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Tinitanks 5gal pico, The Alcove (thread currently under construction)


Tired

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Shocking no one, I have a nice assortment of algaes growing now. The macros are coming back (yay), but so are a lot of undesirable fellows. My test kit is in the mail, but since all my corals are still open and happy, I'm assuming the parameters are workable. 

 

This stuff popped up. Some sort of macroalgae that I swear looks like a tiny version of hornwort or elodia. It can't be those, they're freshwater. It turned white when it was exposed to air during a water change, and is now recovering. It's growing noticeably. Any idea what it is? 

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I placed a ReefCleaners order, which is pretty exciting. I haven't ordered critters online in years. I think that macroalgae will make a nice textural component- it's shaped a bit like a gorgonian, after all. Hopefully nothing eats it. Also hoping the shells are enough of a distraction for my hermits to leave the snails alone. If not, well, just let them try to eat a limpet.

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I got my order! 

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35 empty shells (ordered 25), and some nice ones. I asked for a range of sizes, and boy did I get it. 

 

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Nerites! I ordered 2. They were already moving within 10 minutes of being put in the tank.

 

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Blurry hermits. I specifically asked for no extras on these so as not to overwhelm my tank. One blue leg, one... unknown. If the unknown starts getting too big (or I turn out to have a few too many hermits in here) I'll rehome them. 

 

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Limpet- I also asked for no extras of these. 

 

And then, well. We all know ReefCleaners sends extras. Here's what you apparently get if you order 8 dwarf ceriths.

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About, uhh, 50. And three species of non-ceriths. 3 dwarf planaxis snails mixed in, and see the hermit in the bottom left of the top pic? Super tiny. He'll stay as long as he behaves. All the ceriths (except one) were alive and well, as far as I can tell, and they're all starting to move around. Some of them have really nice colors. 

 

I also found these. 

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Any clue what they are? They extend in a very telescoping manner, and they both have a pale dot that moves up and down the length of the trunk. When it reaches the end, they extend a tiny white puff-like structure, and several antennae that resemble a eunice worm's. They keep extending and then retracting- I don't know if they're looking for sand or what. I'm gonna email and ask if they know what these are. Probably something harmless that just happened to take up residence in snail shells, but I'd prefer to find out before I put them in the tank. These are in a cup until I hear back. 

 

Edit: forgot about the "fire fern" macroalgae. I haven't put this on anything yet, I'm just letting it sit in there. I'll find a place for it when I get the permanent tank set up.

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Went over to look for anything suspicious real quick, since the lights have been off for a bit. Didn't see anything worrying, but I did find something a bit unexpected.

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I don't remember bristleworms being able to climb glass. Because this one was climbing- when I first spotted it, it was well off the ground. This is after it bolted for cover. Do they need a lot of algae growth to be able to do this, or has it just slipped my mind that bristleworms can climb this well? 

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On 10/20/2019 at 7:01 AM, Tired said:

Went over to look for anything suspicious real quick, since the lights have been off for a bit. Didn't see anything worrying, but I did find something a bit unexpected.

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I don't remember bristleworms being able to climb glass. Because this one was climbing- when I first spotted it, it was well off the ground. This is after it bolted for cover. Do they need a lot of algae growth to be able to do this, or has it just slipped my mind that bristleworms can climb this well? 

Not sure if they climb the glass or swim but I have seen mine spawn on a few occasions. They seem to try and reach the highest point of the tank before releasing the sperma nd eggs. The tank goes a little milky for a day or so. Corals look amazing after the free feast. 

 

I usually find one either in my Weir Comb or on my Wavemaker  

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Got my treatment for the bryopsis in yesterday (Tuesday the 21st) and dosed it. It says 1 capsule per 10 gallons, I did a bit under half a capsule. I swear the bryopsis looks a little bit paler today. Sorry, pods- I gotta get that stuff out. I'll have to get a loofah or something for the pods to hide in, there's tons. 

