• Latest Update
• 09/30/05 - Update
• 11/13/04 - Update
• 08/30/04 - Update
• 06/21/04 - Update
• Children's Impressions of the Aquarium!

06/30/06

Turns out Eric, April's son, is very observant. He noticed that the little white polyps in the tank are producing the little swimming jellyfish we have been calling hydroids. In fact, the jellyfish and the polyp are just different stages in the life of a hydroid, a term that is generally used to refer to the polyp stage. The reproductive stage (the little brown jellyfish) are "budded off" from the white polyp and are known as medusae (pl)/medusa (sing). Usually hydroids are colonial and look like plants with many branches along which many medusae are grown. But, ours are solitary hydroids and have only one stalk which buds off the medusae.
This doesn't help me figure out how to control the situation other than doing what I've been doing, but it does explain why they are so many of them. It's summer, it's warm, they're reproducing. If you squat or bend over down to Eric's size you will see the process at the bottom of the tank, on the undersides of the live rock where the snails can't eat the polyps. You'll see a little tiny baby medusa flapping away trying to free itself from the polyp. It's kinda cool, if it weren't so annoying. Just kidding. While you're down there you might see a bunch of baby snails, too.

Anyone who wants more info and an illustration of how they "bud off" the medusa, go to: http://www.reefs.org/library/aquarium_net/1097/1097_2.html

09/30/05

A quick recap of what happened in the last three months. Mean and meaner became even MEANER and were absolutely torturing Lenny so we decided to take them back to the aquarium - which takes back damselfish when they go bad and put them in tanks with larger fish to bring them down a peg. We swapped them for the large black and white snail, who I think is a turbo but I don't have time to research snails today. Since Teresa and I had to totally disassemble the tank to get the darn fish, we decided to grab ALL the damsels, including the yellowtail blue ones, because they would just move up the pecking order and become the bullies, as the striped ones had after we got rid of Shark, the nasty clownfish.
I picked up the Bar Gobies because I think they're beautiful and they like to hang out in groups and are really docile (they would actually slide onto the hand of the aquarist at the store). I figured they wouldn't "go bad" and bother Lenny and Foxie. But, because they aren't as flashy as the yellow-tails, I picked up a Royal Gramma, too.

They are a little shy and at first all tried to cram in under the big central rock with Toby. Very amusing, actually. Now you can find them hiding in little mounds and crevices all over the bottom of the tank. Since there are five of them and we can't really tell them apart, we refer to them collectively as The Jackosn Five. They exhibit mating behaviour when they spread their fins (which are lined in black and are very elegant) and then display a little black "beard" under their chin. They are the only gobies that bread in captivity. Maybe that's what those long wormy things are that are clinging to the walls.

The other newcomer is a Royal Gramma that we call Loretta because the scientific name is Gramma Loreto. I suppose we should call her Grandma Loretta if we really want to remember her scientific name. She is shy also and shares the barnacles with Lennyy. I was given some pink plastic coral one night at a "do" at the aquarium. I put the spiky one in the tank to add a little color and Loretta started coming out and hanging out around the pink coral. After working at the new Art of Deception exhibit at the Aquarium, it occurred to me that she's thinking she blends in with the pink. On the chance that was what she was doing, last week I put in the lumpy pink coral and she comes out even more now and hangs out around the coral.

