Anemone Identification
6 May 2007Can anyone help me identify these guys?
They’re tiny, maybe just a few mm across. In comparison, the zoanthids in these pictures are maybe 7-8 mm across.
There are three of these anemones growing on a rock fragment that these zoanthids came on. I just noticed them for the first time today. At first I thought they were just some algae, but when I poke at them they retract very quickly.
They look different than the Aiptasia I had before. More flower-like. I might even describe each tentacle as a little bit fuzzy.
Can anyone tell me I have got here?
These pictures are horrible. I need to get a better lens for macro photography and better lighting.
UPDATE:
After some research, I have decided that I’ve got three feather duster worms on this rock. They definitely have a “feathery” characteristic. They are super sensitive and dart in very quickly when touched. Am I more on the right track here?
Do you have a Salt Water Tank blog?
6 May 2007Not much going on in my aquarium these days. I’m letting things settle after the incident a few weeks ago. Everything seems to be doing fine, so if there was any danger in the first place from the contents of the hydrometer getting dumped into the tank, hopefully I prevented any issues by getting the affected sand and rock out of there quickly.
So instead, let me point out a resource that exists to help bloggers get more visibility, especially to other bloggers who write about similar things.
I’ve created a Reef Tank Community at BUMPzee.com. It’s very small relative to some of the other communities but I’m pleased with how it hs shaping up so far.
Through it, I’ve met a few other reef tank owners and bloggers and hope that it will grow.
Also, to help foster the community, I’ve placed a BUMPzee widget in the sidebar. This widget is customizable so you can display visitors, your most popular posts, and the most popular posts in the community.
Also, as the blog owner I get page and blog stats in that widget and over on BUMPzee, so I can see daily visitors to my blog and the most active pages. Plus, the links on BUMPzee are good for Pagerank and SEO if you’re concerned about that sort of thing.
So, if you’ve got a blog about salt water aquariums (there are surprisingly few of us), I invite you to join BUMPzee and submit your blog to the Reef Tank community.
Disaster Strikes My Reef Tank
26 April 2007OK, so that’s perhaps a bit dramatic, but man, what a day.
I was measuring the salinity when the lid to my glass-top slammed shut right on the hydrometer. I ended up with the stem in my hand, and the bulb portion shot into the tank.
The base must have torpedoed into the rock because the very bottom broke as well and all the little weights at the bottom spilled into the tank. I’m guessing these are lead, which can’t be good to have in the tank. An ounce of lead in a 20 gallon tank must be as bad as (or worse than) the Exxon Valdeez in the Pacific!
Most of it had spilled onto a single spot on the sand and I scooped that up with a small measuring cup the best I could. Unfortunately, some had also spilled onto the rock and collected in some of the crevasses. I tipped the rock and let it fall into the sand from where I scooped that up as well.
So here I am with a dilemma. I got most of it, but surely not all. What do I do? Ride it out and see if the invertibrates get affected? They’d be the first to go. The fish and corals could surely handle a little heavy metal.
But I couldn’t stand the thought of even a few little lead balls sitting in the tank, slowly leeching into the water and rock. And I figured the longer I think about it and research, the less impact any solution might have. So I acted quickly.
I went to the pet store and purchased a few new pieces of live rock and a 10 lb. bag of reef sand (CaribSea brand). And of course a new hydrometer.
I removed the two pieces of rock that may have had the lead pellets land in it and scooped out maybe 4-5 lbs of sand in the affected area. I replaced the sand with the full 10 lbs (ending up with a good deal more than I had previously) and the new rock.
Of course I took this opportunity to do some new rockscaping and built more of a cave and tunnel on the right side of the tank. I think it looks a good deal better, and is much more visible. The old structure had a cave that I couldn’t really see into.
Here’s how the tank looks now…
I laid the sand pretty deep on the right, giving it a two-tier look. And perhaps giving a spot for a jawfish I’ve had my eye on to dig a hole to hang out in.
I also left plenty of plaform to later add some more coral on top of the rock.
The whole ordeal set me back about $60 and a few hours. I consider things like this a “stupid tax”. I deserved what I got for being careless.
As for the old rock, I’ve placed it in a pail of salt water. Once the water warms up, I’ll drop a snail or crab in there to see if they make it. Like a canary in a mine.
I’m guessing the rock is fine and I’ll use it later when I build a bigger tank. It’s probably a good $50 of live rock.
