Sunday, May 4, 2008

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!

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