can't believe you broke the sps curse. Two thumbs up bud

My old tank had zoas a large colt coral, a lot of large frogspawn, hammer, and torch corals. I'm wondering if it was something more to do with too many large frogspawn/hammer/torch corals. Not really sure but now those large lps corals are gone I can keep some sps, I still have 2 frogspawn and one torch but it's not 6-7 of them like I used to have.

No doubt there is chemical warfare going on in there Laurie. Although tricky, with sufficient carbon and adequate flow throughout the tank softies and SPS can both thrive in the same tank.

Hey Tony,

Sorry to see you had some troubles with your tank but it looks like things maybe on the upswing for you!

Thanks for the kind comments everyone. It has been very nice to see SPS gain a toehold and it's certainly exciting to think of the possibilities down the road. Disappointing about the clams but pragmatically I think these things do happen.

As for the chemical warfare, I do think this is a possibility. I do also think that fish choices may not have helped matters (I know now, for example, that my butterflies are not completely innocent in matters regarding SPS death, although you'd think munched polyps would not account for massive RTN'ing but who knows).

Still lots to learn. I'm doing zeovit with this setup but picking up some frags from lobsterboy - although the corals are doing well overall, they did not retain their colour. There is a peach milli which is brown but with blue tips - the pink prostata has stayed pink but it is not the popping pink/fuscia it was in his tank - and the yellow pocillipora and yellow acros - while still "mostly" yellow - are nowhere near the highlighter brightness that they were in his tank. Is this lighting? Or a function of different water or simply sulking that they are in a new setup? I hope to seek out some knowledge in this area. I did have SPS in the past but it's been so long I may as well be a complete noob in this area. Sooo .. let the real fun begin I guess. :)

So today I moved over the crosshatch trigger from the cube. I've been meaning to for a while but I wanted to do it on a weekend so I could be around to deal with the catching, acclimating, and then the inevitable subsequent watching "is everyone OK???"... And then, one thing after another, weekend after weekend, never an opportunity arose. So this morning I thought, better try this now or it will be yet another weekend slip by.

I did a netless transfer using my fish trap. What a much nicer way to do this over chasing with a net, there didn't seem to be much stress at all, just maybe a little patience while waiting for the fish to swim in.

First I tried baiting it with mysis, but that didn't work out too well, too small I think. So I tried some krill and that was the magic: she swam in within a minute after adding that. I pulled out the trap and poof, 45 minutes later she was in the new tank.

First she found a good spot to lock herself in with her trigger fin. Solid as a rock, just watching the world around here. All the while the cleaner shrimp were all over her. :lol: Once in a while she'd twitch them off but they'd come right back. Anyhow 30 minutes after being let out of the bucket she was swimming around as if nothing was ever the matter and that this was her new home all along. No issues with any other fish at all, although I wasn't expecting much trouble since they were all together in the same tank before.

Here she is! In her "blue" colour mood. I'll have to try to get a photo when she's in a green or yellow mood. It blows my mind how much she can change.

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/IMG_1906.jpg

This one shows the red in her fins a little more:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/IMG_1918.jpg

This one would have been a great shot of her but the lieutenant tang swam into view as I pressed the shutter button. Ended up being a perfect shot of the tang. What are the odds eh! If I tried to get a shot of the tang it would never work out like that.
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/IMG_1905.jpg

Some random other shots since I had the camera out:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/IMG_1922.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/IMG_1913.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/IMG_1908.jpg

Frags are all starting to take off..
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/IMG_1914.jpg

One of the BTA's has shown up (way in the back there):
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/IMG_1912.jpg

I had to spend a few days out of town this week for meetings for work. On the way home from the airport I decided to take the opportunity to take 5 minutes of "me" time (since I never have any free time anymore without kids in tow) and stop in at Gold Aquariums since it's not far out of the way home from the airport. Turns out they had just landed a nice shipment of corals so ended up walking out of there with a couple new things. Ran into 24storm at the store, it was nice to catch up with him and say hi.

Bali:
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/IMG_1902.jpg

Aussies (two of them, they are both probably the same coral, the colour isn't showing up quite right, I'm excited for their potential though, and both of them have little red acro crabs):
http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/IMG_1904.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/IMG_1904.jpg

http://i305.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/IMG_1910.jpg

Wow Tony - That's really starting to look nice.

I really like your fish trap idea. Might have to use that myself.

- Brad

Unfortunately when I was down stateside this week my wife texted me mid-week that yet one more of my clams had died. :( Bummer. The clam was looking fine when I left but I guess that's how that goes. .. fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, fine, dead. :( I'm down to two. No idea if their number is up soon too or if the serial-clam-death stops with this last one. I am wondering if maybe the problem is the zeovit and there isn't enough nitrate in the water for them.. No idea but I'm thinking I'm going to do some reading up on that to see if anyone else has ever wondered if there might be a correlation.

Things are looking good Tony.

Thanks Brad! And yeah, the trap is great. Only thing is it's large-ish so a little cumbersome to work with and maneuver into a tank. I had to get it right into a corner in my cube to get it to fit right but once I had it pinned in place it worked out OK. I used a couple magnets to help hold it up, it was a super solid grip but better than flopping around in the current otherwise the fish are not going anywhere near the thing.

If you want to borrow it sometime let me know. :)