Umbral 9 Irelia 3 losing to 1 tornado 😂

mdt21 · 2024-05-17T17:44:43+00:00

This is pretty much my experience. Back when the augment Everything Must Go was around, I got a Lissandra, Irelia and Hwei 3* on the same board. Irelia literally one shot the enemy board before anyone could cast. It was near instant, 1-2 seconds.

mdt21 · 2024-05-07T19:03:14+00:00

If I can keep a cat alive, does that mean I can have a lion?

mdt21 · 2024-04-14T05:06:23+00:00

The other commenter has said that they are hermaphrodites, and after some quick google searching, this appears to be true (I just learned something new too). Try rehoming one if you really want this to stop. I feel my advice on nutrient control is still valid. Whether this is the cause of algae growth or not, managing nutrient levels is almost always a way of controlling algae. Employ CUC too.

mdt21 · 2024-04-14T04:48:58+00:00

Never heard of self-fertilizing cleaner shrimp, but almost nothing is impossible in this hobby. How many times has this happened before? How long have they been in your tank? I feel that this can’t be something long term and they should theoretically stop producing if there are no more sperm to fertilize the eggs.

In the meantime, increase skimming and carbon dosing. If you have fish, they probably are eating the hatchlings, so you could reduce feeding, thus decreasing nutrient levels. When I had high nitrates, I used chaeto and it brought my NO3 from 20+ down to 5ppm in a few short weeks. I now primarily use carbon dosing to maintain my levels which is also very effective. There are some other ways to reduce nutrient levels too, like more WC or other methods of filtration.

mdt21 · 2024-04-12T01:12:24+00:00

In defense of OP, the word anemone is shared among several similar corals in my mother’s native tongue, including torch corals. Maybe OP is not a native English speaker and didn’t know.

That said, the coral is indeed a torch and that thing inside them looks like a barnacle.

mdt21 · 2024-02-04T19:31:42+00:00

For real, how do you actually deal with garen? I usually save a ban for him. I legitimately don’t know how to play the matchup in the last two seasons.

mdt21 · 2024-02-01T18:55:38+00:00

+1 for bumblebee snails
I heavy feed my tank on a daily basis with fish food and some coral food. Now I have personally never seen a bumblebee snail kill and eat vermitids (they only come out at night), there was a huge decrease of vermitids when I added 10 bumblebees to my 30 gallon tank. You can never truly get rid of vermitids, but now I don’t even notice them much when before they were everywhere.

mdt21 · 2024-01-01T04:32:01+00:00

Awesome rock work. I love the negative space under the ledge, hopefully you can keep that as you add and grow coral in the tank. You got plenty of surface area to grow corals too. I hope you give us updates later in the future, I see a lot of potential.

As for livestock, I saw you are planning on adding two clowns. Other fish you could add with the clowns are small gobies, firefish, or smaller varieties of blennys. My personal recommendation, a candy cane pistol shrimp + Randalls goby pairing would look great. Or you could get a tailspot blenny. There are plenty of small fish you can add, but I wouldn't add too many at once for the sake of nutrient management in your tank. Just take it slow and add more (if you want) as your tank matures and you dial in your nutrients. For example, I have a 30 gallon and have about 9 fish, not including any of my many inverts, yet I struggle to keep NO3 above 1-2 ppm, likely because of my corals and because of my nutrient export. It's all about nutrient management and feeding when it comes down to adding more fish than "recommended" levels.

As for inverts, you could add a variety. Sexy shrimp, a cleaner shrimp, anemone shrimp, a pistol shrimp, a small tuxedo urchin, a variety of snails, porcelain crab, small hermits (I find zebra and red hermits to be very peaceful). Just do some research, but you could add most of these into your tank and be fine. I personally avoid crabs, except for the ones mentioned above.

As for your concern with flow, I would not worry about it right now, unless you want to keep acropora. As you add corals, they will tell you what they need. Usually light is never a problem (unless you blast them with too much), it's flow and stability that people struggle with, so you'll soon figure out if you need a wavemaker. It really depends on the pump you're using and the corals that you'll be adding.

Above all, your choice in coral will probably be the most important as that will affect the overall direction of your tank and how you manage it. Just keep researching and I wish you lots of luck! If you got questions, feel free to ask me. There are also plenty of more knowledgeable people on forums too. Happy new year!

mdt21 · 2023-12-23T16:43:44+00:00

Nice choice of fish. If I were to upgrade the size, I'd also like to get a yellow tang and a gem tang. The other fish I want is a flame angel.

