29g LTA home

I have had my LTA for about 9 months now, and it has always done pretty well, even under my ghetto lights I had to begin with. They are pretty hardy (at least as hardy as bubble tips). I have seen lots of LTA's arrive fairly bleached like yours, and under good conditions they gradually bounce back. The key I think is giving it a good stable environment to settle into. Also, although they do like to bury their foot in the sand, some like to be backed into a little cave on the sand bed with their column diagonal. I would suggest the cave option if yours appears to move around a lot and not settle into one spot after a while.

It wandered again. It was leaning against the heater and now that area is melting away. This thing is driving me crazy. It's bad enough that I was unsure if I have a healthy place for it but then for it to come in unhealthy, .

That method can sometimes help with LTAs, which actually are typically less prone to wander as much as bubble tips.

The heater has been in the tank since I set it up, before the sump was ready. I'm going to be removing it after lights out. I thought it was out of the way and so I didn't remove it. Lesson learned. When nursing a sick anemone back to health, everything is in the way.

Once again, my experience with the LTA is that it becomes huge! and eats fish. You honestly would do better to trade it for a nice BTA. Just my 2 cents.

Is there such a thing as quick ideal reef aquarium?
If you remove the word "quick", I think it's an easier question. But I'm pretty sure I have a quick setup that failed, even though no test could say a number is off, and I don't have pest problems. I recently setup a new system with a bunch of established algae and rock. My thought was that I could make an environment ideal enough to quickly take care of a LTA. The LTAs health on arrival was not good, but I feel bad now because I didn't give it an ideal place to recover and now it is dead. There are many reasons I think that I have a good system. I don't clean my glass and I can still see into the tank after a month is one. Also, the macro algae I placed in the system have receded slightly and are now rebounding. It sucks that I lost one type of algae that I really liked but it seems I don't have enough nutrients for it to do well. I never saw ammonia or nitrites. Nitrates are at zero. Could the system be too low on nutrients? I'm starting to wonder if the old tanks that do so well are because they have a lot of nutrients, but that they are bound up in a lot of life that is happy in a tank. This life can circle around somewhat, just like in nature. New life ends up as another's food. That is what my tank was missing, all the little life. I don't think there is a way to get all that tiny life into a new setup quickly. Having patients is the only way. Arrogance gave me a false sense of ability. I'm still such a newb.

Edited by MadReefer - February 07 2011 at 1:02am

MadReefer - I think your deductive reasoning is pretty close to the mark.  Older tanks have more "layers" of life because gaps in the nutrient export cycle have had a chance to fill.

I moved a rock from my sump to the LTA spot and added a few more corals. A plate I moved to it seems to love it. I have a frag tank hooked to the same system and I"ll probably move some of what is in there to here. Here is what it looks like now.