My humble 5.5g

[xADUBx]

Awesome tanks! I hope the FW tank move goes alright and I can't wait to see your new SW setup!

 

That limpet is a cool little guy.

[Lalani]

Thats quite a few tanks and vivariums to tend to, you must love your pets.

As always, your photography is top-notched!

[divecj5]

Hey Diane. Been a while since I've seen you on here. Just wanted to see how things were going with your slice of the reef.

[Weetabix7]

Hey Diane. Been a while since I've seen you on here. Just wanted to see how things were going with your slice of the reef.

 

I was just wondering the same thing today.

Been missing you a bit lately.

[el fabuloso]

^^ Ditto

[c est ma]

Adam, Lisa, Aaron--and others who have inquired here or pm'd me--Thanks for the concern! I really appreciate it. I'm terribly sorry to have been AWOL for a couple of weeks. It's just been one of those "perfect storm" sort of periods where everything was happening at once--lots of HS activities w/ my daughter, son home a couple of week-ends, holiday doings, all that jazz...

 

And then there's the horror of my unattended inbox--aaaack, where do I start?!

 

So, though I'm sure I owe responses to some people on this thread, I'm going to put that off till I catch up on other people's threads.

 

Just a quick update on what's been happening here:

 

First, a couple of real bummers--my newly detached baby plate just disappeared a couple of weeks ago ( ), and I accidentally killed my little limpet ( ). I think maybe my scarlet hermit carried off my plate. I've searched as best I can, but can find no trace of it...Happily the plate site is quickly producing another baby...And I really want to have a separate tank for it when it detaches!

 

As for the limpet, I just didn't see it when I was cleaning the fuge, and ended up running my scraper over it hard enough to tear its little shell right off. I felt SOOO bad!!

 

Well, I do have one bit of excitement to report, but I'm afraid it involves the FW tank. I was idly watching "the Jungle" while talking on the phone Monday, when I thought I saw the pygmy corys swimming around. I leaned in for a closer look and discovered it wasn't them at all. "Niels!," I called to my son, "There are fish in my tank I don't recognize!" LOL!

 

We have concluded that my Odessa barbs must be breeding, and the tank's so heavily vegetated that some of the fry are surviving. Indeed, there appear to be fry from at least two clutches in there, the biggest of which are the size of, well, pygmy corys. I tried to get some pics of the babies but wasn't very successful--they are fast, and I wasn't using flash. But here are some of the best.

 

These first 4 are the best I could get of the biggest offspring. There are 2 this size, and they really dart around, so I had to use the sharpening feature of my editing program to make them a little clearer, which is why some of these look a bit funky:

 

 

 

Upper right, in the middle of the snail convention. There's also a tinier baby just visible in the upper middle:

 

 

Not too clear, but this one really shows those beautiful barb diamond-shaped scales:

 

 

 

This is one of the best shots I was able to get of one of the smaller babies:

 

 

These next shots show the smaller babies with some food in their tummies!:

 

 

 

 

 

A couple of the tinier babies in the top center:

 

 

 

I'm just amazed that any fry survived in there! It is heavily planted, but it's also full of ravenous fishes, not least of which are the barb parents themselves!

 

Well, off to catch up. I'll try to catch up on my pms, too. Once again, thanks, everyone.

 

--Diane

[BKtomodachi]

Wow, I'm jealous of your tanks AND your vivs!

 

I wish I had the patience to let corals and plants develop and grow into true colonies like you have. Maybe someday...

[Duncan]

I'm impressed! I know nothing about plant tank but I know a good plant tank when I see one and yours even breeds mini fishies! And that's a huge amount of snails you got there. Snails seem to survive anywhere, land snail, fw snail, sw snail... wait, is there air snail? lol. Anyway, it's always nice to read your updates.

[divecj5]

Hey Diane. Glad to hear that things have just been busy and it wasn't anything otherwise. Sorry for the loss of the limpet and the baby plate but it sounds like another one is not too far behind.