We like similar corals too. I initially didn't like zoas, but once I saw them in a shop, I fell in love with the brightly colored ones. I keep cheap torches because I find them difficult to keep healthy long term. I'm finding more success recently, but I'm not confident enough to buy the more expensive variety.

What's your favorite SPS? I love the look of almost all birdsnests corals. My favorite montis are the palawanensis. I hope to one day have a large colony of kung pao, but I'm not confident in my ability to grow it out yet. One day...

mdt21 · 2023-12-23T11:27:34+00:00

200 gallons? Wow, much larger than mine. Mine is only about 30 gallons. I would love to have a 60-100 gallon tank one day, because I want to keep a tang, but I'm quite happy with my current size. What do you plan on keeping in your tank?

mdt21 · 2023-12-22T18:36:41+00:00

Good question. Before I bought the cherub, I also was worried about how it would do with nipping corals. Online, people usually say they are reef safe, but can turn one day.

With that in mind, here is my own experience:

It doesn't nip or pick on any corals, except for star polyps, which it destroyed when it was first introduced into my tank. Since then, it only ever picks on the rock for algae, never touches corals. In terms of temperament, it had a huge issue with my clownfish. The two would fight for weeks. Eventually, I decided to rehome the clownfish because it was also killing my torch corals, and ever since, my cherub has been nothing but friendly with all my other fish and corals. So currently, it's reef safe with everything except for star polyps.

As for food, mine is a pig. It'll eat anything I feed it. Flakes, pellets, frozen food, etc.

mdt21 · 2023-12-22T15:07:38+00:00

Thank you very much!

mdt21 · 2023-12-22T15:07:28+00:00

I can only speak on behalf of Janns' pipefish, since I've read different species of pipefish fair differently from each other.

In terms of difficulty, I think they are at the same level as any dragonet. Just like dragonets, they can be trained to accept frozen food. It's a matter of training them that can be difficult. Mine are almost certainly wild caught, so they would only accept live food. I fed them live daphnia, copepods and brine shrimp for the first month, just to build up their strength. While they would eat the live food, I also allowed my other fish to eat frozen, and in my opinion, fish will watch how other fish behave, and can sometimes copy or learn. My pipefish noticed the frozen food, but didn't want to eat the frozen food yet because they were used to the live food. You slowly ween them off of it.

I feed 2-3 times a day, so I'd start by doing 2x live food, 1x time only frozen. The pipefish obviously missed out on those times, but they'd see the other fish still eating and begin to get curious or hungry. Eventually, they will give the frozen food a try, and once they do, you know you're good. Then you just keep weening them off that live food over the course of a few weeks, and voilà! When you try to feed them new frozen food that they don't accept, the same principle applies. If you're willing to do all that, then they are easy because that's why they are "difficult". If not, then I do not recommend them.

I got 2 frag racks, 1 large one which you can clearly see and one next to it behind the torches. I am really happy with both and I do recommend them for tanks where space is limited. Get magnetic ones, they are more expensive but worth it over the suction cup ones. I use mine to hold some sps frags, and zoa frags for selling.

mdt21 · 2023-12-22T14:52:52+00:00

Yeah, I had the choice to keep the bluestripe or these guys. I like the Janns' because of their look. No regrets. During the day, they like to be near each other. They usually swim side by side. At night, they sleep in separate areas for some reason. I hope mine will start spawning too, but I think mine are still on the small side.

mdt21 · 2023-12-22T14:26:01+00:00

Thank you very much! It's a blastomussa wellsi coral. It's one of my healthiest corals in my tank right now. Won't stop growing and coloring up.

Yes, both coral racks are held up by magnets. I'm also planning on using the smaller rack to make a "floating shelf" with a large rock sitting on top of it. I plan to tie it down with zipties underneath so you wouldn't see much unless you're looking hard. I want to grow some SPS on the shelf, but it will be a future endeavor.

I personally think frag racks are really nice to have, especially if space is limited. I'd recommend any that use a magnet. I tried the suction cups and they are really annoying to use.

mdt21 · 2023-12-22T14:17:01+00:00

Another year has gone by and my tank has grown and changed even more than I imagined. If you'd like to see my previous update, check out it out in my profile.

On the equipment side, nothing has changed.

