Just a couple of fish shots that I took yesterday following the blog update, if only they could all sit still for the camera like Candy the Red Striped goby does (now!).

A new month and a new FTS. Besides a few new corals not that much has changed really. The Stylophora is showing some nice growth, the Lobophyllia and Acanthastrea look good, the zoanthids are, err, surviving. I think that all the nudibranchs have gone now and the remaining heads are opening up once again, I did lose a few of the orange ones that were on top of the rock, they simply melted away. Too much light/too little light/too much flow/too little flow? Who knows?? To be honest I've never really been that successful with zoas, perhaps the water is too clean? I'm considering feeding some coral foods to see if it helps them at all.

Acro #1 looks the same, it was knocked off the rockwork by a naughty hermit crab and when I stuck it back down it was in a slightly different orientation so it's difficult to tell if there has been any growth or not. Acro #2 has shown a tiny bit of growth and the damaged tips on the lower left-hand branches have regrown. I do think that they have lost a little colour though, another reason to try feeding perhaps, plus the nitrates and phosphates are still undetectable which according to current thinking is not ideal for SPS these days.

Since the Pink Streaked wrasse was added the Nudus gobies and Red Striped goby have moved to the front right of the tank. I get to see a lot more of them now which is really great. The tank has settled down nicely again. I need to relocate the Lobophyllia as Lurch the conch keeps knocking it to the left in his quest to clean the lower rocks. I am also thinking of adding a plating coral to the rock that sits above the pistol shrimp and Whitecap's home (I've seen them again today btw, two days on the trot I think that's a record, lol!) in order to give the entrance to the burrow a bit of shade, I think that will help them to feel more comfortable and hopefully they will become more visible. At the moment the lighting is really too bright for them.

I've been trying to get some shots of the Possum and Pink Streaked wrasse but it's proving difficult as they don't sit still like the gobies do. I will keep trying. Oh and last but not least Crystal the Bruun's cleaner shrimp shed her exoskeleton again last night so she seems fine too.

It's all gone quiet on the pistol shrimp and Whitecap goby front, no positive sightings since Wednesday the 25th and no new burrow holes have appeared in the sand either. Still apart from their absence the tank looks to be doing OK. Parameters are within normal ranges and the corals that I have look fine, time for some new additions methinks.

I still really want to add an Acropora colony with a commensal crab hidden in amongst the branches but all the colonies I have seen have really large bases which would be difficult to find places for on my rockwork. I could cut them down I suppose but it would be hard to do without damaging the coral, not to mention freaking out the crab, so I decided yet again to stick to small frags only. Unfortunately the tank is going to look pretty empty for ages whilst they grow out and I will have to make sure that I stay strong and don't get tempted to fill in the empty gaps with extra corals. So anyway on Saturday I chose a beautiful  green frag of Acropora formosa (I think) and a frag of Seriatopora hystrix. Additionally I perhaps rather foolishly decided to purchase another fish, one that will hopefully be on display (eventually) for a bit more time than my current fish stock. I settled on a small Pink-Streaked wrasse who I was assured by the LFS was not just a pretty fish but also functional predator of the troublesome red bugs etc. I don't have any of those in my tank at the moment....but you never know.

Needless to say the tank is now in fishy turmoil again. The Nudus gobies have moved out of their new (version 2) home and even Candy the Red Striped goby has changed her usual perching spot. Sigh! Interestingly Edna the Possum wrasse doesn't see bothered at all and seems to be ignoring the new fish. Who knows what the Whitecap is thinking imprisoned under the rockwork (alive I hope!). I must point out though that the Pink Streaked wrasse does not appear to be aggressive at all to any of the resident fish, she has spent all of today cowering in the right-hand back corner of the tank.

I think that's it for new fish additions for a while, the current occupants need to settle down  and chill out a bit.

So I managed to sneak up on the gobies and capture them doing their thing, gosh it's such a hard life waiting for food to float by. It's not the best shot but at least they are all present and correct. You can't tell from the photo but the T. nudus gobies have grown quite a bit over the last 7 and a bit weeks (even with their bout of self-imposed hunger strike following the introduction of Whitecap goby & pistol shrimp pair).

I'm happy to report that the Whitecap goby is fine. The pistol shrimp seems to have settled down in one area now (fingers crossed it stays there) and pretty much every time I feed the tank the same hole opens up and it's relatively easy to drop a bit of food down there. Unfortunately the pistol seems to snag all the food, I didn't see the goby get any at all yesterday. Do pistol shrimps share food with their goby partners I wonder? I'm betting not. At this rate I'm certainly going to have the fattest Red Spotted pistol shrimp ever.

