Our First Fishes

We now have our very first fish in the Nano tank!! They are two wild caught Ocellaris Anemonefish, or False Percula Clownfish.

Both are approximately 1 inch long, one is slightly bigger and bolder than the other. I've called the smaller of the two Amber and the larger one Boomerang. They have found a wee corner behind the rocks where Amber mostly stayed yesterday, Boomerang kept darting out and back and that's how he got his name! Clownfish all start off as males and if they find a pair one will turn into a female. The female is usually the larger, more dominant one. Our two seem to get along well at the moment although Boomerang is definitely the boss! I'm hoping they pair and then we might get some baby Nemos!

There's a bit of a thing on the marine fish forums about the name Nemo.... it's a bit like 'he who shall not be named' in Harry Potter! I'm going to ignore it, but just for the record we've not called any of our Clownfish 'Nemo'. We've got a naming system like the American hurricanes. We'll start as A with the 1st fish and work through to Z as best we can.

I've not taken any photos of Amber and Boomerang yet, so here's one off the internet.

 

Sea Slugs

I've been reading a bit into our slug that we bought last week. In the shop it was called a frilly slug, more commonly known as a lettuce sea slug. There's quite a few types and by looking at some pictures ours looks most like the Elysia clarki. It is commonly confused with the Elysia crispata.

The Elysia clarki eats algae (Penicillus capitatus, P. lamourouxii, Halimeda incrassata and H. monile) and absorbs chloroplasts from the algae into its body which continue to photosynthesis and give the slug its green colour. This allows the slug to produce sugars for its own nutrition.

Sounds pretty complex for a wee sea slug, and unfortunately I've not a clue if we have any of the algae it like to eat in our tank. It has been slithering about the tank happily enough but I've not seen it eat anything and it doesn't look very green (does that mean its not eating?). It has an annoying habit of slithering into the weir and getting stuck due to the high flow. I had to rescue it three times yesterday! I think once we have the big tank up and running it might be happier and safer in there.

Its very pretty for a slug and I hope it settles down. I'm going to do everything I can to find something it wants to eat. Will keep you posted on its progress.

A very dirty tank

Its been a week or so on since we took out the prawn, which went all fluffy! Disgusting! Since then we have added some hermit crabs, 6 blue legged and 2 red legged... I think. I only asked to buy 5 blue legged hermits and some empty shells - I'll let you guess how we ended up with 8 crabs and only one empty shell! We have also bought 2 sandsifting snails and a frilly slug, or lettuce slug as Stu keeps telling me. We also got another bit of Live Rock (about 2kg).

The tank has turned brown with algae and the crabs and snails are kept busy keeping it clean. They're doing a really good job, even if we have helped them with the glass scraper a few times :-) I noticed the glass scraper only works on the side walls of the tank and not the front glass as it it curved. We'll need to find something a bit more flexible to keep it clean and clear.

Stu has taken up the job of top marine chemist and has been regularly testing the water. Our ammonia levels have been a constant clear 0, nitrites rose to 1.5 mg/l and fell within 2 days to 0 mg/l. Our nitrate levels rose slowly to a max of 100 mg/l and are now falling. All good stuff. Time for our first water change I think.

I got a wee video of our hermit crabs when I first put them in the tank. If you watch close you can see one switching shells. How cool is that!

Click here to view our hermit crab video.

The Rock and the Prawn

We picked 2 pieces of LR (Live Rock) down at the LFS. Stu picked a lovely purple bubbly bit and I picked a flatter piece with some wee things growing on it. Both pieces of LR have come from Fiji, picked up as broken rubble from the reefs out there. The LFS receives it dry and has to ‘cure’ the rock and let the microorganisms re-grow. This takes several weeks and requires lots of water changes and it a pretty smelly job!

Once home, we popped the rock straight into our Nano and arranged it nicely with a wee cave in the middle. We did some tests and got a blue colour on the pH test and clear 0 for Ammonia. We think our pH tests are a bit cheap so will aim get something more accurate.

To start our tank cycling we added a lovely raw king prawn. He is on a slow cook and is slowly turning pink! He’ll stay in there for 3 days , then I’ll take him out and we can do some more tests.

Salty and Sandy

It took us a few weeks to get onto this stage. We had tried to order all these wee bits online but in the end Stu cancelled the order.

We got some Red Sea Coral salt for RO water and some natural reef aggregate down at the LFS. Sanded the tank, put the heater on and then after the cloudy water had cleared we added the salt. We got a refractometer which is amazingly accurate. Salt is now 1.025 with the temperature at 26°C.

The tank looks much better now, with the reef base in. I had a good look at it and its made up of wee porous balls of coral and rock and some shells. It looks good and is not sharp which will be good for the sand sifting fish we plan to add later. I would like to add some live sand to it too but the LFS only had a huge bag in stock. Maybe I can add some when I'm filling the main tank with sand...?