Starving Tank

About two days ago, our fish and 1 cerith went missing. We haven't seen them return yet. We are assuming the worst. The tank has been very clean lately and the snails seem to be constantly scouring the tank for food. I am beginning to wonder if possibly everyone is hungry and maybe the emerald, strawberry or hermits decided they needed to remove some competition for food while getting a snack.

I decided to return the 4 hermits, the turbo and 1 astrea to the fishstore to see if that helped increase the algae/diatom production for the tank.

Brain Coral

After the re-scaping, Ben decided he needed to add another coral to the tank since the layout changed and there were some "open" spots without coral. I had been reading some forums and had decided that I wanted to switch out our actinic lights for a 50/50 power compact bulb to include more 10,000K lights which were of more use to the corals. We also had been fighting red slime algae, so I thought we should try to add some macroalgae to the tank in an attempt to out compete the red slime for nutrients. Seemed to me that we NEEDED to go to the fishstore!

We got to River City and quickly found the 50/50 PC bulb that I needed for the tank. They recommended using some chaeto for macroalgae if I was going to add it to the main tank. Ben found a nice open faced brain that he liked for his coral. We were all set to head home.

Upon arriving home, we discover our new Peppermint shrimp was dead! Maybe the re-aquascaping was too much for him. We are sure having bad luck with peppermint shrimp.

Re-aquascape

I decided last night that I needed to re-aquascape our tank in order to combat the red slime. By re-aquascaping, I could remove the deadspots in the tank that were allowing the red slime to thrive and I could also make a new scape that gave us better locations to place corals and provided more hiding spots for livestock. It took a while, but when Allie and I finished, I really liked our new formation!

Earlier that day, we had another turbo that flipped over and could not right itself. By the time we saw it, it was apparently too late. It died shortly after. The turbos are notorious for falling off things and not being able to flip themselves, but we had no idea it was going to be this bad!

New additions + red slime

We brought home our new Peppermint shrimp today! This time we picked out a smaller specimen to ensure that we didn't have an old shrimp. He is very cute!

While we were at Aquatek, they were having their 10th anniversary sale. We had $27.50 in store credit and everything was on sale for 20% off. We decided to pick up another coral! We ended up buying a Montipora Digitata, our first stony coral! Ben really liked a leather coral that was at Aquatek that he said had pom-pom coming off of it. I decided not to purchase because it was very expensive. Ben was very sad, so when I came back home and started acclimation on the peppermint and coral, I headed back out to another local fish store (River City Reefs). They had a nice selection of leathers, and some much more affordable than we saw at Aquatek. I picked up a smaller leather for a fraction of the price and brought it home for Ben. I believe it is some sort of sinularia coral.

Because Xenia are reportedly toxic to stony corals (Montipora) if they come in contact with them, we decided to do a little bit of coral re-arrangement. We moved the Xenia from its central location to the right side of the tank on a rock shelf that we hoped it will spread up. We moved the green star polyps from the back left up towards the front so that the Montipora could use its perch, away from everything else. Time to see if the corals like their new spots!

We started noticing a significant issue with red slime algae around this same time. This is actually a nuisance bacteria that forms in systems with high nutrient level in the water in areas of low water movement. It also seemed to be affected by the amount of light it receives. Over the coming days, I would try increasing the water flow, physically removing the algae, reducing the amount of food I was giving our fish, and reducing the amount of lighting. The red slime was still there and growing!

Peppermint Shrimp

Our Peppermint Shrimp died the day after the Turbo snail was added to the tank. The shrimp was fairly large, so it could have been old age. More reading has lead us to believe that adding too much Iodine to the tank could cause stress, premature molting and even death of shrimp. It is probable that some of the measures that I was using to save the finger leather coral caused the untimely demise of the peppermint. :(

The new turbo that was added to the tank to help with the hair algae problem doesn't seem to be doing very well. We have already had to flip him back over a few times to avoid him dying upside-down! The turbo ended up falling one last time and this time he rolled down into a hole in one of our live rock. I was unable to reach him and ended up having to extract him with pliers after he was obviously dead (our Nassarius snails were moving in to clean him up!) We are very sad for our Turbo!

