Aiptasia

August 4, 2004
Did an order from a place in the Florida Keys--a couple who collects mostly plants, some smaller animals and ships nationwide. Mainly I wanted macro algae for stocking the new refugium we’re making, but I also bought some glass shrimp (small beasties to breed and provide food for larger beasties), a new brittle star, some worm clusters, a whole bunch of small snails and micro starfish. All this is basically to improve the cleanup crew. Oh yes, and 3 hermit crabs, despite all my conflicting feelings about those things. The hermit crabs were so small, I promptly lost track of them and can’t say if they are even alive--time will tell!

The sender warned that the worm clusters might have aiptasia anemones on them, so they should be quarantined. I did quarantine them, and they do, indeed, have aiptasia on them, so the problem is, how do I get rid of the aiptasia so they can go in the main tank and look pretty? Aiptasia are small, virulent anemones that spread so quickly, they can take over a tank in no time. Once you have them, getting rid of them is nearly impossible. The books say various things will eat them (easiest for me would be peppermint shrimp), but that even when they appear to be gone, they may not be, and will come back from some spec that the predator missed. So on reflection, it was dumb to buy these clusters, because I think they will have to live in quarantine forever! (And I don’t know if I’ll keep a quarantine tank set up another month, let alone forever!)

A recent article in a magazine on uninvited aquarium guests talked about aiptasia, as well as a nasty isopod that kills fish by attaching to their sides at night and sucking blood or even internal organs. This creature is typically a hitchhiker on live rock, but may arrive by other means, and one of those means could easily be among the fronds of macroalgae that some fool woman just bought from the Keys! The Keys order arrived Wed., and I bought the magazine that talked about these things just two days later. THAT gave me plenty to worry about. One clump of macroalgae went in the quarantine tank, but the other just got rinsed in saltwater and dumped in the refugium. When I saw a bunch of small creatures swimming around in the rinse water, I dumped them in too--didn’t want to waste what I assumed were amphipods and copepods, because they are good guys for making fish food. But any one of those guys could easily have been an isopod. Marine tanks are not conducive to peaceful sleep!

I took my son and daughter in law over to the local dealer to show them her large tank (6’ by 2’, 180 gallons). They studied it carefully and declared it was too small; I need to make my next tank 8 feet! While there, I picked up a bicolor blenny to replace the one that died months ago. It was one of my favorite fish, the way it backs into holes and looks at you. I also bought a new Sinularia that is greenish and has many small branches, unlike the first one that has a few thick fingers (pictured in upper right).

I continue to battle cyanobacteria algae without success. We hope to get the new refugium/sump installed next weekend, and “they” say that over time, that should help keep cyanobacteria in check. We shall see. I’ll take pictures and describe the sump conversion project next time.

Hermit crabs

7/15/04
To follow-up on last week’s episode about the sea cucumber, it seems healthy and happy. Since shedding its skin, it looks darker gray, and maybe bigger, but I can’t be sure about the bigger part, since these guys look way different depending on how stretched out they are.

I’ve lost another blue-green chromis (probably jumped, but can’t find a body). Down to four now... I bought some plastic grid that is used for lighting (they call it “egg crate”) with the thought of putting it on top of the tank, but I keep hesitating. It would be a real pain, not easy to get on and off, and I have my hands in there quite often (glass has to be cleaned daily, for example).

Last Monday, I had a really LONG day, leaving in the morning to go to Portland, then meeting fellow reef-club members in Waterville at 5:30 to car pool to Bangor to see the tanks of a member who definitely has caught the bug pretty bad--he has 7 tanks, and has only been doing this a year and a half. He sells his excess corals so I brought along a cooler to bring stuff home, just in case. I didn’t get back until 10pm.

As luck would have it, he had a few unusual colors of zooanthids. I currently have two colors: a green one with long tentacles and a brown with orange centers. Unlike many corals, these guys can mostly grow against each other without complaint, so if you mix colors, you get a nice “garden” as they merge. I bought a pink one of normal habit and an unusual multi-colored one with mixed green center and neon orange rim, small sized, on a branch of coral. To complete the garden, we need a lawn for contrast, so I bought a small piece of star polyp coral. This spreads all over the place, each polyp is thin and never gets tall, so it looks grass-like when it covers the rock (that will take a while, of course).

Finally, being a blue-lover, I had to get a blue ricordia. My existing ricordia is green. The blue one (3, actually, on the one rock) is very small.

