I try to encourage sponge growth in my tank because I quite like them and are also fascinated by them, however there's one particular sponge that's been giving me cause for concern recently. It hitchhiked into the tank on the shell of the large thorny oyster 9 months ago. When it first arrived it was a tiny white blob but as time has gone by it's turned grey and grown bigger. By the end of January 2022 it had completely obscured (killed?) the purple tunicate that had been growing behind it and was spreading over the thorny oyster shell as well as in front of the right side of the Frond oyster. I was beginning to wonder about the identity of this sponge, could it be the dreaded chicken liver sponge? Apparently chicken liver sponge can be invasive, growing over/killing corals and it should be removed as soon as seen. This is what the sponge looked like as of last week. I scoured my books and the internet for information on grey sponges and came across Chondrosia reniformis (aka kidney sponge). This species can be mottled brown to grey in colour *check*. Grows into smooth, irregular kidney-shaped encrustations, *also check*. What particularly caught my eye though is that colouration depends on light intensity, the brighter the illumination the darker the sponge and that is exactly what I have seen with this one. It started off white and over time has turned dark grey. I assume in the wild the sponge/Thorny oyster came from a shaded location and now in my tank is pretty much under full lighting. There is a similar species named Chondrilla nucula (chicken liver sponge, uh oh!) which is also a possibility but I'm leaning more towards the first species at this point.
I'm quite fond of bivalves as well as sponges, if things continued as they were the sponge would probably grow over the Frond oyster preventing it from feeding most likely resulting in its demise. Given the choice between the two I'd rather keep the former and loose the latter. Also if this sponge really is invasive then much more would be at stake eventually. C. reniformis is described as leathery and uses collagen fibres for support instead of calcareous spicules etc so I rather naively assumed that I could simply peel it off the shell. I tried this with a pair of tweezers but all I did was puncture the sponge in several places causing the release of some unknown grey liquid. Clearly removal was not going to be quite so simple. Also the following day I noticed that the coralline algae growing in the vicinity of the sponge was now dying off. Coincidence? I think not! Some sponges are said to be toxic to keep from being eaten so perhaps this was one of those. Also the sponge seemed not to be bothered by multiple stabbings with a pointy pair of tweezers. Plan B was to perform surgery outside of the tank in case there was a chance of any more toxins being released. I detached the spiral coral, no point in risking that too, and moved the oyster shell over to a bowl containing some tank water. I then proceeded to pick off the sponge bit by bit, when most of it was gone I scrubbed the entire area with a stiff brush. After rinsing off with some additional saltwater I plopped the shell back into the tank and crossed my fingers. A quick check with the magnifying glass did show some tiny bits of sponge still remaining on the shell, hopefully they will die off in a couple of days. The Frond oyster survived the scrubbing ordeal and was opening up again not long after being back in the tank, the Jewel Box clam however took a couple more days to feel comfortable again. It seems to be fine now thankfully. I am yet to see the feather duster reemerge, I hope I didn't squash its tube. Fingers crossed I have dealt with the sponge, either that or I've spread it around the tank. Eeek!
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My Balanophyllia coral spawned again on Saturday, 29th January 2022. This is the second time I've witnessed it release gametes, the first time was 30th October 2020. It's not exactly the same time of year, or even phase of the moon for that matter, but it did happen at the same time of day i.e. first thing in the morning. I really wish that I had more of this species, it would be so cool if one was female and released eggs at the same time. I have been looking to add more but they are not commonly available here unfortunately.
I posted a short video to Instagram, the spawning event went on for quite a few minutes.
Coincidentally I took a couple of photos of the coral the night before it spawned, it looked the same as it normally does.
...and hopefully I can keep celebrating it for many years to come.
Back in November a couple of days before my birthday I spotted something awesome for sale online. Something I have always wanted to keep, my holy grail of livestock so to speak. A series of messages passed back and forth between myself and the shop. First I checked the size, then I checked price and then I checked if it was still available. I didn't think I had any space left in the tank but where there's a will there's a way right! My lovely husband said "birthday present, let's go!' So we did and once I saw the item in question I knew I couldn't leave the shop without it. I traded in some zoanthids in order to make room, well, who needs zoas anyway?! So that's how Christmas arrived for me in November, a Christmas tree worm rock! In addition to the worms and the Cyphastrea coral host, there is also one really Hench Vermatid snail (I can hear many reefers screaming right now), lots of teeny tiny barnacles, a rather gorgeous Tunicate and four super awesome Paguritta crabs. At the time of writing this post (I'm behind on my updates once again) the rock has been with me for just over two months. I lost a couple of the worms early on (during week 3 & week 5), they were both close to each other so I hope they were already doomed rather than unhappy with my tank conditions/feeding. I haven't lost any more since then, there are at least 35 worms remaining. The host coral appears to be doing really well so far. To begin with it was quite brown but has since turned a lovely shade of fluorescent green it's also spreading over the bare parts of the rock too, I'm extremely happy about that. Articles online say that if the host coral dies then the worms will too, I don't know about that but I'd rather not have to find out. Needless to say I've taken a LOT of photos of the life on this rock, everything about it fascinates me. I'm not going to post them all in this post but they can be found on the livestock page (click here.) Ever since I picked up a Walking Dendro I have wanted to capture a video of the peanut worm hauling the coral around the sand. I have tried on a number of different occasions to record a Timelapse video but the coral never moves, even just a bit. Then, in June last year, I happened to notice the coral was propped up on top of a partially buried Cerith snail with the peanut worm visible below. Yes, I thought, finally a chance to capture some worm action. I hastily set up my phone and clicked record but unfortunately when I checked the footage some 30 minutes later I discovered that the focus was slightly off. I can't tell you how annoyed I was about! Since the video was not the best I never bothered to upload it but here we are 7 months later and I haven't recorded anything better, so what the heck, I'm going to share it anyway. At the beginning of the video the worm can be seen poking out bottom left of the coral and snaking to the right, its head appears just under the sand to the right of the coral. It's going to be hard to make out if you watch on a phone but on a bigger computer screen you can see the star shaped mouth moving right next to the glass. I've fast forwarded through the parts where nothing much happens to make it less boring. Still this video is for die hard peanut worm lovers, you have been warned. Whilst cleaning the glass a couple of days ago I happened to notice an intriguing little red blob cruising up the side panel. The 'blob' was tiny, measuring just 1mm in length, I'm amazed I saw it at all to be honest. A quick check with a magnifying glass showed it to be a teeny tiny nudibranch. I assume it must have hitchhiked in with the Christmas tree worm rock because I've not come across it before but due to the size it could have been in the tank for longer I suppose. I never in a million years expected to be able to find an ID but a quick search of the internet for 'tiny red nudibranch' revealed that it is most likely Vayssierea felis. These miniscule nudibranchs feed on Spirorbid worms and I have plenty of those that's for sure. The red-orange spots in the body are developing eggs. Pretty cool huh!
