Graveyardworms Pocillopora breeding challenge

[graveyardworm]

Im gonna start this alittle bit early cause I have some preparation first and would like to document and get as feedback as possible along the way. The pocillopora that I currently have are successfully settled babies from parents which sadly were lost one was lost awhile back to dinoflagellates, and the other more recently to brown jelly some documentation of the event can be found here (http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic54251-9-1.aspx?Highlight=brown+jelly)

Not sure how conforming the setup needs to be for the challenge.

My plan

Livestock: Two of the three specimens currently in my tanks are on rather large pieces of LR, and I feel will need to be removed for the challenge. The other is a very small frag which broke off during tank maintenance and is allready on a small piece of LR. I'm also going to try to get atleast a couple more specimens prior to starting the challenge. The parent colonies will be supported off the bottom of the tank on racks made from eggcrate and pvc.

Tank: Use a 25 gallon which I already have plumb it into my main system with slow flow through to aviod losing any babies out the overflow, I will also have a fine screen over the drain to further prevent any losses.

Settlement substrate: The bottom of the tank will be lined with either LR rubble or tiles for settlement. It seems tiles would probably be better cause I can cover the bottom more thoroughly.

Circulation: A powerhead, most likely a maxijet 1200 with the sponge filter installed will be my circulation, or perhaps two smaller PH's on opposite sides of the tank pointed at eachother for more random flow.

Lighting: I'll be using one of the 65 watt 6500k outdoor light fixtures found at Home Depot, if this is inappropriate I do have the 18 watt flourescent fixtures which are commonly found on freshwater tanks.

Filtration: Since this will be plumbed into my main system it will have the benefit of protien skimming, activated carbon, LR, DSB's, and the water stability of over 300g.

Cleanup crew: Once microalgae begins to appear I'm going to remove some Colonista grazers from another tank to see if these guys will establish a breeding population in this tank ( a second experiment ). If these guys arent enough I also have plenty of columbellid grazers which will also be added as a helper crew.

Feeding: I feed my suncoral nightly with a mixture of shaved PE Mysis, Frozen cyclopeeze, and frozen rotifiers. So its convenient for me to also put some of this in the challenge tank.

Feel free to critique my plan and provide guidance/suggestions This is still in the planning stage so changes are no big deal.

[graveyardworm]

Now some pics of my Pocillopora, I find the difference in growth between the two ssettled ones amazing. They are in two different tanks, but share the same water. Lighting is different, flow is different, and feeding is different. The larger one is under lower light, slightly higher flow, and gets alot more food ( The tank its in also houses my suncoral ).

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/31-17-07.jpg

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/21-17-07.jpg

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/11-17-07.jpg

[graveyardworm]

Well I went ahead and made an attempt at removing the corals from the LR. With a screwdriver and a hammer my plan was to break the rock so the corals were on smaller pieces. The encrusting one went okay, but the branching one turned into fragfest "07". I did manage to get the rock to break , but I now have four frags. Not sure what this means as far as starting the breeder challenge early in Feb, but I suspect the frags will be pouring thier energy into healing and attaching themselves to the LR pieces. I did start the search this afternoon for more specimens, and so far no luck.

[BrianPlankis]

Well I went ahead and made an attempt at removing the corals from the LR. With a screwdriver and a hammer my plan was to break the rock so the corals were on smaller pieces. The encrusting one went okay, but the branching one turned into fragfest "07". I did manage to get the rock to break , but I now have four frags. Not sure what this means as far as starting the breeder challenge early in Feb, but I suspect the frags will be pouring thier energy into healing and attaching themselves to the LR pieces. I did start the search this afternoon for more specimens, and so far no luck.

DOH! Sorry to hear about the fragfest 07. I would just mount them and let them start healing, remember to mount them sideways with minimal glue. This should maximize their recovery rate and encrusting. Remember this challenge is designed to last a minimum of 12 months, so they will have time to heal and grow. You could also try to acquire another 1-2 larger colonies to add to the frags to increase your chances.

As far as changes to your plans:

1. Now that they are on smaller rocks, I would recommend putting the parent colonies in baskets overnight (this only needs to be done on nights you want to see if there is any release), so you can keep flow going through the tank, but keep the larvae in the baskets.

2. You could also place some of the settlement tiles on the eggcrate and PVC stands as well. Some of the articles I read mentioned that some larvae will prefer to settle in shaded areas and in nooks and crannies, so having a variety of places to settle on tiles would be good.