Aiptasia Anemone Pictures
25 April 2007I’ve written in the past about the Aiptasia or Glass Anemone that came along with my live rock.
As I was researching this, I had a hard time finding a good picture and as I was writing a few other posts, I just realized that I had a picture to share. It’s not a very good one as mine was at an awkward angle, but with a little imagination, it is a pretty good representation of what it actually looked like as it waved around.
It was quite small, only about a centimeter in diameter and length. You can see the 4 or 5 prominent tentacles in this picture, but there were several other smaller and more colorless tentacles closer to the rock.
I think the distinguishing characteristics are pretty visible here: milky color with tentacles that taper to a point.
Getting Rid of the Aiptasia
100% of the advice that I read and received said to get rid of this guy. My first course of action was to put a peppermint shrimp in the tank.
The anemone was gone within 48 hours. Sounds like I was pretty lucky there as the pet shop owner said that some peppermint shrimp won’t ever find it, or be the sort that likes to eat them. So it’s sort of a crap shoot.
Even if it didn’t do the trick, I like having the shrimp in the tank. It’s a very interesting creature.
New Inhabitants, Kicking it up a Notch
25 April 2007Undeterred by my first real setback (the death of a Cleaner shrimp), my daughter and I made a trip to the pet store this past weekend.
In the past week, the algae has all but gone up and the water become very, very clear. If you compare older pictures with the ones I’ve got in this post, you’ll see a significant difference in the amount of brown algae. The crabs and snails have really been earning their keep. In fact, some of the snails have ventured to some more hard-to-reach areas like the glass, filter tube, and heater. And the crabs are eating the algae off the snail shells. This is actually quite amusing as the snails HATE it. When a crab is sitting on a snail shell, the snail will twist and turn, even “pop” with a jerk to try to get the crab off. I didn’t know a snail could move that fast.
Back to the topic at hand. My daughter Sarah wanted a clown fish, and I wanted a nice piece of coral, so we set off with that goal in mind. Here’s what we ended up with.
- Green Hammer Coral, $70
- Ocellaris Clownfish, $24.99
Green Hammer Coral
The coral is really cool. I had a difficult time deciding, so my daughter Sarah made the final decision. You cannot see it in these pictures, but it has two live “heads” of polyps. This photo is pretty cool because it also happens to contain about 50% of the snails and crabs who have apparently come by to check it out.
As an extra bonus, the coral stalk came with a single barnacle. I didn’t notice this until I got home, but it is also very cool. It’s alive and if you’re very patient, you can catch it feeding with it’s feather-like feeder that shoots out, sweeps the water, and retracts.
In addition to the two live heads, it has a few that have long-died.
Most fascinating, however, was that out of the dead branch farthest over to the left in the above picture, next to the scarlet crab, I noticed some activity. A small tube, no thicker than a hair came out and shot out a long stream of what I assume is excrement. The stream snaked out about 6 inches until it stopped and the tube retracted. I never would have guessed that the whole structure is still living animal.
Here’s a closer shot.
And here is another in which you can see the two heads taken at night after the lights have been off for hours. Even after the lights have been only a few minutes it has really puffed up. When the lights are off, it really shrivels up. “I’ve been SWIMMING!” — George Costanza
And, not that it’s particularly fun to look at, but you can see the barnacle right at the base of the stalk that goes up vertically.
Clownfish
And of course, the clownfish who kindly swam past the coral for a photo op.
He’s quite small now, which is fine by me, maybe 1.5″ long.
Compared to the cardinal who manages to just sit there with a few flicks of his pectoral fins, the clown wiggles almost frantically like a dog wagging its tail.
What’s his name? I have a 10 year old daughter. I’ll give you one guess.
Photos and Backgrounds
The above pictures really make me want to do something about the background in these photos, which is currently my wallpaper. Peter over at salt-water-aquarium.com has some good sugguestions which I’ll be considering.
I guess I could do worse than blue wallpaper.
Forty Dollar Fish Food
25 April 2007Yes, that’s right. I don’t know what the equivalent would be in our terms, but the crabs and fish had Cleaner Shrimp feast.
The cleaner shrimp died about a week ago now. It started to moult while sitting right on top of the rocks. I thought it a little strange that it was there, unprotected. It had sort of stopped mid-moult with it’s head and abdomen pulled out halfway. I was a little concerned, but figured this was just what they do. As it was night-time, I went to bed. (See third picture below)
The next moring, the shrimp had moved down into a cave below where it was. It was difficult to tell what was going on, but now it seemed to be dead. Again, I waited.
After several more hours, I “called it”, as they do on ER. “Time of death…”
I reached in and grabbed one of the antenna. The old skeleton came out and behind it, what was left of the shrimp, just some of it’s tail meat.
