Aiptasia (Glass) Anemone Image by: www.eXtreme-Aquatics.com/

Source: flickr.com → | ∞ Permalink

Is Glasrose German for Aiptasia?

Eine Glasrose in meinem Nano-Aquaroium. Eigentlich ein Plagegeist, aber wunderschön anzusehen.

Source: flickr.com → | ∞ Permalink

This video has someone demonstrating how to get rid of an Aiptasia anemone with Aiptasia X (aka concentrated limewater).

I've never seen a syringe needle used first. I've always gone for the big gun, which can result in the anemone getting spooked too early. The needle on the syringe probably allows for a sneakier attack.

Source: youtube.com → | ∞ Permalink

Do you ever wish you had a larger tank? Before you upgrade, think about all the work involved, not only maintaining it, but eventually for the inevitable tank move.

Check out this time lapse video of a 500G tank move, just a few gallons at a time.

Lessons learned

Some things you need for a successful tank move of this size:

• A lot of time (this took them 11 hours straight)
• A patient and supportive spouse. Hopefully one with a strong back and will lump buckets of water.
• Several friends to keep the bucket brigade moving.
• Less friends and family who just get in the way
• A muscle shirt (no wet sleeves)
• A spring clamp keep the siphon hose in place. Not a single siphon slipped out of the bucket onto the hardwoods. Impressive!

And who knew that the Benny Hill theme song could be so annoying.

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In the Northeast U.S. the past few days we're getting our tank cooling methods and techniques tested. I don't know if this is considered a heat wave, though it's certainly close. Here a heat wave is three consecutive days over 90F. In fact, today threatens to break the record of 96 in Boston.

It's interesting keeping watch on the local message board to see how people are coping with what can be very stressful times for reef tank owners. Those with air conditioning or chillers are of course doing just fine. Others are struggling with temps of 90+ in their apartments and keeping their tanks cool with clip-on fans and bags of ice.

People with basement sumps are also generally doing just fine as the cold damp basement climate combined with a big sump is enough to keep their whole system cool.

There are two tanks in my mostly finished basement, which has one exposed wall. The tanks with their metal halide lighting have pretty much changed the climate in my basement. I'm forced to run a dehumidifier, which not only dries the air, but warms it as well. The past few days, the temperature has been hovering around 80F down there. With fans, I've been able to keep the tank temperature in check at 79-80 without modifying the light schedule.

Two well-known reef aquarists, Randy Holmes-Farley and Greg Hiller explained their interesting cooling methods, both using cold tap water in DIY chillers to cool their systems.

They run a very long coil of plastic tubing through their large sump, perhaps 250 feet worth, or an entire box from Home Depot. The cold water running through the coil provides a large surface area for transferring heat into the tap water and out of the sump.

The basic setup has the tap water running directly through this tubing and out into the garden to water plants or the lawn. The flow is managed by an on/off solenoid that's rated for home water pressure, controlled with a temperature controller. Greg runs his water through the additional step of putting it through his RO/DI. He mentions this is risky as he's adding pressure to the tubing making it susceptible to it breaking and flooding his sump with tap water.

Randy says his system uses approximately 1 gallon per 5 minutes and is generally operating only half of the time.

My own tap water is very cold coming from a deep well. This sounds like a very effective solution if the water consumption is not too high. I do need to worry about taxing my well too much.

It also requires a central sump in order to cool all tanks, which I do not currently have, though I would like to get there some day.

Do you live in a climate that reaches these high temperatures? If so, how do you cope?

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This week I had the opportunity to visit a fellow reefer Michele Wronski to pick up a pair of tank-raised clownfish.

Michelle runs a non-profit organization called Oceanis the Inland Reef which focuses on community education on marine life and coral reefs. Michelle teaches and inspires the people of all ages in her community to care for, understand, and respect, the coral reefs. A noble cause.

She's got over 20 tanks and more than 1500 gallons of reefy-goodness. She raises clownfish, bangaii cardinals, and seahorses. Hopefully soon she'll be breeding dragonface pipefish.

