yikai

hmm... good idea. the best slides will be a very thin film, thin enough for all the light to pass through. but how does one acquire a thin slice of SPS tissue?

fantastic? this consider fail leh LOL. no lah very difficult coz have to aim my camera through the tiny eye piece.... and quite blur. next time i do better. i try scale scrapings and anemone's tentacle.

no use lah. paraffin oil is kept in a little vial with a dropper. like those iodine supplements we use for our reefs. how much can i take from her? will be better if i just bought my own. so i can use it at home. haha. microscope is so mundane when all i look at is bacteria. this time it's fun. oh nudi! how interesting. maybe i shall look at a nudi too. or a copepod perhaps.

calcium carbonate?? i am unaware of that and have not heard calcium carbonate as being a requirement of dinoflagellate. first time hearing and am surprised. dinoflagellates have to do with pH, that i know. silicates, nitrates etc are minor fuel but not major. they are photosynthetic and my tank had the same thing as the one you posted. photosynthetic cyano and dinoflagellate can look similar. the flagellum on dinoflagellate cells are invisible to the naked eye unless viewed under the microscope. whatever it is i hope onizuka solves this unsightly problem soon! algae problem just stink! hate them,

that's all for now! any requests? what should i look at next? bear in mind anything transparent like ich, flukes and other parasites need to be stained with methylene blue which i do not have. and too fine details under 400x is un-doable until i source for paraffin oil.

And the last one is the clipping of my fish's tail. Don't worry, the fish is not harmed. a small cut is made at the outer edge of the tail and it will regenerate very quickly and the fish is not hurt. This fin clipping belongs to Cirrhilabrus marjorie, the Marjorie's fairy wrasse. You can see the bamboo like structures? Those are the rays of the fins and are covered by skin. the red spots all over are the red pigments that give the tail of the fish a reddish colour. This is the outer end of the tail which is lighter in colour. Should i cut deeper, the red colour will intensify as the number of pigments increase. and the bony rays will get thicker and bigger. this is taken under 100x magnification too.

Here's a "petal" of xenia under 100x magnification. You can see the feather like appendages found on the arms of the xenia's polyps. each little tiny brown circle within the cells of the xenia contain zooxanthellae. without 400x magnification, this is as far as i can go.

Here's the first subject. Bryopsis. This shot was taken under 100x magnification. I'm afraid without paraffin oil, i'm un-able to go to 400x magnification. A drop of paraffin oil is needed for 400x magnification so that the glass slide and the microscope lens is in contact with the oil, which prevents refraction of the surrounding light. anyway i don't have the oil and cooking oil won't work. so here's bryopsis under 100x magnification. The little green circles are actually chlorophyll inside the bryopsis's cell. the slide isn't properly made so the cell wall and other parts of the cell is not visible. withh 400x magnification, the individual chloroplast pigments within the chlorophyll will be visibile. unfortunately i cannot produce that. time to hunt for some paraffin oil.

So i just got a new microscope which allows maximum 400x magnification. Use it almost every week in school but never had the chance to use it for my own fun. so decided to take it for a little spin. i examined 3 specimens under the microscope. Bryopsis, Xenia and a clipping from my fish's tail.

wah. long lived residents

this is worse than cyano-algae. this is dinoflagellate. i had this problem when i jsut started my tank. do alot of water change, remove all silicates, PO4, NO3 and if FOWLR tank, just black out the whole tank for 3-4 days.

finally a tank thread! do post pics of your latest tank! i remember you are one of the first reefers i ever met in this forum about 2 years ago. i came to collect chaeto You grew the chaeto in a white bucket in your balcony attached to your tank. I still remember the black clown pair and the nice rockscape.

best to feed marine algae or nori. but they do accept lettuce.

Iwarna Hawaii Tmr. At Yt Declivis bfly Red banded hawk Gold flake Flame angel Lemonpeel Lemonpeel hybrid Male female flame wrasse Scarlet wrasse Bartlett Potters Africa postpone to saturday

just FYI, cleaner shrimp, neon goby and cleaner wrasse do not eat white spots it's a common misconception. none will work.

this is sympodium!! very rare. and beautiful. softies collectors can head down to GO and get it now!! and what soft coral is that beside it? nepthea? sinularia? too blue cannot see.

fish

hmm..? what you mean reef or fish? there's africa and hawaii shipment at iwarna on thursday. the fish i posted in the video will be available from africa shipment on that day. timing yet to be confirmed.

Iwarna hawaii and africa on thursday. this beautiful and rare butterflyfish from africa will make a beautiful addition to any reef tank. yes. it is coral safe. as reef safe as a copperband.

it's not veryobvious.... it's only very obvious when the male's mouth is full of eggs. banggai cardinals are mouth brooders.

haha nvm la. still can see.

banggai can only keep in pair. if tank very very big then more than one is ok. otherwise a pair will form and the outcast will be killed. from my experience.

as for now, we will never. our LFS stop carrying fiji shipments already. LCK's fiji fishes have not been coming in for very very long already and CF also. Iwarna regularly have fiji shipment but it's all WS corals. occasionally will have fish from WS also. unless we have fiji FISH shipments again, we will never see the blue nox. one way could be LCK's mix USA shipments. maybe if we lucky, the US people will send us a blue nox.

the first picture is taken from Rudie kuiter's wrasse book. it shows a male. however, the photo is very bad and does not show any discernible features as all the fins are clamped up. The 2nd and 3rd photos show an un-identified wrasse which is speculated to be the male too. It is wrongly identified as Joanallenae fairy wrasse, but i have a feeling all three photos are males of the same fish. I've asked a few wrasse experts and they don't have any definite answers as of now. so i guess i'll have to wait slowly for one of my females to morph into a male. but who knows how long it will take..