Brian

[graveyardworm]

An update, 10 days after fragging

in this pic you can see the new growth on the broken end of one of the branches, several polyps have sprung up.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/healing1-28-07.jpg

And here you can see I've placed one of the frags on the same rock as another, hopefully the colors will remain different and eventually they will grow together. They both came from the same parents which were also growing together in much the same way.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/2colorstogether1-28-07.jpg

[graveyardworm]

I finally found a Pocillopora colony at an LFS today. Its a relatively new store, and they had all kinds of stuff that I liked. I couldnt resist and bought a black suncoral which looked like it really needed a home. Anyway the P. Damicornis colony is about baseball sized and is currently acclimating, I'll get some pics once I move it to QT.

[graveyardworm]

Here's my new addition to the challenge, lets hope I managed to get the target species.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/NewinQT2-11-07.jpg

[BrianPlankis]

David,

That looks like it should be a P. damicornis, but I know that Eric always says that coral ID by pictures is nearly impossible. At least the LFS didn't have it mislabelled an Acropora sp. :D

Maybe Eric will chime in on what he thinks about the chances of it being P. damicornis. Regardless it looks like you have a little bit of bleaching going on there, so keep an eye on it.

Brian

[graveyardworm]

It is a little lighter, I had to mess with the color abit to make it look right. At the time lighting was just spillover from my display with 14k MH.

[Eric Borneman]

P. damicornis is one of the only species in the genus I am comfortable identifying in most cases from a photo, and this really couldn't be any other species. You got it!

[graveyardworm]

Just ordered the light fixture for my breeder challenge tank today. Here's what I got.

http://www.marinedepot.com/md_viewItem.asp?idproduct=CU01003

["Umm, fish?"]

I had one of those over my QT tank for a while. I bought it used so I don't know the whole history, but within a couple of months it just plain refused to light ever again. I think some salt creep had worked its way up the cord past what was supposed to be the seal. So, be sure to keep the cords up out of the way.

Good luck! I need to pick up a light, too. Hmm.

[graveyardworm]

Originally I was going to use one of the outdoor light fixtures you can get at places like Home Depot, 65 watt, 6500k, PC fixture. They're only like 40 bucks. I got this one cause we're finally getting some snow, and since most of my winter cash comes from plowing I finally have a little more income, plus construction work is starting to pick up with spring coming. Plus it has a moonlight led and the color will be a little more pleasing to look at.

["Umm, fish?"]

Ah! I must have had a cheapo earlier version. Mine had no moonlight. So, please disregard my complaint. I hope it works out for you!

[graveyardworm]

I recieved my new lighting today, not to impressed with the brightness of it, but wht the heck did I expect its only 65 watts. I think I'll be getting rid of the 50/50 bulb, and going with a straight up 10k bulb. I'll be setting up the Breeder challenge tank this weekend, and I'll post a description and pics.

[graveyardworm]

I've got some really exciting news to report. Today I was looking through my main display for red flatworms, I found a few:( , but afew compared to the infestation I had 8 months ago is awesome, I've almost won with regular siphoning. Anyway I noticed what appeared to be a baby pocillopora. So I started looking around more closely, so far I've counted four tiny baby Pocillopora, there have to be more I cant see.

So I'm trying to think of how/why. I've come to a couple possible conclusions.

1) The pocillopora I have in other tanks have reproduced and somehow the planulae made it through my sump and for whatever reason decided to settle in this tank. ( this I think is the least likely scenario )

2) The parent colony which died of jelly infection was in this tank, the event took place a couple months ago. I think there may have been a polyp bailout response with some survivors.


and an update on my breeder challenge: My new colony is still in QT, today I added some ties to that QT and siphoned some coraline out of another display while scraping, this was added to the QT in hopes that it will colonize the tiles to get them ready for settlement.

["Umm, fish?"]

Either way, congratulations!

[BrianPlankis]

Either of your two scenarios are possible, I'll be interested to see Eric's response to this because polyp bailout is typically said to occur only under stress and a colony dying could be a trigger.

But I would also propose a third solution. The parent colony self-fertilized and those planula settled before it died off and you are just now noticing it. Given what we know from the literature I would think options 1 or my new #3 are more likely than #2. But we also have no way of knowing :)

How many polyps do the babies have? If we can start figuring out rough estimates of growth rates then we can try to figure out in the future when they started.

