happy NPS!

i decided to wait up and take pictures of some of our more lively NPS specimens...

our orange japanese dendros are very motivated to extend their polyps, but haven't just yet. i can tell they're def thinking about it b/c they've puffed up their flesh up to the very edge of their tubes and stuck their tentacles out just a hair. i'm guessing they're still testing the waters.

the blueberry gorgonian is like a stick covered with baby blue colored snowflakes and the yellow symbiotic polyps on our orange sponge are super happy as well! they're out everyday several times a day.

phytoplankton culture experiment

after about 3 days my first batch of phytoplankton crashed and i had to throw it out. i tried another batch (LEFT) that same day and within 24 hours i had dark dense chunks settling at the bottom, which is one of the first signs of a crash. the first two batches were made with a warm water saline solution like the kind i used for hatching my brine shrimp cysts while my latest culture (RIGHT) was made with a cold water solution. i figure since the phyto-feast lived in the fridge the warm water was probably scorching and shocking the poor little phytoplankton. either that or my live phyto-feast is really old and is probably all dead. i guess we'll see how it holds up. so far so good!

UPDATE: 2013-04-30 

i ended up throwing out my second batch (LEFT) and starting over with a cold water solution.   sadly, both are starting to go translucent after only about 48 hours.  i started a thread on reef central to enlist the help and advice of others and they're saying i may be better off trying an isolated species as reef nutrition's photo-feast is a mixed bag. luckily, i had gotten fed up with all the failed experiments and ordered some photo-food formulation and a nanno culture from aqua farm nursery DOT com off of eBay the day before! i'll keep you posted how it goes...

ps: i make sure my culture vessels have plenty of aeration via my little DIY air bubble lasso! :)

lemon yellow sun coral colony

thought i'd post an updated picture of our new super happy lemon yellow sun corals. it's pretty little but there a bunch of little baby heads budding on all sides! yay for eBay! :)

cherry rhyzo

someone listed this gorgeous cherry rhyzo on eBay right now @ $275 or buy it now for $325! if i had that kind of $ to blow i'd be all over this bad boy, but anything over $100 is just nuts to me...

our latest acquisitions...

orange japanese dendros + yellow sun coral! this is my first eBay coral purchase(s) so not sure of their survival rate but i really do hope these bad boys thrive in our tank!

imma grow my own brine skrimpz!

i sat in traffic for over an hour yesterday just to go to my LFS only to find they didn't have any frozen hikari brine shrimp with spirulina in stock!  no NPS corals either!  grr!

i've decided to grow my own b/c it's not worth the drive to the LFS (for the cheapest price) anymore and it's not worth the overnight shipping costs even if i order in bulk. i'll keep you posted how i get this show on the road...

update:
dug through our misc aquarium supplies and found a couple air pumps, an old crusty DIY refugium and remnants of a brine shrimp hatchery kit. i cleaned off everything and planned to hatch brine in the little hatchery doohickey then grow them out on our window sill in the little refugium next to the main tank. wish me luck on my little brine shrimp breeding adventure!

update:
i ditched the DIY refugium and went with a larger sterilite tub so the critters have more room to grow. i'd like to have multiple cultures going so i'm going to try growing some tigger pods in a tub as well along side the brine once i have my phytoplankton culture established

really great TED talk by enric sala about the current conditions of our coral reefs!

http://www.ted.com/talks/enric_sala.html

our latest acquisitions...