Seeing Pink

In my first attempt at a saltwater tank 14 years ago I wanted to grow Coralline algae so badly. I was never able to do it. I was just using the standard lights that came with my tank and I was using tap water. The only thing I was able to get to thrive in my tank was hair algae and a couple of clownfish. Everything else died within a month or so. The clownfish liked it though. They would host inside a patch of hair algae on a piece of lace rock. They wiggled around in that algae just like it was an anemone.

In my current tank I haven't seen any hair algae. There may have been a little on one of the pieces of live rock that I put in the tank. However, it quickly disappeared. This tank is definitely dominated by the pinks, purples and even some greens of Coralline algae. It continues to spread like crazy. When I saw the the first circles of the algae on the glass I was overjoyed. Now, however, the algae is starting to become somewhat of a pain. I have a hard time keeping up with it. Even though I clean your typical green, red and brown algaes off the front glass every few days with my magnet cleaner this doesn't keep the coralline under control. Once it takes root it has to be scraped off with a razor blade. It is especially bad at the sand bed where I'm afraid to clean with the magnet cleaner for fear of trapping sand in the cleaner and scratching the glass.

The following pictures were taken yesterday. This is approximately five months after starting my tank.

If you are curious you can look at the pictures from January 13th, 2008 and October 17th, 2007 for reference.

I know lots of people would love to have this problem. It does indeed look nice and I don't want it to go away. However, it does tend to increase the maintenance that has to be done. So what am I doing to get the algae to grow so rapidly? I'm not completely sure but here is a list of things that I bet contribute:

1. Only RO/DI water goes into the tank. Never a drop of tap water.
2. 48" Odyssea 260 Watt Power Compact Lights from the Fishman on eBay w/ stock 10000K daylight bulbs and true actinics. Daylight bulbs go on at 8:00 am and turn off at 10:30 pm. Actinics turn on at 7:45 and turn off at 10:45. So, I have roughly 14 1/2 hours of lighting in the tank.
3. Dose with 15 ml of each part of Oceans Blend two part calcium and pH/Alkalinity daily. Well almost daily. If I sleep in after 8:00 on the weekend (pretty much every weekend) I won't dose since the instructions say to dose before the lights come on to avoid pH spikes. My calcium level is at 460ppm.
4. Dose with 1 1/2 cap fulls of Kent Marine Tech I iodine each Sunday.
5. Water change using Instant Ocean every 3 to 4 weeks.
6. Use a protein skimmer.
7. Last but not least live rock. Unlike other algae in your tank the coralline won't show up unless you seed it. You need to add live rock. The rock I bought had a lot of coralline growing on it already. The quality of your rock probably makes a big difference.

That's all I can think of. Good luck on getting Coralline to grow in your tanks.

Crawling Tongue

A few days ago I had to move my tongue coral. This thing moves along the sand bed. It moves at a pace that makes a snail look like it is reved up on Red Bull. Over the course of the last few months it moved from its home between the glass and live rock up to the front glass. It started out parallel to the glass and ended up perpendicular to it. I had to move it so I can clean the glass with my Mag Float glass cleaner.

I have seen the coral move itself at least twice. Each time it only moved a few millimeters. Just before moving the coral changes from brown to green and partially retracted its tentacles. Then, all at once it pushes itself by swelling the tissue that is in contact with the sand bed. It then extended its tentacles and turned brown again. It moves itself just a little bit and then goes back to being its normal sedentary self.


This time I'm going to watch it closely and document its progress as it moves. Here is a photo of its current location.

Hosting Brain Coral

Well, it looks like it's final. My Ocellaris Clownfish has decided that it wants to host in my open brain coral rather than the green bubble tip anemone in the tank. For the last several months the clownfish has hung out near the coral. It would even venture between the walls of the big polyps. Today, I noticed it rubbing around inside a polyp over and over again and sometimes just laying down inside of it. I guess it makes sense. One of the preferred host anemones for the Ocellaris is the giant carpet anemone. This open brain coral resembles a green carpet anemone more than the green bubble tip anemone does.

It is somewhat of a disappointment though because I hoped i would be able to see the clownfish wiggle around inside the tentacles of a real anemone. I knew that it was unlikely that the two would bond when I bought the anemone several months ago but I decided to go for it anyway. This is still fun to watch though.

Your Inner Fish

I just finished reading Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin. My wife reviews books for several blogs and she brought this one home. I picked up before she could read it and couldn't put it down.

This book answered a lot of questions that I always had about human development. Why do almost all animals on earth have pretty much the same body structure? Head and mouth in the front followed by two arms or fins followed by two legs or another fin and of course the anus in the rear. It is written in an easy to read format with just enough science to get the point across but not so much to lose you.

One thing that fascinates me about this hobby is how we get to raise and study animals that don't fit that mold. Anemones and corals don't look anything like us. They look more like plants than animals. The author of this book does devote some of the text to jellyfish, anemones and corals. We actually do share some of our DNA with them. We are more similar than one may think.

Whether or not you believe in evolution or creationism I highly recommend this book. If you are an evolutionist, like I am, you will find this book fascinating. It takes you through the fossil record and describes when different types of animals showed up on this planet. If you are a creationist, don't worry. The author does not shove evolution down your throat. I believe the word is written only one or twice in the entire book. If you believe in a creator you will be amazed by the common genetic formula that exists in us all and how closely we are linked to Gods other creatures. I urge you to give it a try.

Conch

I noticed what I think is a small white Conch shell on a piece of live rock today. It is no bigger than a few millimeters in length. This piece of live rock is the one I got for free because my anemone would not detach from it in the store. This rock also has a lot of stubby worm like things on it which don't seem to do much. No feathery plumes, no long wormy appendages. There are some long yellow worms on this rock also that let out their appendages and sweep for food. Some of these are visible in this photo.

Snail Orgy

This morning I noticed that one of my Astrea snails had a pile of white things around it that resembled little sesame seeds. Looking around some more I noticed them around another snail. Then I noticed them on top of several rocks. I looked back at the first snail and I happened to see an egg shoot out of the snail. It appears to me that several of the snails in my tank decided to lay eggs on the same night. Yesterday was the first day of spring. Are snails smarter than we think? Can they read the calendar? How do they know to spawn at the same time with no additional cues?
In the picture above you can see the pile of eggs lying below the snail. The vent from which the eggs were laid is also visible just below the shell and just to the left of the egg pile. If all goes well I may be overrun with snails soon.

Hitchhikers

I commented that I have some hitchhiker coral growing on the back-side of a rock. Well, I finally got my hands wet and turned the rock around and got the camera out. What I have here is a small colony of Zoanthids. These are really small and it turned out to be difficult to photograph. I took about 25 pictures before I got one that was good enough to post.

I also have a few white sponges that hitchiked their way into my tank. Here is a picture of one of them I took today. My green bubble-tip anemone is in the lower-right of the picture. Some other green Zoanthids that I purchased are in the upper-left.

Here is a picture of the same sponge taken on January 12th.

My, how it has grown.