Some new frags

Well on Friday morning I bought in a few frags to put in the tank. "Frags" for those who don't know is a term used in marine aquaria for "fragments" of coral. It's kind of like taking a cutting from a plant in the garden and replanting it somewhere else. These frags came from my marine tank at home.
It may have been a bit premature to put these in, but hey, it's just too tempting to have an empty tank waiting like that! Plus, these particular corals (acropora) are growing a bit out of control in our tank, so a little trimming didn't hurt them.

This tank, with it's lower lighting output is not ideal for most acropora, but we may be lucky and get a few species to grow. Anyway, Neil trimmed the pieces off the night before, and wrapped them in damp newspaper and put them in some water, ready for me to take to work. Having them sit overnight like that was probably not ideal and judging by how they looked by the end of the day, I'd say they may not make it. One had started to bleach, which we trimmed off and the other looked a bit flaky. We'll see how they look on Monday and turf them out if they are dead. Next time, we will trim them off fresh in the morning and bring them in. The white putty stuff you can see is called "Aquaknead". This comes in a tube and you cut small amounts off, knead it together and use it to attach frags to rocks. After time, algae grows over it and it doesn't stand out so much. Thanks Shannon for helping attach the frags.

The other few frags we bought in were Coralimorphs (or common name is mushrooms as they look like mushrooms). This family of corals come in a huge variety of colours and textures, some smooth, some fluffy. I think they are a great addition to a tank as they add a lot of coverage and colour and grow fairly fast. A couple of the morphs were on a little piece of rock, which we placed in the tank. The other two we just threw in. Later on, Neil came in and we decided it might be a cool idea to help them attach to one of the vertical rocks, so he used some toothpicks and secured them into one of the holes in the rock. Once they have attached themselves, we will remove the toothpicks. You can see this in the pictures.

The water was tested again and it was quite good. I found the ph test kit too.
PH: 8.2
Ammonia 0.5mg/l
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 0

If levels stay good for the next few days, we will look at adding some livestock maybe on Friday! Yippee.

Naomi :)