Having read the high praise that many people have for Michele on the Boston Reefers Society forums, I was prepared to be impressed. But my expectations were exceeded by the vast variety of fish and corals that Michele cares for in her facility.

Knowing that I was in for a treat, I asked Michele if I could video-tape my visit and she graciously agreed. Michele was a fantastic guide as she took me through her many fish tanks.

In case you don't get the opportunity to get all the way out to Barre, MA (it is worth the trip), here's a sample of the hour-plus that I spent with Michele.

Source: viddler.com → | ∞ Permalink

Last night I visited a fellow member of the Boston Reefers Society, Chris. It was a small get together to drink some scotch and swap fish stories, so to speak.

Chris has a 92 gallon corner FOWLR tank in which he's got a big lionfish, a monster wrasse, a cool dogface puffer, a zebra moray eel, a damsel living on borrowed time, and a few others.

A while back, he dropped a clown in the tank which was intended to be food for the lionfish. As Chris tells it, the lionfish tried to eat the clownfish but spit it out.

It chased it around, but something happened and the clownfish was ultimately accepted into fightclub.

Now the clownfish actually hosts in the lionfish's feathery fins. I'm not sure which one is which's bitch, but I caught it on video. Judge for yourself.

Source: viddler.com → | ∞ Permalink

Here in Massachusetts we get some crazy heat spikes, and we had one a few days ago bringing the tank temperature up near 84 degrees. That served as a hard reminder that something needs to be done to help keep the heat down from the two 250W MH lamps on my 75G tank.

I went on Amazon and picked up two Vornado 540B circulating fans. (One for each of my two tanks.) I figured that I could use them elsewhere in the house if they didn't work out.

They arrived in a few days and while they're a little bigger than I expected, they pack a big windy punch. And the two speeds should easily serve the dual purpose of both a quiet vent fan as well as a more urgent evaporation cooling when things get too hot.

Here's a quick video of one of them in action, demonstrating the two settings and the noise level.

Source: amazon.com → | ∞ Permalink

A common situation with reef tanks is the drain plumbing dropping down into the sump, creating loud splashing noise as well as spray caused by water hitting water.

Generally, noise and splashing can be eliminated by submerging the drain pipe below the surface of the water. Putting a pipe straight under water, however, can create other problems such as flushing, trapped air that causes the water to drain in a noisy rush. It can also create a siphon which can cause the unintended draining of water when the pumps are powered off.

The solution is to create what is commonly referred to in the hobby as a "reverse durso". I'm not sure of the spelling of this. I've seen it spelled both Durso and D'urso. I think it is someone's name.

In this video, I show how I did some quick plumbing with pvc connectors commonly available at your home improvement store.

I'm no expert, but it works for me. If you know of any improvements I can make, please let me know in the comments.

Source: viddler.com → | ∞ Permalink

Wow, I've let this blog go fallow. While I've let this blog go stagnant, my fish tank activities certainly haven't.

Last time I wrote here in May, I was running a 20 Gallon long reef tank. Lot has happened since then. Over the summer, I had a crash in that small tank. Newbie + small tank = likely disaster as it is very difficult to keep the water parameters stable. I had an incident where I added a cup or so of top-off water and all the corals shriveled up to nothing. A few of them died within hours. The rest took a week or more to recover.

At that point, my top priority was to get a bigger tank. I quickly moved everything into a 40 gallon tank and ran that for a few months while I looked for an even bigger tank.

The end result is this, that I set up in November, a 75 gallon tank.

And here are a few random pictures from it.

I'll leave it at that for now. Though I'm going to try and get back active on this blog again. Shorter posts and more of them!

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One evening while sitting and staring at the tank, as I often do, I caught a glimpse of a worm that took a bite at a snail.  Before I could really register what happened, it had darted back into its hole.

I have a red LED so I can see the tank at night without disturbing the fish.  So I grabbed my camera and got comfortable to wait and see if it would return.  It actually didn't take long.  I got the following pictures.

At first, I thought it was some sort of bristle worm.  But after posting these pictures on a message board, someone suggested that it may be a Eunice worm.  Eunice worms don't have the distinctive bristles and are much more aggressive.  That describes my worm MUCH better.

