An internet buddy got a great video of a crab hanging out on the beach. At first curious, he turns surly around the 1:50 mark and kicks sand into the camera. This sort of behavior should be familiar to most aquarium hobbyists.
The algae war in my reef tank continues. Despite some recent success, specifically in taming a rise in nitrates, the nuisance persists. Dosing AlgaeFix has greatly reduced forms of green algae on the rock and tank walls, but cyanobacteria continues to be an issue.
Cyanobacteria from my freswater planted tank
Also known as 'red slime', cyanobacteria is an obnoxious problem within the aquarium. It first appeared on the substrate, and not fully understanding how difficult it is to remove once it spreads, I was lazy on removing it fast enough. Scooping it off the substrate is simple, as it forms a tight mat that can be removed by hand. Once it spreads into the rocks and corals though, it starts to create strands that are extremely difficult to completely remove from the tank. Leftover pieces quickly spread across the tank mere days after cleaning.
While my water chemistry is good in regards to nitrates, a primary food source for algae and bacteria, the tank still has quite an issue with detritus build up. To rule this out as a possible source of energy for the cyano, I've decided to add some new snails to my tank. I'm hoping the combination and numbers that I've selected with be able to efficiently trim down new algae growth, while contributing to stirring up the sand bed and consuming waste and detritus.
6x Nassarius Snails (Nassarius sp.) An effective detritus consumer, that will hopefully remove quantities of uneaten organics from the rock and substrate.
6x Bumble Bee Snails (Engina sp.) Smaller in size, they can get into crevices within the rock, in addition to burying in the sand for food. Plus they look cool.
6x Turbo Snails (Turbo fluctuosa) An algae removing workhorse for the marine aquarium.
When I dealt with algae issues in my freshwater aquarium, the ultimate solution ended up being the addition of a dozen Amano shrimp, which quickly and efficiently removed all traces of nuisance algae from the tank within a few weeks. Looking for an equivalent silver bullet to deal with marine cyanobacteria has turned up mixed reports. Conventional wisdom states that nothing common to the aquarium trade will consume red slime. However, a few livestock dealers make the claim that scarlet hermit crabs, Paguristes cadenati, will eat it. Being in their commercial interest to market livestock as cures for common frustrations within the aquarium hobby, I remain skeptical.
As an experiment, and because Live Aquaria offers free shipping from Florida when you order $60 worth of 'clean up crew' animals, I am also bringing in 8 of these crabs. I'll monitor them carefully for any evidence of wether they eat this pest or not.
I've never really tried out the video function on my camera, and that is reprehensible. So here is a quick shot of Boris and a few of his friends, partying it up as is their custom.
This post was supposed to be an update on the new corals and fish I added a week ago, but first I'd like to introduce you to Boris the Destroyer, a superglue eating hermit crab:
The first inhabitants to take up residence in my tank were hermit crabs and snails, including Boris here. While the rest of the hermits are fairly mild-mannered, Boris is a special individual. At some point in the past year, he killed a Nassarius snail, took over the shell, and promptly grew to three times the size of his fellow hermit crabs. I've always wondered how he managed to grow so fast, and why he shows particular interest in new coral additions to the tank.
It turns out Boris has been eating the super glue (Cyanoacrylate) that I use to attach coral frags. Over the past week, each morning I've awoken to one particular Monitpora frag knocked loose from the rock work. I'd reattach it, only to have it knocked loose again the next day. Each time I re-glued the frag, Boris would make a beeline from anywhere in the aquarium straight to that coral. I thought he was picking delectable treats off the foreign frag plug, but after a few days I realized he was actually chipping off and eating the super glue. There can be no doubt that he has gained super powers from this diet, and poses a threat to civilization.
I had banned the naming of aquarium inhabitants ever since a pair of cichlids my girlfriend had named after F. Scott Fitzgerald characters were found floating upside down, but as Boris is surely immortal, I have no problem bestowing him with the name.
The Plectranthias inermis is doing great. Although still quite shy, I have seen it venturing further into the open. I was worried about how small it was compared to the other, more boisterous fish, but everyone seems to be getting along well.
The corals were, as usual with Live Aquaria, healthy and attractive frags. I noticed what could possibly have been STN setting in on a nub of the blue branching Montipora, so I snipped that off. The green branching piece took quite a beating, as it was a target of Boris, but seems to be recovering decently. The green cap is also good, although I am considering moving it to a position with more light.
You can also see in one of the following photos how insanely fast the Montipora caps I got a few months ago have grown. They have easily doubled in size, and one is moving in on its neighbors. I am hesitant to mess with success here, but something may need to be moved soon.
Live Aquaria is easily the best site for ordering aquatic life, with unmatched quality and shipping, as well as a stay-alive guarantee. I've been a big fan for quite some time, and the majority of my reef's inhabitants originated from them.
