A truly weird thing!

[More videos from Sparky477]

I shot this Scyphozoan Jellyfish through the microscope after sucking him up with an eye dropper. He actually is swimming around in a drop of salt water if that is any indication of how big he is. Unfortunately I only have one objective lens in the scope and I could have done with a little wider shot, but you can get the idea of how this guy swims by watching the video.

Ricordea

Scyphozoan Jellyfish

This is a photo of a Scyphozoan Jellyfish that is another hitchhiker in our tank. He's visible to the naked eye and swims with a pulsing motion just like an adult jelly. I've read several different sites on Scyphozoan Jellyfish and they say this one could grow to adult size if fed properly, but I've never seen one in my tank grow any larger than the size of the letter O. The fish seem to ignore them and I suppose they are to small to be a pest, so at this stage I'm going to leave them alone (not that I can get rid of them since I don't know where they are breeding in my tank.

Sun Coral / Orange Cup Coral

Tubastraea Faulkneri

Tubastraea Faulkneri

Tubastraea Faulkneri

Tubastraea Faulkneri

Ricordea

It's hard to get a really good photograph of the Recordea in our tank. It's just at the wrong angle to the acrylic making it slightly out of focus, but this is a pretty good photograph. For some reason Recordea looks like photographs taken with an electron microscope, but there was no special filter or lighting used, just electronic flash.

Ricordea

Rusty

Tubastraea Faulkneri, or more commonly known as "Orange Cup or Sun Coral". These corals have no zooxanthellae so they rely totally on captured food for survival and are generally regarded as ahermatypic or non-reef building. These corals usually open at night in response to time when planktonic food sources are at their highest and are usually found upside-down at the entrance of caves or overhangs in nutrient rich water where food will be abundant.

Humuhumu nuku nuku apua'a (Say that ten times fast!)

Discosoma: Oil on Canvas

Hard fish to photograph since they aren't as placid as they look here. By the time the camera is in focus they're gone, so it takes some patience to get a good photo.

Jack

Twitchy

Firefish Goby

Xenia

Scooter Lips

How could you not love a fish with lips like those.

"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.