Again, either way fabulous news

Brian

[graveyardworm]

I've been able to count up 10 so far, 2 on the glass, 7 on LR, and 1 on an empty snail shell. They're all about the same size. There doesnt seem to be any common preference for settlement. Here's a pic of the one on the snail shell.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/Pocilloporababy2-18-07.jpg

["Umm, fish?"]

Wow! That's a lot of polyps! They look like they've been there for at least 5 weeks(?). See the photos about 2/3s of the page down here:

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2006/4/aafeature2

They grow really fast!

[graveyardworm]

The brown jelly incident in this tank happened on 12-10-06. So if it was polyp bailout that would put this baby at about 8 weeks old. Seems about right. Nice link.

["Umm, fish?"]

Corals can also go sexual in response to stress. If it was brooding and got a bad infection, I would imagine that it would let what it could go. FWIW.

[graveyardworm]

This morning I removed the two on the glass and glued them to tile pieces. I also took the one on the snail shell and moved to the tank where my new P.Damicornis is currently housed. Kindof a crappy pic, but here. Also a little evidence that aragonite and even snail shells eventually become part of solution again to be recycled.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/Pocilloporababies2-19-07.jpg

[graveyardworm]

Its official, my breeder challenge tank is setup and my P.D. colonies are in.

Tank 25g tank stand alone (no sump) may eventually be plumbed into a larger system

Flow a single rio 600 PH ( This will be upgraded to a sieo 620 when the new impeller comes in for my 1100 )

Lighting 65watt Nova PC fixture with moonlight

Filtration Small Marineland Biowheel filter ( will be shutting this off at night )

Settling substrate Glazed ceramic floor tiles

Livestock 1 Wild collected colony baseball size, 4 frags from a successfully settled planulae colony, and 1 successfully settled planulae colony, plus three very small successfully settled planulae.

Feeding ? frozen cyclopeeze, chopped mysis, frozen rotifiers, live brine shrimp, DT's oyster eggs

[graveyardworm]

Here are my colonies so far

Newest colony, not very healthy from the LFS, but it is slowly gaining color.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/BCPD63-2-07.jpg

The rest are all related, they are from settled planulae which have grown, several are accidental frags from one of the colonies.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/BCPD53-2-07.jpg

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/BCPD43-2-07.jpg

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/BCPD233-2-07.jpg

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/BCPD3-2-07.jpg

[graveyardworm]

Take a look at what my Pocillopora went and did before I moved them to the breeder challenge tank. Some pics of what they look like just after settlement through the glass at the bottom side of the planulae. Thread at Marine Depot (http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic62032-11-1.aspx)

[BrianPlankis]

Take a look at what my Pocillopora went and did before I moved them to the breeder challenge tank. Some pics of what they look like just after settlement through the glass at the bottom side of the planulae. Thread at Marine Depot (http://forum.marinedepot.com/Topic62032-11-1.aspx)

That is awesome! I wanted to say coral when you first posted that picture, but kept quiet in case I was wrong :) You can let that guy grow for a while, it will be interesting to see it develop from the bottom, not too often you get a chance to do that.

Brian

[graveyardworm]

I just wish I hadnt accidentally scraped one off.:(

[BrianPlankis]

I just wish I hadnt accidentally scraped one off.:(

Maybe you should get some of that yellow caution tape and make a perimeter :D

Brian

[graveyardworm]

I'm guessing there's alot more on the LR, but they're so small I cant see them. I found another one on the glass, but it looks dead, I'm wondering if it was grazed by something, astraea perhaps. The next couple weeks will tell.

[Jen]

David, I have been reading everyones logs as I prepare to join this breeders challenge. You sound like you are off to a great start. I have a very large colony and am looking for another along with a colony from Erics stock. Are you planning to use a seperate container for the settling period? What will you use? How long will you give the little guys to settle before moving them to the grow out tank? Just trying to get my stategy figured out.

Jen

[graveyardworm]

At this point all I've got is a tank with some pocillopora colonies set up. Hopefully soon Brian will have some packages together with baskets, netting and maybe a few other things for the challenge to sell. I havent really thought about a settling tank yet I do have a few small tanks kicking around that I could use. Welcome to the challenge.

[BrianPlankis]

At this point all I've got is a tank with some pocillopora colonies set up. Hopefully soon Brian will have some packages together with baskets, netting and maybe a few other things for the challenge to sell. I havent really thought about a settling tank yet I do have a few small tanks kicking around that I could use. Welcome to the challenge.

