More fun and a Mushroom

So its been one stumble after another the last couple days. I really need to do a water change. First error was in my math. Ended up with a bin of water that was too low in salinity. Fixed that by adding more salt.

Got the bin cooking was going to come home and change it and through a miscommunication my water change water now had my live rock curing in it. Ok Plan B. Luckily I had 10 gallons of RO water at the house so I started another bin cooking for water change. Checked the last bin of Smitty's water (which the LR was SUPPOSED to be in) and the parameters were too bad. No water change option there. So hopefully tomorrow I'll get my first water change in and eliminate some of the Nitrates from my tank.

So on the other hand there is good news. I have another coral :) Last night while moving a rock around to fit the power heads while working on the flow I felt a squishy under my fingers. So I took my finger off that spot and arranged the rock where I wanted it. By that time the substrate was pretty stirred up so I couldn't see much. Didn't see much as it settled and by bedtime I could see this dark blob of something.

So this morning when I turned on the actincs there was this green glow over on the rock. Looking closer I saw what appeared to be a mushroom. Turning on the bright lights confirmed it. I have a small (nickle/dime sized) mushroom coral plopped up there on the rock. So now I have three varieties of coral: Brown polyps, zoas and a mushroom. Not bad for "hitchhikers" on my LR purchase.





So the small critters seem to be hiding. Haven't seen my mini bristle stars since the other day. I'm hoping they are just in the rocks. I have an orange and white stripped snail that showed up again today on the glass. Gliding back and forth having a grand time. A bunch of feather dusters and some worm like thing. I saw it stretching from the top of a rock hole down to the lower edge and then "snapping" back. Pretty cool.

I got my second order of LR today. 45-50 pounds or "Prime Caribbean" rock. Well I'm not impressed. I was hoping for lots of life and it sure seems pretty barren. Got two very large pieces of what appear to be ancient plate coral and nearly no squishy masses or anything else. I'm going to have to break the larger pieces into smaller ones to get it into the tank. Maybe I can find something inside the coral.

In the meantime here are a couple of links to some live action shots from my tank. Hope you enjoy this.

Really poor focus of the little worm thing stretching out for food.

A tour of my major polyp rock. This is currently the center point of the tank.

A video of my mushroom glowing

My Emmy, OK my emerald crab

My Peppermint sneaking around in the dark