Can they be housed together?

salt water tanks arent that costly, its the live rock and coral thats gets ya.

there's a lot more costs than just the tank...lol Anyway...the charger for my digital came today..so YAY pics! Oh...please excuse the massive amounts of algae...lol

flash...


no flash...


That sucker's cost me hundreds so far...luckily that is mostly stocking...once I'm done with that (which I should basically be after thursday) it should just be maintainance costs.

get a HPS bulb to grow that rock .

Some where there is a bunch of hermit crabs drooling

HPS?...I have hermits...they don't like hair algae...lol I'm getting a mithrax crab...hopefully it will help. That's pretty much the only algae in there besides coraline and cheato (which is the big clump below the ph). Everything else is being kept in check. The rock is mostly only a couple months old...that's why there isn't much visible coraline. Here's a pic that shows a few of my frags a little better...you can't see much in the fts...
btw...the corals all look a little funny in the pics b/c the light was just turned on 20 min before... that hairy shroom in the middle is about 3" across...it's huge...lol you can't really tell from those photos though.

shroom in the middle of the tank (in the fts)**

Looks like you have aptasia on the top of that rock above the polyps as well as hair algea. Both spread like crazy and kill corals.

Are you running a protien skimmer?

Skip the mitrax crab. They tend to take out hermits and snails more than hair algea.

What lighting are you using?

It seems like you probably have high nitrates which are feeding the algea.

I use RO/DI water in my tanks (it is well worth the expense for the unit) and skim like crazy.

that close up looks great. there is alot of stuff growing, i couldn't notice from that first shot. I forget what fish it is, a haven't had fish in so long. But it loves to eat that hair algae. They were pretty cheap too. HPS is high pressure sodium bulb. Look into it, a buddy of mine used to grow the rock under it for a month then another month for the algae eats to clean it up, then sell it. Made that Fiji rock very pretty almost 100% coverd.

He may know it as metal halide.

You're dating yourself calling them HPS (damn, so am I).

Metal halide is different. I have a duel lamp and ballasts that I was going to use to do this same thing as well as grow corals. I just never got around to doing it and the lamp and bulbs and ballasts are collecting dust unused in my closet. I think i may even have an ad of here with pictures of it. brb

I'm not a he!....lol

SPJ, It's not aiptasia...it's clove polyps...lol No I'm not running a protein skimmer...it's a 10 gallon tank...also the surface of the water is constantly agitated all over (that is not foam on the surface...it is bubbles from a bubble wand at the back of the tank that dissapear very quickly). I have 130 watts pc lighting (2 65 W bulbs...1 10,000K the other actinic). I do use RO water. I'm aware that hair algae can take things out and that it usually feeds on high nitrates...but my nitrates are at about 10 ppm so I don't think that's the problem...and I'm going to be doing a water change tonight or tomorrow. Do you have any suggestions of what I could get instead of a mithrax?...I wanted one as much b/c they're cute as for the algae...lol I didn't know that they take out hermits and snails...I'd never heard that.

Vince..thanks Yeah you can't see much in the FTS b/c most of it's so small...lol I have TONS of little feather dusters all over...lol I also discovered recently that there is what looks like it might be a red coco worm living on one of my rocks...it's very small and in a little crevice...but it's very definitely very red! As far as what's in there purposefully...lol I have frags of 9 different zoos, frogspawn, monti cap, chalice, blastomussa, candy cane coral, clove polyps, the hairy mushroom, and a very small ric. All appear to be doing very well...the clove polyps are growing like crazy...they were practically all dead when they arrived (a couple weeks ago), but after a few days 5 opened up and now there are at least 10 little polyps The mushroom has also grown since then by at least a half an inch...the thing is a monster...lol The only thing that is at all questionable is the monti cap...I wasn't sure how it would do to begin with...it is a purple cap..so I didn't know if I had enough lights. It was more purple when I first put it into the tank a week/week and a half ago...now it sort of a ruddy purple (definitely still purple though)...but it does look like it is growing.