They've just added an RSS feed for their Diver's Den, which provides what-you-see-is-what-you-get specimens on a first come, first serve basis. The feed should let you keep tabs on their stock without having to remember to check the site.
Now I just need to get them signed up on Brightcove for all their videos.
Update: The only downside is that unlike browsing the actual site, with the RSS feed you get a view into things that have already sold! So waking up this morning, I discovered I was too late to get in on these beautiful Montipora color variations! So sad.
I got a call from Cassie while on my way home that "some of the corals didn't look very good" and that there were "crawly things in the tank". My immediate thought was that some sort of pest, possibly the 'red bugs' associated with Acropora corals had been introduced with the recent coral frags. This turned out to be a case of "new parent" needless worry on both our parts. After getting a few of the new critters under my microscope, and verifying the identification, it turned out to be harmless copepods, a coveted food in the captive reef aquarium for both corals and fish. In other words, a good thing.
Here is a good article on Copepods, and also a few photos from the microscope.
At this point there are hundreds, if not thousands, of these guys in various stages of growth around the tank. I've been reading that a new trend in reef keeping is to avoid adding fish until the tank has been established for a few months, allowing populations of these smaller animals to take hold and establish themselves before larger predators are introduced. So far this seems to be a good approach.
Here are the first corals to hit my tank. All are aquacultured fragments of larger colonies that have been thriving in captive conditions. This makes them more likely to survive in a new aquarium system compared to wild caught specimens, or so I'm told. In the future I will hopefully be able to write up in more detail the particulars of each species, and hopefully figure out how to take some better photos. I'm afraid that last part might involve some expensive camera equipment.
This morning I placed an order at Live Aquaria for a stony coral frag pack. While stony corals can be more difficult to keep because of their increased need for light, calcium, and water current, I find them some of the more interesting species and was what I always envisioned keeping in my tank. The package I ordered is for five frags (small fragments from a larger colony) of aquacultured coral colonies. Aquacultured specimens, as opposed to wild card, are purportedly more tolerant of aquarium conditions and less likely to be severely traumatized by the introduction to a new tank.
My new metal halide fixture arrives tonight as well, so I hope to be able to get that setup and post pictures of the tank. This should represent the last piece of equipment that was part of my original tank plan, although I've already thought of several things I'd like to change and upgrade in light of the decision to keep stony corals primarily.
I found this guy dead on the rock this afternoon. Since everyone else appears healthy, I'm assuming he was the victim of a shell-jacking, and not something more worrisome like water quality. Earlier I had also found a snail turned over on the back of its shell. Nerite snails are unable to right themselves when this occurs. I would have liked to put this guy under the microscope, but he was already starting to stink and I was on my way out the door when I noticed his corpse.
Marine tanks are certainly more violent than planted aquariums. I'm going to keep an eye out for any other activity, and fingers crossed that this isn't related to me screwing something up with the water change. I should probably get a bunch of empty shells to prevent any future outbreaks of violence, should that turn out to be what happened.
After the nine thousandth call from the New England Aquarium informing me that my membership was about to / had expired, I figured I might as well march over there and renew it. They have a good sized coral tank, and I was looking for some photos I could use for raw material while working on the design of this blog.
It was interesting to observe the tank now, after five months of research into setting up my own tank. Previously it had been fairly inspirational, but now I was able to identify some short comings, or at least what would be viewed as such by the reef tank elite. Bubble and hair algae was rampant throughtout the tank, and the fish and invertebrate diversity was relatively low for what would be possible in a tank of that size. That said, it is still a beautiful aquarium and only one of the many tanks worth spending some time with at that facility.
Click any of these photos to head over to Flickr where you can get a larger view of them.
On Saturday morning I did another round of tests and found ammonia to have dropped to zero. Nitrites were still low and nitrates were elevated to 40ppm. I decided to try and add some of the first inhabitants to my aquarium, a group of snails and hermit crabs who could feast on the new growth of diatoms and the stuff that came in on the live rock.
I went to Skipton's Pet Center in Boston, which is the best fish store in metro Boston, as far as I know. They helped me settle on a dozen Nerite snails and ten hermit crabs, a few different varieties of Clibanarius, including red and blue colorations. Both snails and hermits originate in the Caribbean and are quite common, which makes them affordable to purchase compared to other species. The snails are intertidal and therefore spend a lot of time crawling above the waterline to breathe. Everyone appears to have survived their first night, and I've been watching both snails and crabs tear into the diatoms on the rock and glass.
Still trying to figure out the white balance while shooting under actinic light, so please excuse the yellow tone of these photos. The picture of the blue hermit crab is closer to the correct coloration. Also, if you go to a larger view of the snail photo, you can see the barnacles on its shell extending their feeders. Pretty cool!
