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.