Unfortunately, this thing is injuring my snails which had been unwittingly crawling right over it's cave.  I found several snails laying on he bottom of the tank below the ledge in the rock where this thing lives.  All snails except one seem to be ok.  One snail did die and the other animals in the tank moved in for a feast.

I think this thing is quite cool and would hate to kill something so interesting.  I may set up a separate tank for it and get it into solitary confinement.

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It's been a busy few weeks here and I haven't had much chance to post updates, though a lot has happened.

I replaced that peppermint that died. I decided that I probably killed it with a bad water change that affected the pH too much. That's the only explanation that I have there. The current peppermint is doing very well, and has so far survived a water change for which I was much more careful. I've been using some Superbuffer-DKh to make sure the pH doesn't drop too much on the changes.

I've also acquired a few new corals, three actually. The first was an open brain coral that has had my eye at the pet shop since I started this hobby. As you can see, I really like the LPS corals.

I rearranged the rock to make room for this guy in the middle. Pushed it back and created a gap. As I learn more about this hobby and what I would like this tank to look like someday, I get better and more practical ideas about how the rock should be set up.

Most recently, I got a few LPS coral frags from a local guy (contacted through the Boston Reefers Society, a very active local club with a message board). He gave me what I thought a great deal on some coral. It may have been too much to add too soon, but I couldn't resist.

The first is a beautiful frog spawn coral with pink, white, and green tips. It has 4 heads.

The second is a nice torch coral, also with 4 heads, a few of which are splitting.

Here's how the tank looks now.

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Just like the in ocean, I suppose, things die. They're replaced with new life. Now someone doesn't just plunk down a replacement in the ocean like I can do in the tank. One cannot deny the god-like role we play as aquarists. Maybe that's what makes it fun.

Coincidentally, I was at the pet store chatting it up with my favorite shop-keepers. All the while, my tank inhabitants were feasting on the peppermint shrimp.

The first sign that something was wrong was that my Bonsai Cardinal was looking particularly guilty as it swam around the tank. Note the shrimp antenna protruding from its mouth...

First order of business was to capture him and get the antenna out of there. Once I had him in the net, I was able to pull it out. The other end was easily down in his stomach with just a little bit of meat left on the end.

Next... find the shrimp. Didn't take long...

Way in the back corner of the tank I found several crabs munching on various shrimp parts. All that was left was the tail that you can see here. There's no shrimp body on the front end of that tail, by the way.

I don't know what happened. Previously the shrimp had been acting fine. I had just a few days before done a fairly significant water change (maybe a 1.25-1.5 gallons in this 20g tank), so maybe that did him in. I've noticed that there are few empty snail shells around as well.

Fish and corals are doing great, as are the other snails and crabs. Will keep a close watch.

So that's the bad news. More to come on coral status as well as a new LPS coral...

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I've added a few new corals to the tank this past weekend. I've been going pretty small since it's only a 20 gallon tank. I figure I can get more smaller things in here and let them grow.

The primary purchase was these button polyps.

This rock, however, came with some nice bonuses. First, in the above picture you can see a few of the calcareous feather duster worms that came along for the ride. I'm used to seeing these tubes all over the live rock, but not actually anything in them! This rock has probably 7 or 8 of them on it. Unfortunately, they surround the rock, so this is pretty much the only way I can position it without covering some of the worms.

They are a pretty pink color when fully extended, but are super-sensitive to light and motion. if I merely tap on the floor, that's enough to send them all into hiding. Here's a closer picture:

Also, this rock had a fragment of a green star polyp that had spread from a much larger colony in the same tank at the store. It is quite small, but they were good enough to include it. It wasn't hanging on to the rock very tightly, so I removed it and tucked it into a crevasse in a larger rock in the tank. Actually, there was a small piece of rock that remained attached that acted as a bit of an anchor, so it's quite stable. I'm hopeful that it will set up camp here.

It was nice getting a few bonuses this time around. I'd actually felt previously that I'd spent a little too much on the zoanthid, which was quite small compared to the other specimines at the shop that weren't that much more money (several times as large at only 50% more cost). Plus the cleaner shrimp that up and died, not that that is their fault. There are no guarantees in this hobby!

