"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.

Scooter

Scooter

Elysia crispata (the lettuce sea slug) Another pseudo-impulse purchase in which again I asked "What does he eat, algae?" which the answer was "yes"; I even mentioned our bad luck with the Blue Dorid Nudibranch which we had to return, and I was told they don't carry animals that could possibly take down a tank. Yes he eats algae, but if you read the fine print, he only eats a particular type of algae, and wouldn't you know, it's not the type growing in our tank at the moment, so now we're on an algae hunt. On a positive note, he has a cute factor though, so we'll keep our fingers crossed and hope he doesn't foul the tank if he goes south. Also the only other tank mate is a feather duster, so the loss won't be as big as it would be if he were in the Aquapod.

Aquarium of the Pacific

Aquarium of the Pacific

Moon Jellys at the Aquarium of the Pacific.

I'm not diving in that tank

And the award for the cutist fish goes too...

This is a Grunt Sculpin or Grunt-fish (jeez even the name is cute) who inhabits the Pacific coast. Not much bigger than your thumb, it lives in areas of the continental shelf in deep water all the way up to tide pools along the shore. I love it's mating habits too, the female chases the male until he's cornered in a hole or crevasse, and forces him to stay there until she lays her eggs. What the marine biologists aren't telling you is, after the eggs are laid and fertilized, the female Sculpin divorces the male and gets the house, the kids, and a hefty sum of money every month. (photo taken at the Aquarium of the Pacific, Long Beach, CA.)

Hypselodoris bullocki also known as a Blue Dorid nudibranch, although this is the common natural coloration (purplish), is a large nudibranch (about 2 inches), and was one of the newest members of our pico tank for about half an hour, until we found out that they are short lived (about two months), and further more, they are short lived because they starve to death as they only eat a particular type of sponge. Not wanting to watch him die of starvation, we did the only right thing we could do and returned him to the store so that they could watch him starve to death. The store originally told us they were filter feeders which I was a little suspect of, but we did some research at home on the Internet and the sad truth is unless you know exactly what they eat, you'll have an ex-nudibranch in a months time. Sorry little buddy :c

Before and After

The top picture is our tank, just as we started adding livestock. The bottom picture shows the tank where we are at now. In the interest of allowing things to grow, we have decided not to add any more corals at this time (in this tank)

Cleaner Shrimp and Elegance Coral

The Elegance Coral has been tough to shoot in the aquarium as the acrylic tends to distort the image, but this is the best image to date, shown here with the camera hogging cleaner shrimp. The Elegance Coral was an impulse purchase, and had I read all the negative things written about it, I wouldn't have gotten it, but so far it has behaved itself.

This is called turbine coral (Turbinaria peltata), which consists of many species who's appearance range from flat plates to upright stalks. These are hard corals that form a calcareous skeleton as they spread.

Tubastraea, or Sun Coral usually inhabits caves and is often found hanging upside down in caves. These corals have no Zooxanthellae and require regular feeding, usually opening at night when plankton is more plentiful, but will open in the presents of food in the water.

The Polyps resemble sunny faces, in fact if you look closely enough you can imagine a face with eyes and a mouth