Clowns and More!

Well I am finally getting around to posting again. It's been a while and lots has happened with the tank in the last month or so. In rough order of what has happened (this post will be rather long) .....

Clown Fish (Amphiprion ocellaris)- We finally got two clownfish! I got them from a local breeder for a good price. It's nice to be able to buy tank bred fish, knowing you are not taking them out of their reef homes. We were hoping they would adopt the pink cataphyllia but they don't seem to be that interested yet. It is possible that they are still determining their sex. When they were bought, they were both male. Once a pair of clowns are put together, the more dominant fish will then become female. Once this happens and they decide to start breeding, they usually look for a "safe" place to lay the eggs, usually on rock near an anemone. Most commonly in the wild they will host an anemone for protection, however they will also host other corals, such as cataphyllias or xenias, anything that "waves around with long arms".

They are very cute and are one of my all time favourite reef fish. Here are a few pics of them a few days after we got them.


Brain Coral - Every reef tank needs a brain! This brain is a Favites spp. It is a nice colour green in the water, given that the tank only has fluoro lighting. It's not an overly popular coral with the studio dudes, as it "doesn't do anything". I've tried to explain that not all corals jump up and down and perform shows everyday, some are just pretty and sit there! Anyway, I am trying to now pick out corals with more "movement". Interestingly, at night when the lights are off in the tank, the brain actually does "do" something. It has long sweeper tentacles that expand out and wave around. It is unsure why they do this, but it is believed they may be used to detect the settlement or advance of corals. So give the brain space!


Whisker Coral (Duncanopsammia axifuga) - Bought this one from St.Kilda Aquarium. I really like this one as it looks like a bunch of flowers. The polyps seem to be out for most of the day. The other day, the fungia (door mat) decided it wanted to try to smother this coral. It literally moved itself over, inflated itself and half covered it! We quickly removed it and the Whisker Coral seems fine now


Orange Dashed Goby (Valenciennea puellaris) - Well this little girl has been one of the highlights of the tank so far. We needed a sand cleaner of some sort, so thought she would do a good job of keeping the sand nice and clean. Well, we bought her on a Friday and over the weekend she decided she would do a little re-decorating! On arriving at work on the Monday, the tank was like a snowstorm and all the rocks were covered in sand! Well she did the job she was put in there for - the sand was now brilliantly clean. After cleaning the sand off the rocks, we could see she had made herself a little home under one of the flat rocks, with a tunnel excavated from one side to the other.
She cleans the sand by taking large gulps of it and filtering it through her gills. It's so funny to watch. We have been feeding her frozen mysis shrimp as she won't eat flake food.


Torch Coral - On the weekend I went and got a Torch Coral (Euphyllia glabrescens). This has settled in nicely and looks great. It is brown with yellow tips. Everyone in the studio thinks it's great because it "does" something. The tentacles move around in the current.


Pepe (the peppermint shrimp) - Great news - Pepe was spotted tonight. Everyone thought he was long gone. I dropped a bit of food in to tempt the goby out for a photo and I saw two little feelers appear from the rock. Wondering what they were, suddenly the little red transparent body of the shrimp appeared! Pepe is ALIVE! He looks very healthy and has at least doubled in size. He is sharing his home with the goby, which is very cute. Thought the goby might have had it for lunch, but it obviously doesn't eat that sort of shrimp!

Anemone - Last but not least, the little unidentified coral that appeared in the tank is growing and has moved itself up to the highest point in the tank (presumably to get the light). Aquarium friends tell me it's a bubble tipped anemone, so we'll see what happens with it!

Pepe - the Peppermint Shrimp

It's been a while since the last post. The tank is still going well. Yesterday I picked up a peppermint shrimp (there was supposed to be 2 of them, but the guy who was holding them for me couldn't locate the other one!).
They come from Oceanarium, which is in Western Australia. They breed them over there and I bought these as a group order with other marine aquarists. We ordered 27 of them! They arrive via Australia Air Express, so someone has to pick them up from the airport. The shrimp this time were very small.

We put Pepe into the tank and he basically swam into a corner and stayed there. Peppermint shrimp are great for eating aptaisia, which are ugly weed like growths that can take over a tank. We are not sure if Pepe is still in the tank, as there is evidence of a husk. This could be him, or it could be just that he shed his skin. We shall wait and see.

Here is a photo of him in the plastic bag, before we released him into the tank.


As well as adding Pepe to the tank, last Friday Neil brought in a few more frags from home. Here are a couple of pics. The brown and white one (which has been named the chocolate crackle coral), does not seem to want to stay where it is put. It has now split in half and is in two different spots. All the polyps are out, so it's still ok. We will just leave it alone and see where it ends up!




And a day or so before this, we bought 3 blue chromis. These are the first fish we are adding to the tank. They are quite hardy fish, very skittish and a lovely blue/green colour. It is very hard to get photos of them as they are so quick. The green towel hanging behind the tank was put there temporarily to stop the chromis looking their reflection in the glass. The reflection was making them think there were more fish to school with, so they were staying at the back of the tank. We will get a more permanent piece of something to put there soon.

