Tank update

I found the Yellow Watchman goby when I was doing the water change-out last weekend. It was in the second chamber in the back of the tank. Unfortunately, I was unable to net it and bring it back to the front of the tank. After a few tries, I actually lost sight of him and was unable to find him again after 15 more minutes of searching. If I can successfully capture him, he is destined for a return trip to the fish store. Ben and I really do not want another fish that likes to hide in the back.

The flame scallop can still be seen in the back right corner of the tank. It is no longer wedged in between the back wall and the live rock, but it is still in the same general spot. It's shell is open and its tentacles are extended. I am concerned that it can still be seen under the lights during the day as they tend to like darkness, but maybe it will be ok.

The new Fungia coral kept rather still this week. It is getting somewhat buried in the sand by the Lawnmower Blenny's "dancing" in the front corner of the tank, but it hasn't relocated. When we first put it in the tank, it looked mainly like a coral skeleton, but now at night its tentacles can be seen. I am excited to see what it will look like when it has settled into the tank some more!

Fungia

Ben and I decided to purchase a Fungia coral for Mother's Day for Allie. Nothing like a little aquarium expansion to show a woman you care! This is the first coral that we have for our tank that sits in the substrate (sand) rather than on the live rock like all of the others. Surprisingly, these corals are able to move around the tank although you would never guess it from looking at them. We will have to wait and see if our Fungia decides to be sedentary or if it likes to take small day trips.

Watchman, where are you?

The little yellow watchman goby that we added to the tank has been noticeably absent this week. I still have not seen him out and about or even hiding underneath the live rock. I will need to do a thorough check of the back chambers when I do the next water change-out. This is not what we have been hoping for with a new fish!

The flame scallop continues to spend its time along the backwall of the tank. We will continue to feed it and watch its progress, but this is definitely not a good sign.

Hair Algae Help

Earlier in the week, I added a Mexican Turbo snail back into the tank. We had a couple turbos in the tank in the past, but a couple died from flipping over and not being able to right themselves. Mexican turbos (as well as Astreas) are not capable of flipping themselves over if they are knocked off of the wall and fall onto their shell unlike the Cerith, Nerites, and Nassarius snails. This lack is thought to be due to their natural environment (shallow surf waters) which have more than enough current to allow the snails to be righted by the water action. If a snail is left on its back for a few hours, it will most of the time die. At any rate, turbos are known to be great at removing hair algae, so I thought it was worth another attempt. Boy was it a good choice! This little bugger has done a bang up job at trimming down the hair algae! Blenny, why are you here?

Since the last water change-out and tank clean-up, there is been very little red slime in the tank. I have been attempting to get that algae under control for months now and it looks like I might finally be making some headway! Yahoo!

The flame scallop has been seen lying at the bank of the tank wedged in between the live rock and the back wall. It is not moving back to a dark space when the lights come on as is normal. I fear that it might be on its way out. We will continue to watch it this week.

On Sunday, May 4th, Ben and I and his grandparents (Grandma & Grandpa Render) went out to some of the local fish stores to look for a fish for Ben. He has been wanting to replace his firefish ever since we decided to return it to the stores. Ben was really looking forward to purchasing a Neon Goby, but we have been unable to locate one for some time now. We stopped in at two different stores on Sunday, Aquatek and Gallery of Pets. We didn't see anything that interested us at Aquatek, so we zoomed up to Gallery of Pets before they closed. They didn't have a Neon Goby, but they did have a small Yellow Watchman Goby that caught Ben's eye. We purchased the watchman and brought it home to acclimate. It acclimated for about 90 minutes and then I released it to the tank. It swam to the bottom of the tank and hide underneath some of our live rock. We will have to see how it does in our little aquarium!

Changes

A lot has happened since my last blog entry. Our 3rd peppermint shrimp died on us, and we decided to forgo any more peppermint shrimp purchases since we are unable to determine why they keep dying off on us! We also added a second emerald crab shortly after the first was re-introduced into the tank. Unfortunately, we haven't seen the new crab since we added it to the tank. The next morning, we found a emerald molt which means that the crab was likely highly stressed when we added it. We fear the worse, but it wouldn't be the first emerald crab to hide for 6+ weeks without our knowledge!

