Sadly

Sadly I have lost one of my corals, it has been eaten by something and I have no idea what did it. As you can see from the pic below this is what it looked like, as you can see its nice and healthy waveing its tenticles around in the water flow, even tho it gets most of its energy from the lights it still collects food partiles from the water or it did while it was alive






This is how I found the coral one morning, as you can see half of it is missing and a bit of it is lodged in the rock away from the main coral body. I tried to save what I could by moveingf it top a different location and had hopes for the next day or so as it seemed not to be touched but on the third day I awoke to find it totaly eaten, andI still dont know what did it as as far as I know there should be nothing in my tank that eats corals, Ive been very carefull with what I buy and put in there

feeding update

Well so far mandy the Manderin isnt using the feeding station so Ive now moved it to a different part of the tank thats more secluded in the hopes that the fish will eat from it there. Ive also started to breed copepods for the fish and will be uploading some pics of that at a later date ( dont want to post everything now lol cos I need tokeep you interested and looking forward to new posts lol)
Anyway Ive uploaded two small vids of mandy eating which I hope you will enjoy watching as much as I enjoy watching her.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8R4Sug_aSM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2n5ppOZYjM

new experiment

Well the title says it all, I was talking to this guy on a fish forum about feeding manderin fish andhe said about this new typ of feeding station he was testing and wanted feed back on how well it works, so I said I would help him so he sent me one and this is it. Its totaly clear so that you can watch your fish eat, it has a nice sized entrence for even the fatest manderin fish (lol) and a handy feeding tube in order to "squert" the food (copepods) into the feeding station. for the time being ive put the station in the middle of the tank with the entrence pointing to the cave like spaces at the back of the tank where mandy likes to roam for food, I will think about moveing it to the side of the tank thats more secluded if i dont see any sign of feeding. Ive only had the station a few days and although ive not seen mandy use it yet she might be useing it at night when im in bed for all I know. Anyway I will keep the blog posted on any updates with it

Ive also included two other pics, the first shows what looks like a "phantom" cat laying in the tank, no idea what caused the reflection lol becouse I dont have a cat.

Last pic is of mandy herself, its a pic thatshows off her colours much better than most of the pics ive taken of her so wanted to share

mandy pics

I thought I would post a few more pics and a small vid of mandy the manderin as now she seems to love to pose for the camera I hope you enjoy the pics

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TU8ty52m-Y

The New Fish!!!!

Yayyy the new fish have arived!!!!! and as you can see the fish place has sent them very well packaged lol, tho seriously im very happy they take such care that their fish arives well protected. The two fish are called Mandy ( A Green Mandarin Dragonet) and PJ ( A Pyjama Cardinal )

Where are they !!!!!!!

Yayyy found them and starting the aclimatisation so that they get used to the temp of my tank and then I slowly add some tank water over the next hour so that its not such a shock to them

Awwwwww isnt Mandy a stunner !!!!!!! just look at thoes colours.... hopefully once Mandy settles down more I will be able to take better pics

And here is PJ... also a very colourfull fish

update

Well I have a new update. I got a feeding station for the marine tank. Its a piece of plastic sourounded by foam so it floats and its attached to the side of the tank so that when you feed the flack food to the fish it stayes in one place and not float all over and getting sucked up by my filter




This shows the station in use



I also bought a brine shrimp hatching station so that I can grow shrimps to feed both corals and fish. I forgot to take a before pic lol so you have to make do with the pic of it in the tank



I also have a small vid of me giveing my anenome its first feeding and if you look closely you can see that it starts to react to the shrimp before it even touches the anenome, almost as if it could see it lol


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xR3dX2GaCN4

Also I should also have me two long awaited fish delivered on friday, yayyyy!!!! lol I will be sure to post a new update then

Anemone

Ok time for anouther update and as I had a new coral delivered I thought this was the perfect time. I decided to get a green Anemone. Im also waiting for a brine shrimp hatcher to be delivered so I can get fresh food for both corals and fish..

This is the Anemone on a small peice of live rock



This is the Anemone in the tank after its been aclimatised to the temp and water conditions, its just starting to open up

And here it is fully opened up

I thought I would post a update on Nemo and Ellen, as you can see they are growing great and very lively

Lol this is one of the hermit crabs that decided to try and climb up the side of the tank, the little bugger only made it half way up before falling down and makeing his way over to the rocks

new filter

Well I thought it was time I made a update on the blog and as I had to buy a filter I thought this was as good a time as any. I had wanted to get something new either the Marisys or the reefpack both have combined skimmers which would free up much needed space in the tank as there would be less pumps/pipe work inside. I had been looking around for the best deal when the desision to buy was taken out of my hands when the external filter I was useing decided to give up and pump water all over the floor instead of into the tank !!! So it was a rush to get the first one I could get and I ended up with the Marisys 240 which as you can see in the pics below is kinda big and kinda blue.... lol

First pic shows the top of the filter and its inbuilt skimmer system




This pic shows the only bit that attaches to the tank the front bit hangs into the water and sucks up the water through the grills and down to the filter, the return water is returned to the tank from the small pipe you can see pokeing out




This pic shows the whole filter system

This pic shows the tank with some of the rocks rearanged opening up some interesting areas to put new corals Ive also readded the old powerhead so it directs the flow of water so it flows along the back which the old filter did