I was very tempted by the hermit crabs. I have always thought these were neat, and he had a whole fleet of them, blue-legged and very interesting to watch. The local dealer, however, if VERY opposed to hermit crabs in a reef tank, saying that they kill fish and snails. One day when I was there right after she got a new shipment of blue-green chromis fish in and I was going to buy some, I noticed that half the fish were dead. When we examined the bodies, they had slash marks on them. The dealer said there had to be a hermit crab in there by accident, that they go after the fish at night while they are in the reef sleeping. She began picking up snail shells until she found one that had a crab in it and removed it. Contrary to this, all the books say hermit crabs (especially the blue-legged ones) are exemplary scavengers that do a great job of keeping the reef cleaned up. They claim that a hermit never kills a snail unless it needs to get a new shell and the aquarist has failed to provide any. So you just need to put a good selection of various sized shells (got plenty of those!) in the aquarium and the hermit will select what it needs as it grows and all will be well. Soooo, there I was in Bangor watching these cute little guys, and I saw a hermit side up to a snail, turn it over, and start clawing at it! Now I can’t say for sure there was a snail inside, but the snail in question had a much smaller shell than the one the hermit currently occupied, so he can’t have been looking for a new house, and in theory he wouldn’t be clawing at the snail if the shell were empty....This definitely gave me pause, and in the end I decided not to buy one, for now at any rate.

Sea Cucumber

July 11, 2004
The sea cucumber cleans the sand by eating it, removing whatever nutrients are attached, and ejecting it from the other end of its body. The hole in the center of this picture shows the exit end of this simple creature. The rest of his body is hidden under the open brain coral.

Tonight, the cucumber is shedding its skin, or at least, a layer of its skin. Not knowing that this might happen, I naturally headed to the books, where I learned that both healthy and unhealthy sea cucumbers may shed skin. And not just skin. They are also prone to “that nasty little habit of evisceration when a stressed animal sends its guts, gonads and potentially every part of its entrails out of its anus or mouth, depending upon which way the wind blows.” The follow-up to this activity is the regeneration of all these organs. The danger for the aquarium is the pollution all this causes. The book advises that you promptly remove the expelled items. Ok.....hope it is done shedding by bed time!

I finally found an internet site that has seaweed available for sale. Since most marine aquarists are interested only in the animals, not plants, very few people have seaweed, and I’ve only seen two species available locally. Both of these I have bought, and you may recall that a month ago I was worried the red bubble one might be unsafe, and I relegated it to the quarantine tank. I have since been able to get it identified and learned that it is safe to keep in the main tank, except that the tang would consume it all, so I have it in the refugium and pick a stem from time to time to give to the tang. Anyway, I’d like to have lots of different types of seaweed for visual interest, and also because with enough thriving seaweed, the tang, in theory, would eat a balanced diet and they would grow fast enough to keep him happy and well fed.

Speaking of food, I’ve been worrying about the overfeed/underfeed problem. My tendency is to overfeed--can’t let my citizens starve! And since some of the corals need to be fed, too, it can get complicated distributing the evening meal to everyone equitably. If I feel someone got left out, I grab more food and sling it over. This overfeeding is probably the root cause of my ongoing cyanobacteria algae problem. So I’m really trying to cut back. The corals aren’t supposed to be fed every night--every 4th night is about right, so “they” say. But since I couldn’t keep track of whose turn it was, I had been solving it by giving a little every night.

Did some more reorganizing of the live rock, trying to get better spacing and surfaces to put corals on. I think I’m finally happy with it (until next week, anyway). Of course, the corals grow best if they are undisturbed, you aren’t supposed to keep rearranging. But until you find exactly the right spot where the light is right and the current is right, they aren’t happy and don’t open up properly to feed.

The little guy in the picture is my lawnmower blenny. Cute, isn't he? Next to him on the right is xenia coral, and on the left, the green bubbly stuff is ricordia.

Anemone thriving

07/04/2004
The anemone has amazed me this week. I’ve had to move corals out of its reach, as its extension is fully 10 inches. The “foot” tube has moved forward a bit so it is not so far tucked into the cave, and the top of the disk seems like it is climbing the rock behind it, reaching for all those things I have yanked out of harms way. Portions of the Caulastrea coral that were touched by the anemone’s tentacles looked withered all week, but now seem to be recovering. Only the anthelia has remained adjacent to it, because I’m not detecting any signs of harm so far. One evening this week, after mealtime, the anemone tucked into a ball. I hadn’t fed it that night, yet I imagined it was digesting a meal from the look of it. I started counting heads, and couldn’t find the basslet. The basslet is only 2”, I figured he had become a meal for sure. But the next morning, he showed up, so I guess he’d just disappeared into the rock for awhile.