Total price for this addition: $39.99

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Can anyone help me identify these guys?

They're tiny, maybe just a few mm across. In comparison, the zoanthids in these pictures are maybe 7-8 mm across.

There are three of these anemones growing on a rock fragment that these zoanthids came on. I just noticed them for the first time today. At first I thought they were just some algae, but when I poke at them they retract very quickly.

They look different than the Aiptasia I had before. More flower-like. I might even describe each tentacle as a little bit fuzzy.

Can anyone tell me I have got here?

These pictures are horrible. I need to get a better lens for macro photography and better lighting.

UPDATE:

After some research, I have decided that I've got three feather duster worms on this rock. They definitely have a "feathery" characteristic. They are super sensitive and dart in very quickly when touched. Am I more on the right track here?

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Not much going on in my aquarium these days. I'm letting things settle after the incident a few weeks ago. Everything seems to be doing fine, so if there was any danger in the first place from the contents of the hydrometer getting dumped into the tank, hopefully I prevented any issues by getting the affected sand and rock out of there quickly.

So instead, let me point out a resource that exists to help bloggers get more visibility, especially to other bloggers who write about similar things.

I've created a Reef Tank Community at BUMPzee.com. It's very small relative to some of the other communities but I'm pleased with how it hs shaping up so far.

Through it, I've met a few other reef tank owners and bloggers and hope that it will grow.

Also, to help foster the community, I've placed a BUMPzee widget in the sidebar. This widget is customizable so you can display visitors, your most popular posts, and the most popular posts in the community.

Also, as the blog owner I get page and blog stats in that widget and over on BUMPzee, so I can see daily visitors to my blog and the most active pages. Plus, the links on BUMPzee are good for Pagerank and SEO if you're concerned about that sort of thing.

So, if you've got a blog about salt water aquariums (there are surprisingly few of us), I invite you to join BUMPzee and submit your blog to the Reef Tank community.

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OK, so that's perhaps a bit dramatic, but man, what a day.

I was measuring the salinity when the lid to my glass-top slammed shut right on the hydrometer. I ended up with the stem in my hand, and the bulb portion shot into the tank.

The base must have torpedoed into the rock because the very bottom broke as well and all the little weights at the bottom spilled into the tank. I'm guessing these are lead, which can't be good to have in the tank. An ounce of lead in a 20 gallon tank must be as bad as (or worse than) the Exxon Valdeez in the Pacific!

Most of it had spilled onto a single spot on the sand and I scooped that up with a small measuring cup the best I could. Unfortunately, some had also spilled onto the rock and collected in some of the crevasses. I tipped the rock and let it fall into the sand from where I scooped that up as well.

So here I am with a dilemma. I got most of it, but surely not all. What do I do? Ride it out and see if the invertibrates get affected? They'd be the first to go. The fish and corals could surely handle a little heavy metal.

But I couldn't stand the thought of even a few little lead balls sitting in the tank, slowly leeching into the water and rock. And I figured the longer I think about it and research, the less impact any solution might have. So I acted quickly.

I went to the pet store and purchased a few new pieces of live rock and a 10 lb. bag of reef sand (CaribSea brand). And of course a new hydrometer.

I removed the two pieces of rock that may have had the lead pellets land in it and scooped out maybe 4-5 lbs of sand in the affected area. I replaced the sand with the full 10 lbs (ending up with a good deal more than I had previously) and the new rock.

Of course I took this opportunity to do some new rockscaping and built more of a cave and tunnel on the right side of the tank. I think it looks a good deal better, and is much more visible. The old structure had a cave that I couldn't really see into.

Here's how the tank looks now...

I laid the sand pretty deep on the right, giving it a two-tier look. And perhaps giving a spot for a jawfish I've had my eye on to dig a hole to hang out in.

I also left plenty of plaform to later add some more coral on top of the rock.

The whole ordeal set me back about $60 and a few hours. I consider things like this a "stupid tax". I deserved what I got for being careless.