Edna the Possum wrasse has been with me for 5 years! She's a lovely peaceful little fish, always sneaking around the rocks searching for a tasty snack. I don't know what the life expectancy is for these fish, she's only small and small fish don't tend to live as long but hopefully we can celebrate a few more years together yet.
It's been seven months since I introduced a pair of thorny oysters to my tank and I am sad to report that they just didn't last. The larger one died after a couple of months and the smaller one followed suit a week later. I must assume I wasn't supplying enough of the right kinds of food to sustain them or they just didn't acclimate well to my tank. It's not all doom and gloom however, some of the organisms that came attached to the outside of the larger oyster's shell are still alive. The Frond oyster, Dendostrea frons, on the top of the shell is still opening and closing, which is very cool. As is the jewel box clam (Chama sp?) at the back. This is the only photo of the clam I have taken so far, it looks the same now as it did back in July, well it's covered with a bit more coralline algae and vermatid snails now. The vermatid snails are everywhere now and they are becoming rather annoying. The other smaller bivalves have survived too along with some of sponges etc. The sponge coverage is a lot less that it was at the beginning but some bits are holding out on the more shaded areas of the shell. The grey 'blob' growing to the right of the Frond oyster has definitely grown since introduction, I assume it's a type of sponge also. Up until recently I had assumed the small tunicate originally located to the left of the grey sponge had long since perished but no, it's still hanging on in there amazingly. It looks like it's seriously getting squeezed out by the sponge though. Last but not least the small fan worm attached to the bottom of the shell is still alive and looking lovely. I think it may be Bispira brunnea however these worms generally appear in clusters (hence the common name cluster dusters). They secrete soft non-calcareous tubes but I can't tell what kind of tube this worm is living in, when the feathery head retracts you wouldn't know anything was there at all. Some of the livestock has adopted the empty oyster shell as a favoured sleeping location. The cowries like to hang out under the top shell during the day as does the Black Sea cucumber occasionally (but he's getting too big to fit into the space now). Since it was clear the oyster shell was going to be staying in my tank for the foreseeable future I decided to put it to good use. I needed a spot to fix down a new spiral coral that I picked up in October. I had tried fixing the coral to a rock in front of the yellow spiral but the two didn't appear to get along very well. The yellow one stopped extending its polyps and the flesh looked oddly puffy so I opted to pull the new spiral away as a safety precaution. This left me with a bit of a dilemma, where to place the new one. That's when I came up with the idea of making use of the oyster shell, actually there was really no where else to place the spiral to be honest. This new spiral coral is super curly and has a thicker stem than the other two I have, it is a different species being a Stichopathes sp. rather than Cirrhipathes sp. As you can see this species has polyps on one side of the stem only whereas Cirrhipathes sp. have them arranged all the way round.
Yesterday was pretty eventful, my pair of pink streaked wrasse spawned for the first time. I guess that means that I was fortunate enough to choose a male and female after all. The female had been looking fat all week but yesterday she looked like she'd swallowed a marble, so round was her tummy. The pair seemed to be displaying/interacting a lot and this intensified a couple of hours before lights out so I sat down to watch them. The male would display to the female by swimming on his side next to her and his colouration changed too (I'm not exactly sure to what because the lighting was really, really blue at that time plus I was sitting too far away so not to spook them). The rear of her belly next to the vent went very pale/white. The romancing/courtship went on for about an hour, they would come together, rise to the top of the tank and swim back down again. Finally, about 50 minutes before the lights go out, they did the deed. I downloaded the footage from my webcam but the quality is bad, I mean really, really bad but I'm still pretty excited to have captured it anyway. Maybe when/if it happens again I can try to record it on my phone but the lights will still be blue so it might not be that much better. I have cropped the footage a bit and tried colour correcting some of the blue (also the glass needs a wipe). It's a blink and you'll miss it kind of moment, so if that happens check out time stamp 1:20 (top left of the screen). One of the benefits of the yellow wrasse no longer being present is that whenever the fish are fed and the flow is switched off out pop this pair. I don't know what Flash has been eating recently but his belly is really quite round, lol. |
AuthorHi, my name is Lisa and I live in Derby, UK. I am a self-confessed reefaholic! Archives
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