Got a great picture of the emerald crab, which is cute to watch. These crabs sit next to a patch of algae and pick up little bits with their claws, which are blunt on the tip to make this easier. They just shovel in one bite after another, while I cheer them on, since they are getting the bits the snails can’t reach. I have a total of 3, but you can never find them all at once.

The deep sand bed is showing signs of life. The lower 4” is very fine, compacted sand. The idea here is to have an anaerobic environment to reduce nitrates into their component parts. I have started to see tiny tunnels in this deep portion. If you look carefully, you can see red, 1 mm specs traveling along these tunnels, and one spec can even pass another going in the opposite direction.

My courage about the murex (from last week’s edition) quickly dissolved into worry until I finally removed it from the tank. It is living in the refugium. Not all murex, I learned, are carnivores, but there is no way for me to be sure about mine. It occurred to me that by the time I found out his true nature, I could easily be missing my favorite tube worm, and I’d be mighty upset if that happened!

Every morning I put a “sandwich” of dried nori seaweed and either lettuce or spinach (from the garden) onto a rock and secure it with a rubber band. I lower this into the water and watch the feeding frenzy. The tang and dwarf angel are the primary eaters, but the cardinal fish and lawnmower blenny also frequently show up, as well as the clownfish. The food is gone in under 15 minutes. Mind you, there is always algae visible on the rocks, it is not like there is nothing to eat in there! But apparently THAT kind of algae is not as tasty as the stuff I buy, go figure.

Cardinal fish and xenia

6/25/2004
One last buying expedition to report on. I’m unlikely to add significantly more fish from here, except for the odd replacement (like getting another bicolor blenny some day). Went to the dealer’s to return the big rock that the anemone had been stuck on when I bought it. I’d been debating all week whether to buy a pair of cardinal fish that had been part of the tank contents the dealer had bought from the discouraged aquarist I told you about last time. These odd-looking fish are nocturnal, but in an aquarium them tend to abandon that habit to a large extent. This was a good chance to get two that were known to be compatible, and I took the plunge. This fish is on the far right in the picture above.

I also decided on a nice-looking pulsing xenia (illustrated). This type of soft coral is readily available, but I’m getting smarter now about the size and type of rock they are planted on, as a difficult piece of rock makes for difficult placement in the aquarium. This piece had several stalks on a rock just the right side to put a cap on a cave in the live rock in my tank. Finally, I picked up a cluster of tiny worms. As you might have figured out by now, I’m very partial to worms! When we collected seashells in the Florida Keys, I was thrilled when I found some great worm rock shells; now I’m equally thrilled when I find a good live worm. This cluster is several very thin tubes, quite small, each with a tiny swirl of feeders, pretty cool.

There was a pretty black snail in one of the dealer’s tanks. She didn’t know what it was, or whether it was reef safe. It had come in by accident in a shipment, and she had kept it to see what it did. In the month she had kept it, it hadn’t caused any harm. I decided to take a chance. When I got home, I put my shell collecting books to good use figuring out what kind of snail it was. Turns out to be a West Indian Murex, which, according to the book, eats snails and barnacles and the occasional soft coral. So, not sounding promising in the safety department. And yet, it is worth taking a chance for a while to see what happens. I read a magazine article recently about a type of anemone that has been labeled a “fish eater” for decades. The author decided to try to keep some in his tanks, and found that this statement was false. There must have been some incident that started the statement years ago, but subsequent writers had simply perpetuated it. I’m not saying my Murex won’t eat corals and snails in my tank, I’m simply saying I’ll consider it innocent until proven guilty. Today a small snail was crawling over it, cleaning algae off it. I thought, “watch out, buddy, here be a possible dragon.” Too bad I can’t post a warning sign to the other inhabitants!

This picture is the Sinularia coral. This was my first coral, but I haven’t posted a picture until now. Early in the month, I mentioned that it had shrunk up and refused to open and feed. This lasted for nearly three weeks. I thought it had surely died, and even asked the dealer how you tell if a coral is dead. Then one weekend while I was in Portland, it shed all that gunky algae and sent out the feeder hairs like nothing had happened.

The new tang I bought last week was taken out of quarantine and added to the tank when I put in the cardinal fish. It went really well. To catch him, I used an acrylic trap--just an open-ended clear container with some food in it. When he went in, I covered the opening with a net and it was a relatively stress-free capture. Then I introduced him to the tank during dinnertime, so the other fish were busy eating. I didn’t think he would eat that night, but he did. So far, he is getting along really well with the others. Tangs can be really bossy, this is why you add them near the end--otherwise they think the entire tank is their territory and you can’t add anyone else. Only the Coral Beauty had any differences of opinion with him, as he took over her favorite cave. But it was reasonable--he is bigger than she is, so he needed the biggest cave to fit inside it! Like the Coral Beauty, he is hard to photograph, as he moves very fast and spooks easily, but he is visible just to the left of center in the picture at the top.

