I discovered my first black sun coral baby at the beginning of last month. It's settled on the outflow pipe of my return pump which is not the most ideal of locations. When (if) it grows larger it will need to be moved but for now I'm just leaving it be. I do not know which of my two black sun corals spawned this baby but since the tentacles have a green tinge I'm thinking it may be the T. micrantha. I'm hoping that there may be babies dotted around the tank but so far I am yet to find any others. Here it is just under 6 weeks later, looking a bit bigger.
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So one Sunday in May I discovered this: Here's the story. Just after 4am on Sunday morning I woke to the sound of house alarms ringing in the neighbourhood. So annoying! Then it registered that the reason house alarms sometimes trigger is usually related to a power cut, so I groggily reached for my phone to check on the tank. The first thing I noticed was that I'd received a disconnect notification from the return pump which was confirmation that there was a power issue. I tried checking on the tank via the webcam but it wouldn't connect so I tried the bedside lamp. That switched on so clearly the power was restored, I rolled over and went back to sleep. When I got up in the morning the house alarm display was showing an error code but I didn't care about that because immediately after I discovered the water level in the DT was abnormally low. The return pump was not working!! Whatever kind of glitch in the power/internet had knocked out the controller for the return pump and it had not restarted again, this had never happened before. I unplugged it and plugged it back in and water immediately started flowing again. However as soon as water began recirculating the temperature monitors started alarming. I watched as the temperature dropped to 23.5. OK, hopefully that wasn't too bad but 15 minutes later I noticed the tank was starting to look a bit cloudy, uh oh. I checked the refugium and found a significant gathering of mini brittlestars. The temperature dip had triggered them to spawn on mass. I have never seen so many little waving legs in my life, they were everywhere. Up in the DT brittlestars appeared out of every nook and cranny, climbing up literally every coral to spawn. I knew I had a fair few in the tank but I had no idea there were that many. The water got cloudier and cloudier so I started prepping for a water change. Fortunately nothing has been too badly affected by that event but it's not something I'm eager to repeat. I do have multiple temperature probes in case of failure but they are all positioned in the sump. I moved one of the sensors up to the DT so if it happens again I will be alerted but having said that the audible alarm is so puny I doubt I would hear it at night. I should probably invest in another temperature probe for the profilux because when that sounds I most definitely hear it and it scares the life out of me.
It's been almost 8 months since I added the Christmas tree worm rock so time for a proper update. I think things are going pretty well but I don't have a 100% success rate. A few of the worms have vanished (a total of 7 since introduction) for reasons unknown to me. Probably food related but I don't know for sure. The remaining worms (approx 33 of them) seem to be fine, in fact some are bigger and have extended their calcareous tubes quite considerably. Hopefully this is a good sign. I still have all 4 Paguritta crabs (tentatively identified as Paguritta morgani) and the tiny barnacles, spionid worms etc. Sadly I think I have lost the tunicate recently, it was being overgrown by the Cyphastrea and repeatedly covered by sand thanks to a Tigertail cucumber who has taken up residence underneath the rock. I regret not acting sooner to deal with the cucumber/sand situation. The Cyphastrea is growing really well, it has completely covered all the free space on the rock except for one small area which I always found strange. Then, when recording this update, I finally discovered the reason why, there are two teeny tiny gall crabs living in that location. It's only taken me 8 months to discover them, lol (they measure just 2mm wide so are easily missed). As luck would have it one of them shed that very night leaving the empty exoskeleton right by the entrance to his hole so my identification was confirmed. I find them pretty cool but then I find most things reef related fascinating. Since they don't appear to be doing too much damage so I'm going to leave them be. Another short clip of the Paguritta crabs because they are just so cool! Also.... what's that? There's something moving in that hole! My surprising discovery of the gall crab(s?). The video is not the best quality (a bit of an understatement there) but the tiny gall crab can be seen in the area of rock not covered by coral (right of centre). I think there is a second one in another hole above and to the right of the first one. A few macro photos of the gall crab shed exoskeleton that only the most dedicated of reefing nerds are probably interested in, lol. The details are quite hard to make out. Underside: Topside, the carapace looks reddish but that's just algae growth, the new skeleton is whitish is colouration. Side view: View of the crab in her hole the morning after shedding.
I am happy to report that last month my Coco worm passed the 2 year mark (today makes it 2 years, 1 month + 1day), I wonder how much longer I can keep it for? Apart from feeding, the main difficulty I have with this worm is flow. It really does not like a lot of flow! When I need to take the nanostream pumps out for a clean (and I have to do this more times than I'd like due to the rapid growth of coralline and bubble algae) repositioning them afterwards is a real headache. No matter how hard I try I can never quite get them in exactly the same position again, one of the downsides of having a multidirectional pump I guess. If the worm gets too much flow then crown starts to suffer and if the crown is damaged it can't feed efficiently. Sometimes after cleaning I spend days tweaking the pumps trying to make everything happy again. Point them too far one way and the clam gets blasted, too much the other way and the worm gets blasted, too much down flow and Heliofungia gets battered etc.
I've been trying to find out the identity of this thing for a while. It kind of looks like a tunicate (with inhalant and exhalant siphons) but seems to be living in a tube. The 'tube' has grown longer over the last 7 months and is covered with Cyphastrea coral. I have seen something similar in the past but it was much smaller and growing on a snail shell. I am so very curious to know what this thing is and really hope someone can help me ID it. Top down view. Also here is a quick video showing what it does (or doesn't do). I does not extend a net or anything like that. If you recognise what this is I'd really appreciate it if you could leave a comment.
