A few weeks ago I decided to take action against the hair algae growing on the skeletons of my recently deceased Acros. I armed myself with a toothbrush and tried scrubbing the affected areas, at the same time I performed a water change enabling me to siphon out the algae as soon it was liberated. It didn't take long for me to realise that this just wasn't going to work very well. It was almost impossible to reach some of the areas without running the risk of damaging the surrounding corals and even in the areas I could reach I was unable clear it all off. Worst of all during the process, thanks to my clumsiness, I snapped off the branch tips of several corals.  So no more scrubbing for me!

Instead I decided to embrace the hair algae rather than hate it. For years I've wanted to try keeping a Rainford's goby (aka Court Jester goby, Koumansetta rainfordi) but never had the courage to try one because of their reputed difficulty in accepting prepared foods plus need for filamentous algae in their diet. As luck would have it I came across one of these little fish during a visit to a local fish shop, I observed it for a while whilst running through my Rainford's goby purchasing check list.

1. A healthy looking specimen (sleek looking without a concave tummy). ✓
2. Eating prepared foods (I watched it tuck into frozen mysis). ✓
3. Mature aquarium to introduce it to (the tank is 22+ months old now). ✓
4. Filamentous algae present on which it can browse (yes indeed!). ✓
5. No super aggressive tank mates such as dottybacks or hawkfishes to harass it. ✓

My biggest concern, apart from the feeding issue, was the presence of my Yellow and Pintail wrasse, they are much bigger fish and I had no idea how they would react to the introduction of a small and delicate goby. I was fairly confident that the other nano gobies and wrasse would have no issue. After much umming and aahing I decided to take the risk and bring the little fish home with me.

Amazingly, once introduced the new goby was completely ignored by all the resident fish, I was certainly not expecting that! Despite the lack of aggression the goby was far from relaxed which I suppose is normal for any new fish and the Yellow/Pintail wrasses are undoubtedly quite scary to a timid little goby. He didn't hide but kept low down on the sand in the front left-hand corner of the tank and actually looked to be struggling with the brisk flow so I turned down the powerheads to give him some relief. That night he created a cosy little depression in the sand underneath the Utter Chaos zoanthids to sleep in. By the way I have no idea if this fish is male or female, I decided to go with male (a tough little guy with any luck) and named him Jessie. 

Over the next couple of days Jessie slowly settled in and started exploring the tank. I can confirm that he does peck at/sift the sand and eat hair algae, result! I can't see him being voracious enough to eradicate the hair algae or even keep it in check for that matter but that doesn't bother me right now, I'm just thrilled that he's eating. He was still nervous of the bigger fish and would dart out of their way whenever they approached and when it came to frozen food he would look interested but was not confident enough to grab a bite. Fish have to be quick off the block in this tank when it comes to food as the greedy wrasse tend to hoover it up in no time at all.

I increased the number of feedings from three to four times per day and on the fifth day post introduction, Jessie felt confident enough to sneak a couple of small pieces of Gamma Mysis. By the eight day he was up for trying to tackle a large piece of PE Mysis but this was a bit beyond his capability, he tried 'chewing' it 4 times but as he spat it out for yet another attempt a wrasse swooped down and stole it, lol! To ensure that he is getting his fair share I have introduced him to the magical food dispenser (me and a pipette). I like to spot feed most of my livestock (fish, corals, shrimp and crabs) and naturally the fish know that the pipette means food so it takes a bit of time and patience to get the food to the intended target. The Yellow and Pintail wrasse try to steal as much of it as possible, I swear given the chance those fish would keep eating until they popped! I have to wait until these fish 'appear' to lose interest before quickly releasing a piece of food in front of the intended recipient. Fortunately, Jessie is a quick learner and took to the pipette trick remarkably fast, he's even started pecking at the tip in his impatience for the food to appear.

It's early days for this fish but so far I think it's looking promising. I will certainly keeping a very close eye on the state of his tummy to make sure it stays full looking and not sucked in.

It occurred to me after my last update regarding the continuing red bug issue that there was one pest I hadn't actually seen in the tank for a while and that was pyramid snails. For months and months I religiously siphoned out as many of the tiny parasitic snails that I could find, I literally removed hundreds of them without any obvious dent in their population. Naturally this got old very fast and as the months went by and my hardworking clean-up crew (Trochus & Turbo snails etc) and clam looked fine I became less vigilant. I would still remove any that I saw attached to the snails but I no longer actively seeked them out. Today though I've searched the tank most thoroughly with a magnifying glass and cannot find any evidence of a single pyramid snail. That's not to say that they aren't still present in the tank but considering how many there were at one point I take it to be a positive sign. Perhaps one of the fish has finally found a taste for them, the most obvious candidate being the Yellow wrasse but I have never seen her (now him) show any interest in eating them even when faced with one crawling up the glass in front of her face.

So that's the step forward, now for the backward step. Since the demise of some of my Acropora I have been faced with the issue of what to do with their dead skeletons. I fragged off as much as I could but that still left a goodly amount of encrusted base on the rocks. Sadly these have now become a magnet for hair algae. Normally the snails would have made short work of this algae before it had chance to establish but they find it quite hard to navigate their way round the rockwork these days due to the fact that there are lots of other corals in the way, in fact I hardly ever see the Trochus/Turbo/Ceriths on the rocks at all now, they just spend all their time cruising round the glass. Since this algae is growing ever longer by the day and starting to spread I need to formulate a battle plan asap.

That's it for now I'll sign off with an updated video for your viewing pleasure.