I hope to be able to announce the packages this week, I've ordered the blacklights and they should be in this week. I have a couple of baskets on hand and am ordering more and I also have the mesh in stock now. I'm still trying to locate rigid airline tubing, but a stop to the local fish store today should get me some of that.

Brian

[Jen]

I have a two gallon pico that has been running for a year. It only houses one goby and whatever inverts I happen to be collecting that week. It has a very basic hang on back filter that could be turned off for a few days to allow settling. I am trying to decide if this would be an appropriate tank or if the goby would come out at night and scarf up the little fellers. I have plenty of air pumps and other stuff to make a new tank. This is very exciting for me and I am enjoying the setup process.
Jen

[graveyardworm]

In my fish room I have an extra RO/DI line for filling my mixing barrel and for top off on tanks not hooked into my big system. Well on Friday morning I cranked on the RO to top off my P. Damicornis tank and got called away and forgot :mad: (angry at myself for being dumb) when I got home from work I suddenly rmembered what I had done :eek: so I ran to the room hoping that I hadnt done it, the floor in the room was covered in water and the tank was overflowing. So I immediately checked the SG 1.010, HOLYCRAP, the coral polyps were all closed up tight, snails were laying on their backs, and much to my surprise there was a microstar in there as well. So I started changing water to bring the salinity back up after about 4 hours at 1:30 AM I finally had it back up to normal, There was slight polyp extension, and the snails were starting to move around. Now 2 days later the corals are up to about 75% polyp extension, and the snails seem to be fine, moving around and eating, even the microstar has found his way back into a hiding spot.:party: So far the only adverse effect seems to be slight bleaching, hopefully thats it and we're on the way to full recovery.

I'm ordering a hang on overflow to hook this tank into the main system and hopefully no more problems like this.

[dpearly88]

Wow, I guess P. Damicornis is some pretty tough stuff!

["Umm, fish?"]

That's pretty amazing that they're surviving. Maybe feed them pretty heavily to help recovery?

[graveyardworm]

I'm amazed as well, when I first saw them they were sloughing off some mucas. Reading one of the AHABS issues Ron mentions the incredible amount of dilution which sometimes occurs in lagoon areas during heavy rainfall. Not to mention that I'm sure these corals get exposed at low tide, and have to deal with rainfall sometimes, not to mention the sun, noontime on the equator, ouch.

[Jen]

I am glad they are hanging in there. I could barely read through the post, was afraid of how it was going to end. I have installed an inexpensive top off unit that is worth its weight in gold. I put the link below. A local Houston reefer makes these and they work great.

Jen
http://www.top-off.com/

[graveyardworm]

I have the same top off unit on my main display system for almost two years now, its worked flawlessly. Not outta the woods yet the corals still have to recover.

[graveyardworm]

For some reason the little newly settled polyp in my lagoon tank has completely disappeared overnight.:( Since I dont think its possible for one to just detach at will I can only assume its has been eaten completely or knocked off the glass by something. I have no idea what may have been able to do this. It was on the glass near the sand so perhaps my Queen conch grazed it, but I dont think the conch would've grazed the calcium deposit.

[BrianPlankis]

For some reason the little newly settled polyp in my lagoon tank has completely disappeared overnight.:( Since I dont think its possible for one to just detach at will I can only assume its has been eaten completely or knocked off the glass by something. I have no idea what may have been able to do this. It was on the glass near the sand so perhaps my Queen conch grazed it, but I dont think the conch would've grazed the calcium deposit.

Oh man, sorry to hear that, I really was looking forward to watching the development from underneath :(

Brian

["Umm, fish?"]

Some newly settled polyps do have the ability to regress back to their plankton form if the conditions don't turn out to be good. I have no idea about pocillopora, though.

[graveyardworm]

I'm picking up a new tank for my breeder challenge tomorrow. It's a 40g breeder drilled. Hopefully it'll be up and running by the end of next week.

[graveyardworm]

Something wierd going on in my current P. Damicornis tank. Its a stand alone 29g, no filtration, just water changes. The water gets cloudy everyday even through the night. The corals look okay with good polyp extension each day, although still recovering from the accidental hyposalinity. I dont know if its a bacterial bloom or something leaching from the tiles. Since its a recent development I dont think its from the tiles. I've been swapping out about half the water volume with water from my display system every night.I keep an ammonia tag in there which has worked in the past in QT tanks so far it hasnt indicated any ammonia.