Turbo comes home

Ben and I made a quick trip out to Aquatek (quickly becoming our favorite LFS) to re-home the remaining hermit crabs from our secondary system and to purchase a turbo snail for some help with the hair algae. The exchange process was very simple. They just took our bag of 7 hermit crabs and added them into their population of hermits for sale. We were given $10.50 store credit (half the value of a new hermit, not bad at all!). We went over to the snail tank and one of the employees fished out 3 of the smaller snails for us to look at. Ben pick the one he liked best and we walked to the front of the store to complete our purchase.

We now have a new tank residence with the ability to eat hair algae (not sure yet whether it has the proclivity for eating hair algae) and an "empty" 5 gallon hex tank that we can use as a quarantine tank for future fish purchases. We only purchased one snail because Allie and I are sort of sensitive about overstocking the snails. Some of the books we have read have given us a real soft spot for them. We are going slow to make sure that we have fat and happy snails. One other reason that we started with one Turbo is because turbos can grow to be fairly large snails and have more of a tendency to knock overcorals than other snails.

Odds and Ends

Also occurring on the 9th, the Cleaner shrimp had its first molting in our aquarium! Shrimps molt in order to grow. The shrimp are more vulnerable for about two days following a molt while their new exoskeleton is hardening.

The finger leather coral is now looking much better after we move it up the rock face to get more light and underneath the output port to get it out of the direct water flow. It has steadily improved over the 4-5 days since it was moved to its current spot. It looks as good or better than when we bought it.

On at least two occasions now, I have witnessed an Astrea snail climbing to the top of a piece of live rock and releasing either sperm or eggs into the aquarium! It is really fascinating to watch everything that is going on in the aquarium.

For the last 3 or so night, I watch at the corner of one of the pieces of live rock to see the orange arm come out of a hole in search of food. There is some sort of worm that is inhabiting the live rock that feeds only at night. It can stretch almost 2 inches from the mouth of the hole where it resides. I have seen it sort of "suck up" pieces of sand or food. The worm itself is transparent, so the piece of sand can be watched as it moves back down the body of the worm. So weird!

Hair Algae...again

Over the last few days, we saw a green hair algae begin to grow and spread on the back glass of the aquarium. I researched what could be done to reduce this algae growth. Allie and I really preferred to get a snail to combat the algae rather than some other creature just because they are a much more peaceful tank citizen. Unfortunately, most of the snails would not eat a long, filamentous algae like hair algae. Turbo snails are reported to be able to eat hair algae, but are also known to be rather like bulldozers in their movements throughout reef tanks. The other options that we heard when we talked to some local fish stores were a couple types of blennies (lawnmower blenny and sailfin blenny) that were good at eating filamentous algae, some tangs, and some nudibranchs. The lawnmower blenny really gets to be too big for our tank (~5"), the sailfin blenny is a bit closer to what our tank could handle at 3-4" but sort of difficult to find. The tangs were out; they get way too big and are too aggressive for the setup we are going for. Finally, the nudibranchs (sea slugs basically) generally have a toxic ink that they use as a defense mechanism. They have been known to kill all tank inhabitants when they die!! Not so interested in that one...

Allie and I spent a few hours researching other fish that could possibly help with algae control. There was a goby called a Rainford Goby that is reported to eat hair algae. Gobies are much more docile and tend to be smaller which makes it a better fit for out tank. However, when I spoke with Bruce from Aquatek, he said they really rather will sample hair algae periodically rather than really attacking it. We decided that I should just look for a smaller turbo snail to add to the tank and we also decided that we would again re-home some of the smaller hermits back to the main tank to help with algae removal on the glass near the substrate.

Ben and I took off for River City Aquatics which I knew to mainly carry Turbos for snails...or so I thought. When we got there, I found out that they didn't have any of the bigger turbos, but instead had Cerith, Astrea and some Nerite snails. I decided to pick up two Cerith snails to replace our deceased snails that were killed off by the homicidal hermits earlier on. I really like Cerith. They are sort of a cross between the Nassarius snails which spend most of their time buried in the sand and the Astrea snails which are usually on the rocks or the glass. Like the Nassarius, the Cerith spends some of its time buried in the sand and it can also right itself when it falls on its back in the sand (Astrea cannot do this). But the Cerith will also eat some film algaes and diatoms on the glass like the Astrea. Ben also found his favorite fish (the Firefish) while we were at River City. We decided that we were ready for a fish in our aquarium now! Ben and I returned home with two Cerith snails and 1 Firefish.

