Frag time!!

It been a long while since I fragged anything, last week one of the local pet stores in town- Animart in madison, WI was giving away some of their never used fixtures for free. So I took a couple coralife power compact 130w lights to replace what I had on the mantis tank.

For some odd reason the green star polyps just dont do very well in my 92 corner reef while most other sps and lps as well as soft corals are thriving. So before the entire colony comes to non-existence, I decided to frag it and attempt to revive the colony in my mantis tank.

I then also fragged some soft corals, mostly pumping xenia and Kenyan tree, they grow like weed.

Plumeria growth

My first post on plant. My wife thinks I have a green thumb- I either keep plants and they will prosper or I can revive near death or what appears to be dead plants back to life. I wouldnt say its a gift, but I think everyone can have the green thumb if you pay attention to you teacher duirng high school biology, do research and learn from others' failure.

Plumeria is not a plant you can grow outside yearound in Wisconsin. I managed to keep it alive (with leaves) through the winter indoors, and then placed it outside when spring hits wisconsin in May. That's right, spring did not arrive until may thus year.

You can tell the growth rate difference, pale green on the stem is from last September through this april. And the dark green from the tip two inches down were all in the last three months!

Coral growth august 7th

An update of the coral growth on August 7th. Looks like the miami orchid in the middle are starting to form little bumps- a little more protruding than before

Anemone buddies

Here is my quartet of rosy bubble tip anemones (RBTA)

At the very first post of this blog was when I bought two of them from a fellow hobbyist. They were both small at that time. Over the last few months despite not so good lighting and my make shift water filtration system, they have survived and grown. 

I actually just sliced one of the larger one into two halves recently with a razor blade. I prepared a tub of water from the tank in a restaurant dish tray. I added a few drips of lugol's solution to help disinfect the post trauma anemone and to promote healing. I removed the anemone from the water and sliced it. Soaked both halves in the solution for 10 minutes then returned them back into tank. It's been two weeks now both anemones are happy and accepting hand fed food again!

Mantis update

My mantis is still alive and punching! In case anyone is wondering...

I am not really sure whatthe growth rate of this creature is. But since I've acquired her (yes, we are sure it is a her), she has only molted once that we know of.

She has been constructing and reconstructing her burrow into a chain of chambers. So we cant exactly be sure whether she's molted deep in her hole. But in order to maintain the water quality, I try my best to feed her minimally- one meal every three days with either a silverside fish or a cooked shrimp.