[graveyardworm]

I might be out of this one atleast temporarily. Still seeing repercussions from the accident. It seems I've overcome the cloudy water, but now one colony is exhibiting some tissue loss, and a couple others dont look so well. Amazingly the newest colony which was still acclimating through the salinity drop has come through unscathed. Whereas my older colonies have exibited some color loss, and poor polyp extension in some areas.

Maybe someone can explain:

1) Why was there color loss from hyposalinity throughout the colonies, but not complete bleaching?

2)The most color loss was at the branch tips, but these tips are exhibiting the best polyp extension on the colonies?

3) Why was the newest WC colony unaffected?

4) The worst affected portions of the colonies - the polyps are shrunken and appear to have little white specs trapped within the tentacles.

I'll get some pictures these may help with my descriptions.

[graveyardworm]

Here's pics, go back to page 3 to see how they looked prior. I cant believe how much the new one colored up.:eek:

You can see the color loss in the tips, and I circled some white spots. I can try to get closer pics of the white spots if necessary.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/PD4-17-07Whitespots.jpg

The one with tissue loss, the area of tissue loss wasnt bleached and had polyp extension prior to losing tissue.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/PDbleached4-17-07.jpg

Finally the newest one unaffected, the lighting makes the tips look a little bleached to the camera, but they are not.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/HealthyPD4-17-07.jpg

[BrianPlankis]

David,

I don't think there is much that can be determined to answer your questions. Too many variables. Eric might be able to chime in about the WC one, but that is just a guess.

Keep an eye on the one with tissue loss and if it continues to lose tissue then remove it immediately and frag it far away from the tissue loss. See Andy's thread for details from Eric (although this could be a different condition because yours was caused by salinity shift).

Brian

["Umm, fish?"]

Mine started from the base and worked its way to the tips. Very ugly and very fast.

[graveyardworm]

Just picked up a new Pocillopora colony from a local reefer for free.It may be of breeding size. Here's a pic.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/Newpocillopora4-21-07.jpg

[CarmieJo]

Very pretty new colony. And my kind of price!

[graveyardworm]

Mine started from the base and worked its way to the tips. Very ugly and very fast.

I lost a parent colony about the size of two fists in 24 hours to that. There was absolutely nothing I could do. I cant say where it started in the colony, but it was like brown jelly infection. At the same time there was a spawning event which repopulated the tank though now I have babies everywhere. Only they arent babies anymore, theyre all about 3/4 x 3/4.

[graveyardworm]

Made some changes to the Pocillopora breeding tank. It was looking a bit too industrial and was too easy to place other frags in, plus the parameters just werent very stable. So I had a bunch of LR and sand that I had gotten from another local reefer which I had in holding tanks with pumps and heaters which I wanted to consolodate a bit. So I decided to set up a little display tank dedicated to my Pocillopora. I also just picked up a really large nice colony from a local reefer. Most of the colonies are still in my big display while I wait to ensure that there wont be a disasterous cycle in the new set up. I'll be adding them over the next few weeks.

Here's how it looked before.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/Pocillopora%20challenge/6-23-07-1.jpg
Here's how it looks now.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/Pocillopora%20challenge/New7-09-07.jpg

I'll be updating as things progress.

[graveyardworm]

Here's the tank today.

http://s50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/Pocillopora%20challenge/?action=view&current=9-29-07fewchanges.jpg

Posted some questions in CarmieJo's challenge thread regarding lighting, and at the time I didnt think my PD's had spawned. Well happy to say I was wrong. When I was checking out the tank and taking new photos I noticed a couple peculiar brown spots on the LR, and a closer look revealed new recruits. :D I've counted 6 new recruits on the LR, none on the glass, or powerheads. They have 3 or 4 polyps each so they havent been around very long.

Here's some crappy pics of some of them.

2 in this picture

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/Pocillopora%20challenge/Newrecruits129-29-07.jpg

recruit #3

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/Pocillopora%20challenge/Newrecruit39-29-07.jpg

and recruit #4

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/Pocillopora%20challenge/Newrecruit49-29-07.jpg

[CarmieJo]

Yippee! Time to start collecting...

[graveyardworm]

My new P. Damicornis colony. This thing is huge, about the size of a softball.

http://i50.photobucket.com/albums/f326/graveyardworm/NewPoc10-06-07.jpg