On the Reef

Haven't posted much to this community, but eventually as I get to it - I more than likely will be posting more...

Keeping the community going

Our Peacock puffer is a mean little bastard!
I was in the room with the aquarium watching this morning when the lights came on. The puffer immediately got up from the rock he was sleeping on and within 5 seconds was nipping at one of the flame scallops.
CUT IT OUT!

We have had our Blood Shrimp since June and it has motled 3 times.
I'm assuming that means he is growing and is in good health.
I hope that's what it means.

Anemone Armies Battle To A Standoff

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This is our Lawnmower Blenny.  Jonathan named him Elby.  He has loads of personality.  It's entertaining to watch him sneak up on rocks and chomp at them like a great hunter.

This is our newest tank mate.  It's a Boxfish, but I'm not sure of the specific name.  I do know from the coloring that it's a female.  We named it vivian.

Last night I was moving the rock that our Blood Shrimp hides behind so that I could clear out any debris that had collected there.  When I turned the rock over, I found that it had a critter on the bottom of it!  Our porcelain crab was on the rock!  The porcelain crab dissapeard at the end of June.  We say pieces of his large claw floating around, so we assumed he was dead.  It seems he just motled.  He's a little paler (less blue) than he was, but he was very much alive.  I hope soon he returns to his former perch so we can watch him flagging again.  We call him disco crab because of the way he looks when he waves his little sieves in the water like somebody flailing flags at a disco club.
Welcome back Disco Crab!

The new additions to the tank are doing well.  The crabs have been very busy.  I tried taking some pictures, but they didn't turn out very well.  I need to get even more intense light focused on the tank for taking pictures.
Here is one that almost turned out.

Just felt like sharing. Our (Ok it's supposed to be the kids') 55 Gal
aquarium has been up and running since April 19th. We had 3 assorted
Damsels, a Tomato Clown, and a Lawnmower Blenny. We had one 3.5 pound
piece of Live Rock and a nice crop of Algae.

Yesterday we went to The Fish Place in North Tonawanda "Just to look"
and maybe get some cleaner crabs and a small piece of Live Rock.

  We left the store about $100 lighter, but the staff there is very helpful and friendly.

  What did we get?

   (10) Blue leg hermit crabs (very tiny things.)

   (2) Scarlet leg hermit crabs (slightly less tiny)

   (1) Porcelain crab.  (very pretty blue)

    (1) Blood shrimp

    (1) 3.5 pound lump of Fiji Live Rock.

All of the crabs went right to work when we added them to the
tank.  The Porcelain Crab is very neat to watch as he waves his
sieve hands above him in the water.

The bright red shrimp, with it's white antenae and legs, immediately
took up residence behind a big, flat piece of rock.  We can only
see his antennae sticking above the rock.

I was thrilled because the piece of live rock had lots of creatures on
it. One, that I kep calling a feather duster (wrong, I know, but don't
know what it should be called) seems to have been eaten.  Too bad
because it was really very interesting to watch.

We also got a new test kit for amonia and nitrite.  The salinity
in the tank was a little high, but it's due for a 20% change this week.

The main group of fish all survived our 10 day vacation. (thanks Joe for feeding them)

I'm hoping to add a Yellow Tang in July.

That's all.

I haven't posted here before, but we have a 55 gal. tank with 1 yellow tail damioselle, 1 blue damsel, 1 yellow tailed blue damsel, 1 horseshoe crab (I think he's still alive, we saw him last week) a tomato clown and a lawnmower blenny. The blenny is the most fun to watch. Anyway I found the crab dead last night. My chemistry seems good, so I don't know what happened to him. I'll do a 10 gal. water change tonight (had planned to anyway) and wait a few weeks. Maybe I'll get another one.

Last time I posted, I was freaking out about my lawnmower blenny not eating. Well, you'll be happy to know that a couple days after I posted, he suddenly started eating algae off the glass, and now happily chomps prepared foods as well.

Something else exciting and curious has happened, too. I have a featherduster worm in my tank, which had sort of one and a half heads -- the feathery part was sort of split partway. A few days ago, it stopped coming out of its tube, and when I looked into the tube I couldn't see anything -- it looked like the tube was empty. I sadly assumed that it had possibly died. But this morning, a new, tiny feathery head is poking out of the tube! I can't tell, but it no longer looks split. Which makes me wonder if perhaps the worm divided. I wonder what happened to the other worm, if so? They are such strange creatures. I'm pleased that it isn't dead, though, and I'll be interested to see how things develop.

x-posted to fish_geek and on_the_reef