As for the old rock, I've placed it in a pail of salt water. Once the water warms up, I'll drop a snail or crab in there to see if they make it. Like a canary in a mine.

I'm guessing the rock is fine and I'll use it later when I build a bigger tank. It's probably a good $50 of live rock.

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I've written in the past about the Aiptasia or Glass Anemone that came along with my live rock.

As I was researching this, I had a hard time finding a good picture and as I was writing a few other posts, I just realized that I had a picture to share. It's not a very good one as mine was at an awkward angle, but with a little imagination, it is a pretty good representation of what it actually looked like as it waved around.

It was quite small, only about a centimeter in diameter and length. You can see the 4 or 5 prominent tentacles in this picture, but there were several other smaller and more colorless tentacles closer to the rock.

I think the distinguishing characteristics are pretty visible here: milky color with tentacles that taper to a point.

Getting Rid of the Aiptasia

100% of the advice that I read and received said to get rid of this guy. My first course of action was to put a peppermint shrimp in the tank.

The anemone was gone within 48 hours. Sounds like I was pretty lucky there as the pet shop owner said that some peppermint shrimp won't ever find it, or be the sort that likes to eat them. So it's sort of a crap shoot.

Even if it didn't do the trick, I like having the shrimp in the tank. It's a very interesting creature.

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Undeterred by my first real setback (the death of a Cleaner shrimp), my daughter and I made a trip to the pet store this past weekend.

In the past week, the algae has all but gone up and the water become very, very clear. If you compare older pictures with the ones I've got in this post, you'll see a significant difference in the amount of brown algae. The crabs and snails have really been earning their keep. In fact, some of the snails have ventured to some more hard-to-reach areas like the glass, filter tube, and heater. And the crabs are eating the algae off the snail shells. This is actually quite amusing as the snails HATE it. When a crab is sitting on a snail shell, the snail will twist and turn, even "pop" with a jerk to try to get the crab off. I didn't know a snail could move that fast.

Back to the topic at hand. My daughter Sarah wanted a clown fish, and I wanted a nice piece of coral, so we set off with that goal in mind. Here's what we ended up with.

• Green Hammer Coral, $70
• Ocellaris Clownfish, $24.99

Green Hammer Coral The coral is really cool. I had a difficult time deciding, so my daughter Sarah made the final decision. You cannot see it in these pictures, but it has two live "heads" of polyps. This photo is pretty cool because it also happens to contain about 50% of the snails and crabs who have apparently come by to check it out.

As an extra bonus, the coral stalk came with a single barnacle. I didn't notice this until I got home, but it is also very cool. It's alive and if you're very patient, you can catch it feeding with it's feather-like feeder that shoots out, sweeps the water, and retracts.

In addition to the two live heads, it has a few that have long-died.

Most fascinating, however, was that out of the dead branch farthest over to the left in the above picture, next to the scarlet crab, I noticed some activity. A small tube, no thicker than a hair came out and shot out a long stream of what I assume is excrement. The stream snaked out about 6 inches until it stopped and the tube retracted. I never would have guessed that the whole structure is still living animal.

Here's a closer shot.

And here is another in which you can see the two heads taken at night after the lights have been off for hours. Even after the lights have been only a few minutes it has really puffed up. When the lights are off, it really shrivels up. "I've been SWIMMING!" -- George Costanza

And, not that it's particularly fun to look at, but you can see the barnacle right at the base of the stalk that goes up vertically.

Clownfish And of course, the clownfish who kindly swam past the coral for a photo op.

He's quite small now, which is fine by me, maybe 1.5" long.

Compared to the cardinal who manages to just sit there with a few flicks of his pectoral fins, the clown wiggles almost frantically like a dog wagging its tail.

What's his name? I have a 10 year old daughter. I'll give you one guess.

Photos and Backgrounds The above pictures really make me want to do something about the background in these photos, which is currently my wallpaper. Peter over at salt-water-aquarium.com has some good sugguestions which I'll be considering.

I guess I could do worse than blue wallpaper.

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Yes, that's right. I don't know what the equivalent would be in our terms, but the crabs and fish had Cleaner Shrimp feast.

