tinyreef Posted November 28, 2005 Share Posted November 28, 2005 holy explosive pods, wow! awesome fungia too, tiny yet satisfying. Link to comment
Ann Posted November 28, 2005 Author Share Posted November 28, 2005 Not much to update here as I haven't added anything new to the tank recently, however I hoping to have a bumper update by the next weekend. In the meantime I thought that I'd leave you with a few shots taken today of some the smaller hitchhiking residents in my Pico tank. First is a Calanoida copepod.... ....and second is a hydroid jellyfish. I've seen at least 2 of these swimming about the tank in the last week or so. I don't know if they are the same ones I see every time or if they are new ones that have budded off. They are pretty neat looking critters, measuring just a millimeter or so in diameter. Till the next time. Best regards Ann Link to comment
ZooGirl Posted November 28, 2005 Share Posted November 28, 2005 Ann, awesome pics! That jellyfish is so cool! A millimeter...that's some macro you got there!! Link to comment
Casabubu Posted November 28, 2005 Share Posted November 28, 2005 I saw one of those jelly fish things in my pico the other day also! Link to comment
icenine Posted November 29, 2005 Share Posted November 29, 2005 Ann, awesome pics! That jellyfish is so cool! A millimeter...that's some macro you got there!! No kidding! Very nice. Link to comment
Carinya Posted November 29, 2005 Share Posted November 29, 2005 that's probably the best pic of a hydroid (jellyfish) i've ever seen. nice tank too. coming along well. C Link to comment
Ann Posted November 29, 2005 Author Share Posted November 29, 2005 Thanks! My camera is an old Fuji FinePix so it's nothing special really. The close-up shots above were taken using a neat trick involving an additional 50mm lens attached to the front of the camera in the reversed position. The resulting pictures have an extremely small depth of field and the subject matter has to be very close to the front on the tank so it's really only suitable for very small stuff that's crawling on the glass itself. Whilst I'm here I may as well do a quick coral/tank update as I took a few new pictures today. The bubble coral is looking a bit happier now but I've come to the conclusion that it's got to be moved. Every time it inflates its bubbles it ends up sagging over the side of the rock and looks like this: If I leave it like this I'm afraid it'll part company with it's skeleton and end up hidden underneath a rock somewhere at the back of the tank. It still has no mouth nor any feeder tentacles. The Fungia is undergoing a bit of a colour change which could be either good or bad. It seems to have developed quite a pronounced striping, still, it seems happy enough and likes to eat small bits of Mysis. The mushroom is growing rapidly and must be a good 0.5nm more expanded now. No extending up towards the light for this baby though, it's more catching the glare off the white sand I think. Here's a shot of another valued member of the clean-up crew, Stomatella snails are the best. How about this for a spot of tank climbing! I found this hermit almost to the top of the glass. He'd scaled the height of the tank by wedging his legs underneath the edge of the silcone sealant. How's that for a spot of ingenuity. And finally a FTS, cause no update is complete without one, looks pretty similar to the last one right?! Best regards Ann Link to comment
Travis Posted November 29, 2005 Share Posted November 29, 2005 Looking good Ann, I love the picture of the hermit! Link to comment
BelowH2O Posted November 30, 2005 Share Posted November 30, 2005 Yeah the hermit pic is awesome. Thats interesting you have sargassum seaweed in there. On the gulf coast you can go collect floating masses of the stuff. Theres actually a really cool tiny angler that is a common find called the sargassum angler. You can also find tons of pods and sometimes peppermint shrimp. Link to comment
Tony Posted December 6, 2005 Share Posted December 6, 2005 I seam to have a lot of those little Jelly's in my tank and pods. I dont know anything about them although. Do you? Link to comment
Ann Posted December 6, 2005 Author Share Posted December 6, 2005 Tony, That link doesn't take me anywhere I'm afraid. I've had these before in my other tanks, though I've yet to locate the polyps that these guys actually bud off from. I've not found them to cause any trouble at all 'cept maybe lose the odd copepod or two to them. There's a small amount of info to be found about them here. You'll have to scroll down the page for the jellyfish bit. Best regards Ann Link to comment
Tony Posted December 7, 2005 Share Posted December 7, 2005 Your tank is looking fantastic. Like the rockwork. Link to comment
Nanomaniac Posted December 7, 2005 Share Posted December 7, 2005 Hey Ann where did you purchase your Stomatella snails? Link to comment
Nanomaniac Posted December 7, 2005 Share Posted December 7, 2005 nevermind, Ann. you probably picked them up from a LFS. BTW, I love your tank. Link to comment
Ann Posted December 7, 2005 Author Share Posted December 7, 2005 Actually no, they were freebie hitchhikers on the LR in my big tank. They have reproduced like crazy since then so I just picked out a few and popped them into this pico. Best regards Ann Link to comment
chieferich Posted December 7, 2005 Share Posted December 7, 2005 I have some of that sargassum in my tank. it drives me crazy. that and some caulerpa that came on my rock and grow like wildfrire! anyone for salad? any luck in removing the sargassum? Link to comment
Ann Posted December 7, 2005 Author Share Posted December 7, 2005 To be honest I've never found Sargassum algae to cause any problems in my tanks. IME it sprouts out of newly imported live rock, grows really well for a while and then just fades away. When it's gets too large I just take a pair of scissors to the shoots and cut them out at the base. I must confess that I quite like the look of it growing in an aquarium, at least when the sprouts are small and manageable. I think that it makes a tank look more natural, I'm kinda wierd that way. Now I'm not a great fan of Caulerpa sp., it's far too invasive and is best kept for refugiums (if kept at all.....). I have a foxface in my big tank to keep that and other algae at bay. Best regards Ann Link to comment
