Elos Mini build thread (new photos page 14)

[Anonymous]

You all remember the original 'octopus ink' heteroxenia I purchased from liveaquaria, which kept losing polyps? And when I investigated I discovered a xenia-eating worm hanging out in the colony? Well, as I mentioned previously I ordered a second frag of it from liveaquaria. Seemed to be doing well this past week, but tonight I noticed a missing polyp. Gave it a freshwater dip and what did I find? Yup, another of those xenia eating worms. I managed to get a photo of it this time before I disposed of it...



No other coral seems affected, not even any of the other varieties of xenia. It seems clear that the frag tank in wisconsin liveaquaria is growing out their octopus ink heteroxenia in must be crawling with these guys.

 

[Anonymous]

Yeesh. Not good at all, but good work in finding it.

I'm having an existential crisis with my tank (see GRD).

 

[Anonymous]

I could use a few of those worms. My tank is overrun with xenia. :evil:

Be careful what you wish for with xenia. I wish I'd never put it in my tank.

 

[Anonymous]

Since the whole point of this tank is xeniids, being over run isn't actually a problem

 

[Anonymous]

Since the whole point of this tank is xeniids, being over run isn't actually a problem [/quote

I really like your tank and have been following this thread.

Talk to me in a year and see how you feel about xenia. If you don't mind having only xenia in the tank, then you will be fine. Mine has choked out every other coral I try to place in my tank. :evil:

 

[Anonymous]

I really don't mind having just xeniids in the tank (xenia, cespitularia, sympodium, etc), although I do have a few other things in there/going in there just for splashes of color. They were chosen for their ability not to be overgrown, one way or the other (mushrooms, ricordea, gorgonians, button polyps). I've never been a fan of the fruitstand look, either in terms of layout or in just having a complete mix of different species, and since this is a small tank I figured I'd try to keep it focussed on just one family of animals with just a few additions from outside the family for accent. I also deliberately set out to avoid any animal that might conceivably pose any threat whatsoever to the redspot cardinals, as well as leather corals and their extreme chemical warfare abilities. While I didn't succeed nearly as well with the aquascape as I'd wanted - the large rocks I received really put constraints on what I could do - I'm hopeful the finished, stocked product will be very attractive while being very different from the average reef tank.

Not all xeniids are weeds, though. The sympodium I have hasn't visibly grown since I bought it, for example, and the giant bali xenia just seems to grow bigger rather than sending out new stalks (which is a shame, as far as I'm concerned that one could take over half the tank and I'd be thrilled). I'm not sure at this point what to expect from the sympodium, but in the event it fails to take off i may end up adding blue snowflake polyps (Sprung classified them as an unidentified xeniid some years back, even though every vendor out there sells them as "clavularia") which ARE a weed. Just a pretty blue one See http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showt ... =snowflake for a tank overrun by those.

 

[Anonymous]

Went ahead and placed an order with http://www.sustainablereefs.com for delivery the first weekend in october. They're a fairly new start up that I just stumbled upon that sells only aquacultured corals. With some pretty remarkable offerings, in fact. I've ordered a blue cespitularia (from ORA), a pink efflatounaria/cespitularia (from LSA), yellow encrusting "xenia" (LSA) and what they're calling daisy xenia (LSA)....

 

[Anonymous]

Ooh, nice find. Those Cespitularia in particular look great. I'm really looking forward to seeing how the tank develops and how all the xeniids grow.

 

[Anonymous]

And the above is what they call "daisy xenia". Not very colorful but morphologically it's fascinating. The polyps clearly resemble clavularia yet note the stalks all arising from a central mass like xenia. My best guess is this is something completely undescribed.

 

[Anonymous]

You're going to have to keep a pretty careful record of what's fixed where! It will be akin to a national collection of xeniids by the time you're done. :wink:

 

[Anonymous]

I swear to god I've got more damn troublesome hitchhikers in this tank than I've ever had in any other tank. Tonight I noticed one of my red sea pulsing xenia stalks was gone, just completely removed the rock it had attached to. It was there an hour ago before the lights went out, so where did it go? Broke out the flashlight and went looking for it and discovered it yanked halfway into a small hole in the rock my giant bali xenia is on. About eight inches away from where it was and there's no way it could have gotten pulled into the hole on it's own, so I take a pair of forceps and start to pull it out of the hole. Something starts pulling back. A second later this guy scuttles out and climbs right onto the giant bali xenia and tried to hide in it's polyps...