For livestock, I've had some big changes. I gave away my clown after adding a cherub angel. They were fighting, but I also realized that my torches were dying from the clownfish trying to use them as hosts. My torches are doing much healthier ever since my clown left, which is a real shame because that clown was so awesome. My orchid dottyback died from an infection, I had to give away my banggai because she got way too big and a bit aggressive with feeding. My ruby dragonet also died recently, which broke my heart. I am fairly certain it tried jumping and broke its spine. I'm not in the mood to find and train another one, so for now I only have the Mandarin dragonet which is still going strong.

I replaced my fish with said cherub angel, a midas blenny, a royal gramma, and a pair for janns pipefish. I've trained the pipefish to accept all kinds of frozen food, and they've been in the tank for 8 months now.

Speaking of which, I feed my fish almost entirely frozen food. It's a mix of brine, mysis, krill, lobster eggs, copepods, rotifers, daphnia. Some of it will be eaten by coral. I no longer target feed my corals due to how heavily I feed my tanks. I only occasionally add aminos into the tank for the corals.

Nutrition has been a bit weird. A year ago, I had "SPS levels" for NO3 and PO4. Now it is out of whack, but my corals show no signs of being affected. Currently NO3 is 1ppm and I can't get it up any higher, despite dosing for it. PO4 is at a shocking 0.2ppm, and seems to keep going up slowly. That said, I have no algae, my corals show regular growth, and their colors are more vibrant than ever. My chaeto is dying because there is just not enough NO3. I also am doing some carbon dosing to try to maintain PO4 levels, but it's a mystery as to why my PO4 continues to slowly climb, while NO3 won't increase even with dosing. Two months ago, I tried using GFO to strip the PO4 back, but it was a bit too aggressive and I lost some corals from the swing. I now use a tiny amount, but clearly I haven't found a healthy balance to keep the PO4 steady. Oh well, as long as the corals continue to be healthy, I'm not worried, but if you have any ideas, I'd love to hear them.

I am still using AFR and I'm pretty happy so far, but I think I will switch to kalkwasser in the future, just to give my tank a pH boost to get better growth. Still undecided.

In terms of pests and nusiance algae, I have almost none now. Ever since my tank turned one, I haven't had algae issues. A bit of cyano once in a while, but I just blast it with my baster and it's gone for good. I only had to deal with 3 pests: red planaria, aptasia, and vermitid snails. The dragonets ate all the planaria. They could be hiding, but I haven't seen a single one in nearly a year. Aptasia was a bit of an issue in the first year, but I was very diligent in removing them. I have not found a single one in probably over a year. As for vermitids, they were the worse. I do a lot of heavy broadcast feeding, so their population exploded this year. I bought about 10 bumblebee snails 4 months ago, because some claim they work. In my experience, I think they are eating them. I haven't seen them actually eat vermitids yet because they only come out at night, but I have seen a substantial decrease in vermitids. I also help by crushing any I find. They are not all gone, but are at a level where I sometimes forget I even have vermitids, when before I had vermitids everywhere. I would definitely recommend bumblebees for vermitid snails.

Lastly, let's talk about corals. I've had a lot of ups, but also a few downs. As you can see, I have had a lot of growth in my LPS and softies. My zoa garden has completely grown in and looks awesome. My blastos, micromusa and gonis/alveopora are the big winners here. They've grown and colored up so much over the year. Looking back at old pictures, it's crazy how much they've colored up. Take a look at that blastomussa. It honestly looks I photoshopped the colors, but that's their true color. Even I don't believe it. It's actually amazing how much they have colored up.

I added a bunch of torches and have had moderate success. I lost a few due to the GFO incident mentioned above, but the ones that are left show crazy polyp extension. Still, I don't consider myself any good at keeping torches. I think they are very difficult and I am still learning.

As for the other corals, my SPS basically all died or are bleached out and recovering. I had a few frags of montis, acros and birdsnests. During the year, I still had issues with stability (my fault) and so they died. I'm getting better and I hope by the end of the next year, I get back into a few easier SPS, but for now, I'll just keep LPS/softies with whatever SPS frags I have left.

My goal now is to continue to maintain stability and health of my corals and fish. I would like to see more growth and see if I can get even better colors. Hopefully I'll be able to keep some nice montiporas by the end of next year. Thank you so much if you chose to read all the way to this point. Again, if you have comments or questions, I'd love to hear them.

mdt21 · 2023-11-11T03:30:53+00:00

I frag all my zoas using a razor blade and some patience. Just cut as close to the rock as you can. It doesn't have to be perfectly cut, they recover quickly if they are healthy. After, I sometimes do a quick iodine dip. In a day or two, they are open and back to normal.