A New Anemone and a Tang

6/18/04
The dealer emailed me a few days ago to say a customer had taken down his 150 gallon tank and she had bought the contents, which included two anemones and three tangs. These would arguably be a better buy, adjustment/health-wise, than a recently imported animal, and the anemone was actually a split so had been “bred” in captivity. (Anemones sometimes reproduce by splitting in half). So despite having a serious lack of free time lately, I went over to see them Thursday afternoon. When I got to the store I asked why the customer gave up, and learned that a float valve that feeds reverse osmosis water into his tank (to replace evaporation automatically, instead of manually like I do), had stuck in the “on” position while he was away for two days. This poured about 70 gallons of fresh water into the tank, overflowing onto the floor, of course, but also lowering the salinity to nothing. This was apparently his second crisis in a short time, and he was fed up.

The dealer took everything directly from his fresh water into her salt water and hoped things would survive. Most did, but all this happened only a week ago, so I wondered, were some creatures just slower to die, or were they really ok? The tangs seemed healthy, no sign of ich, and they were eating ok. I liked two of them, and the dealer urged me to get both; said that they had proven compatibility and having two in a tank is better for the fish. But my tank is small by marine standards, and everything else I have read says one tang only for 75 gallons, and even at that, you have to be really careful which kind of tang, to get one of the types (which these were) that doesn’t get too huge. Another factor is that my quarantine tank (yes, folks, I was really determined to use that tank this time!) is only 20 gallons, and I didn’t see how I could put two tangs in 20 gallons.

So I just bought one, a Scopus tang. Tangs have a razor-sharp, bony projection on either side of their tails with which they can slice another fish (or your finger), so one must approach with caution. This is why they are sometimes referred to as “surgeon” fish. I also bought the larger of the two anemones. This is the same variety as I tried before, but a darker color. It had its foot planted at the base of a rock about 10” across, and the dealer was unable to pry it loose, so she packaged it up rock and all, with instructions to bring the rock back when he let go.

Getting that big a rock into my reef was no small feat, but I managed to fit it in the back corner where the shell for the clownfish had been. The clownfish, since my last update, had abandoned that shell in favor of the trachyphyllia (open brain) coral. Their harassment of this coral was one reason I was eager to get another anemone, because the trachyphyllia could die from them pestering it.

By morning, the anemone had left the big rock, but had not gone the direction I hoped it would (of course) but instead climbed down the far side of the rock and wedged itself against the glass. I removed the rock this morning and we’ll see where it goes next. My latest reading on this subject has suggested that they are best left alone initially, and only moved if they go somewhere that just won’t do (from the keeper’s point of view--obviously if the animal went there, IT liked the spot just fine).

I also found two unusual goodies that I just couldn’t resist. One was a “Christmas Tree Worm” rock. Small worms, minute feather dusters about 4-5 mm high, often form a colony on a coral-coated rock. These are known in the trade as Christmas Tree worms since the rock looks like it is lit with little jewels, often multi-colored. This particular one was all blue, so you can see why I wouldn’t be able to resist it. They can only be kept in well-established reef tanks as they feed on the micro goodies that in theory are breeding prolifically in the refugium. If only I could see those goodies to satisfy myself they are there!

The final purchase was an “elegance” coral (catalaphyllia jardinei) that looks somewhat like a semi-open clam with small tentacles. These are seldom available for purchase because ambitious reefers can’t clone them. In fact, the dealer had been tempted to keep it herself, but had no more room in her own tank, so I snapped it up.

Water chemistry

6/6/04
This week I looked in the tank and thought, “this is starting to look good”! The watchman goby/shrimp pair emerged from a four-day hiding. That was the longest they have ever disappeared. I had rearranged the rockwork a little, being very careful, I thought, not to disturb the rock that forms the roof of their house. Still, I was worried when they didn’t show up for so many meals.

Remember the pearly headed jawfish that I had as one of my first fish? It makes much bigger holes in the sand than the watchman goby, and died within a few days from unknown causes. I had been debating getting another one, so had been reading up on them. They make incredibly big tunnels, as long as 9”, as wide as 4”, that they reinforce with shells and coral rubble. Such big tunnels can, of course, collapse. I came across a posting on the internet from a guy in India who had a mated pair, and the female disappeared. After several days, he began gently exploring the sand with his hand, first in a 6” square, then an 8” square, to see if she had been buried alive. He never found her, and eventually gave up the hunt. After 3 weeks, the male fish finally chose another mate and in the 4th week, his tunneling apparently broke into wherever the original female had been trapped, and she was freed. She emerged alive, but didn’t survive, poor thing. Can you imagine, 4 weeks buried alive in your house? Fortunately, the watchman goby that I have is much smaller and doesn’t make such huge tunnels, but I was pretty glad to see his cute little face peaking up after 4 days missing.