[klarion]

Great to see you back on the forums, and what awesome news on the FW tank. It's a testament to the right recipe when fish babies can hatch and survive in a tank. I say, forget the (though gorgeous) Amano style tanks if you can raise young in a natural (as natural as tanks can be) environment.

[el fabuloso]

Glad to see you back Diane! I can't speak for everyone else but I was going through withdrawals.

 

The barb fry are absolutely adorable! Your planted tank is fabulous, I've always wanted a planted tank which ironically what brought me to the reef tank realm. Last summer I was bent on setting up one of those Amano-style iwagumi tanks. I was looking for a small tank and came across the JBJ Picotope on Foster & Smith, and was surprised to see that it was also recommended as a reef tank! I thought to myself: a 3-gallon reef tank? That totally defies everything I know about saltwater tanks! After researching pico reefs I stumbled into this place and the rest is history. I should get around to setting up that planted tank which is hard to do when my pico has my full undivided attention!

[Formatsreef]

Diane lovely tank, it's been an inspiration.

[klarion]

Diane,

 

I should give you all the credit for the "Denizens" idea! I've heard the word before and you reminded me of it. I really liked the way it sounded. So, now I've got Denizen Profiles. Thanks.

[c est ma]

Woot! Woot! Woot!

 

OK. So I was a lot more depressed about losing my baby plate coral than I let on. I mean, I had waited so long for the second baby plate--after the first one was killed--only to lose it, as well...I tend to go into winter funks, and this didn't help...

 

Well, as if you hadn't guessed--it resurfaced this evening!! (Well, Friday evening.)

 

Setting the stage:

 

Maybe some of you will remember that I keep the baby plates in little glass specimen dishes. This is for several reasons: because they're so tiny, because I'm not sure if they're really happy on my crushed coral (as opposed to sand--the cc is pretty large in particle size compared to the baby plates), and because my tank is so jammed with other things I'm afraid they'd end up wedged under something that might sting them to death if they were "loose." This system worked fine for the first baby plate--it stayed "happily" in the dish...until the emerald killed it.

 

The latest (2nd) baby, however, was found more than once on the substrate outside the glass when I'd turn the lights on in the morning. Even tho fungiids are capable of motion, I didn't really think this little guy would be able to crawl up the glass dish sides and over the top by itself. Nor, tho, did I think I had anything that would be likely to carry it out...a puzzlement.

 

Here's a shot of it on 2/26/08 when I found it outside its dish. (Naturally, everything BUT the plate is in focus...):

 

 

I took advantage of the moment to try to get some shots of its underside:

 

 

And then returned it to the dish, of course.

 

On 3/6/08, I caught my scarlet hermit (with a Trochus on his back) in the plate's dish, picking around as they always do. Even tho I was wary of having anything happen to the plate, and even tho I'd just fed the plate a sinking pellet, I watched the crab for some time, and it did not seem to be harming the plate.

 

 

One reason I felt that way was because the plate was remaining rather fleshy and puffed out, altho, like all fungiids I know of, it is perfectly capable of withdrawing its flesh so that it looks scarily skeletal.

 

 

I even took some of my classically poor vids of it. Please have a look, despite the quality. They're only 40 seconds long each!

 

Towards the end of this one, you can see the crab start to really pick at the edge of the plate with its claws. While it looks rough, it also doesn't look like the plate is too unhappy, and it seems to me that maybe the crab is finding diatoms or something along the plate edge. (Remember there's a fool Trochus on top of the crab--the more, the merrier!):

 

 

Towards the end of this vid the crab actually picks up the plate, briefly:

 

 

More crab/plate action:

 

 

In this last vid, the Trochus hops off ( ), and the HC appears to be trying to leave the dish. Towards the end, you can really see his pointy little walking legs poking dents into the plate's flesh. This always amazes me--how corals can look so fleshy and vulnerable and still not only survive but seem completely unfazed by having all manner of prickly, pointy, armored creatures crawl all over them!:

 

 

Well, so...I got those pics and those vids; made sure the HC got out of the dish, and called it a night. The next morning the specimen dish was empty and there was absolutely no trace of the plate. I poked around the tank thoroughly, several times, throughout the next few days. I lifted up rics and searched beneath them, moved whatever rocks/frags I could, etc. Absolutely not a trace. Of course, I felt like an absolute fool. I thought that maybe the crab had come back after all, and somehow carried off the plate. Or maybe some other critter--tho the list gets even more unlikely...the other hc's even smaller, and the brittle stars, while most opportunistic, still don't seem likely to pick on something like a baby plate...

 

At any rate, time passed and the plate stayed missing. I figured that if I ever saw it again it would only be as a completely dead skeleton, encountered if I ever tore the tank down. And even that was unlikely, considering how tiny this thing had been...

 

Eureka!

 

So tonight I'm glancing at the tank (which I've been largely ignoring, except for water changes, due to the combined loss of the plate & limpet, for both of which I felt horribly guilty, and the ongoing diatom battle, which is mostly cosmetic but still a PITA)...and I notice a strange, bluish-&-pinkish disk-shaped object in the center hollow of the live rock. My first thought was that it was one of my several drifting Discosoma; but on closer inspection, it didn't seem to be a shroom...OMG! Could it be?! No!! Yes!! It is the baby plate!!

 

It was in a hard place to get good pictures. See the spoked disk just above the green ric (and below the goby, which always likes to be the center of attention):

 

 

It was impossible to get a zoomed macro shot. This is the best I could do, sharpened w/ my software so that the rest of the things in the pic look really weird:

 

 

LOL, it actually shows up the sharpest in this pic of the whole right side of the tank...if you know what to look for! See the sort of ship's wheel-like disk over the green ric to the far left:

 

 

Well, even tho it looked to be in pretty good shape, I thought I'd better get it out of the hollow, as that part of the 'scape is full of pits and niches that couldn't be especially fitting for a baby plate. Not to mention the fact that I didn't want to have it disappear again!

 

However, that part of the 'scape is also pretty inaccessible. I quickly realized that my chances of retrieving the plate were probably smaller than those of knocking it back into some crevice where it would vanish, unless I planned carefully. In addition to the hard-to-reach location, I was also very mindful of just how delicate (hermit crabs notwithstanding) these little things are. I didn't want to lacerate the poor thing whilst trying to save it...

 

My hand was way too big for the job, and I didn't find an implement in the house that appeared to hold any promise. I finally sacrificed a couple of measuring spoons--the 1/2 tsp one turned out to be too big, but the 1/4 tsp--finally!--was successful:

 

 

Next post: the plate recaptured!

 

--Diane

[c est ma]

Woot! Woot! cont'd

 

Success!

 

After too many tense moments of realizing just how huge and unsuited my hominid hands were for the delicate recapturing process--it turned out I managed to slip the bent spoon under the plate, delicately coax the animal into the spoon's concavity, raise it up through suddenly most annoying outcrops of rock, and transfer it to the specimen dish in my other hand...

 

Backtracking. This was the baby plate on 3/6, the day before it disappeared. I'd just happened to have it out of the tank for a measurement:

 

 

And here it is the day it reappeared, 4/4, nearly a month later:

 

 

As you can see, it's grown from ~9mm in diameter to ~11.5mm--in its longest dimension. Great job, baby plate!

 

Several more pics of the plate at this time, with different white balances & exposures. I can never get the colors to show up when it's out of the tank, but I just love the geometry. Some of these show the tentacles esp. well, some the radial patterns, some the mouth--from slit-wise to slightly open...:

 

 

 

 

 

 

Of course, I eventually returned it to the tank! To do so, I had to move the frag with the plate-generating site and the Porites to the back of the tank, which displaced the B. merleti a bit--Oh, I need a new tank SO BADLY!!