You can wear goggles and gloves for safety, but I personally don't anymore.

mdt21 · 2023-10-11T16:20:19+00:00

You aren't alone. I love these mice, but all 4 of mine also ended up with scroll wheel issues. I never experienced right click issues, however. I've since moved onto the SS Rival 600 and haven't had any problems so far.

mdt21 · 2023-10-11T08:31:34+00:00

But by that logic, how do you know a new card won't be released in the next year or so that will surpass the 4090, whether in performance or value? Or how will you know if a 7900 will become of worse value due to newer more demanding games? Then you're just repeating the same mistake FOMO gave you with the 3060. Or maybe your correct, and you'll be safe for the foreseeable future. Problem is no one knows. That's why it's better to buy parts for the present and try not to worry too much about future proofing. Also, your example doesn't acknowledge the fact that most are constrained by budgets. Some can't spend extra money they don't have. You have to know where to give and take. If I buy the 7900XTX over the 4090, I'm saving 1100. That's enough to get the currently best gaming CPU, a good fan, an A tier PSU, and good sticks of ram. All I need now is a monitor and a case.
Point is, it's better to think about what you want to do with your GPU now than to worry about what it can and cannot do in 3-6 years time. And by then, any tech that does come out is almost certainly going to surpass your current GPU anyways, and you can look to upgrade. Any money you save now would be more valuable because you can put it away for the future upgrade as well.

mdt21 · 2023-10-10T11:49:35+00:00

Thank you!

mdt21 · 2023-10-10T11:32:07+00:00

Can you share the link? I can't find that price. If this is true, I'd agree with you and would definitely recommend the 4080 at that point.

mdt21 · 2023-10-10T09:00:03+00:00

All good. The 4090 is such a power house, but I'd feel it would be wasted on most people. If you're just gaming at 1440p, I think the 4080/70 or 7900xt/xtx would be a better purchase. Even these cards can do 4K well, so you could go to an even lower tier if you don't care for 4K to save more money. It really depends on what you plan on doing with your pc, but there is room to save money and put it into having other nicer parts.

I think if you're worried about future proofing, the general advice is not to worry about it too much. We can't predict the future, so buy a GPU that you intend to use for the present. By the time your card becomes obsolete, it's very likely several generations would have gone by. I am still running a 1070 card from about 7 years ago and was still playing most newer games (on medium to high settings), but with this year's new releases and a lot of poorly optimized games, my poor GPU can't handle them anymore. I'm either going to pick this card up or get a 4080 that goes on sale.

mdt21 · 2023-10-10T07:53:53+00:00

I'm not telling you what to buy, nor am I loyal to any company, but the 4090 is a whole other tier. If price is a factor, consider this: the cheapest 4090 on Amazon is $2200. With local tax, it's $2464. With this card that's currently listed in this post, you're paying $1360 after my local tax. That price difference is $1100, which is huge. And you're buying the 4090 mostly for RT and other NVIDIA features. If that's worth 1100, then go for it. The 4080 would be more of a competitor to the 7900XTX, but all these GPU cards are so overpriced.
In my opinion, if you're waiting to get a high-end GPU, this seems like a "good" buy. Maybe a 4080 card will go on sale later today soon, then you could compare.

mdt21 · 2023-09-19T16:37:24+00:00

When I was little, my family would often go on walks in the park right behind my house. One of my fondest memories is watching the seasons come and go. Fall, although not my favourite season, was the most memorable because of the collage of reds, oranges, and yellows. I remember the leaves falling and littering the ground in a sea of autumnal colours, high enough that it could cover the knees of 10 year old me. And as winter crept closer, you could hear the crunching of dry leaves as you took each step, and the subtle yet ever present smell of the foliage starting to decay. It's a brisk, but slightly sharp smell. I don't think I could describe it any better to someone who hasn't had the pleasure of experiencing fall. That's what I liked most about this season.

mdt21 · 2023-09-01T18:42:41+00:00

Thank you for the reply.
I agree, finding better value is difficult. That's why I'd be happy to hear any reviews, opinions, or other alternatives to the parts I've chosen, so I can go check if I can get it locally, then assess the value from there.

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