A couple of new corals

Well it's been over a week since the last post, things have been very busy at work. Pleased to report that the tank is still going well. The water is being tested most days and I am keeping a log. All levels are good, except there is still some ammonia in there (0.5mg/l), which is holding up the introduction of fish. We have been doing twice weekly water changes, and this is keeping the level at bay, but it may just need time to cycle through. Everyone is dying to get some fish in there, as it looks so empty still.

On Thursday May 3rd I picked up a couple of corals from Amazing Amazon in Glen Waverley. One was a pink/purple tipped cataphyllia and the other one a purple fungia. These were put in the tank (with the help of Shannon's long arms!) and they soon started to inflate and look at home. One part of the cataphyllia looks a bit suss, so hoping that will eventually come out too.

Spencer has fondly named the fungia "the doormat" as it just sits there and doesn't do much. It does have little tentacle things that wave around in the water current. I think it's great and every coral has it's own little personality to me!

Here are some pics of the new corals. It is quite difficult to get a sharp photo a lot of the time as the corners of the tank are curved, so these are the best I could manage. Both corals are "out" a lot more now.





This little pic below is a coral that came on the live rock when we installed the tank. It is growing at a rapid rate. We think it is an anenome, but will get that double checked.

Some new frags

Well on Friday morning I bought in a few frags to put in the tank. "Frags" for those who don't know is a term used in marine aquaria for "fragments" of coral. It's kind of like taking a cutting from a plant in the garden and replanting it somewhere else. These frags came from my marine tank at home.
It may have been a bit premature to put these in, but hey, it's just too tempting to have an empty tank waiting like that! Plus, these particular corals (acropora) are growing a bit out of control in our tank, so a little trimming didn't hurt them.

This tank, with it's lower lighting output is not ideal for most acropora, but we may be lucky and get a few species to grow. Anyway, Neil trimmed the pieces off the night before, and wrapped them in damp newspaper and put them in some water, ready for me to take to work. Having them sit overnight like that was probably not ideal and judging by how they looked by the end of the day, I'd say they may not make it. One had started to bleach, which we trimmed off and the other looked a bit flaky. We'll see how they look on Monday and turf them out if they are dead. Next time, we will trim them off fresh in the morning and bring them in. The white putty stuff you can see is called "Aquaknead". This comes in a tube and you cut small amounts off, knead it together and use it to attach frags to rocks. After time, algae grows over it and it doesn't stand out so much. Thanks Shannon for helping attach the frags.

The other few frags we bought in were Coralimorphs (or common name is mushrooms as they look like mushrooms). This family of corals come in a huge variety of colours and textures, some smooth, some fluffy. I think they are a great addition to a tank as they add a lot of coverage and colour and grow fairly fast. A couple of the morphs were on a little piece of rock, which we placed in the tank. The other two we just threw in. Later on, Neil came in and we decided it might be a cool idea to help them attach to one of the vertical rocks, so he used some toothpicks and secured them into one of the holes in the rock. Once they have attached themselves, we will remove the toothpicks. You can see this in the pictures.

The water was tested again and it was quite good. I found the ph test kit too.
PH: 8.2
Ammonia 0.5mg/l
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 0

If levels stay good for the next few days, we will look at adding some livestock maybe on Friday! Yippee.

Naomi :)

Tank Wishlist

I came up with some coral and fish that I think might work ok in our new tank.

Of course these would need to be added slowly and everyone needs to be happy with the selections.

Here is a pdf if you'd like to download it.
http://starfishblue.com.au/studiotank.pdf

Day 4

Tank still looking good. Discovered a very cute little slug, which I will try to get a photo of. It may be a nasty little coral eater when it grows up so will have to try to identify it now and deal with him if need be (evil laugh).

We did some water tests today, Ammonia (small trace) Nitrite (none) and Nitrate (tiny trace), so things are looking good for adding stuff soon. Might even add some little frags from my home tank tomorrow.

Hope to see some posts from all you other studio reefers soon, as people will get sick on me blabbing on!

Naomi :)

Day 2

Well it seems like everyone loved the tank and got a nice surprise on Monday morning. I was not working so had to wait until the next day to see how it was progressing.

Tuesday 24th April
Upon arriving at work, I was pleasantly surprised at how clear the water was and how great the tank was looking. There were a few little corals that had woken up and there was quite a lot of activity with the snails and everything just seemed happy :)

In the afternoon, Spencer, Shannon and myself did a 40 litre water change. Siphoning the water out was fine, but putting the fresh batch in involved stacking the 2 x 20 litre drums on top of a wheely bin to allow gravity to do its thing. None-the-less, it was better than having to lift 20 litres up above your shoulders.

Below are some pictures taken before the water change.

Naomi :)