Four additional hermit crabs were added to the tank in an attempt to combat the hair algae that keeps cropping up on our rocks. These new hermits are much more like the originals that we had in the tank. Much more active than the scarlet hermits that we added and in an out of new shells like they were teenagers. They also seemed to have spurred something on in the scarlet hermits which are also more active now (but still not like these new hermits). They are constantly scurrying around and tidying things up.

About 4-5 weeks ago, we added a Lawnmower blenny to the tank to again try to address the hair algae blooms. This blenny apparently didn't read this contract before I purchased it though. It has basically ignored all of the hair algae in the tank! It is staying fat, so it is eating something in the tank...I am just not sure what that is.

Shortly after I added the blenny, the firefish started jumping into the back chambers again. I moved it back into the main tank a couple of times only to have it in the back chambers again by the next day. It was too stressed to stay in the main display. I decided to pull it out and put it into my small 5 gallon hex cube until I could think of something better to do with it. I decided to pull out the bunch of chaeto and toss it in the hex at the same time since it was putting out runners and starting to spread in the main tank. The firefish seemed much more relaxed in the hex tank. It could be seen swimming around the tank and would eat hardily when fed. I decided to leave him there for the time being.

Over the next 3-4 weeks, the small hex cube began to develop an ugly skin on the surface of the water. It was likely protein by-products from the fish waste and food. The small tank didn't have a very efficient export system and the water was slowly building waste. I couldn't keep the firefish in that tank for long. I spoke with Ben about the problem, and explained that I couldn't keep his fish in the small tank for much longer because it would get poisoned by the waste products. We toyed with trying to re-introduce the firefish back into the main display and again rigging up something to keep it from jumping into the back chambers. In the end, we decided that we should return the fish to the fish store to allow it another chance with some other aquarist. It just didn't seem to enjoy what we had to offer it here.

During the same time period that I had the firefish in the small hex tank, our Xenia decided to propagate. It began splitting off into two distinct stalks. Over about a 2 week time period the stalks moved away from each other and a thin ribbon of material stretched out between them into finally they had totally separated themselves! We now had two individual Xenia. We decided that we should sell one of the Xenia back to the fish store since it grows so fast and we know had ~10X the amount of Xenia that we started with.

Yesterday, Ben and I bagged up the firefish, one of the Xenia stalks, and the chaeto and headed out to our favorite fish store (River City Aquatics). They agreed to purchase the items for store credit. Ben and I went back to look for a Neon Goby, which Ben has been excited to purchase for some time now. Unfortunately, they didn't have any in today and neither did Horizon or Gallery of Pets. Ben was bummed. We will keep looking and researching. We might find something else that interests him even more. That will be for next time...

I did a 20% water change-out on the main tank last night. I pulled out as much red slime algae and hair algae as I could. I will measure water parameters in the next day or two and try to stay more on top of the tank. I decided to go ahead and decommission the hex cube last night while I was doing the water change out. The tank didn't seem fit for housing livestock and there wasn't much point in just cycling water through it.

Emerald Crab returns!

Our tank has been steadily growing algae ever since we removed all of our crabs. The two scarlet hermits that we added seem to be...well, slow and lazy. They don't seem to do a whole lot for the algae problem. We have been talking over the last week or so and decided that we probably had judged the crabs too harshly before. The firefish after all, didn't actually get killed off like we thought. And the hair algae was much better when we had the crabs before.

We decided to try to find a small emerald crab to add back into the tank. I had seen some small crabs at Horizon Aquatics a little while back, so we decided to start there. We did find a small crab there and when we brought it home I tried to determine its sex. I found a nice illustrated guide on the web to do this. We now have a little female emerald crab! After about 1.5 hours of acclimation, we added her to the tank. She immediately went to work eating. She has been out in the open so we can see her which is just what we wanted! We didn't care for the reclusiveness of the strawberry or the hitchhiker emerald. We are glad to have an emerald back in the tank!

Dead Cardinal

Allie called me up at work near the end of my day and told me that one of the cardinalfish was not doing well. I decided to pack up a little early and head straight home.