 

But the plate itself seems none the worse for wear:

 

 

 

In fact, it's grown so much it's impossible to get it all in focus in one shot with the loupe:

 

 

 

 

Happy days.

 

--Diane

[Monkfish]

Good job getting the plate out.

 

 

I think this is a good indication that you might need rehab though.

[lilredneckman]

Wow diane glad to see it alive! I haven't really looked at your thread lately but it seems that i miss ALOT of exciting stuff when i am gone so i promise i will make sure to see all of the updates!

[arwndsh]

YAY Diane!! I'm so glad you found it. I hope I have your same luck, my pistol shrimp hid another one of my plates a couple days ago and I haven't yet been able to find it. I don't want to tear apart my whole aquascape again (I had to tear it apart Tuesday to rescue my other corals from him). I got him some rubble so he would leave my corals alone and he still steals a plate. I need to get the darned thing a goby. Looks like I might have to break down and buy him one on line. But YAY for you.

[Lalani]

Eek! How did I miss this update!

Glad you found the little plate, and boy is he cute.

And those pics are outstanding.

[c est ma]

Much belated response post I!

 

Starting with some of the latest responses; I'll work my way backwards, I promise!

 

Wow, I'm jealous of your tanks AND your vivs!

 

I wish I had the patience to let corals and plants develop and grow into true colonies like you have. Maybe someday...

 

Well, I've gotten to the stage where I have the time and the money. And I'd happily go back to your age and dreams of the future...

 

I'm sure some day you'll have what you want. (smile)

 

BTW, much of my "patience" is actually "inertia." Plus, I haven't had to move for quite a while...

 

 

I'm impressed! I know nothing about plant tank but I know a good plant tank when I see one and yours even breeds mini fishies! And that's a huge amount of snails you got there. Snails seem to survive anywhere, land snail, fw snail, sw snail... wait, is there air snail? lol. Anyway, it's always nice to read your updates.

 

Duncan, you made me think about snails, and you are so right. I got some cute pics of some baby snails in that tank, and you've inspired me to do a post about snails--soon. Thanks for always checking in!

 

 

Hey Diane. Glad to hear that things have just been busy and it wasn't anything otherwise. Sorry for the loss of the limpet and the baby plate but it sounds like another one is not too far behind.

 

Thanks, Adam. As I said above, both losses really bothered me a lot. I'm one of those who tend to think I "get what I deserve," and I thought maybe I'd been too overconfident or something...I can't believe the baby plate reappeared after nearly a month!!

 

Great to see you back on the forums, and what awesome news on the FW tank. It's a testament to the right recipe when fish babies can hatch and survive in a tank. I say, forget the (though gorgeous) Amano style tanks if you can raise young in a natural (as natural as tanks can be) environment.

 

It's funny, I've always been rather glad that I was keeping FW "jungles" long before the current high-maintenance planted trend occurred. Those tanks ARE gorgeous, and it is definitely nice to grow the plants you want, no matter how delicate. I just grow the plants that survive...Guess I'm just not a high-maintenance person...Many years ago we'd been neglecting my son's tank (the current FBT viv) for some time when we glanced over and found a large brood of baby kribensis thriving in it! And don't tell anyone, but I only do a water change on the FW once or twice a year--when it looks too yellow --otherwise it's straight top-offs...

 

 

Glad to see you back Diane! I can't speak for everyone else but I was going through withdrawals.

 

The barb fry are absolutely adorable! Your planted tank is fabulous, I've always wanted a planted tank which ironically what brought me to the reef tank realm. Last summer I was bent on setting up one of those Amano-style iwagumi tanks. I was looking for a small tank and came across the JBJ Picotope on Foster & Smith, and was surprised to see that it was also recommended as a reef tank! I thought to myself: a 3-gallon reef tank? That totally defies everything I know about saltwater tanks! After researching pico reefs I stumbled into this place and the rest is history. I should get around to setting up that planted tank which is hard to do when my pico has my full undivided attention!

 

Thanks so much, Aaron!

