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.