 

A tiny strand of chaeto that came in on my paly rock has about quintupled in size since I got it, so I think I'll actually have a decent bit of that stuff by tank transfer after Christmas.

 

I'm also accidentally growing a bunch of gracilaria on one of my rocks. One of these rocks is just COVERED in macros. Pics incoming.

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(edit; hair algae! my bad)

 

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This rock is the algae rock, apparently. Don't mind the upset zoas, I blasted some detritus off for this pic and they got caught in the crossfire. 

The two bare patches on the rock are, I think, the work of two small chitons. I spotted one last night. They hide in the rock during the daytime, and that's where I see them, those two spots. They're what we call dedicated. 

On that rock, I see gracilaria, whatever red is branching on the right (another graci?), what I think is C. prolifera, bryopsis (boo), and then a thin, sort of filamentous red algae on the left area. I'm hoping that's not something super invasive. We'll see what it does. It branches, if you look closely. I'm curious to see if it gets any thicker, or if it just has really fine strands. Also some patches of coraline under everything else. I don't think I'll be trying to grow any corals on this rock, this can be the pod-and-chiton habitat rock. 

 

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Some sort of... amphipod, I assume? I've been seeing these long ones since the first day, but never orange, and never holding still. This is the biggest I've seen. It was sort of casually wiggling its swimmerets now and then, just relaxing in the algae. They crawl and swim and generally act like pods, and are easily spooked. They almost remind me of mantis shrimp in the way that they crawl on the rockwork, kind of like they're investigating everything with their little front limbs. I'm still wondering just a little bit if these are mantis shrimp, just tiny. 

 

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All those white dots are copepods. Apparently they love bryopsis. Too bad I can't keep a patch around for them. I'll be letting the gracilaria patch get to a decent size so these have somewhere to live, though I am going to keep that pruned to keep it from going nuts.

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Here, this picture shows the feathering a little better. I was under the impression that hair algae doesn't branch at all. This stuff starts out as little strands, then winds up as slightly thicker, whiter strands with feathering coming off of them. Like a lot of pictures (possibly misIDed?) that I've seen online of bryopsis. If it's not bryopsis, that would explain why my new nerites are stripping it off the back wall, though.

 

And I don't think those are what these pods are, no. These don't have visible legs like those. They really do look like a legless mantis shrimp with more normal shrimp eyes instead of the little bobbley ones. Long body, visible folded appendages up front, lots of swimmerets, very flexible. Just no legs that I can see. I assume there are walking legs in there somewhere.

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Wow those sound like some cool critters! I don't think you should worry - that looks like a bunch of hair algae to me - bryopsis looks like this:

 

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Okay, cool. It sure does look to be edible by an assortment of snails, so hopefully they'll take it out. I didn't know hair algae came in a feathery shape, but I saw people calling pics that looked like this stuff "bryopsis", so I guess they got that wrong. I'm going to go edit my prior posts (the ones with photos) so it won't show up in search results for bryopsis.

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Found another aiptasia. This one's kind of pretty with the stripes. I'm going to leave it alone for now, it's in a very inconvenient place to get to. I'll get it when I do the tank transfer in December, probably, unless it starts getting real big. These have to be a decent size and age to spawn, right? 

I guess that berghia must have died of old age and stopped going after these.

 

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That's one of my eunicids. It's the biggest I saw, and it's taken up residence in the empty feather duster tube. It didn't even know I was there! I think it's probably an okay one to have- it was moving along slowly, sort of nosing at the rockwork, and I saw it pause to (as far as I could tell) nuzzle and chew at a patch of algae. There's a few of these in there- they leave little piles of worm poo below their holes, so I can tell where they are. They haven't touched my corals, but I'm not sure they can reach my corals. May move a sacrificial zoa or two closer, see if they go after those, but so far I think they're okay. 

Anyone recognize these? It looks like it has legs like a centipede, and its antennae are white. I know it's a eunicid, and I'm wondering if this is one that people have had before. 

