Fragging Cespitularia

Hey there everybody,
I bought a cespitularia frag that is just going nuts in my tank. I haven't fragged it before and was curious if it is fragged similar to Xenia. The way it is growing is its sending these runners across the sand (probably looking for a surface to attach to). Can I just frag it in the water and chop the runner so that I can attach it to a plug? Will the runner recede back to the mother colony? Or should I make two cuts. The first cut by the base of the mother colony where the runner begins and a second cut at the end of the runner for the frag. Anyone have any experience fragging this coral? Thanks everybody

Tank Stuff For Sale

I had Jeff delete my other posts as some of the stuff was already sold anyways. I am going to post everything in this post and update as stuff sells or as I add new stuff. I live in Valparaiso but I work in Michigan City so I can bring things to work if you want to meet there.

I have two dart sequence pumps that I will be putting up here soon. One has newer bearings and a new seal. The other needs a new seal.

6' Hamilton Prostar 3x250 watt DE MH fixture with 160x2 watt VHO actinics

A Hamilton 150 watt DE MH single fixture

An Oceans Motions 8 Way

I will get pictures and prices of the above especially if there is interest.


$175
Acrylic sump made out of 3/8" cell cast acrylic. It is 48" x 24" x 17". The bottom still has the paper on it that is why it looks like that. The paper can be taken off.





$150
2 x 30" Reefbrite Actinics. They have a new power supply for each one which has been soldered as you will see in one picture.




$15
Pinpoint PH monitor no probe


$15 Each
2 x 20 gallon long tanks with egg crate at the bottom if you want to use as a frag tank


$10 Each two of them
28 Watt Aqualight T-5 Fixture

How much water from established tank to skip cycle?

I have a nano tank that I'm currently looking to upgrade (yay $1/gallon sale!) to a 29 gal. I want to turn my 10 gal into a sump for it this summer.

My issue is I have a fish and snails in my current tank and can't leave it set up while the new one is cycling since I'm using some of the same equipment in the new tank.

Is using the 10 gal of established water and live rock enough with new water in the 29 gal to skip the cycle? Or is it possible to add a little bit of new water every day that it would work? It's only a $5 damsel so I'm not out a lot of money if he dies, but I've kind of fallen in love with him and would be sad.

Am I stuck in the cycle or just the way it will be?

Mt tank is nearing day 50. I have 4 snails, 3 blue legged crabs, a clown and a bi-color

I started with BRS reef saver rock and seeded with red sea reef mature kit.

Tank is a 40 gallon but total water volume is 25 gallons. I do a 4 gallon water change every 2 weeks now and i only feed once a day and my fish eat 80% of what i put in. The other 20% gets moved around and they can't find it.

My ammonia, and nitrites are zero but my nitrates never go below 15ppm. I do not have any algae issues and the water is crystal clear.

I do run biopellets in a reactor and the skimmer actually has calmed down a lot and barely produces any more. So I assume the "poop" level in the water is very low.

Now I may just be asking a lot of a new system especially since I started with zero live rock and 15ppm isn't too high. I just assumed with such a low load system that i'd be in the 5ppm range by now

Still snowy Sunday

Bleh, today will be an adventure.

Brown jelly disease.

I introduced a healthy looking gold frogspawn, gold torch, and 3 neon green frogspawn frags. The place I got them from had cyano in the coral tank. And the idiot scraped the neon green frogspawn. I have scraped a ton of corals before and they all lived. But he scraped it in his tank with some nasty bacteria in it.

I didn't dip the corals because I was out of melafix. I acclimated them and put them in my tank. The first neon FS died within two days. Then one of my corals closed up. I saw the brown crap spewing from the coral, and the start on another coral.

I overnighted some coral revive. Dipped all of my corals. And I thought I was fine for a week. Well this weekend it's back. I started on my neon hammers I have had for several years and killed half of it. I have dipped some corals twice within the past few days. I currently have half of my Euphyllia in a quarantine tank.

Has anyone tried the lugols iodine/ iodide treatment?

What can I do? I thought I would come up with something with the 30 minutes I spent on the heavy bag today. And all I ended up with is bloody knuckles and sore hands. Normally if I get stuck on something 15-30 minutes of punching something really helps me think. This heavy bag has kept me out of jail so many times! Lol! now that I got my emotions out of the way. I am ready to work on a solution, but need some advice. I have never dealt with this. And can't find any solid info except people losing all of their LPS or use lugols.

I borrowed my buddies UV sterilizer to kill the infection, and I am mixing 50G of salt water for a large water change tomorrow. I have been careful not to stir up the "brown jelly" in the tank. Because if it lands on a coral it's like a flesh eating bacteria... There is no stopping it.

This is a little heart breaking. Everything was growing and healthy until I added that coral. I am going to keep at it until I find a better solution. Should I treat my coral with Lugols? Right now I am using coral revive. It seems to be slowing it down but Inam tired of breaking off heads of corals from large colonies. I remove anything that shows a symptom into the quarantine tank. who specifically has dealt with this?

Just can't get them to survive

Don't get it. Very glad I only got a firefish this time over - but it too lasted a bit over a week before coming out and seemingly just passing away of no identifiable causes. Had to grab it away from the shrimp, which was at it during the last living moments. Tank parameters seem OK even though it's a small tank of 10g. Usual salt fluctuations but never more/less than 1.024 and 1.028. Water changes once per week of about 20%. Ammonia is zero. Nitrates/nitrites either zero or close enough to it, at least according to the tests.

Corals seem all fine (gonopora is the only one that hasn't opened lately.) The scarlet cleaner shrimp is his usual active self. The 2 porcelain crabs are their usual active selves, waving their fans for food. Hair algae is less than I'd expect, which is quite good. Using Purigen and Phosguard, which seems to work, in a mechanical filter. So now a purple firefish, two red firefish and a Rainford seem to have just expired after about a week - yet everything else seems to be fine. Wondering if I should try another hardy fish of a different sort or just give up trying to have fish with this tank.