An impromptu video of the NPS corals last night after lights out. In hindsight I probably should have wiped the glass and used a tripod. Also apologies for the reflections, the corals look good at least.
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I am really rather hesitant to say this in case I jinx it but it does seem that the 3 Peppermint shrimp I added a month ago are actually eating some Aiptasia. At least the Aiptasia are disappearing where before they were increasing. Honestly I am quite surprised by this considering how much food I add. I fully expected them to fill up with left over food and ignore the nasty glass anemones but it seems that they have the appetite for both so yay! Needless to say I wished I had added them months and months ago now, lol. They don't appear to be annoying or eating anything that they shouldn't. I did try feeding some food the Acanthastrea (Micromussa), as I like to do occasionally but that proved a mistake as one of the Peppermints was on it like a shot. To be fair the Acan is located right by the cave where they hang out during the day so the temptation to steal some food must have been too great to resist. I won't be doing that again anytime soon.
Continuing my spate of recent risky additions I have introduced a beautiful blue sponge to the tank. I'm not sure of the ID, looking at 'The Modern Coral Reef Aquaria' by Fossa & Nilson it could be Haliclona sp or Xestospongia sp. Apparently the latter feels firmer to the touch, but I certainly have not, nor will I try, squeezing it to find out. I'm not sure what possessed me to buy this sponge because I have read disturbing reports of this type of sponge releasing toxins on its death. This can lead to, well, bad things happening to the rest of the livestock. Needless to say I have been watching it very, very carefully, ready to remove if it looks like it's on the way out. To that end I have simply placed it on the sand for easy access. I haven't placed it in a particularly shaded spot as I have read some reports that blue sponges fare better under moderate lighting. They may even be photosynthetic! I don't know if that is the case but so far it doesn't seem bothered by the light and has been clear of any algae growths (the build up of algae is bad for sponges as it interferes with their ability to filter water). Most of the time the siphons appear open which I am taking to be a good sign and the colour is still good. The top down photo most accurately represents the shade of blue as seen by the eye.
I had read that in order to keep a spiral corals growing in a spiral shape they needed excellent water flow so I chose the best spot I could find for flow and visibility. I wanted to be able to admire them all the time rather than have them hidden at the back. I fixed both to the rockwork in the middle of the tank, the yellow one seemed fine but the after 3 days the orange one had lost some flesh revealing the black skeleton underneath. It was really getting blasted by the flow and maybe it was just getting too much. I feared that it was going to strip and die so I immediately pulled it off the rockwork and placed it back on the sand again. Another day later and it was like the flesh had never been missing, it had completely regrown. Thank goodness! It does seem that spiral corals are fast growers. In just under 2 months they have both extended their length by quite a bit. I love these curly wurlys!
A couple of nights ago I was checking on the tank just after lights out and discovered one of the Blue Legged hermit crabs (Clibanarius tricolor) had released babies. It's the first time I've been lucky enough to observe the zoeae, they don't last very long in the tank with hungry Cardinal fish and NPS corals fully extended. To begin with I thought the tiny specks were micro bubbles and I was just about the check if all the pumps were functioning correctly before the penny dropped. I siphoned a few of the little guys out for a closer look under the microscope.
Well, in this case the oyster is the world. At least it is for the many epibionts associated with one of these American Thorny oysters, Spondylus americanus. Thanks to my recent success in acquiring the Spiral corals (and a Rhizotrochus!) my wish list has been looking a bit shorter recently, however it is by no means complete. Another animal that I have always wanted to keep is the Thorny oyster, I have never seen any for sale nor have I been able to source any online. I decided to ask the local shop (the one that found the spiral corals) to look for one for me. Lo and behold one week later they had some. Now I know that oysters are difficult to keep, even a small one may be a stretch too far for my mixed reef tank but I have always wanted to try. I have been able to keep the hitchhiking mussel (Septifer bilocularis?) alive for over 4 years now but it is tiny in comparison and probably also an indiscriminate filter feeder. Still I feed a lot more particulate food and phytoplankton these days so I feel I'm in a better position to give one a go (famous last words!). They had two available, one was smaller and almost certainly the better choice but the bigger one was oh so fabulous, I found it impossible to choose between the two and all form of rational thought flew right out the window. I ended up buying both of them. I have named them 'Syd' Little and 'Eddie' Large (after the British comedy double act). Eddie is covered with so much fascinating life! So far I have discovered 4 addtional bivalves, 2 hoof snails, 2 tunicates, at least 4 species of sponge and a feather worm attached to him! I'm not confident on the IDs but the bivalve on top is possibly a Frond oyster (Dendostrea frons) and the one at the back is possibly a jewel box clam, Chama sp. Of the two remaining bivalves one is an Ark clam and the other is too tiny for me to have any sort of clue what it is other than it being a bivalve. The hoof snails, Hipponix sp.?, were initially intriguing but after doing a bit of research and watching them I came to the conclusion that they were possibly bad for the oyster. I found an article online that stated Hipponix conicus eats the mucus, faeces and mantle tissue of its host plus micro algae growing on the hosts shell. I observed both of mine, on