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I put some cyano and other pest algae in a half-gallon bowl to let it do its thing, and now it's crawling with copepods that I guess I accidentally sucked up. Ones with egg sacs, no less. I guess I'll have to figure out how to get them out of there before I pour it out for a complete water change, it'd be a shame to dump them out.

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I now have very little hair algae, thank you snails! 

 

There's some flatworms now, though. After staring intently at tiny brown dots, I'm pretty sure they're Acoel flatworms/rust flatworms, so I'm not worried. Probably there's a bunch showing up because I started feeding a bit more heavily. I'll feed slightly less and keep half an eye on them for awhile. If they spike and fade, or stay at about the same number, no problem. If they go up in numbers and keep going up, I'll start sucking them out. From what I've read, it looks like these can overpopulate, but generally don't hurt anything. 

Anyone know if black ray shrimpgobies and pistol shrimp have any interest in flatworms, if I squirt em loose from the rocks? 

 

And I found a very cool tank that I'm going to use instead. The Tinitanks 4.5 setup. Since it comes with all the features included, even an ATO, and such a cute little stand. 

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On 9/25/2019 at 10:58 PM, Tired said:

I was really happy to hear from the shop that it should be cycled, too. They've had it for awhile, apparently, and it does look cycled- as much as anything can "look" cycled. The bivalve shells pretty much all seem to be empty, and are free of anything rotting. There's no smell to it (any more than rock and seaweed has), and it doesn't have any warningly-colored substances or anything that looks like it's dying on it. I'll keep an eye on things, of course, but I'm pretty confident that they're right.

 

Unrelated, what is this? The shrimp guy at the LFS wasn't there, and the person who was there wasn't sure which of their (long) list of possibilities this was. She said her best guess was "humpback shrimp", but if I try and google that, it's mostly camel shrimp that come up. This is much cooler, and I want to find out what it is and if I can keep one. That fuzzy bit on its back, at the bent section, is part of its body and not just something behind it. It wasn't doing much, just sitting there looking around. Such a strange-looking thing, though- the snout! It reminds me of a lantern bug. If I had to name this thing, I'd probably call it either a platypus shrimp or a lanternbug shrimp, but I'm sure it has a name already. It was in a tank with some other shrimp and some zoas, so presumably it isn't a danger to those things. 

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And then this is an anemone shrimp of some sort, right? 

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I am unsure if this was answered but if not..

 

The first one is a Plume Shrimp/Donald Duck Shrimp

The second one is a Brunns shrimp (I had one of these, they  stay snall and dance sometimes)

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I had found the name of the Donald Duck shrimp, but not the second, so thank you.

 

Do you know if both are reef safe? I'm particularly curious about the Donald Duck shrimp, I can't find much info on them and they're really cool.

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Went from "oh, wow, Saltcritters is doing a pretty decent-sized sale, I should look and see what they have available so I can get an idea of if I want to shop there later" to "oh, I like the looks of those" to "welp". 

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So, yeah, guess I'm getting a rock flower nem earlier than I thought. I couldn't resist an ultra for $15 and change, even if it isn't WYSIWYG. Ultra rock flowers are pretty animals, period, and the surprise is kind of exciting. Plus a mixed frag including something with some nice long tentacles, a frag that looks like it has nice tiny polyps, and an interestingly patterned couple of polyps for under $4. So, yeah. 

 

 

Edit: also, this showed up.

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I've got one live limpet! I'm not sure if it's the same species as the couple of others I lost, it looks blotchier and maybe a bit more ridged. Either way, nice to see. And yet another thing on the list of critters that are here to eat all of my algae. 

Gonna take out most of those dwarf ceriths pretty soon. I plan to keep about 10, and will give the rest to my LFS.

 

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Yeah those are some hard to argue with prices - nice find! I can't even look at online places most of the time, or I'll almost start crying over the things I have to leave behind hahaha

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My Saltcritters order came in! Everything looks pretty healthy. I'm going to give them a few hours to settle, then I'll get a few pics to put up. 

