Christmas Lagoon

[Subsea]

Because I like Christmas “all the time”, I have dedicated red and green as the festive colors in my 55G macro lagoon tank.  However, to complete the contrast of festive colors, I envisioned black.  I recently moved some second generation pregnant black mollies into this tank.   During morning coffee, I saw the third brood.  Also, within the last two weeks I put in a few nano pieces of uncured live rock collected from 30’ of water 20miles west of Tampa, Florida.

[Subsea]

The second picture shows some perils of curing rock in display tank.  This is a very mature tank with an extremely robust janitor crew consisting of oxidation and reduction bacteria in sand bed, bristle worms in sand and rock, amphipods & copepods everywhere, baby cerith snails and black mollies.  

 

The mollies are like big pods.  Shortly after birth, in the thick of the Grape Caulerpa, I saw amphipods bigger than new born mollie.  No patience on my part.  I took a picture of the rock that baby mollie was grazing on.

 

Baby mollie is in the middle of second picture next to cabbage leather.  It is not a good picture, but the baby ceriths are bigger than the mollie fry.