cyano

A couple little quick hits I wanted to share. As of Sunday December 23rd I officially added the first sps corals to the newly restarted tank. The best coral LFS in the area started ordering from ORA and have hired better employees that have that store really turning around so seeing some SPS I really could not resist so I purchased a purpleish acropora and a BoP Birdsnest which I dipped, acclimated, dimmed the lights down a bit, and within 10 minutes of placing them in the tank the polyps were fully extended. I have been watching them closely the last few days and they show no loss of color (they actually are a brighter color in my tank vs the store tank) and no bleaching so I am happy about that. The acro already has encrusted a majority of the plug and the birdsnest is starting too a bit so I was curious what the growth rate is typically (do they have to fully encrust before they sprout new limbs or grow upwards?) and how long of an acclimation to my tank am I looking at before they start growing?

On Saturday I added the cleaner shrimp back to the main tank and was getting the remaining coral frags in my frag tank ready for taking to the LFS for credit and noticed that there was bryopsis and bubble algae starting to grow in there.....not willing to share either with anyone else or fight that battle again I sadly removed everything remaining from the frag tank and disposed of it .

Since adding the duncan back to the main tank it was feeding easily with the cleaner shrimp being in a separate tank and also I no longer house zoanthids which the clowns were living in. So now the female clown has taken to the duncan coral and as of this morning was chasing off the cleaner shrimp and feeding the duncan which not only is funny but makes me very happy . Also since the clowns are no longer "hosting" zoos and xenia they seem to be going back to their original color meaning the black from the zoo stings are starting to fade slowly.