My neat little ricordia story.

[SeanT]

About two months ago I bought my one and only ricordia.
A tiny orange ricordia from Chad at reefscience.com.
When I got the ricordia I placed it low in the rockwork out of super direct light.
It fell back into the rockwork in an area where in order to get it I would have to dismantle half of my tank and that just wasn't worth it for a single ricordia.
Today something caught my eye, and I was doing some minor rearranging anyway, so I moved some rocks and there was the ricordia. And his FAMILY!!!
I now have SIX of them.
The original ricordia was smaller than a dime now 3 of them are as big as quarters and the other three about the size of nickels. :)

I don't know what caused the splits stress, happiness whatever. But I will take it.
Will post a pic shortly.

[kmk2307]

Wowzers! Do they usually grow that fast in your tank? Mine haven't grown very fast at all! Do you think they are able to catch a lot of food back there?

Thanks,
Kevin

[SeanT]

Well since that was my first and only ricordia I have no idea about their growth rate.

I am a huge advocate of overfeeding tanks.
There can be problems with overfeeding; nitrates, ammonia, algae, but with proper mechanical filtration, detrivores, and a good sized fuge, with a lot and diverse amounts of macro algaes, and occassional water changes I have been fortunate enough to not have these problems.
I decided a month or so ago to double up on the amount of phyto and golden pearls I feed and things are growing rapidly.
I am even beginning to see pods back in my main tank where my Coral Beauty had picked them all clean before.

I feel most underfeed their tank.
But if you don't have a powerful skimmer and a fuge I wouldn't just start dumping everything in.
I slowly elevated the levels.

[dmccrary]

Nice story. Glad to hear some good news come from you after seeing those pics of your office. Let me know about the first big meeting coming up.

THanks
Dustin

Dmccrary@email.unc.edu