While the snails and fish acclimated, I began searching for some small hermits to add back to the main tank. I pulled out two some hermits (1 blue-legged and one zebra) along with about 4-5 empty shells so there would be less risk of snail homicides. I dropped them into the main tank and watched as one of the "empty" shells proceeded to get up and wake over to the live rock. Make that 2 blue-legged and 1 zebra...

When the fish and snails were finished with acclimation, it was after 9pm so the tank lights were already off. The fish immediately swam down into the live rock and hid. The snails began move up the live rock to begin their cleaning duties. We had our fingers crossed for a safe first night with a new fish and 3 hermit crabs...

Strawberry Beefcake

Today was another big day for our aquarium. We heard from Aquatek that they were supposed to get a shipment in today around 3pm that was likely to contain Strawberry crabs! Ben was very excited to hear this as he has been wanting a pink crab since he heard about them. We were indeed able to purchase a strawberry this evening. Even though they are said to be related to the Emerald crab that we first got, this dude is much bigger than our Emerald. Both crabs are said to get to be ~2 inches. Well, our strawberry is already that big. Our little emerald is only about 1 inch. We are keeping our fingers crossed that we got a friendly crab!

While I was out running errands today, I got a call from Allie. She said, 'I think we have a dead shrimp now!' I said, well what are you seeing? She told me that there was a clear or white shell that looked just like our peppermint shrimp. I told her that it was more likely that our shrimp molted! She looked at it again and then agreed that is what happened. Allie quickly found Ben to show him the exoskeleton of our peppermint shrimp. We now have confirmation that at least one thing in our tank is growing! :)

We watched one of our corals, the finger leather, quite a bit today. It doesn't seem to be acclimating well to our system. The first couple of days, it seemed to be doing well. It sort of swelled up and then little feather-like flowers pop out all over the coral. After those first couple of days, the coral seemed to sort of shrink up. Last night, I tried moving the coral's position in the tank to get more light and water flow. I had a suggestion from one of our LFS to give it a bit more Iodine to help it recover. And finally, while at Aquatek buying our strawberry, they suggested that we actually want to move the coral back down out of the light and water flow. The coral is once again further down the rock face and a little sheltered from the light. We are keeping our fingers crossed for this one!

I now have two tanks to keep track off, the one we intended to have and our own little Alcatraz. This morning I went into check on our little murderers and counted 11 hermit crabs instead of 10 like I thought I had. I know for sure that I had pulled two dead crab bodies from the tank yesterday, so I must have started with 13 instead of 12. Clearly, one of the hermits felt bad for the miscommunication, so they killed another crab today. Now we are actually down to 10...

Homicidal Hermits

On New Year's Eve, we started to worry about our snails. After the re-aquascaping, we had counted the snails and thought they were all accounted for. Now, however, we could not account for one of the Margarita snails and two of the Nassarius. We began to suspect the hermit crabs which do sometimes attack snails for their shells. We watched the tank intently, and eventually decided that we were definitely missing a Margarita, but that all four Nassarius were present.

On New Year's Day, we could not locate one of our Cerith snails. This was too much casualty, too quickly. We decided it was time to get the hermits out of our reef tank. I ran to Petco and purchased a relatively affordable 5 gallon hex tank. This was going to be the new home for the hermits. I added about 1 inch of reef base to the hex and moved two of our smaller live rock fragments to the new tank. I moved 9 of the hermits that I could reach easily. Our plan is to increase the number of emerald crabs and snails to deal with the algae rather than utilize hermits.

On January 2nd, I discovered that one of the three hermits left in the main tank had been killed over night. Looking at the hex tank, one of the largest hermits had also been killed! The hermits are very opportunistic hunters and apparently even their own kind are not safe. I moved the remaining hermits from the main tank into the hex. We are now down to 10 hermits and 8 snails. We will have to see how many we have tomorrow morning...