Our 37 Gallon Display with 10 Gallon Fuge.

[Uslanja]

The other inhabitants are looking good. Just for fun a few quick photos under this mornings actinic light.

A small paly frag is showing growth.

Ricordea Florida

An Astrea Snail was knocked from the glass and two Nessarius Snails set upon it in a hurry. The Astrea was able to keep its trap door shut and the marauders quickly moved on.

 

[Reefmack]

on the chalice.

 

[QuentinB]

Agreed with the chalice, but it was definitely worth a shot! Live, learn, and try again later, right?

Your actinic shots are amazing. I have an empty nerite shell thanks to our nassarius snails now. I think it was them, anyway.

 

[Uslanja]

We're not giving up on the chalice, there is still a little bit of flesh with some colour, so........ maybe???? We would really like to know what we did wrong and we still don't know much about those corals. Sometimes finding solid information can be a real challenge!!

 

[soco]

Chalice Corals (10/31/09) / Species Spotlight - Quality Marine


Chalice Coral, Echinophyllia aspera, Plate Coral Information and Coral Pictures

Its not the best info. pretty basic, and you might have already heard all of what it has t say but i found this little bit of info onn them!

 

[Jetbkk]

Good luck with the chalice and hope it pulls through for you...

 

[Uslanja]

Thanks Soco! We read as much as we could find prior to purchasing the chalice and we felt a fair degree of confidence that they we're durable enough to survive in our tank. We had read that the chalice coral is easy to keep and can adapt to a variety of conditions. We didn't have that kind of luck. We are not sure what we did wrong and are suspecting that it might have been bleaching due to improper lighting? We're still confused as to how to determine the lighting requirements. We took this coral from a frag tank under T5's and placed it deep in our tank under MH. We have no way of measuring the light intensities between the two tanks, but we would have thought that they would be somewhat similar. We saw the tissue plumping up and it appeared to be growing, but with a slight beige/brown colouring. Not knowing how they grow or what to look for we thought it was likely then that colouring would occur as the tissue growth continued. But once the tears started, the tissue quickly failed and pulled away from the skeleton within 24 hours. We would like to try another chalice coral but at the same time are admonishing ourselves for killing this one. We need to study and learn some more and regain our confidence before we try another one, if we ever do. We keep many animals on our small farm, culling and putting down livestock is a fact of life, but we are not calloused to it. When something dies we feel the failure of our responsibility.

 

[PIMPALA]

sorry about the chalice. new FTS?

 

[Uslanja]

Hi Jason! I'll work on a FTS over the next few days. But in the meantime, I went snooping in Tracy's photobucket account again and found a couple of neat photos! These things are an unknown to us. Tracy has good vision, but then she's much younger than I am, lucky me!! Anyway, Tracy saw these very small things in the rock that looked like little zoa polyps through a magnifying glass. And that is in fact what we had thought that they were. But then Tracy grabbed a couple of photos of them. These pics have been blown up as large as she could get them before they grained out. We're not sure what they are. In the photos they kind of resemble a feather duster but through a magnifier they look like a polyp. They are the coolest fluorescent green/yellow colour! So, if anyone has any ideas what they might be, let us know!!!

Our mystery things!

Sorry about the photo quality but these have been blown up quite a bit from the original.

 

[DesertOrchid]

Perhaps it was not your abilities to keep the chalice going but the health of the chalice when you bought it. I know that the effects of mis handling 2 or 3 months prior can really affect the survivability of a coral. Good luck in your next attempt ! I'm sure you will do well! Great looking tank!

 

[crespeto]

That is sad that it is still degrading, hope you can figure out what the deal is and get it to start to come back. Thanks for the pics, those are very cool little critters you have growing there hope they start to grow and get bigger so you can really check them out.

 

[Uslanja]

The chalice skin tissue has completely pealed away leaving nothing but the skeleton. It has been removed from the tank.

 

[QuentinB]

uh-oh... I'm sorry to hear that, guys...

 

[steved13]

 

[Uslanja]

Still not sure what we did wrong, or even if we did anything right? Need to learn some more!!

 

[Robzilla]

I'm sorry to hear about the chalice. Keep us posted on the next one, as I would like to own one in time and have picked up some great advice from this thread. We all learn through each other's trials and tribulations.

 

[Uslanja]

Hi Robzilla! A person I met the other day at ARC (A Reef Creation) near the Buffalo airport was telling me that the shape and growth pattern of the chalice is indicative of the tank position and lighting requirements for a chalice. We had read that they adapt to high lighting right down to low lighting. We don't think we had it in a high light area, so we're wondering if it should have been moved into more light instead of less light like we had done. The thought shared with us was that flat chalice growth indicates a horizontal position with higher lighting and the irregular peak and valley type of growth indicates a lower light position. But we really don't have enough experience to comment. Any one else have any ideas, we're all for learning more before we try again?

 

[Uslanja]

Water parameters have been checked and they are not looking very good.

Temp. 75.3
Salinity 35
Spec. Grav. 1.026
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 0
Phosphate 0
Ph 7.8
Alkalinity 5.6 dKH
Calcium 320
Magnesium 1380

We are addressing the calcium and alkalinity issues with 25% daily water changes. We've been reading and reading and reading some more regarding water chemistry and very nervous about dosing to correct things. So until we're more comfortable with the chemistry side of things, we'll go at it with water changes.

 

[GlassMunky]

Your "mystery things" looks like little baby palys to me... i have a few on a rock in my nano. you alk/ca seem to be the only things that are low. why are you hesitant about doseing to correct the problems? thats what the 2-part is made for. just dont overdose and o by the directions on the bottle and you should be fine.

 

[Uslanja]

Hi GlassMunky! Been a few days since we checked in here. We had tried dosing but our parameters appeared to be getting worse instead of better. We read somewhere that the two part dosing product was intended more as a maintenance solution as opposed to a correction. We decided to conduct daily water changes to get things back in line and then return to dosing. But the thing that we do not understand is why the alk and calcium had dropped so much when things had been quite stable with just weekly water changes. The only stoney coral that we have is a monti cap. We did place a chalice in there but it failed within two weeks. Surely that didn't throw our levels off? But we have been conducting 25% daily water changes and everything visually appears to be doing very well. Hopefully I'll get home in time tomorrow to have some daylight left and conduct water testing to see what the numbers are.