 

I inspected them for pests and couldn't see any, so I did a dip of tank water and a few drops of Lugol's, to help them perk up after shipping and in case of fungus. I didn't want to stress them with a freshwater dip when they're from a fairly reputable supplier (the only mention I found of pests related to Saltcritters was someone who saw a 'bug' in the shipping bag that I suspect was just an amphipod), and I didn't think there were any places that any notable bugs could hide on them anyway. It's just on frag plugs anyway. Half an hour soaking the bags in the tank to temp acclimate, then out of there into a bit of a dip. 

I was pretty happy with the shipping, too. Compact little box with a heat pack and sealed bags instead of tied, arrived in about 24 hours with the heat pack still warm. There was a bunch of brown gunk in with all the zoanthids- not sure what that was, but it didn't seem to be hurting them any. 

 

For now, have a pic of one of the frags opening up while it was in the bag, all casual. This one shut briefly when taken out of the bag, then opened in the dip, and now that one polyp is open again and the rest are trying things out.

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Awful pics once again, but here's the stuff all open.

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The nem is in the top of a gallon jug so it has some sand if it wants. It's a healthy enough animal as far as I can tell, but I'm not a huge fan of orange, so I may give it a little while to calm down after shipping (though it already seems pretty unfazed) and then swap it to my LFS for another. I just don't have the room in this tank for a RFA I'm not thrilled with, ya know? 

 

Edit: I'm gonna give it to my cousin when she comes down for Christmas. They have a currently-FOWLR with clownfish, so I'll be feeding him nice and heavily to see if I can get him big for them. Since he's about the size of a quarter at the moment. I'll give him a week to recover from shipping (read somewhere you should do that) and then see what he thinks of all-you-can-eat mysis. How much CAN he eat? How often is too often to feed these guys? 

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A couple of decent pics of my Rastas. They've been multiplying at a nice rate. And, interestingly, those two thoroughly smushed polyps are sort of regrowing. They mostly fell apart down to the two stumps on the right, but, look at the furthest right one- it's grown a 'face'. It's sprouting back into a polyp. I think they died back to the mat, and now the mat is regrowing a polyp.

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2 hours ago, Tired said:

Edit: I'm gonna give it to my cousin when she comes down for Christmas. They have a currently-FOWLR with clownfish, so I'll be feeding him nice and heavily to see if I can get him big for them. Since he's about the size of a quarter at the moment. I'll give him a week to recover from shipping (read somewhere you should do that) and then see what he thinks of all-you-can-eat mysis. How much CAN he eat? How often is too often to feed these guys? 

RFAs can eat pretty much as much as you give them. I feed mine a little bit of whatever I'm feeding my fish, once a day. A couple times per week would probably be adequate though.

 

Also, remember that Rock Flowers do not host clownfish, so don't give yours to your cousin for that reason. 😅 I think it's pretty! I have an orange one as well (though I admit that I don't like it as much as my green one...).

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They don't try to host clownfish, I've read that much, but I've definitely seen pics of clowns hosting them. It's like some soft corals, I suppose. They aren't supposed to be symbiotic, but the clowns don't always know any better, and the nems don't seem to mind. I've let my cousin know it's a "clowns may be interested" situation, and if they do want a definite clown-hosting anemone, they have space for that as well. 

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16 minutes ago, Tired said:

They don't try to host clownfish, I've read that much, but I've definitely seen pics of clowns hosting them. It's like some soft corals, I suppose. They aren't supposed to be symbiotic, but the clowns don't always know any better, and the nems don't seem to mind. I've let my cousin know it's a "clowns may be interested" situation, and if they do want a definite clown-hosting anemone, they have space for that as well. 

Huh! That's crazy; I had no idea. I just assumed the clowns would not be interested at all. Though I guess I shouldn't be surprised... at work we have a large tomato clown that hosts in a Tridacna gigas clam... 😂🤷‍♂️

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