The largest five (out of eight) hermit crabs were turned in to my LFS for store credit, along with five bumblebee Snails which were only in my tank for one day. I was getting tired of the raucous gang of hermits scurrying over corals, picking on each other, harassing snails, and generally being antagonists. The small ones are still handy to have around and they're interesting, but I don't need that many.
The bumblebee snails were a last-resort decision. My LFS had limited snail selection and I wanted to step up the snail population from the two Mexican Turbos and several Stomatella snails, the latter of which came in on my live rock and are now steadily multiplying. Upon further research, though, I read some anecdotal accounts about the Bumblebee snails that I didn't like. They are opportunistic predators (like the hermit crabs, and more so than most other species of reef-safe snails) and can devastate the microfauna in the sand bed with the same gusto that they will consume algae. I felt that I had to watch them carefully and decided to do some serious research on the type of snails available to the modern day reef keeper.
Cerith snails seem to be the most handy snails to have around. Their eating habits revolve around nuisance algae, diatoms, and things you generally want gone. They can usually right themselves when turned over (a big deal compared to other types of snails), are largely peaceful, and come from warmer climates. Unfortunately it takes several of them to eat at the same rate as even one medium sized Turbo, and they are not as good at removing uneaten food and detritus as they are at scraping algae off of the glass and rocks. After finding them at another local fish store, I added six Ceriths to my tank. They're easily distinguishable by their sharply conical shells... you frequently see hermit crabs in these same shells.
My plan in the next couple of weeks, roughly coinciding with the reintroduction of my fish to the tank from quarantine, is to try to obtain the following: (3) Trochus Snails, (2) Nassarius Snails, and (2) Nerite Snails. Each species is slightly different in its habits, diet, capacity to dig/stir the sandbed, etc. My guess is that it's best to have a mix.
Several corals have been added... I am now holding off on getting any more. I just don't have any room to spare in the near future, especially considering the growth potential of the corals I already have. The Euphyllia species are real-estate intensive for a 29 gallon cube; they can grow rather large, taking up roughly the space of a basketball if left to grow. That said, I do have some plans in the works that will open up a lot of space in my tank. At that point there will be some options for new coral and I will be extremely choosy! More on that plan later, but it has been set in motion.
Pulsing Xenia (Xenia umbellata) - My mom gave me a very great Christmas gift this year... she picked out a colony of Pulsing Xenia from and bought it for me to be picked up later. I had noticed this specific colony on prior visits and it was the most active "pulsing" colony in the store. I brought it home (30 minute drive) and immediately started a gentle acclimation process. Since the colony was growing on some egg crate (the shop actually "fragged" the egg crate for me) I bought a bit of live rock to which I glued the Xenia. Since I haven't been able to take a decent picture of this coral, you'll have to wait to see it.
Craiglist has proven to be quite a good source of cheap, quality corals. I met a couple people over the last week who were genuinely passionate about the hobby and talked with me at length about their setups. It's really nice meeting these guys and discussing livestock, hardware, etc. Some of them belong to the Bay Area Reefers (a reef keeping club that meets in Fremont) and have urged me to come along to the next meeting. In any case, on one of my visits I was particularly intrigued by a Christmas Favia (Favia sp.) frag that had many eyes on it for $25. In a store this might cost me double that, and I had the pleasure of dealing with someone who grew, fragged, and cared for the coral himself. This Christmas Favia is a green with red coloration on the polyps. Favia is a strong stinger and can't really be kept in close proximity to anything else. It does readily accept meaty meals and will swallow whole any mysis I can place near its mouths. The bottom part of it, as you can see in the photo, has a couple of skeletal polyps; the previous owner suggested that it had been stung by another coral. Most corals, if healthy, will simply regrow over dead spots like this.
Christmas Favia eating mysis.
I was lucky enough to obtain frags from two different colonies of Green birds nest (Seriatopora guttatus). I think one of them is the same as the ORA lineage, which looks tremendous under the proper lighting- this one came from another Craigslist contact. The other came gratis from my LFS; another generous gift of several frags from his show tank colony. This colony isn't fully colored up with the fluorescent neon green polyps but a lot of that depends on lighting and health conditions.
