Shots Across The Bow

Reef Update

Last week, I posted some pictures of my aquarium that I had taken last December. Here are some more current ones.

As you can see, there are a couple of new residents.

First up is an open brain coral

This is another stony coral, and while photosynthetic, it also needs a regular supply of solid food in the form of mysis shrimp.

These guys are polyp corals, and I transferred them from my smaller tank. These are soft corals, and spread fairly rapidly. When I first put this rock in the reef, there were only 7 or 8 polyps on the rock.

You probably recognize this guy from last week, the trumpet coral. But, if you look closely, you'll see that it has grown significantly over the last 3 months. In fact, it's gone from 7 polyps to 11, which has been really cool to watch.

If you look closely in this picture, you can see how the polyp has elongated and formed two separate mouths. It's well on it's way to complete division. As the polyps divide, they continue to build a stony skeleton that will begin to look like stems of flowers. As the coral matures, the polyps grouped togethe will begin to resemble the bell of a trumpet, hence the name.

Here's another repeat ustomer, the muchroom coral. Notice that the polyps have reproduced and also grown to cover most of the base rock. Since this species does not make it's own skeleton, before too long, I expect to find polyps on other rocks in the aquarium.

Last but not least, comes the bubble coral. It's hard to tell from this picture, but he's almost doubled in size over the last three months. I've been trying to find out how they reproduce, if this one will keep getting bigger, or if it will divide somehow, but I haven't found out anything yet.

In a couple of months, I plan on adding an anemone/clownfish pair, a pistol shrimp/goby pair, maybe some frogspawn or maybe even some small polyp stony corals.

I'll post more pictures then.

What's an Aquarium Without any Fish?

A reef.

Back in October I started cycling the tank with 100 lbs of live sand and 100 lbs of live rock. (For those unfamiliar with reef keeping, live sand and rock refers to sand and rock (duh) that are chock full of microscopic critters, worms, and who knows what all. It acts as a biological filter, breaking down waste products into non-toxic form. One of the fun parts about cycling a reef aquarium is watching to seee what kind of critters hitchiked in with the rock and sand.

For example, here is a tubeworm, called a featherduster because of it's distinctive crown. There are probably 20 of these things throughout the tank, which is pretty cool, snce they cost between 10 and 20 bucks apiece at the fish store.

In December, after testing the water and making sure the chemistry was right, I went out to the fish store and bought a bubble coral.

This coral is pretty neat. It contains a type of algae that produces food for the coral through photosynthesis, but the coral is also a carnivore, eating a small piece of shrimp every couple of weeks or so. What's really cool though is what happens at night.

The coral collapses all the bubbles, which are filled with water, and extends feeder tentacles that can catch and pull food into the mouth.
The bubble coral is a stony coral, which means it pulls calcium and other minerals from the water to form a hard supporting structure. You really can't see it in the pictures because in this critter, it's underneath the animal.
To keep the bubble company, I also transferred two corals from my small aquarium.

First a trumpet coral, AKA a candy cane coral. Like the bubble coral, it has the photosynthetic algae, and will also eat phytoplankton or small shrimp. Also like the bubble coral, it's a stony coral, but this time you can actually see the skeleton.

Like the bubble coral, it too collapses at night, although not as dramatically, and extends feeder tentacles.

Second a mushroom coral. Unlike the previous corals, a mushroom coral is not a stony coral; it's classed as a soft coral. Like the others though, it feeds through a combination of photosynthesis and feeding.

Since then, I've added a rock with some polyp corals, and now that the system is stable, I plan on adding some more corals and other critters. I'll keep the pattern up for a year or so, letting the system gradually adapt to each addition until the reef is done.

Then I'll get a new aquarium and start all over again.

My New Hobby

This is a 12 gallon NanoCube, an all in one aquarium. We've got a freshwater tank, with 6 African Cichlids, and two of the kids have betta's in tanks, but I decided I wanted to try something different, a Nano reef. (For those non tech geeks, "nano" in scientific notation means 10e-9. (Man, I wish I had one of those 1972 typewriters that did superscripts. Those were the days! I'm sure there's a text formatting code for superscripts, but I don't know it. 10^-9 Found it.) Used here, it just means very small.) The stuff you see in the aquarium is called live rock. It's got lots of critters like tiny shrimps and a few small snails and god only knows what all else growing in it. It makes a great base for corals and other invertebrates, and acts as a natural sort of filter, keeping the aquarium water clean.

Right now, I jus finished cycling the tank (allowing the water chemistry to stabilize due to the living, dying, and scavaging of said critters and other micro-organisms) and added a few snails and a couple of hermit crabs to start eating the algae. Once the water stabilizes again, I'm going to add a coral or two, or possible some feather duster worms if I can find some.