Kicking it in his shell yo!

Check out the polka-dot eyes

Discosoma

New Growth

The Halmedia is showing signs of growth after being in the tank only a few days. The white tips are newly forming leaves that will eventually turn green. The white color is formed by the calcium that makes up the skeleton.

Another new coral added this weekend: Discosonoma, or Mushroom Coral.

Another shot of the Xenia

It looks like a plant, but like all flora in a saltwater tank, Halmedia is a calcareous algae. There are fish that consume this growth and the calcium skeleton is eliminated by the fish and become sand on many tropical beaches.

Snail at Work

Astraea Tecta or "turbo snail" which I assume gets its name from being shaped like a turbine, and has nothing to do with speed. They get around the tank, but I haven't seen one kick up any dust yet.

Our first saltwater fish

A Damsel, but hopefully not in distress: We were obliged to get a Yellow Tailed Blue Damsel as out first fish since they are hardy, and I'm a nincompoop when it comes to saltwater maintenance. I did a 25% water change the other day and didn't bother to check the Alkalinity/Ph of the water from the store and it made the Xenia pucker up like it licked a lemon, but the Damsel seemed unaffected.

I'M NAKED!

I've tried to keep this site as clean as possible, but inevitably some smut slips through the cracks. I apologize if there were any children present when this page came up.

Here we have one of the Hermit Crabs who has grown too big for his britches, and is in the midst of swapping out (or checking for a better fit) for larger accommodations.

Kelly had to snap this photo quickly since these crabs are vulnerable while out of their host shells.

Salt water snail

I don't do windows! Ok, maybe he does do windows.

Hmmm. Notice any family resemblance?

Mr. Crabby

He's soooooo cute!!!!!

Congregating copepods

These are a group of copepods that started congregating on the front of the tank.

Our first Coral

This is called Xenia or Waving Hands Coral because of the pulsing action of the coral. The coral resembles a stalk of broccoli with flowers at the end of the stalks that open and close like grasping hands.

When we got it back from the store, it looked pretty sad, but it has perked up since then. The store owner said as long as the water quality is good, the Xenia will continue to pulse.

This is the 24-gal Saltwater Nanocube. It look barren now, and I still want to arrange some of the rocks, but here it is. I added a power head that has a head that reciprocates to simulate wave surge and bring up the water circulation a bit since the current was a little low. The new Xenia is in the lower left corner

If you enlarge the photo you will see little white specks on the class and floating in the water. There are many more than you can see here since I cleaned up the image in Photoshop, but there are thousands of Copepods chowing down on algae. Good food for later on.

Snowball, peeking out from around an aquarium ornament. These fish are very territorial, and to him I'm just a large ugly fish, so he keeps an eye on me, especially when I'm watching TV. Part of the problem is they build a nest of bubbles and the conditions of the tank dictate that the nest is closest to me by the couch, so I'll suddenly feel like I'm being watched, and when I look over, there he is eyeballing me, or he will flair his gills and come rushing over to where I am.

Bag-O-Snails

We've got the Hermit Crabs cleaning the rocks and gravel of algae, but since they can't climb on the glass, we figured some snails should take care of cleaning that area. Three snails here are eye-balling the food that awaits, while they acclimate to the temperature of the tank.

Snicket.

Mr Shrimpy.

This batch of photos came out a bit different. I tried oblique lighting from the top, which shows the internal structure a little better than from underneath. You can clearly see the red eye spot, and I'm assuming those are eggs at the rear, but I'll have to do a little more reading. You can also see legs in this photo, and the dark vertical stripe down the middle, and again I'm assuming, is some sort of circulatory system as it pulsates. I'm going to have to find a way to host videos.

I shot this copepod off the aquarium glass with a jury rigged microscope. It's very hard to get a good picture this way because focus is a function of how far or close the microscope is to the copepod, but the lighting is much better. I'm going to give it a try again to see if I can come up with a better photo.

This was a pretty good shot of a copepod. You can see the single red eye between the antennae.

Copepod as viewed under my microscope. I scooped this one off the glass in my nano reef.

The Cichlid Brothers

Jack

Moe

Manny

One of three Hermit Crabs cleaning the Saltwater Aquarium. No use naming these guys, they change their shells every once in a while, in what amounts to be a true shell game. One thing I've got so say about these guys is they sure do a good job of cleaning the tank; no tank acclimation for them, as they hit the ground running (or in this case cleaning) as soon as we dropped them in.

In this photo, one of the Hermit Crabs is inspecting a prospect for a new home.

Glowlight Tetra

This is one of our "Glowlight Tetras". He doesn't have a name since he looks just like the other Glowlights that are in the tank. He has "Neon Tetras for neighbors, as well as a "Longfin Danio" and a couple of "Zebra Tetras".

Mr. Shrimpy

This is our Wood Shrimp, "Mr. Shrimpy". He hangs out at the underwater bridge and refuses to be social, unlike the Cichlids which are camera hogs. I'm sure that the Cichlids are excited because they think there is food to be had, but I would swear they dodge in front of the camera on purpose.

In this shot, you can see his hands have "Fan" like fingers, which he uses to catch food suspended in the water, or scooped up from the ground. The particles of food stick to his feet and he licks them clean when he's caught something. Sometimes he cheats and sits in a stream of water and lets the flowing water do all the work instead of waving his feet in the water.

If you right click on the photograph, it will give you a larger photo (as will all the photos on this blog), and you can see a little more detail. If you do enlarge the photo, check out his eyes, they're pretty neat!

Our First Signs of Life

Besides the inevitable algae that grows, we found a couple of hitch hikers amongst the live rock in our new 24gal nano-cube saltwater aquarium. At first we thought the rock was as barren as the moon, but after a while some of the creatures are popping out when we least expect it.