occasion, extend their feeding proboscis right inside the oyster. Perhaps they were simply feeding on mucus and faeces but eating mantle tissue absolutely cannot be tolerated. The oysters don't need that kind of extra pressure to survive, they are hard enough to keep healthy as it is. I don't like killing things but the hoof snails had to go. Apart from the two on Eddie I found another one attached to Syd. The smaller ones popped off relatively easily but the large one took a bit more effort. Each one left a black 'mark' on the oysters shell. To begin with I thought the 'marks' were actually holes in the shell. I feared that the hoof snails had bored right through the shell and by removing them had I made the oysters vulnerable to predation/infection. Fortunately closer investigation showed that the shell was still intact, the snail's foot must have ground away the outer layer of the oysters shell. It's been just over 5 weeks since Eddie and Syd were introduced and the CUC have been checking them out most thoroughly. Unsurprisingly the cowries have been eating some of the sponges, most particularly the pink one on top. I'll be sad to lose it but there's not much I can do about it other than remove the cowries and I quite like having those around too. The Ark clam that was attached bottom right has vanished so must have moved on to pastures new. Both oysters are quite reactive but Syd, the smaller one is really twitchy. He can 'see' me approaching the tank and closes up in response. I don't know if this will harm him in the long run as it must use energy to close/open up all the time, also being closed means less feeding. I will have to wait and see how they both fare. I'll sign off this post with some time-lapse fun of Eddie & friends. A fellow reefer was shutting down his tank due to an impending house move and kindly offered to send me some of his cool hitchhikers. I am always looking for any extra diversity so welcomed them with open arms. He sent me two small bivalves, a small rock with an encrusting purple sponge and a handful of mini brittlestars. Unfortunately I made the mistake of adding the brittlestars to same container as the rock for acclimation so when I came to check on them a bit later on they had all managed to pile inside the rock somehow. Therefore I don't have any brittlestar photos to show, duh! I think one of the bivalves is an ark clam, maybe a bearded ark clam, Barbatia sp. (possibly Barbatia candida), the other one looks like a rectangular false cockle, Cardita variegata. I'm no shell expert though so take those IDs with a pinch of salt. After acclimation I placed them on the sand to check for signs of life and sure enough both opened up a little. I'm even worse at identifying sponges so I'm not even going to try to hesitate a guess at that one. The next day the Ark clam had completely vanished, I'd been warned that it liked to go a wandering so I wasn't particularly surprised to find it gone. I tried really hard to find its new location but failed completely. The other bivalve was still sat in the same spot on the sand so I carefully moved that to a spot under the rockwork.
Sponges tend to grow best out of the light so I placed that little rock underneath a ledge. The following day however I discovered one of my money cowries loitering right next to the sponge. I gave it the benefit of the doubt but it became clear later on that the cowrie was actually eating the sponge. The top left part of it had been totally consumed. I immediately pulled the cowrie away but 5 minutes later it was back on the sponge again. Nooo! Clearly this sponge is super tasty or something. I cannot be on hand all the time to defend it from hungry molluscs so I pulled the sponge out and placed it in the sump. A couple of weeks later it seems to be doing OK down there and may even be growing a little so I'm just going to leave it there now. The Coco worm reached its first anniversary with me on the 19th May 2021 so I recorded a quick video in celebration. I hope I can keep it happy and healthy for another year. Some new corals, yesss! I had been searching for a spiral coral for years, hoping that I'd come across one for sale in a shop one day. As the months/years ticked on I decided a more direct approach was probably needed. Last year I noticed De Jong Marinelife had some in stock but they sold out before an order could be placed. I also tried the 'order now' request via TMC when I noticed they had some available at the beginning of March but I never heard anything back from them. Then at the beginning of April I spotted a photo of a spiral/wire coral (Chirripathes sp.) listed on Facebook by a relatively local shop I immediately messaged them but it had already sold. I asked if they ever had any more in could they please, please let me know. Incredibly on Sunday 18th April I received a message to say that they had some more available, I immediately said yessss and jumped in the car. It would be my first visit to a fish shop since the pandemic started over a year ago. On my arrival I discovered that they actually had 4 spiral corals available, I wanted them all but settled for just two because I didn't want to seem too greedy, lol. This is how they looked the day after introduction: I think spiral corals are just so cool! I hope that I can feed them enough to keep them happy and healthy. Whilst I was in the shop my eyes couldn't help wandering over the rest of the fabulous coral stock, I just couldn't help myself it had been sooo long. I came across another unusual coral something I'd never seen in a shop before. Honestly my eyes were practically popping out of my head. Since I love the odd stuff, the corals most people ignore on their way to the SPS trays, I bought it too. I wasn't 100% sure but it looked a lot like a Rhizotrochus to me. The shop owner didn't know what it was but he did think that it was likely non-photosynthetic. Having asked around it does seem likely that this coral is indeed a Rhizotrochus sp. This is a coral I never, ever expected to see available in UK. The reefing gods must have been smiling down on me on that day.
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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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