anecdotal though but there may be a variety of factors at play.
This is just anecdotal though but there may be a variety of factors at play.
OP
OP
Took a couple photos with the camera finally. Colors aren't quite there yet, but ultimately I'm just happy things are alive and growing. Colors will come later.
BC Insanity Teni: Very similar to the JF Homewrecker, but more pastel. Very very cool coral that for some reason never grew in the old tank but has had insane growth since the move.
BC Wild Karrde: One of the corals that hasn't done much, but it still looks somewhat happy which is a plus. Excited to see it start to color up.
BC Cricket Spine: Another coral that didn't grow at all for almost two years, and then once I moved tanks it started to take off. SPS are weird.
BC Super Rainbow: Definitely has lost some color, but is growing!
BC Insanity Teni: Very similar to the JF Homewrecker, but more pastel. Very very cool coral that for some reason never grew in the old tank but has had insane growth since the move.
BC Wild Karrde: One of the corals that hasn't done much, but it still looks somewhat happy which is a plus. Excited to see it start to color up.
BC Cricket Spine: Another coral that didn't grow at all for almost two years, and then once I moved tanks it started to take off. SPS are weird.
BC Super Rainbow: Definitely has lost some color, but is growing!
Heartbreaker is beautiful but encrusts like no other! I use bone cutter and just chip away at encrustment to expose rock. To avoid the encrusting, I started gluing plug end to frag disc and then glued disc to rock. Sits the SPS frag up a bit. While it can encrust on the frag plug it wont in theory encrust down to the rock. I can then remove the whole disc and plug with sps to frag if needed. Not the prettiest but I'm the only one in the house paying attention to the tank so...
Dude that cricket spine! Great job looks as good as Therman or Adam’s!
sidenote: do NOT look at Therman’s FS thread on R2R or you’re gonna start playing Pokémon haha. It’s hard to resist the collector-itus looking at his stuff.
sidenote: do NOT look at Therman’s FS thread on R2R or you’re gonna start playing Pokémon haha. It’s hard to resist the collector-itus looking at his stuff.
What are your thought on a SPS only tank with Anthias as the only fish? That is my plan. I have almost everything I need for equipment to match your setup except I will be going with Kessil lighting not T5s.
OP
OP
Sounds awesome to me! Only reason I don't have anthias is because I don't feed often enough. Thinking about getting some and an automatic feeder though. I'm currently at only 6 fish in the tank and would really like to add some more.
Agree, thinking same thing. Did 30 chromis once, it was ok. Anthias seem to make a reef a reef
I am thinking 8 of them when it comes time just need to figure out what species would be best and easiest to care for. Your corals look great as always by the way
OP
OP
Kalk Reactor has been great. Alk climbed a bit but I'm ok with it, and will naturally go down in time. Ph is now between 8.2-8.4 (up from 7.0-8.1).
I also spent a lot of time and effort both scrapping off sps encrustment from the rocks and cleaning as much bubble algae manually as possible. It took about 10 hours total spread out over a few days. I basically did 1 of 3 large rock structures each night. Below pic is a very small portion of the aftermath. Some nights it was much messier than this
Cleaning the rocks created a lot of bare white spots, and some algae is moving into those spots but I'm not too worries about it. Coraline will cover it back up eventually.
The saltwater mixing station hadn't been cleaned in a long time, so I also cleaned that. Here's what it looked like before. Could be worse, but still pretty gross.
Also cleaned the pump for the first time in 3+ years, however it was surprisingly clean. I guess mixing ro through it along with clean saltwater doesn't beat up a pump too much.
Other than that, just trying to keep things as stable as possible. I have a couple fish in qt, but would rather not say what as my qt luck has never been great (and seems to continue with this batch). Personally, keeping sps alive is much easier for me than fish
I also spent a lot of time and effort both scrapping off sps encrustment from the rocks and cleaning as much bubble algae manually as possible. It took about 10 hours total spread out over a few days. I basically did 1 of 3 large rock structures each night. Below pic is a very small portion of the aftermath. Some nights it was much messier than this
Cleaning the rocks created a lot of bare white spots, and some algae is moving into those spots but I'm not too worries about it. Coraline will cover it back up eventually.
The saltwater mixing station hadn't been cleaned in a long time, so I also cleaned that. Here's what it looked like before. Could be worse, but still pretty gross.
Also cleaned the pump for the first time in 3+ years, however it was surprisingly clean. I guess mixing ro through it along with clean saltwater doesn't beat up a pump too much.
Other than that, just trying to keep things as stable as possible. I have a couple fish in qt, but would rather not say what as my qt luck has never been great (and seems to continue with this batch). Personally, keeping sps alive is much easier for me than fish
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OP
OP
Onto the corals. Received a battlebox and unfortunately had a few casualties due to shipping (cold water). The ones that have survived are almost completely washed out of color, aside from a few. Adam always makes it right though so not too worried.
Here is one that has bounced back quickly however, and might be the most insane frag I've ever had. Yellow and orange polyps with purple and green body. I'm trying everything in my power not to make this guy mad! Also tried some new changes with dslr that resulted in completely out of focus photos, which is a bummer.
Here's a BC Lasermelon which didn't totally lose its color and seems mostly happy
WWC Banana Boom before she gets chopped up for the first time. This coral has almost died on me a handful of times in the past 5 years, but somehow always finds a way to pull through. Very tough to photograph.
And I will leave you with a teaser for what's to come for the expo pre sales Will mainly be trying to sell stuff that's been sitting on my frag racks for way too long, but decided to make a few frags as well.
BC Insanity Teni under blues
Here is one that has bounced back quickly however, and might be the most insane frag I've ever had. Yellow and orange polyps with purple and green body. I'm trying everything in my power not to make this guy mad! Also tried some new changes with dslr that resulted in completely out of focus photos, which is a bummer.
Here's a BC Lasermelon which didn't totally lose its color and seems mostly happy
WWC Banana Boom before she gets chopped up for the first time. This coral has almost died on me a handful of times in the past 5 years, but somehow always finds a way to pull through. Very tough to photograph.
And I will leave you with a teaser for what's to come for the expo pre sales
Will mainly be trying to sell stuff that's been sitting on my frag racks for way too long, but decided to make a few frags as well.BC Insanity Teni under blues
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That aftermath looks like when I try to take out bits of my rock structure to scrape vermatids and bubble algae. Not fun.
Those new frags look nuts!!
Those new frags look nuts!!
OP
OP
Yup, and then you get a million cuts on your hands from the rocks while scraping which then constantly get saltwater in them and then blisters from hours of using bone cutters to chomp away sps skeleton from the rocks
Worth it but man I don’t wanna do that again anytime soon