When I got there, the cardinal was stuck to the intake near chamber 1 in the back. It was still breathing, but labored. I netted the fish and brought it up into a plastic bag to float it to see if it might recover some. I noticed that one of its fins was a little bit torn. I thought I had seen the other cardinal picking on it the other day. Maybe it had escalated? The fish could also have simply not survived the shipping process well. Banggai cardinals are notoriously bad shippers. 10-12 days is about the amount of time that a fish will starve over, so it may just not have been eating well since we got it. :(

It continued to decline in the bag, so I called River City Aquatics and asked them for a humane way to kill a dying fish. They said a quick rap against a fence to break its back or severing the spinal column with a razor! Whoa...I wasn't ready for either of those. I did a little quick research on the web for humane deaths for fish and I found this website. Using a 20% solution of vodka sounded much less violent to me than the other approaches! I hopped in the car and head over to the liquor store for some vodka. By the time I got home, the fish was already dead. At least I know what to do next time should something similar happen.

On a positive note, the Xenia is once again doing very well. It is not back to its fully splendor, but we no longer worry it is going to melt away.

The mushroom polyp that floated off the main shelf, disappeared that first night. I guess it either blew off the rock I placed it on, or something came along and decided it was a snack.

Continued decline of Xenia

The Xenia seems to continue to go downhill. It looks gray and decrepit now. I can find out what has changed in the water to cause it to start dying like it is. I guess it might be beyond saving.

One of the mushroom polyps has been acting irritated lately, retracting itself when all of the other polyp were fully opened. I guess tonight it finally decided it had enough. While I was watching, the polyp un-attached itself from the rock and rolled off the shelf! It pinwheeled through the water and landed in the back of the tank. I picked it up with some forceps and placed it on another rock so it could re-attach itself if it wanted. So weird!

The flame scallop also decided today was a good time to relocate. It had been in a nice spot at the front of the tank where we could all see it. Now, it found a little cave at the very back of the rockscape. We have to look through a very small cavity and can only see its tentacles. Bummer! It was beautiful to look at up front, but I guess it wasn't comfortable there.

Xenia dying?

The Xenia is looking very bad today. I think it might have something to do with the fact that I removed the purigen bag from chamber 2 to re-charge it. That was about 36 hours ago. The purigen is just now ready to go back in the chamber. I hope it isn't too late!

The water parameters all look very good, but I am going to go ahead and do an extra water change right now in attempt to help the Xenia recover.

Rounding out of tank inhabitants

We have really loved our new cardinals for the last few days, and thought it would be nice to get either Ben's or my fish right now. We were very close to having a completely stocked tank and we are sort of impatient to complete it. I had been doing research and wanted to get an Ocellaris clownfish (Nemo) for my fish. They are a hardy, peaceful fish that may decide to adopt one of our soft corals (Xenia or sinularia leather) as a stand-in for an anemone. Ben was interested in a Neon goby, a small black fish with a neon blue stipe. The neon goby is a cleaner fish that removes parasites from other fish much like the cleaner shrimp.

Back we went to River City. We got there and were disappointed to find that they had no Neon gobies in right now. They did, however, have Ocellaris clownfish. I found their smallest clown and purchased it. We also pick up a few more nerites. I could only see one nerite in their snail tank. The guy helping me asked if I wanted whatever he could find and I said sure. Well, a few minutes later he came back with 4 nerites. More than I was thinking of buying, but they were all very small and probably wouldn't need a whole lot of algae to sustain them.

When we got home, we were treated to a surprise: Ben's firefish was swimming around in the tank! He had been missing for almost 2 weeks now and was suddenly back! I quickly went to the freezer and pulled out some frozen fish food and fed him. It ate greedily and then swam to the back of the tank and jumped out of the water and into the back chambers! It must have been hiding back there for whole time.

The clown and nerites were added after 2 hours of acclimation. I decided that later on that night, I would do a water change-out and would try to bring the Firefish back in the main aquarium and rig up some way to keep the fish from jumping back into the chambers. I needed to basically extend the back wall up another few inches. Allie had a great idea of using some laminate for this purpose. It took a few tries, but I think I now have a ~4" laminate extension on top of the back aquarium glass that will keep the firefish from jumping into the aquarium backside chambers. Time will tell...