The cleaner shrimp died about a week ago now. It started to moult while sitting right on top of the rocks. I thought it a little strange that it was there, unprotected. It had sort of stopped mid-moult with it's head and abdomen pulled out halfway. I was a little concerned, but figured this was just what they do. As it was night-time, I went to bed. (See third picture below)

The next moring, the shrimp had moved down into a cave below where it was. It was difficult to tell what was going on, but now it seemed to be dead. Again, I waited.

After several more hours, I "called it", as they do on ER. "Time of death..."

I reached in and grabbed one of the antenna. The old skeleton came out and behind it, what was left of the shrimp, just some of it's tail meat.

Lacking any Aquarium CSI team, all I can do is guess what happened. Either it was sick and died during it's moulting process, or something attacked it while it was in its very vulnerable state. I suppose a crab or the Bandai Cardinal could have done that.

The other shrimp, a peppermint, and all other animals are thriving. So I don't think it's any water quality issue. I suppose I could have just acclimated it poorly as it survived less than a week.

Live and learn. Or not. Well, learn anyway.

In memory of the cleaner shrimp...rest in peace.

Here it is early on.

This one was taken just hours before its demise. I did notice at this point that it had really started to let "stuff" accumulate on its antenna. In hindsight, this may be because it had started to moult.

And here is the shot in mid-moult. This is where it sat for at least a a few hours before ending up down below these rocks where I couldn't get a good photo. The red blob on the bottom is hte peppermint shrimp, and of course the cardinal upper left.

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Big trip to the pet store yesterday where I got a number of new animals to help get the tank in shape and the algae cleaned up.

3 Nassarius Snails @ $4.99 each 3 Blue Leg Hermits @ 2.99 each 3 Turbo Grazers @ 2.99 each 1 Cleaner Shrimp @ $39.99

And I picked up my first soft coral, a small Zoanthid for $39.99. I wanted to test and see how well coral would do in the tank at this stage. for $40, I'm very interested in keeping this alive!

And yes, I got a second shrimp. I thought the first one was so cool, I had to get one that's more extroverted, a cleaner shrimp.

All in all, a pricey visit to the store, but the tank is now teeming.

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There have been several new developments in a week since the last post.

Two more hermit crabs have died. At least I think they died. Initially, I couldn't find empty shells for either crab. One of them was a larger crab and I can't imagine that I'd lose track of that shell. The other was one of the very small ones and I did later locate its shell tucked deep inside some branchy rock. I'm guessing the latter got its shell stuck there and died in its escape and subsequent search for a new shell. I suppose the former could just be the shell that a crab moulted. I'm not certain how to tell.

New Livestock:

4 new Blue Legged Hermits @ $2.99 each 4 new Turbo Grazer snails @ $2.99 each 1 Peppermint shrimp @ $11.99

The most interesting new inhabitant is a peppermint shrimp. I picked it up at the local pet shop as the initial strategy to rid the tank of the aiptasia anenome. It seems to have worked. Very quickly, the aiptasia was gone. Mission accomplished.

At first I was a bit reluctant to put this in the tank. In the pet store, the few tanks that are full of shrimp aren't very attractive. They're big and scary looking. And their legs and antennae seem to take up a lot of space. But now that it is in my tank, it has quickly become my favorite thing to watch. Everything it does -- how it swims, eats, even hides away, is fascinating. Unfortunately, its favorite hiding place is in the back against the wall. Oh well. Maybe I'll get another as they really seem to do a good job at getting into the deep places to clean out the rocks.

This morning I arrived to see what appeared to be a dead shrimp. It is totally white resting on its back on the rocks and completely intact -- every feature down to antennae, swimming legs, eyes, etc. etc. I stared at it long enough to be convinced that it had died and them moved on to inspect the rest of the tank... And a shrimp swam by!

The shrimp had merely moulted. I cannot believe how complete its former exoskeleton is. All is well.

It is hard to keep track of how many animals are in the tank now. There are 9 or 10 snails and 7 or 8 crabs. They don't seem to be able to keep up with the algae at this point and seem to be able to keep only 30% of the rocks clean. The sand at the bottom of the tank is pretty well covered with algae as well. I did move the snails around to spread out their efforts and that has helped some. I think more are needed.

