New Additions and Update

On December 23rd, the family went out to purchase a shrimp to add some movement to the aquarium. When we got to Gallery of Pets, we spoke with them about our plans for the tank and about our intended purchase. They said it is usually best to add 2 or more shrimp/fish to a tank at once since some of the creatures will be more territorial when purchased on their own. Ben decided that he would like to get two shrimp then. One Peppermint Shrimp because they are known to eat Aiptasia (which Ben really dislikes in our aquarium!) and one Cleaner Shrimp since they are supposed to be very good at removing any parasites that my tag along on future fish purchases.

We brought them home and floated them for about 15 mins to get their water temperature up to tank level and then we moved them to a small fishbowl that we sat alongside our aquarium. I set up a drip line to slowly add our saltwater to the fishbowl to slowly introduce our new shrimp to our salinity and pH. After about 1 hour, we had added roughly twice the initial water amount to the fishbowl. I netted our new shrimp and added them to our aquarium. They swim down to the live rock and found a ledge and cave to hunker down in.

Christmas day arrived and the shrimp were doing just fine in the aquarium. Allie and Ben gave me some new marine aquarium books as gifts and after reading, I decided that the aquascape that I initially setup was not ideal. Allie and Ben helped me brainstorm and we re-arranged the live rock to have a slightly lower profile and more bowl like shape. We are still getting used to the new arrangement (moving from basically a central pile to more bowl-like appearance), but I think I really like it. We seem to have more nooks and crannies than we did before.

Early on in the tank setup, we had seen 2 brittle starfish moving in the tank. After we added the reef sand to the tank they hadn't been evident. Well, today we confirmed sightings of at least 3 brittle stars, with a possible fourth! We were all very excited! What a great Christmas present!