As I raise the salinity back to normal (the next water change should get it all the way to normal), the corals are looking much better. The trachyphyllia (open brain coral), which had been really shrunken, is looking puffy and happy (so much so that the clownfish is trying to cuddle with it as some kind of anemone substitute). Only the sinularia refuses to puff up and feed. I tried moving him tonight to another spot to give him more water circulation, we’ll see if that does the trick.

My latest research efforts have been directed at calcium/alkalinity. This is a topic that the local dealer said to ignore, but that seemed rather too simplistic to me (after all, even if she can ignore it, my water is different, and all the references I’ve read say this is the most important topic, after salinity, for marine reef keeping). I bought a calcium test kit about a month ago. When I tested the water, it was low but not alarming. Testing it again now, it is lower, so it is clearly time to do something about it. One cure for this is “kalkwasser”, a limewater solution that is slowly dripped into the sump (slowly, because it would be caustic if done too fast). You do this every day. Did I mention I can’t ever go on vacation again? Tomorrow I’ll mix up my first dose and we’ll see what happens, if anything.

I have finally shed my guilt about the anemone dying. I used to think I’d caused it’s death by trying to feed it directly. I have since come to believe that it was ailing before that, since 1) it is supposed to have sticky tentacles and mine did not and 2) the mouth isn’t supposed to be gaping open. This and other issues make me think it was failing much sooner than I realized. I didn't check the salinity of the bag it was in when I brought it home. Perhaps it was significantly different from mine and I acclimated it too fast. Maybe someday I’ll even try another anemone.

Feeding the open brain

05/29/04
Did some rock rearranging today in an effort to get more horizontal surfaces on which to place corals. Placing corals is surprisingly tricky. Higher up is better light, which most of them want, but they don’t want too much current, which is what you get higher up because there is no rock wall to break it. My husband invented a new outlet pipe for my pump today in an effort to diffuse the current more effectively. Formerly the pipe ended with an elbow that blasted all that current out against a single spot on the rock. He inserted a T above the elbow so that some of the current would come out before it got to the elbow at the bottom. Not only that, he drilled a slot in the pieces and put a set screw in the slots, so that we could adjust exactly where the blast aims.

This week I got pretty worried about the trachyphllia (open brain coral), which is looking considerably smaller than when I bought it. I never have gotten food into it that I know of. Whatever falls on it is consumed by the fish before the coral can. One night when the meal was bloodworms, I noticed one landed right next to the coral’s mouth. I observed the mouth opening wider and maneuvering ever so slowly toward the worm. Well, I got determined he was going to get that meal. So I stood there waving my hand around for 20 minutes to keep the fish and shrimp away while that mouth did its slow dance around the worm, eventually sucking it in. This is all pretty small scale, a bloodworm is as wide as a thin string and about 1/2 inch long. I tried to get a picture of the “action.” If you look carefully you'll see one of the mouths (each lobe has a mouth) and the bloodworm. Afterwards, I posted a question on a marine forum on the internet to see if anyone had suggestions for how to feed these guys. One person said to put a plastic pint basket over the coral (with a rock on top to hold it down) after you place the food on it. This will keep the fish away until it is done digesting (sounded like a good idea). Another guy (who is the forum moderator and the expert), said he distributes a finely ground mess of food to the tank as a whole after dark, when the corals prefer to eat. I think this might work well after you have wall to wall corals, but my specimens are pretty few and far between, so an awful lot of food would be wasted, and wasted food gets converted into nuisance algae.

Speaking of nuisance algae, I have a beautiful red macro algae (i.e., seaweed) that consists of small bubbles attached to branches. I had it in the main tank for quite awhile and it looked nice, but I began to worry that it would multiply and become a nuisance, so I moved it to the refugium. Lately I’ve observed small bubbles of this algae up in the main tank, clinging to the rock here and there. I’m thinking this is not a trend I like (the web is full of algae-related horror stories) so today I decided to take no chances and removed it to the quarantine tank in the basement. Macro algae is good for removing excess nutrients from the water, thereby helping to prevent micro-algae outbreaks, but it is tricky getting a type that is not going to go postal someday and wreck everything. Some types will enter a reproduction phase if they feel crowded, sending copious quantities of spores into the water, polluting it so badly that you have to do massive water changes to save your fish and corals. There is plenty to worry about in this hobby, for sure.