The frag that I got from my craigslist contact went through an rigorous iodide (or iodine?) dip which was probably lasted too long; the frag is not thriving and has some dead sections. Iodine dips are common practice; they can potentially irritate the coral but at the proper duration and concentration, they mainly serve to "stun" and dislodge any attached animals from the frag or plug. This includes a lot of beneficial creatures, but it is mainly to knock off any possible parasites or pests that are lodged on the coral. Whenever you get a coral from an unfamiliar source, its a good idea to dip with iodine, just as you would quarantine (or in addition to quarantine).
I added another Euphyllia to the collection, right next to my Frogspawn. The Torch coral (Euphyllia glabrescens) comes in various color morphs- I chose one with translucent white polyps tipped in an opaque white. This colony looked extremely healthy at the LFS over the course of a couple of weeks... I had noticed it on previous visits (another benefit of frequent visits to the fish store) and never saw it with a problem. Buying new arrivals in the Euphyllia species can be problematic; these are stony corals and their skeletons are very sharp. During transport the delicate polyp tissue is almost always damaged. A completely unharmed Torch, Hammer, or Frogspawn coral after shipping is nearly unheard of. Placing the coral illustrates an exception to the usual "don't let corals touch each other" rule- Euphyllia species, much like zoanthids, can come into contact with other corals within the same genus and not sting each one another. That's good, because otherwise I would have to give them both a lot more room. I plan on eventually doing something interesting with this frag. It didn't come with a piece of rock, so it is wedged in a crevice for now. I knocked it over once during maintenance and felt pretty bad. Fortunately it wasn't damaged. The torch is a very dynamic coral that adds a lot of movement to the tank. You can see from these pictures how much it changes from one moment to the next.
Another great craigslist find were several species of Zoanthids that I picked up from a hobbyist who was propagating and fragging them for pretty reasonable prices. At present, I have counted the following "named" zoas in my collection: Fire & Ice, Bam Bam Orange, Eye of Ra, Eagle Eyes, and Tub's Blues. I've also been able to identify some of my existing Zoas- Bird of Prey. Below are the new zoas on their plugs. After a few days of getting used to the new tank they were all fully open and I'll soon begin gluing them to my developing zoa colony garden.
Tub's Blue and some Eagle Eyes
Fire & Ice, Tub's Blues, and Eagle Eyes
Eye of Ra, Bam Bam Orange
Four colorful, half-inch crustaceans have been perched on various corals for the past few days- when they meet each other or when they are frightened, they wave their butts around in conspicuous circles and make no apparent effort to disguise themselves. These are Sexy Shrimp (Thor amboinensis).
Chilling on my Ricordea
Hanging out underneath the torch
Relaxing on the lobo open brain
Poised and ready to steal food from the coral at first opportunity
Yes... that is what they are called. They don't grow much larger than their current size at an inch or so. Widely considered reef-safe, they will in fact resort to eating soft corals if they don't get enough food. Sexy shrimp are very peaceful and passive reef inhabitants and do well in groups. Some people swear by "odd numbered groups" but I cant imagine why. In any case, I never see more than two or three of them in any one place. They do definitely benefit from interacting with each other and my feeling is on their own they would not do as well as with others. These are often the first animals in the tank to get Ooohs and (especially) Awwws. Their seductive, gyrating dance is enough to get the attention of even the least observant viewer. Sexy shrimp are also known as Anemone Shrimp because they bond or host with anemones in the wild. In the tank they'll host on anything that resembles an anemone and are highly promiscuous about the various corals on which they will perch. I am going to try keeping them very well fed so that they are never tempted to munch on my zoas or LPS. So far there have been intermittent incidents and the jury is still out on whether I'll let these guys stay for the long term. They're frequently perched on my brain coral and I even saw one audacious individual reaching down into one of the mouths of the coral, hopefully in search of food and not having found a snack of Lobophyllia innards. When the fish are reintroduced there will be more food for them in the tank and this habit may go away.
That's it for livestock, but there is big hardware news coming up.
Here are a few more bonus pics that turned out well:
No comments:
Post a Comment