 

So many of us go from FW to SW. I imagine it's really hard to go the other way! I like your story. Not to mention your tanks!

 

 

Diane lovely tank, it's been an inspiration.

 

Thank you so much!

 

 

Diane,

 

I should give you all the credit for the "Denizens" idea! I've heard the word before and you reminded me of it. I really liked the way it sounded. So, now I've got Denizen Profiles. Thanks.

 

You're most welcome, Grasshopper...

 

 

I don't remember that at all, but you've certainly developed a great idea. I can't believe no one's suggested names for your unnamed...uh, denizens. Maybe you need to offer prizes. LOL!

 

 

Good job getting the plate out.

 

 

I think this is a good indication that you might need rehab though.

 

LOL!

 

That's about what they said on Dendro-Board when I posted a pic of my fruit fly aspirator:

 

 

With those things and the syringes, I'd better not get raided anytime soon.

 

 

YAY Diane!! I'm so glad you found it. I hope I have your same luck, my pistol shrimp hid another one of my plates a couple days ago and I haven't yet been able to find it. I don't want to tear apart my whole aquascape again (I had to tear it apart Tuesday to rescue my other corals from him). I got him some rubble so he would leave my corals alone and he still steals a plate. I need to get the darned thing a goby. Looks like I might have to break down and buy him one on line. But YAY for you.

 

Oh, man! Isn't it a bummer when you like and want to keep BOTH the offender & the victim? Well, at least now we know the plates are pretty hardy even when they go into hiding!

 

Hey, why not order the goby you want? Wouldn't that be fun?!

 

I'd like to put some of those last plate posts in my fungiid thread, but haven't decided if it would be overkill to put them there in their entirety, or if I should just post a few pics and link to this thread. What do you think? I think threads in the coral forum get a somewhat different audience...

 

 

Eek! How did I miss this update!

Glad you found the little plate, and boy is he cute.

And those pics are outstanding.

 

Thank you, Lalani! As you know, I do it all with trickery. I'm not a pro like you, but I get lucky once in a while.

 

----------

 

Which will hopefully set up the next shots, which are no great shakes. I do like to put some pics in every post, tho.

 

I've finally joined "the club."

 

Last time I was up at my fav lfs I saw these dime sized nems on the wall of one of the tanks. No one could ID them for me--they were just hitchers--but I thot they looked familiar so I asked if they'd sell me one. Brought it home and dropped it in the fuge, as I didn't think I could shoehorn anything else into my tank; and also that the chance of it disappearing in the main tank would be, well, approximately 1.00.

 

At first it was just brownish, but over the last couple of weeks it seems to be turning into one of the sort of green-&-pink variety...:

 

At first:

 

 

 

It just dropped right onto that spot in the chaeto, and hasn't moved a mm. Seems happy, tho. Can anyone tell me if it's OK for it to stay there or not? I do spot feed it now and then.

 

Now:

 

 

 

Also--anyone want to tell me what it is? (I'm afraid to state my guess...)

 

It's hard to get a good pic, esp. through the acrylic fuge walls which I seldom scrape...

 

--Diane

 

PS: Sorry to all whose quotes lost their smileys. I got the dread "you have posted too many emoticons!!" admonishment, so had to delete quite a few...

[spanko]

Cannot help with the nem ID but it is cool looking just sitting atop the Chaeto. Keep up the info on the plates, it is so interesting to see that coral develop and what it can go through and still keep ticking.

[Fishfreak218]

It looks alot like a mini carpet anemone. S. Tapetum

[silverdust]

You find such amazing critters Diane! I have no idea what species it is, but when you get it figured out and see if it likes regular lighting, let me know please. I'd love to have a little nem with an anemone shrimp one day.

[Lalani]

Nice find! I think I'll have to take a closer look at my LFS tanks next time...

[arwndsh]

I am positive it is a mini-mini carpet. And as for the pics of the plates I would say through them up in the plate thread as well. Why not show people that they aren't as fragile as people keep saying they are?