Lacking any Aquarium CSI team, all I can do is guess what happened. Either it was sick and died during it’s moulting process, or something attacked it while it was in its very vulnerable state. I suppose a crab or the Bandai Cardinal could have done that.
The other shrimp, a peppermint, and all other animals are thriving. So I don’t think it’s any water quality issue. I suppose I could have just acclimated it poorly as it survived less than a week.
Live and learn. Or not. Well, learn anyway.
In memory of the cleaner shrimp…rest in peace.
Here it is early on.
This one was taken just hours before its demise. I did notice at this point that it had really started to let “stuff” accumulate on its antenna. In hindsight, this may be because it had started to moult.
And here is the shot in mid-moult. This is where it sat for at least a a few hours before ending up down below these rocks where I couldn’t get a good photo. The red blob on the bottom is hte peppermint shrimp, and of course the cardinal upper left.
New Livestock
17 April 2007Big trip to the pet store yesterday where I got a number of new animals to help get the tank in shape and the algae cleaned up.
3 Nassarius Snails @ $4.99 each
3 Blue Leg Hermits @ 2.99 each
3 Turbo Grazers @ 2.99 each
1 Cleaner Shrimp @ $39.99
And I picked up my first soft coral, a small Zoanthid for $39.99. I wanted to test and see how well coral would do in the tank at this stage. for $40, I’m very interested in keeping this alive!
And yes, I got a second shrimp. I thought the first one was so cool, I had to get one that’s more extroverted, a cleaner shrimp.
All in all, a pricey visit to the store, but the tank is now teeming.
Reef Tank Update
16 April 2007There have been several new developments in a week since the last post.
Two more hermit crabs have died. At least I think they died. Initially, I couldn’t find empty shells for either crab. One of them was a larger crab and I can’t imagine that I’d lose track of that shell. The other was one of the very small ones and I did later locate its shell tucked deep inside some branchy rock. I’m guessing the latter got its shell stuck there and died in its escape and subsequent search for a new shell. I suppose the former could just be the shell that a crab moulted. I’m not certain how to tell.
New Livestock:
4 new Blue Legged Hermits @ $2.99 each
4 new Turbo Grazer snails @ $2.99 each
1 Peppermint shrimp @ $11.99
The most interesting new inhabitant is a peppermint shrimp. I picked it up at the local pet shop as the initial strategy to rid the tank of the aiptasia anenome. It seems to have worked. Very quickly, the aiptasia was gone. Mission accomplished.
At first I was a bit reluctant to put this in the tank. In the pet store, the few tanks that are full of shrimp aren’t very attractive. They’re big and scary looking. And their legs and antennae seem to take up a lot of space. But now that it is in my tank, it has quickly become my favorite thing to watch. Everything it does — how it swims, eats, even hides away, is fascinating. Unfortunately, its favorite hiding place is in the back against the wall. Oh well. Maybe I’ll get another as they really seem to do a good job at getting into the deep places to clean out the rocks.
This morning I arrived to see what appeared to be a dead shrimp. It is totally white resting on its back on the rocks and completely intact — every feature down to antennae, swimming legs, eyes, etc. etc. I stared at it long enough to be convinced that it had died and them moved on to inspect the rest of the tank… And a shrimp swam by!
The shrimp had merely moulted. I cannot believe how complete its former exoskeleton is. All is well.
It is hard to keep track of how many animals are in the tank now. There are 9 or 10 snails and 7 or 8 crabs. They don’t seem to be able to keep up with the algae at this point and seem to be able to keep only 30% of the rocks clean. The sand at the bottom of the tank is pretty well covered with algae as well. I did move the snails around to spread out their efforts and that has helped some. I think more are needed.
First Casualty
12 April 2007A day or two ago, one of the hermits crawled out of his shell and made his way into the middle of the rocks, a fairly protected area. Certainly one that I cannot reach.
At the time I noticed, I could see where it ended up, and it appeared that it wasn’t moving at all. Since then, it’s been flipped over and is very clearly dead.
What happened? I don’t know. I don’t think it was too big for its shell. Maybe it was sick. Does a sick hermit leave its shell behind for its final stroll somewhere to die?
The rest of the livestock seem to be doing fine. The sand and many rocks are becoming quite covered with a brown/bronze algae, which is even making its way onto the glass on the back of the tank. I think it’s time to get some more clean-up crews to get that in control.
First Fish
7 April 2007We picked up our first fish today. My daughter picked it out. It’s a Bangai Cardinal:
I wanted to start out with something docile, not territorial, so a few other fish can be added later. This one fit the bill.