Easily identified as a xanthid crab. Sources are mixed as to whether these particular guys harm their host xenias or not - some say they just eat slime, others say they eat the corals. Considering he walked off with a stalk of xenia larger than he was I have to conclude that he's damaging if not actively predatory. Thank Jeebus for my foot long stainless steel forceps; caught him on the first try. Banished to the sump.

 

[Anonymous]

Just in case anyone was wondering where the update was... the shipper blew the delivery date and it's been pushed back a week. I should have it this coming saturday.

Which actually brings up a rant. With this tank I've ordered livestock from four vendors. Three of those vendors have blown shipping dates, and in two of the cases they didn't even bother to notify me about the shipping delay. That kind of thing never used to happen. I mean, seriously, I've done dozens of internet livestock orders over the years and from more companies than I can count offhand. One thing they all used to share was a certain level of professionalism; they did things when they said they were going to, and in the event of a problem of any sort they communicated with the buyer. And that was true regardless of whether you were buying from a giant like Flying Fish Express or a small guy like Bob Mankin selling out of his living room with Coral Farms.

These days it seems as if difficulties with the small guys are so commonplace that they've almost built it into their business strategy. In two of my three recent flubbed orders the shipper volunteered to eat some of the shipping cost by way of apology... and yet I couldn't help but notice that the shipping costs from both of those companies were inflated to begin with. The vendor of the third order threw in a free zooanthid frag. But in not one of these cases did I ask for special consideration or for the vendor to "make it right", it was just their go-to response which suggests it happens fairly often.

And that's the thing. It shouldn't.

Then there's truth in advertising. One company advertised a frag of sympodium measuring 1.25"... actual received specimen was just under .75". That one wasn't that bad, admittedly. But then a second company advertised sympodium frags measuring 1"... and the actual specimen turned out to be a string of six polyps, .6" by a tenth of an inch wide. Not to sound chintzy or anything, but seriously? Do you really expect anyone is going to do business with you a second time after pulling that?

I miss Flying Fish Express.

 

[Anonymous]

FFE was good to do business with, professionalism in internet sales these days seems to be rarer than blue xenia

 

[Anonymous]

They flubbed the order again, no delivery. Really getting annoyed here... that's twice this company has failed to deliver, twice I've had to email them with "Where's my stuff?" as opposed to them notifying me, and now it's been over three weeks since I placed the order with them in the first place.

 

[Anonymous]

 

[Anonymous]

Eeesh, really sorry to hear that. :x

 

[Anonymous]

Worst part is I've found a different company offering -nearly- everything from this order; only thing they don't stock is the yellow encrusting "xenia". If they had that as well I'd be demanding a refund from the guys I ordered from and placing the order with the other company. I've told them my patience ends next saturday, at which point I expect either the items I've paid for to be delivered or a full refund.

I admit I'm more than a little fed up.

 

[Anonymous]

I'm getting zero communication from this company at this point. Last saturday after finding out they flubbed the delivery date again I sent them the following....

I can let it go for another week. If you can make a delivery date of saturday 10/16, great, I can make that work. If not, please let me know so I can cancel my order for a refund. After the 16th I won't have free weekend available for several weeks, so that's as far as my patience extends.

Please let me know if you can make the 10/16 delivery date, thank you.

Five days later and I haven't heard a single peep out of them. Sent them an email a few hours ago...

I never received a response from you as to whether or not you would be shipping my order friday for delivery saturday this week or not.

If you are, please let me know so I can make arrangements to be sure someone is home to accept the delivery. If you aren't, please set in motion the refund of my order total and let me know when I can expect the return of my money.

I'll give them til saturday, one way or the other - but I expect that once again I won't see delivery of the items I've paid for. Payment was done through paypal... if I have to register a complaint with them to try and get my money back, does anyone have any experience with that process? What should I expect?

 

[Anonymous]

Sorry, no experience with PayPal, but really sorry to hear about your headache with this.

 

[Anonymous]

The last dispute I had using PayPal went really easy, hope it's the same for you