Today I haven't observed so much shrimp activity, it's probably digesting all that food from yesterday, lol. Anyway I tried feeding one last time just now and the Whitecap definitely got a nice sized chunk of mysis after I'd distracted the shrimp with it's own piece of food.

I'm also pleased to say that the T. nudus gobies have abandoned their hunger strike now. I don't see them as much as I used to when they lived in the cave which is a shame. They are now hanging out on the far right-hand side of the rockwork along with Candy the Trimma cana goby. They all seem to get along fine which is good. I need to try and get a photo of the three amigos together but every time I approach with the camera they vanish like lightning into a hole in the rockwork.

Not a whole lot to report regarding the gobies and pistol shrimp over the last couple of days. The Whitecap is nowhere to be found during the day but it does venture out after the lights go down and roams the tank. It looks so tiny and seems to be easily buffeted by the flow, I am yet to see it eat anything. There have been no sightings of the shrimp at all and no pistol shots heard either, I can't decide if I am more worried for the fish or the shrimp now. The T. nudus gobies are also still unsettled although #1 (Hop) has started to eat again, #2 (Skip) is still on hunger strike. Edna the possum wrasse and Candy the Red Striped goby seem completely unfazed by the new additions, nothing puts them off their food, lol!

With all this upheaval I have failed to mention that on Saturday I added a few more corals to the tank. A couple of small Acropora sp. frags and a single head of Lobophyllia sp. I haven't taken any photos of them before today as I have been avoiding cleaning the glass in fear of causing even more disturbance to the fishy occupants. I decided to risk it today however.

Happy New Year everyone, I hope you all enjoyed the festivities.

I am pleased to report that my tank has corals in it at last! I took absolutely ages at the LFS deciding what to buy. I'm still not sure if I have made the right choices but the deed is done now so I'll have live with the consequences. My criteria for selection were small pieces/frags only and easy(ish) corals to care for. So I am now the proud owner of a small rock with a scattering of zoanthids, a frag of Stylophora pistillata and a frag of Acanthastrea sp. At the insistence of my son I also came home with a couple of micro hermits. As far as my kids are concerned, crabs are absolutely awesome and corals are just blah! I did however, put my foot down at the suggestion of buying a clam at this point. As much as I would love one I think the tank is too young and unstable at the moment.

With regards to the resident stock, the squat lobster is still MIA so it's looking like he's probably gone up to the great reef in the sky, I doubt that I'll be getting another if that is the case. He will be my first loss and will be sorely missed. The Scaleless Shrimpgobies are spending more and more of their time hidden in their cave and have become very protective of it too. Any hermits that venture too close are immediately attacked. Neither goby has fed today in fact I have only seen one of them (not sure which one) a couple of times this afternoon. I do hope they are OK. Edna the possum wrasse has become a bit more confident and I can feed her directly from a pipette, she still quite shy and prefers to swim close to the rockwork and hang out under overhangs though. Candy the Red Striped goby is going strong and seems unfazed by anything at all, food is definitely on top of her list of priorities.

The tank is now two months old and yesterday I decided to take a trip to the LFS to see what fishies they had available. To my very great surprise they had quite a few from my wish list in stock. After much umming and ahhing I decided upon a sweet little possum wrasse. It was labelled up as a White Banded Possum Wrasse (Wetmorella albofasciata) but I'm fairly sure that it is actually a Tanaka's wrasse (Wetmorella tanakai). They are very similar looking, achieve the same size and behave in the same manner so it doesn't really matter to me which one it is. They are classed as a peaceful reef-safe fish that are generally quite reclusive, we've called her Edna. No picture to show as of yet.

Fortunately the other gobies don't seem bothered at all by the new arrival, in fact they have been out and about a little more than usual today. Possibly because they missed out on both tea and supper yesterday, lol.

Day 51: The fish seemed to have settled in and have all fed at some point. The food has to practically drift past their faces in order for them to eat though as they are not willing at this point to venture far from their respective caves.

Day 49: The tank is just shy of six weeks old and the time has come to introduce it's first fishy residents. Keeping to my philosophy of 'small fish for a small tank' I settled on, after much research, on a pair of Scaleless shrimp gobies (Tomiyamichthys nudus) and a Candy Cane goby (Trimma cana​).  Three fish in one go for a new tank sounds like a lot but these guys are tiny and I mean really tiny! The load on the biological filter will hopefully be small. To say that my family were a little disappointed when I arrived home with my precious cargo is a bit of an understatement, at first they didn't think that there were any fish in the bags at all, lol!