Pierre the shrimp has arrived

That's right, we now have a shrimp.... it is a Peppermint shrimp, bought in the hope he will eat all those aiptasias. I named him Pierre because for some unknown reason shrimp reminds me of French. Must be something from my childhood....

(click for a very large picture)

Pierre arrived on Saturday, when I also executed a partial water change of 40L, with the help of my friend Marco.  Water tests of water before the change and after curiously showed extremely low nitrates... 10 ppm before the change and 5 ppm after.  Must say I'm intrigued.... Maybe it is the deep crushed coral substrate that is super dimensioned for the current bioload of the tank... who knows.  Will follow this parameter closely in the following weeks.

Also, two Scypha sponges appeared out of nowhere recently.  They must have come as spores with the corals, found a place after a while and grown.  No pictures of them yet, will post once I get a good shot.  They are hard to shoot, one is in a difficult to see location and the other is still too small.

Better pictures of the corals

Took the time to take some slightly better pictures of the coral colonies (click on them to enlarge, they are 1024 pixels across in the enlarged version).

The zoanthus red+green colony, seen without flash, colors in the picture are a little pale, but you get an idea of size and color:

Then the same with flash, colors closer to what you see with your naked eye.  There is no shade, and colors are a little too saturated with flash, but more realistic than without flash:

Then the green+white+brown zoanthus colony, which is quite hard to photograph because of it's position in the tank.  The angle you need to be at to take the picture always results in an unsharp picture, I guess because of the refraction effect of glass+water.  Or maybe it's just my bad photography skills.... anyway, the picture gives an idea of what this colony's color mix looks like:

Then the grass-looking white spot star polyp colony, seen from the side.  It would be great to take a picture from above, but the angle normally results in a blurred and ugly picture.  It is quite hard to take a shot of this coral because its polyps keep moving in the current, like long grass in the wind.  Quite amusing and peaceful to watch:

Finally the giant button polyp colony, in a sharper picture than before.  Probably because camera line of shooting was almost perpendicular to the glass.... you'll notice on the upper right hand side of the picture that this colony came with a hitchhiking macro algae (the green thing that looks like a young leafless tree).  This picture looks almost identical to the real thing seen with your naked eye.

Hope this gives a better idea of what the coral inhabitants of the tank look like.

New inhabitants added on Saturday

Finally the tank has received its first inhabitants (after the cleaning crew and the pods, of course). Added them on Saturday the 10th, so I'm a little late posting news, sorry for that, but here are their pictures:

First, the two clownfish (A. Ocellaris), initially getting introduced to the tank's water...

(click inside image to enlarge)

....and then swimming in their new home.  Their names are Juju and Jiji (given by wife and son), and Juju is the larger one with a larger black dot on his upper right hand side:

These two are quite funny.... they are either swimming together, side by side, or in completely opposite sides of the tank.... as if they had fought, broke up or something.  According to the LFS they are still young and both female, but in a few months one of them will become male and they will be a couple, eventually even mating in the tank if they are healthy enough.  But the fry never survive predation from other tank inhabitants so there is no chance of tank overpopulation due to reproduction.


After them came four coral colonies:

1. A quite good looking red+green zoanthus colony, here seen right after being implanted and with almost all polyps closed....

... and then after one day in the tank, with most polyps open.  Notice that in the lower left hand side of the rock they came on there is a hitchhiker.  My LFS told me it is a polychaeta (after inspecting this picture) but to me it looks more like an anemone or another "tentacled animal":

2. A green+white+brown zoanthus colony, which was shier than the previous one.  It took a lot more to open up its polyps and is more frequently closed than its red+green brother.  This picture is after one day in the tank, still semi open:

3. Also added a white spot star polyp colony, first all closed and looking like bare rock right after being added to the tank....

... and then after a day in the tank, with polyps extended.  Looks like grass, quite beautiful and nice to watch.  The real thing looks much nicer than this picture:

4. And finally a very beautiful (the pictures are far uglier than the real thing seen live, I will have to take and post better pictures than these....) mettalic green giant button polyp colony.  These polyps are roughly twice the diameter of the zoanthus polyps.  Here getting used to the tank's water....

.... then right after being implanted,  all polyps closed....

... finally opening up after a few hours in the tank.  These guys aren't shy, they open up rather quickly in the presence of light.  Seems like they don't fear predators as much as the other corals, probably they have some type of strong fish poison inside.  The picture is far uglier than they look in person, partly because it is shaky and with bad depth of field and focus:

Following my LFS's advice I'm feeding the corals only with light (11hs of 160w of Coralife 50/50) plus 5 drops of Sera Coraliquid per day in the water, and feeding the two clownfish with 6 large flakes (or the equivalent in broken flakes) of TetraMarine Saltwater flakes (has a horrible smell, by the way).

Some of the corals brought hitchhikers with them, like the "tentacled thing" on the zoanthus colony.  In this ReefCentral thread I show a picture of the bristleworm that came with the white spot star polyp colony: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1721906

When I get the time to take better pictures of the zoanthus I'll post something better here.

Aiptasia #2....

Just found a second aiptasia in the tank, one I had never seen before, but is much larger than the first one.


(click inside picture to see a larger version)

The first one has no tentacles, seems very shy. This one is quite bold in the picture, but it shrunk after the light was reduced. So I guess it "hides" at night.... as I've read, aiptasia is a prague...I guess soo I will have a tank full of them.

Got to get those shrimp that eat aiptasia....