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A day or two ago, one of the hermits crawled out of his shell and made his way into the middle of the rocks, a fairly protected area. Certainly one that I cannot reach.

At the time I noticed, I could see where it ended up, and it appeared that it wasn't moving at all. Since then, it's been flipped over and is very clearly dead.

What happened? I don't know. I don't think it was too big for its shell. Maybe it was sick. Does a sick hermit leave its shell behind for its final stroll somewhere to die?

The rest of the livestock seem to be doing fine. The sand and many rocks are becoming quite covered with a brown/bronze algae, which is even making its way onto the glass on the back of the tank. I think it's time to get some more clean-up crews to get that in control.

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We picked up our first fish today. My daughter picked it out. It's a Bangai Cardinal:

I wanted to start out with something docile, not territorial, so a few other fish can be added later. This one fit the bill.

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With the new 65W 24" now perched on top of the new glass top for my 20L Perfecto tank, things are really starting to grow.

I picked these up a few days ago, along with three new blue legged hermits and three new turbo snails.

The total livestock in the tank is now:

5 Blue Legged hermit crabs 1 Scarlet Legged hermit crab 5 Turbo Snails

...and one small sea anenome.

It apparently hitchhiked his way along with the live rock. At first, I was excited to see this. How cool! But as I looked around a bit to find out what kind it is, nobody has anything good to say about this creature.

I can't get a good picture of it. It has milky-translucent tentacles, only 4 or 5 of them, all in a circle around the center. It is tucked pretty well into the rock, so I can't see it's body very well, but it looks like it has more much smaller tentacles in closer to it's body. The long tentacles are perhaps a centimeter long and maybe 0.5mm in diameter at the base and taper to a point.

From my research, it seems I've got an Aiptasia, or "glass anenome". The concensus is that they're a pest and can spread and take over, eating other livestock. They don't need much light, though I've given it plenty now.

How to remove Aiptasia

Advice from a number of online resources suggest that physical removal is a fool's errand and often results in helping them reproduce by breaking them up.

Sending in troops to eat them seems to be the best approach. There are a few natural predators for this anenome. Nudibranches apparently eat nothing but these anenome and would probably do the trick nicely, until the food is gone, of course. Hairy Red-legged hermit crabs like to eat these as well, as do peppermint shrimp.

Another option is chemicals -- creating a paste of potent calcium or sodium hydroxide can do the trick.

I'd rather not disturb the balance of my tank since it's quite small. I'll see if the current hermits do anything, and if not, throw in one of the more "specialized" spieces/hit-men to deal with it.

There is some great reading on the subject at WetWebMedia.com

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The tank is now 5 days old and already algae is sprouting up all over the live rock. I have no idea what it all is except to call it "red algae", "green algae", and "fuzzy algae". In fact, I'm not even sure it's algae. So, in hopes that someone can enlighten me, here are some pictures...

The following two pictures contain red algae that's growing everywhere. It's growing "out" of the rocks, not just spreading out and is a light maroon color. There are also spots of much darker red algae that definitely seems like a different organism.

This one's a bit blurry, but is the only good sample of some greenish algae that's growing. Actually, the turbo snail above also seems to have some of this on its shell. It's just covering the rock, not much substance. Also, there's a bit of orange algae growing here as well. Only one small spot.

And here's some fuzzy stuff growing as well, though not very visible here. It is greenish and fuzzy, just to the left of the blue-legged hermit.

If you have any actual names for this stuff, please leave it in the comments!

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I stopped by the pet shop yesterday afternoon to get my water tested. That's three days in a row at the pet store. I'm starting to feel a bit obsessed. They must see a lot of that -- new tank owners getting completely obsessed as things ramp up.

I wanted to get the water tested since I did a "speed cycle" using BIO-Spira. The water tested great, so I guess it worked. From fresh water to cycled in two-three days. Not bad for what I guess normally takes a few weeks.

