Coral Beauty: Most Dramatic Introduction Yet

After two weeks of quarantining, the coral beauty started eating pellet foods and even started responding to some training:  I tap the tank gently ten times with the cap if the food container right before feeding.  Also, I noticed a white spot on its fin during the second week, and did a freshwater dip to clear that away.  Overall, my first attempt at quarantining was useful.

When I added the coral beauty to the display tank, the drama began.  First, it some how got caught in the net.  I thought it was its gills at first and fins, but after gently loosening the net around the fish, it appeared the fish was actually biting the net and not letting go.  So it took about five minutes of some careful shaking, and eventually it released the net, but only after it was nearly unconscious.  It sank immediately to the bottom if the tank.  It lay there for a little while, but finally came around and started swimming slowly.

The yellow tang immediately swam up to it and began brushing up against it.  I realized that it was wielding its blade, which was quite worrisome.  I read that the coral beauty should be one of the first species to introduce and the yellow tang the last because it is more territorial, but I didn't plan well enough in advance.  I'm hoping the coral beauty is hardy enough to avoid the tang.  I may ads some more live rock to the tank as well.

On the second day, I was happy to see the coral beauty chase down some pellets during feeding time.  And after hiding much of the first day, it has been exploring the tank much more, nibbling at the live rock.  The tang still takes swipes at it every now and then, but the coral beauty, which is currently the same size of the tang, seems capable of avoiding it.  There seems to be a slight discoloration/faded color in the scales of the coral beauty on the left side near its tail, which might be from the yellow tang's blade.  The coral beauty is swimming around fine, though, so hopefully it's not serious.

Coral Beauty One Week in Quarantine

At first, the coral beauty was not eating anything in my quarantine tank.  I fed some flake food and pellets, but no luck.  The next day, I tried the nori that my yellow tang likes so much.  But after a day the coral beauty mostly left it alone. 

I called the LFS and he said they were feeding it mysis shrimp, but he thought it was also eating the algae in tank.  Since I didn't have any mysis, I decided to wait until the weekend to try that.

Later in the week, I noticed that the pellets were disappearing and eventually, the coral beauty started tracking down the pellets as soon as I dropped them into the tank.  Now, after a week, the coral beauty seems to be doing well.  It looks healthy and is eating.  If all goes well, I'll add it to the display tank at the end of this week.

Rose Bubble Tip Anemone One Week After Split

The anemone is looking good one week after splitting.  Both halves are almost fully formed again -- transforming from semicircles to complete circles around.  Also, the right half has finally moved out of the snail shell that it came attached to from the LFS.  I had to move it around a little and to lean it up against the top of rock, but I think it was also getting pushed around a bit much from the Turbo snail.  Here are some pictures from the past week.

Father's Day Present: A Coral Beauty

I got to check out a new LFS today and they had some Coral Beauties.  It's been on my list so I went ahead.  I liked the coloration of the one I bought, particularly the blue on the edges of the dorsal and tail fins.

This will be the first new fish I introduce via the quarantine tank.  I had a bit of a scare with white spots on my Yellow Tang the week I bought it, so I decided from then on out I would be quarantining all new comers.  Although the Yellow Tang seems fine, now, I figure quarantining is a good habit to get into.

I brought over the foam filter that's been sitting in the refugium of my display tank.  I removed some sponge fragments and detritus. I also turned the power head back on and added ten more gallons of new salt water.

Overall, the water parameters looked good.  Phosphates were a little high at 20 ppm, but pH, ammonia and nitrates were fine.

Fire Shrimp Molts Again

It seems like the shrimp has been molting every two weeks or so.  I'm not sure if this is normal or not.

Rose Anemone Splits

I woke up this morning and the first I see is that the Rose Anemone has split into two.  That's exciting at first, but I've also read that they sometimes reproduce like this when they are stressed in some way.  I'll have to research this.

In had been hoping it would soon release the snail shell it came attached to, and yesterday in had noticed that it had really started spreading out and widening it's base.  But wow.  Never would have guessed this was going to happen!

Rose Bubble Tip Anemone

I went into a LFS yesterday, looking for some more live rock and possibly a Xenia pulse coral.  I had read from multiple sources that Xenia is a good soft coral to start with, and that it's been shown to host anemone. They also have a fascinating pulsing behavior.  However, the LFS guy talked me out of it for a couple of reasons.  First, he said it grows like a weed, which I had read as well.  To contain it, he suggested keeping it on its own rock.  He noted that a lot of people start with it, and then eventually regret it after they get more established and accumulate more invertebrates.  Secondly, he noted that while they are fairly hardy, when something does go wrong with them they can basically fall apart really quickly and really cloud your tank -- or worse -- release some sort of toxins that can wipe everything else out.  He actually steered me towards getting an anemone, even though others in online forums suggest waiting for a year.  He pointed out that if you have the right lighting, water conditions, and feed the anemone properly, you should have no more problems than you might with starter soft corals.  So I thought about it for a day, did some more research, and then went back today and bought it.  Here it is.