"I take your stinkin bullets"

Logically I know his brain is not much larger than the letter "O" but I swear he watches me while I'm watching TV, secretly plotting my demise. If he could talk I would imagine he would sound like Al Pacino in Scarface.

Thanks to the folks at Aquarium Advice this guy has been identified as Stomatella Varia and is member of the Mollusca Phylum in the class of Gastropoda. We found him first on the live rock but had a hard time photographing him as he is small (about the size of a raisin), and well camouflaged. We didn't see him for a few days but then discovered him on a group of coral in the tank so I popped him is a small plastic tank to get a better photo. According to one article at Reefkeeping.com, because of Stomatella's lack of shell to hide in, it has developed a unique ability to "drop" it's hind quarter like a lizard while it scampers away.

My wife got the trophy shot with this one. The acrylic glass makes it hard to get good shots sometimes, and Scooter Blennys aren't placid swimmers so this one was part skill and part luck. Click on the photo to enlarge the shot, it's pretty impressive.

Tubastraea Faulkneri, or Sun Coral. We're in the process of trying to fatten these guys up.

From Aquarium of the Pacific

Manny then and now (3 months).

Close up of our feather duster.

Firefish

Our new member of the family. Apparently when growing up, someone accidentally poured a cup of coffee in his tank: he tried becoming carpet jerky while I was acclimating him to the tank, and then once when I was trying to feed a coral and unfortunately the lid was closed on the tank and he whacked his head on the cover to the lights. I'll try mixing some Prozac with his shrimp.

Xenia Elongata which I think roughly translates to "Grows like a weed". Xenia is a part of a large group of fleshy, stalked, soft corals that are usually the first colonizers of a reef area, and they spread by attaching a stalk to a nearby rock and then detaching from that stalk. I started out with two small stalks, and now I have six.

Close up shot of Xenia

Aquarium of th Pacific

It's hard to tell but that's a fish in the middle of the photograph. Click photo to enlarge.

We've had this tree coral for a while, but it's been notoriously hard to photograph, so it hasn't made the blog as much.

Another freebee

Every once in a while you hear on the news that some undiscovered species has been found some where in the world that excites the scientific community. If you like that type of adventure, buy a saltwater aquarium. If you have the patients to sit and stare at a tank, you'll find yourself eventually saying "oh my God, what the heck is that!" This guy is really hard to see but I'm guessing it's some sort of limpet. It has a pseudo shell and it's has a body and antennae like a snail, and I assure you, I got it for free somewhere.

OK, I said no more new corals but I figured it was small and insignificant (wait until a year goes by, then I'll be sorry.) I believe this one is called Ricordea Yuma and is a member of the Corallimorphs (mushroom coral) like the Discosoma. Originally it was in the Pico tank, but 5 gallons is just to small to deal with so we transferred him to the 24 gal tank.

The maximum size this type will grow to is about 2.5 inches (according to our book.)

Fluorescing under actinic lighting gives it quite a different look

More Photos From Aquarium of the Pacific

A Grouper I believe.

Lion Fish

All I've got to say is I'm never swimming in the ocean ever again; I think this is a baby bristle worm that is scootching across the glass of the pico tank. I found some other friends of the worm persuasion as well.

Close up of Jack.

What the???

I found this critter in the pico tank attached to the glass. About .5mm in size. According to different sources it is a jellyfish (Staurocladia oahuensis) and is a normal hitchhiker in new tanks.

And yet another Weird Thing in our tank

We found this guy crawling on the glass in our pico tank. He's about three time larger than a copepod which he is clearly not and crawls more like a flatworm.

A trip to the local Aquarium shop identified a photo as indeed being a flatworm and suggested a liquid phosphate remover which seems to have worked.