tinyreef Posted December 7, 2005 Share Posted December 7, 2005 i like the sargum too. it adds "realism" imho. fast growers = fast export/biolocking of nutrients looks nice, altho the last fts did look a lot like the other fts. how about another pic of the red dot-shroom? Link to comment
Ann Posted December 7, 2005 Author Share Posted December 7, 2005 You want to see another pic of my teeny tiny 'shroom? It shall be done, though it will have to wait till tomorrow now though cause the lights have just gone out on my tank, pah! I do have some new corals though which I've been itching to show off but I wanted to wait till they were all settled in first. Still, I can show you a pic of this one as it seems to have made itself right at home already. Best regards Ann Link to comment
Ann Posted December 10, 2005 Author Share Posted December 10, 2005 I finally have some new corals in my pico now. Some nice zoanthids and a couple of Ricordea 'shrooms. I like to watch corals grow in so the colonies are small, just a few polyps really. Maybe they are a bit too small for this competition, having seen the corals in other peoples tanks. This tank will probably (hopefully, if it doesn't crash) be at its best only after a year or so. Since this is only a pico I decided to frag the zoas as I didn't really want to accomodate all the rocks that they came on. I've never really kept zoanthids before so I read round lots and decided to go for two fragging approaches. One, to break the rocks into small bits with polyps on and stick them down and two, to peel off some polyps and stick them down directly. I wasn't sure about the latter approach so keeping some on the rocks gave me a fail safe in case of the other being a disaster. As it has turned out the sticking down approach was entirely unsuccessful. All of the polyps that I did this to died, I don't know how others get this to work but for me it was doom for my zoas. Anyway here are a few pics (of what's left), some are still settling in and not fully opened up. They are so pretty, I have no idea if they will keep their lovely colours under this lighting/tank set-up so it's going to be interesting how things progress. The colony below just doesn't want to stay put, I have stuck it down twice now and it keeps falling off. Finally I have resorted to tying it down, but even so each day it drops a little lower. I know that this can't make the colony happy and I do so want it to encrust. Here are my pair of Ricordea florida. And finally, no update would be the same without a shot of the dwarf red 'shroom, taken with flash so the colours look kinda off. I was kinda worried about this little fella for a while as the shell to which it had attached to seems to have disintegated. I fully expected to find the mushroom gone one morning never to be seen again but it's still hanging on in there. As for my poor Bubble coral baby, it's been moved around sooo much. I did place it on the sand in the 'gorge' area and it seemed to love it there, but then I realised that the flow seemed to be dropping off in the tank. So I pulled out the pump from the refugium and had a look at it. I discovered that there was a little bit of foam padding protecting the pump impellor and it had become all gunged up. I decided to remove it entirely as it was always going to be blocking up. On starting it all up again the Bubble nearly got blown away!! I can't believe how much difference that little bit of foam made to the flow. The Fungia loves the extra current. Anyway I moved the bubble several times around the bottom of the tank but in each place it got so battered, eventually I placed it up on the flattish bit of rock right in the middle of the tank. The area of prime real estate that I had been saving for a Blastomussa frag, oh well. Here's how the tank is looking as of yesterday..... I'd like to add a few more corals if I can lay my hands on some small stuff. I'm tempted to experiment with a frag of one of my SPS corals just to see it this tank can support such a coral (and what the colouration would be like). Best regards Ann Link to comment
Travis Posted December 10, 2005 Share Posted December 10, 2005 Hey Ann, looking great! If you want to try some SPS, I'd go with Some type of Montipora, Cap or Digi would do best. Link to comment
tinyreef Posted December 10, 2005 Share Posted December 10, 2005 try super glue-gel for the zoanthids. let the glue dry for no more than a minute and then plop the frag back in. nice shots! i just finished a half dozen zoo-surgeries myself. i also made a mermaid zoo-bikini, which my daughter thought was hilarious. the little red shroom looks like it's settling in. the sargum is going nuts it seems. Link to comment
Ann Posted December 10, 2005 Author Share Posted December 10, 2005 Thanks! It do have some Montipora that I could try. I'm still undecided about it though, it may turn out to be a bad idea. Still this tank is, in part, about experimentation. Tiny, Superglue gel was the stuff I used. The polyps sure didn't like it though, their reaction was very quick. Also, I spoke too soon about the tiny red 'shroom. I have just checked the tank and it's gone from it's spot on the rock. Grrrr, I bet the hermits had a part to play in it's coming loose! I've located it now (on the sand) but I have to work out how to reattach it again. I think that I may just have to toss it into the refugium, wait till it attaches itself to a small rock and then move it back to the display tank. It seems I'm just all round hopless at fixing corals down. Best regards Ann Link to comment
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