I also got a basic lesson in corals and fish so I can start thinking about what to start populating with. I'm thinking soft and SPL coral and 3 or 4 fish, some blennies and maybe a pair of clowns. Need to do more reasearch!

Finally, I ordered a glass top for my 20L Perfecto tank and a CoralLife compact light which should be in on tuesday. Once that's in, and the algae really starts growing, I'll start adding more crabs and snails to keep everything in order.

Once I see some balance forming, I'll start adding coral and some fish. Trying to be patient!

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Second day of life for my new fish tank.

The water in the tank has cleared up very nicely by now (it was still a bit cloudy yesterday), and all living things seem to be still that, living.

I was concerned about one of the snails, but they have both climbed up the wall to the surface and are hanging out happily there. I am wondering if they don't have anything to eat given that no algae has had time to grow. Maybe I need to put something in there temporarily?

I also started photographing the fish tank. Judging by the many not-so-great tank shots there are on websites and forums, it can be a very difficult thing to do. You cannot use a flash as it reflects back off the screen. In short, I've set my camera on a tripod with no flash. Then take the picture on the timer so there's no movement. Turned out pretty well given that nothing in the tank is moving. Any fish swimming by will be a blur.

I'll have to do a bit of research about fish tank photography. In the meantime, here are some initial shots:

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Today, I have embarked on a new hobby. I'm building a reef tank. A reef tank is a salt water fish tank in which you develop a living coral reef. I'm just learning about the process now and I thought I'd cronicle this project here.

I've had a bad luck in the past with fresh water tanks, and after three or so years decided to give it another go. This time, on a whim, we're going with salt water. So much more fun, and perhaps more work. We will see.

I have a 20L tank and thought that'd be a good size to start with. I don't know how people manage their gigantic 75+ gallon custom tanks. Scuba gear???

Yesterday I purchased the salt (Instant Ocean) and "live sand", which is coral sand that has live bacteria in it. Got that all set up with a filter and heater to get the tank in shape for the next steps.

This morning I was back at the pet store picking out "live rock" (I didn't realize that all this stuff was "living"). I had looked around at fish and reef hobby forums and checked out some photos of other people's tanks to get some idea of how I wanted to rockscape my tank. I settled on a vision of two separate structures with an opening between them right in the middle of the tank, leaving some spots for live coral down the line.

Even knowing that the key to a successful aquarium is taking it slow, I still wanted to get something in there. So after consulting with the pet store staff, decide on a few snails and hermit crabs to get things kicked off along with a dose of BIO-Spira.

BIO-Spira is a product (not cheap) that shortens the cycle-time in a new tank.

Existing Supplies

• 20L Tank with cover and fluorescent lamp
• Tetra Whisper Filter 30 (though the woman at the pet store told me that I may want to rethink that one and go for a Bio-wheel for salt water.)

New Supplies

• Instant Ocean
• Two bags of live sand
• BIO-Spira
• 18 lbs. of live rock
• 1 heater

It was fun picking out the rock and setting up the tank's landscape. The guy in the pet store was great. We pulled out a bunch of pieces and laid it out on the floor. I tried to build a structure that would be interesting, provide some shelter, and serve as a future platform for some live coral. I'm pretty happy with how it turned out.

Here's the first picture:

Apparently this rock comes from all over the world. They put in an order and guys go out that day to harvest it. He mentioned that most of it seems to come from Fiji. For all I know, it comes out of Boston Harbor!

Starting Livestock

• Two "Turbo Grazer" Snails
• Two Blue Leg Hermit Crabs
• One Scarlet Hermit Crab

So far so good, I think. Though if things are going to go wrong, I don't know how long it takes to do so. One of the snails is quite active, making its way up the wall. The other is hanging tight, but sticks its head out once in a while.

One of the blue leg hermits is very active, crawling all over the rocks. The other one is somewhat active, but seems content sitting in one spot most of the time.

The scarlet hermit will spring to life if I pick it up and put it down somewhere, but will then settle back into it's motionless existence, just feeling stuff floating by with its tentacles.

Fun stuff. I'm tempted to get more crabs and hermits, enough so that I always see something moving in there! I'll resist the urge to move too fast. The money adds up!

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