11/13/04 - Update

Well, after almost 9 months, I think the fish tank has finally reached a state of homeostasis, with happy inhabitants, algae more or less under control, and a nice variety of fish and invertebrates.
At the last update we had lost Three Fish (the late-arriving Blue Damsel) and Fin (the second Clark's Clownfish), both killed in a frenzy of extreme territoriality by the other fish. Even after their rather gruesome demise, the remaining fish seemed edgy and nervous.. Little Lenny was going after the skittish, pacifist Foxie. Blue Fish was battling with Mean and Meaner. Shark was attacking anything that moved. Even the hermit crabs were going after the snails. It was not a happy environment.
Since then, we have lost both Margarita Snails who, I think, were too slow to escape the crabs. We still have three small turbo snails who are quite nimble and seem able to keep out of the way of the crabs by staying up high on the glass. One (black shell with pearly growths on back) keeps hitching a ride on the floating thermometer and has tried twice to escape into the protein skimmer, a la Nemo. We have named him Houdini in honor of his quixotic escape attempts.
About a month ago I observed that Shark seemed to have grown noticeably larger and had begun to attack the other fish when we fed them. I also noticed Blue Fish and Meaner constantly battling over access to barnacle openings, their aggressive proximity making Lenny quite nervous, and I suddenly realized they were fighting over spaces to hide from Shark; looking for spaces that were smaller than Shark.. I realized Shark had to go. Lourdes had been planning to set up a small marine tank for her son, so I suggested she take Shark, theorizing that he would be less aggressive in a tank of his own.
So, early one morning, Lourdes and I rolled up our sleeves and went after the aggressive Clownfish. He was too quick at first, and we had to pull out most of the plants, rocks and the castle (sorry, Maria). We had the tank almost empty by the time I finally caught him and put him in a bucket with an aerator to acclimatize. I also threw in a turbo snail and a hermit crab. Shark looked pretty miserable the whole day, but didn't get much sympathy from those of us who had seen how aggressive he had become. We reorganized the tank and left everyone alone to settle down.
Shark went home with Lourdes, barely surviving the trip, but ultimately settling into his new tank quite happily. He has been renamed Nemo and has a new tank mate, a blue goby, I believe. One of these days, Lourdes' boy is going to draw a picture of Shark in his new environment and we will scan it to put on the website.
The only other change in the tank has been the addition of two more turbo snails. They are HUGE. Honest, you should drop by and check them out, their shells are the size of walnuts! Actually, they are just about the same size as the pictures of the turbo snails on the website. I had grown weary of my constant battle with the algae and dropped by the aquarium store to pick up a couple more hermit crabs to clean up the detritus on the bottom and see if they had anything, short of chemical additives, to help out with the algae. .I was thinking in terms of a couple more small turbos; imagine my surprise when I saw these two from halfway across the room.
I bought a large hermit to replace the crab I had given to Lourdes and these two huge turbo snails. I placed the snails in the tank strategically - atop branches of live rock with two-inch long green algae growing all over them - on a Friday afternoon.. When I came back in on Monday the live rock had been scraped totally clean and the snails were snoozing at the bottom.
I immediately named them Hoover (the grey one) and Eureka (the brown) for their amazing cleaning powers. They are marvels and have tipped the algae battle in our favor, at last. I LOVE these snails!
So, that's it from the tank front. Algae has been beaten back. Fish are happy, crabs are happy, snails are happy. Drop by and visit sometime. It's quite relaxing to just stand there and watch all those happy critters.

08/30/04 - Update

There's been a lot of tumult in the fish tank in the past 6 weeks. First, we introduced another clownfish to keep Shark company, named him/her Fin and hoped they'd be friends. We'd been told clownfish pair off and, interestingly enough, if they are both the same gender, one will change gender so they can mate. What we hadn't been told is that they pair off only if the introduced fish is smaller than the one already in the tank. Needless to say, they were the same size and for the next week Shark and all the damsels, in a frenzy of territoriality, slowly tortured poor Fin to death, taking bites out of him until he was pretty much unable to swim and, in the end, eating him up entirely. Or, at least, no one could find the body. It could well have been the crabs that disposed of it as they had done so before.
Then, Teresa brought in the fourth blue damsel that had been tank mates with One Fish, Two Fish and Blue Fish, assuring us that they would recognize each other and be pals. So, we introduced it to the tank and named it Three Fish. Three Fish did well the first day and we left for the weekend with high hopes. I recently heard somewhere that goldfish have only a three-second memory and that would appear to be the case with blue damsels as well. Three Fish was never seen again after that Friday afternoon. Whether it was the crabs, Blue Fish (seems likely) or just that all the fish have developed a taste for sushi, Three Fish disappeared over the weekend.
The last change is that the tank is experiencing a green algae bloom and everything that doesn't move and some of the things that do (such as snail shells) has green filament algae growing on it. This is sort of a good news, bad news situation. The good news is that the bloom indicates that the tank is healthy. The bad news is that the algae is growing so rapidly that it was becoming hard to see the fish, live rock or anything else. The aquarium guy suggested it was probably a little too much light and that I might add a phosphate remover to the water. Not wanting to add anything chemical unless I had to, I decided instead to try to reduce the feeding schedule to every other day, turn off the light a little earlier in the evening, clean up as much as I can, scraping off the protein skimmer, rocks and glass; replacing the plastic plants that were totally covered; replacing a couple three gallons of water and adding three more snails and two more hermits.
The hermits are larger than our original three and very active. The snails are Margarita snails. I have no idea if this refers to their recreational drinking habits, but there were no Turbo snails, so there you are. The Margarita snails seem very fond of each other and keep crawling together into a big snail lump. If that keeps up it won't help the algae bloom much.
Any suggestions about how to deal with an algae bloom will be greatly appreciated, by the way.
It should be noted that the recent acts of cannibalism have turned some of the original fish fan club a little squeamish. No amount of explaining that they are, in fact, just fish and look at anything dropped into the tank as dinner, has done much to change this. They try to eat the baking soda, for heaven's sake. The only consolation I can offer is that the cleaning I did this weekend to try to get a handle on the green algae bloom totally traumatized all the fish, from Foxy to Mean and Meaner. And, since I had to rearrange everything in the process, they are all now furiously swimming around bumping into each other trying to re-establish territoriality. A fish's life is not as easy as one might imagine. See reference to length of memory above.
OK. That's all for now, folks.