It's been 5 years since I introduced this crocea clam to my tank. During that time he's survived pyramid snails and a stressful tank upgrade that caused him to spawn. I hope to be able to celebrate another 5 years with him but with electricity prices set to soar who knows if I'll even be able to afford to run a reef tank in the future....
I have tentatively identified the hitchhiking large vermatid snail as Dendropoma sp. I recorded this video of the large vermatid snail feeding at the end of December 2021, I had stirred up the sand and noticed it hauling in its mucus web. Generally I'm not keen on vermatid snails (I have an army of the smaller species already and they annoy me intensely) but I find this one kind of cool. It's unlikely to reproduce since (as far as I am aware) I have only one. Unfortunately, a week ago, when feeding the fish their breakfast I noticed a mass of purple coloured mucus like substance covering the bottom right corner of the Christmas tree worm rock. My first thought was I'd lost another one of the Christmas worms but then I realised the mass was centred around the vermatid snail tube. I siphoned away the mucus to discover a dead area of Cyphastrea and no sign of the vermatid snail. Later on the snail showed signs of life, with the operculum again visible at the top of the tube so I wasn't sure what to think. Had another coral released mucus that landed on the Cyphastrea causing the snail to retreat deep down into its tube and suffocated the coral? The next day I discovered one of the Nassarius snails sat right on top of the vermatid snail tube, with another two prowling close by. Clean up crew in action! The vermatid snail was definitely dead then.
I do feel a little sad to lose that snail. Did it starve or was it old, did the mucus kill it or was the mucus a result of it dying? Looking at the video above the snail appeared to be happy enough, eating and producing waste. I assumed it would do just fine without any particular intervention from me, sadly not. Luckily I haven't lost any more Cyphastrea, the immediate area looked a bit unhappy for a few days but seems to have bounced back now. Prior to this the coral was spreading quite nicely so hopefully the dead area will be recovered soon. I haven't lost any of the Christmas tree worms even those that were right next to the vermatid snail and were covered by mucus, I am thankful for that. This is how the area looks a week after the mucus event. It's been a while since I posted an update on the gorgonians, time to fix that I think. The Pinnigorgia sp. has grown into a monster and has to be fragged on a regular basis to keep it from taking over the tank, it also sticks out of the water whenever I perform a water change. I don't do anything special to maintain it, it just grows and grows. The Plexaurella sp. is somewhat frustrating. When I first transferred it to this tank it looked fantastic, as fluffy and healthy looking as I had ever seen it. But then a while ago, a year ago maybe, it started spending a fair chunk of time each month with the polyps retracted. It would stay like this for 4 or 5 days before sloughing off a layer of mucus/algae and springing back to life once again. I know this is all pretty normal for gorgonians but it never did it this much when it was first added or even much at all in my old tank. More worrying is that every time it goes through this cycle it loses flesh at some of the branch tips. I suspect it's probably flow related and or silicate related. As far back as I can remember the diatom growth has been abundant in this tank, (another gift from the TMC Ecoreef rock perhaps?). It seems better controlled since I started being more aggressive with Rowaphos but still closes up on a regular basis. I would like to ramp up the flow but the Crocea clam sits right in front of it and I unwilling to muck around with it any more than I already have. This gorgonian will just have to muddle through, recently it has another issue to contend with aswell. The Oxypora sp. growing in front does not play nicely. I whipped out the coral cutters right after I took the photo below. This is how the Plexaurella looks after the most recent round of mucus/algae shedding, note the couple of stripped branches at the top. I don't talk about the Muricea sp. very much, it's tucked away at the back of the tank and is quite hard to photograph. It grows slowly but steadily, again I don't do anything special to maintain it. Moving on to the non-photosynthetic gorgonians, growth has been a mixed bag with these to say the least which is not exactly unexpected. The Menella sp. is my favourite, the yellow polyps contrasting against the red base is just gorgeous. It has grown but considering I've had it for over 2 years it's not that much really, still growth is growth so I'll take that. At this rate though it's going to be 20 or so more years before I have a colony really worth looking at. The small red and white gorgonian frag I picked up from a fellow reefer is still with me. It extends its polyps almost all of the time but has done nothing much to speak of in the last 16 months. It's shown no recession but no growth either, well maybe there was a little growth at one point but that seems to have since stopped. I guess there's not enough of the right kind of food to be able to grow. The purple polyp gorgonian has been the most disappointing to date. After a really encouraging start where some stripped areas regrew it's been pretty much downhill ever since. The branches began receding at the tips and some flesh was lost at the base too. I tried adding more particulate food but still the recession continued. As the polyps slowly vanished the remaining stalk became a magnet for algae, to be honest after a while the whole thing looked a bit of a state. At 9 months I decided to take action and frag it, I kept a single branch so that I could really focus on target feeding it more. I'd love to be able to report that I've been successful but sadly that's not been the case. The frag is still hanging on in there after 16 months and although the recession has slowed it's still happening all be it very slowly, this is all I have left of it now. Clearly this is one species that I cannot make happy in my current set up.
After the peppermint shrimp fiasco and the removal of the yellow wrasse I've been really focussing on getting the sun corals to open more during the day. I want to enjoy them more when the lights are on and it's easier to feed them during the day when I can actually see what I'm doing. For a while I had been struggling to feed the black sun coral heads that came attached to the orange sun colony. The orange polyps obscure the black heads when they open up. If I didn't take action then I would lose them and I really didn't want that to happen. I pulled the entire colony out of the tank and chopped the black heads off. I also removed the single head marked with the arrow because that wasn't opening too and I thought why not save that too. It took a fair while to coax the fragged heads to open up once more but they are all doing great now.
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AuthorHi, my name is Lisa and I live in Derby, UK. I am a self-confessed reefaholic! Archives
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