Post by TenebrousNova on Dec 18, 2015 9:20:03 GMT
The male clownfish is in love with the Sarcophyton and snuggles up in it when he isn't pestering the green star polyps. After a few days of this the Sarcophyton has gotten used to it and no longer closes up.
About three weeks ago I bought this little guy, a rainford goby, also called the court jester goby. He's pretty timid still but comes out to feed on bits of algae and brine shrimp. They're one of the pickier gobies to feed but this one has been taking nearly everything I've offered him.
My collection of SPS corals is slowly growing. The purple Stylophora on the left is growing a prominent third branch at the moment.
I was pleased to find that the duncan coral is growing two baby polyps at last, located right underneath the "mother".
This little coral has been very difficult to get hold of, it's a Blastomussa merletti. It for some reason reminds me of a raspberry.
Down here is my growing Ricordea yuma collection. These little mushrooms are expensive but come in an enormous variety of colours. I'm planning on having a little garden of them eventually. To the right, you can see that my red Acan has gone from one polyp to having several rapidly growing babies around it.
And this is my orange fungia plate coral, which I'm in love with. It eats absolutely everything that floats into reach of those short tentacles. Plate corals have some interesting properties. For instance, if they don't like their position they can actually puff themselves up and "walk" along the bottom to find somewhere better. And if they die, the dead skeleton will eventually sprout baby plate corals as a last ditch effort.
Finally, possibly against my better judgement, I bought this female mandarin dragonet. Mandarins are one of the most popular fish in the hobby but despite this, they have a poor survival record. This is because they feed exclusively on copepods and amphipods, which are tiny Crustaceans that colonize live rock. They have fast metabolisms and spend their days hovering low above the rock, carefully scanning it for potential prey. They're pretty much the hummingbirds of the sea.
If you don't have an established tank with a sufficient copepod population, the mandarin will starve unless you can wean it onto alternative foods.
I've done a ton of research on these guys before finally biting the bullet and getting this female, which has settled in quite well. The other fish don't really notice her presence as she quietly hunts. I see her pecking at the rock very frequently which means that she is eating. I plan on supplementing her diet with bags of live copepods from the pet shop and see if I can encourage her to take live brine and mysis shrimp, and eventually frozen. Once trained to eat these alternative foods a mandarin's success rate really increases. I'll keep my fingers crossed.
Anyway, here she is! The males have a dramatic, pointed dorsal fin whilst the females do not. Hope you guys enjoyed this update.
About three weeks ago I bought this little guy, a rainford goby, also called the court jester goby. He's pretty timid still but comes out to feed on bits of algae and brine shrimp. They're one of the pickier gobies to feed but this one has been taking nearly everything I've offered him.
My collection of SPS corals is slowly growing. The purple Stylophora on the left is growing a prominent third branch at the moment.
I was pleased to find that the duncan coral is growing two baby polyps at last, located right underneath the "mother".
This little coral has been very difficult to get hold of, it's a Blastomussa merletti. It for some reason reminds me of a raspberry.
Down here is my growing Ricordea yuma collection. These little mushrooms are expensive but come in an enormous variety of colours. I'm planning on having a little garden of them eventually. To the right, you can see that my red Acan has gone from one polyp to having several rapidly growing babies around it.
And this is my orange fungia plate coral, which I'm in love with. It eats absolutely everything that floats into reach of those short tentacles. Plate corals have some interesting properties. For instance, if they don't like their position they can actually puff themselves up and "walk" along the bottom to find somewhere better. And if they die, the dead skeleton will eventually sprout baby plate corals as a last ditch effort.
Finally, possibly against my better judgement, I bought this female mandarin dragonet. Mandarins are one of the most popular fish in the hobby but despite this, they have a poor survival record. This is because they feed exclusively on copepods and amphipods, which are tiny Crustaceans that colonize live rock. They have fast metabolisms and spend their days hovering low above the rock, carefully scanning it for potential prey. They're pretty much the hummingbirds of the sea.
If you don't have an established tank with a sufficient copepod population, the mandarin will starve unless you can wean it onto alternative foods.
I've done a ton of research on these guys before finally biting the bullet and getting this female, which has settled in quite well. The other fish don't really notice her presence as she quietly hunts. I see her pecking at the rock very frequently which means that she is eating. I plan on supplementing her diet with bags of live copepods from the pet shop and see if I can encourage her to take live brine and mysis shrimp, and eventually frozen. Once trained to eat these alternative foods a mandarin's success rate really increases. I'll keep my fingers crossed.
Anyway, here she is! The males have a dramatic, pointed dorsal fin whilst the females do not. Hope you guys enjoyed this update.