Come back for more updates about the NHBO Fish Tank by Susan Matheson.

06/21/04 - Update

There are three new yellowtail damsels (blue with yellow tails) and one Clark's clownfish (yellow face and dark brown body with broad white stripes). Their names are:

• Smallest yellowtail: One Fish
• Middle-sized yellowtail: Two Fish
• Biggest yellowtail: Blue Fish
• Clown: Shark
  (see the pictures below on the right)

When I came in Saturday, everyone was still alive although One Fish and Two Fish have both lost a lot of their distinctive yellow tails. I guess they'll grow back.... We'll see. The yellowtails are no longer just huddled in a group up at the very top of the tank behind the heater. They seem to have claimed all the area up and down the heater and intake tube and most of the top four to five inches of the tank. Blue Fish appears almost fearless when food is present and even nuzzled out Toby to get at the shrimp. Two Fish and Blue Fish hang out around the heater, even swimming down to check out the top of the green plant, and have banded together to turn on and chase Mean and Meaner when attacked. One Fish has claimed the spot underneath the lip of the inflow waterfall. Only small fish fit in there and possibly One Fish has figured out it's the shortest route to the food when it comes in, so eventually he can survive to be a bigger fish.

Shark spends a considerable amount of her time patrolling about three to four inches below the yellowtails' claimed territory on the lookout for Mean and Meaner, who still attack at times. She spend the rest of her time exploring her new home and following Foxy around. Perhaps she thinks she is somehow related to Foxy because the coloration is similar. Foxy is skinny with a yellow body and black and white stripes on her face. Shark is stubby, with a yellow face and dark brown and white stripes across her body. In any case, Shark has been following Foxy around.

In an attempt to shake up Mean and Meaner's world and give the new guys a chance at a more peaceful life, I rearranged the shells and plants a little to create more nooks and crannies in which everyone can hide. After they all recovered from their initial shock, stopped trying to look like rocks and ventured out from their hiding places, everyone seemed pleased (if fish can be described as being pleased) at the new arrangement. Even Lenny the shy blenny is out checking out the new neighborhood. Lenny, Mean and Meaner have tried out almost every leaf on the green plant and it may end up becoming a fish condo. I moved the red plant out a little from the glass so there is swimming room behind it and everyone has checked out the new area around the castle except for the yellowtails and Toby - who is busy rearranging the substrate at the bottom and creating new tunnels.

Mean and Meaner are frantically racing around to every new hiding place and must eventually, I assume, tire from trying to defend them all. So, I suspect the yellowtails might eventually claim spaces further down, probably around or in the green plant. In fact, since Mean and Meaner's attacks are being successfully fended off for the most part, Mean and Meaner have taken to attacking each other, possibly out of frustration. Hopefully, they will all settle down soon.

I put in some seaweed and, within an hour - honest - the turbo snail had crossed the tank and is now busily trying to separate it from its Nemo clip to carry it off.

Finally, I am always afraid I have buried the hermit crabs when I move the shells and coral around, so please keep an eye out for them. I have only seen one today.
That's it for the latest update.

Children's Impressions of the Aquarium!