New Bubble Coral

Yea! I am suprised also, but sure enough and the yp were winning, the gsp had a really bad burn nearest the yp about the size of a silver dollar.
I did notice when I turn on my MH he does seem not to like it to much.
I am going to really have to look this over and figure how I can get him in the sand bed with the room i have which is not very much.

 

Are you sure it was the ysp burning the gsp? It seems odd that all of a sudden this happened or did you move them when trying to find space for the bubble?

I didn't know you are running mh lamps (did we neglect discussing this?). Those lights are simply too strong for the bubble seeing as it's so high in the tank. This is probably why it's not fully opening. There's a good chance it will die if kept so close to those lights.

IMHE aquascaping can be one of the most rewarding yet frustrating aspects of getting things "right" in a tank. If I find a picture of my tank I'll show it to you. I used what's called a minimalist approach which essentially means my tank wasn't jammed full of rock. This was just personal preference as I like a more open look.

Here are a few ideas of what I did in my tank (I hope you're not offended, these are just ideas).

1. I utilized a point system which means I used as few points as possible where the rock was actually on the sand. When aquascaping, you want to maintain as much flow as possible everywhere in the tank so with less rock on the sand you are now opening up flow areas. You have to be careful though because you need enough base rock to support the rest of it while simultaneously getting a lot of it off of the sand. UGH. Does this make sense?

2. A lot of people try to create many arches and valleys so as to open up swimming space as well as allowing more flow to move around the tank. I can't really see how much open space you have because it's hard to tell from the pictures of your tank. The more the rock is piled with little space between it, the less flow you have because the water simply can't move in, out and around.

3. When there are lps in the tank, and especially with mh lights, there needs to be a fair amount of available space on the bottom of your tank. I think this is what's causing problems for you regarding where you can put the bubble. There just isn't enough room.

4. When you have a very big coral often times the rock structure is built around what it needs, at least in my experience. I did it this way but that was just my way of designing the aquascape---I don't know how other people do it. IMHE, most sps don't fight with other corals so they can be placed close to each other while still giving them room to grow. With lps corals this can present a lot of problems. Some lps can be rather close to other corals with no issues. But, with some I wouldn't do that because they will fight till one wins and the other dies. My largest coral was my elegance (and my bubble before I sold it). When I upgraded to my 65g. the scape was designed as to allow a lot of space for it as well as to keep other corals away from it. Like bubble corals, elegance are aggressive. I also had a beautiful fox coral and they too are aggressive so in addition to the elegance, I also had to provide a place for it where it wouldn't fight with the elegance or other corals. It gets challenging to be sure.

If I could give one suggestion it would be to open up 1/3 of the bottom, either on the left side or the right. In that 1/3 section the bubble could be placed in the center of it so it has room to fully expand on both sides. Again, just a suggestion.

These are just some ideas Jeff and I hope you're not offended. Sometimes it's just nice to bounce ideas off of other people.

 

Old Pictures of My Reef

Here a few pictures of my tank when it was up and running. The lights had only been on for about an hour so the elegance wasn't fully open. But, I just wanted to show you how I did it. This actually is an older picture because i rescaped it so it was taller. I wanted to get the sps frags up higher and I also added another powerhead. But, you get the idea.

 

Very nice Lady J, my biggest problem is I just put way to much rock in that tank, OK! maybe not WAY to much, but surely a little to much.

 

Yes Lady J, when I re-arranged my tank I moved things over to the left, the gsp never had burns like that before and the only other Coral to the GSP left side is the yp. Here is a pic of that. I have moved the YP over to the left some and the GSP to the right as much as I could, you can see the brown spot there, but its already starting to recover since I moved it.

 

This is how the Bubble Coral looks now, I tried to feed it a small piece of Shrimp, not sure if he ate it or a Peppermint Shrimp got it, hahaha!

 

Thanks but truthfully I feel it was just a very average aquascape, nothing to say WOW!!! lol It looked much nicer when I made it taller and moved some stuff so the elegance could have the left 1/3 of the tank. Actually, I needed to change it a bit because the pictures up above are shots of when the elegance wasn't 12" wide but more like 6".

Don'f feel bad about how much rock you have! It seems many people do the average 2 lbs. per gallon for filtration but you don't really have to use that much (1 lb. per gallon will work just fine). I put a lot of rock in the sump which opened up the dt yet kept up with filtration. Another thing that sometimes people neglect to look at is the kind of rock you have. We can look at a tank and think, "Cool, I want mine to look like that. Well, you don't have the same rock so that's pretty tough to do".

IDK, I guess all I can say is to give the bubble lots of space with low-moderate flow and moderate lighting and in the substrate.

 

I think it's doing ok. LPS usually feed at night after the lights are out. And little peps are great food nabbers. ;D

The mh lights are too much for the bubble tho--just one of those things.

 

I been trying to think what I can do to make him happier without having to move so much around again, I put that rock there to the left later, it cut back on the current hitting him quite a bit, much more moderate now as far as the lighting goes, I am thinking to find a small piece of tinted plastic or something to put over it on the tank to shade some the lighting he gets. To bad the other Corals like that MH light

ohhh! and I found that frag piece in a hole on a rock just below the SPS, he will get put on a plug today, still not sure of super glue gel or apoxy??<

 

Thats a lot of rock huh? hahaha! believe it or not I am short of having 3lbs per gal