Got some new livestock at the winter social tonight

Lots going on at Melev's Reef tonight. We got back from the Winter Social (the annual DFWMAS party) with 6 bags of goodies!

Some new metallic zoas, a few surprise polyps as well, a dispar anthias, a new tank raised clown to replace the last one that disappeared, a bunch of snails, a Green Linkia.... all new additions to the reef tanks. A few of the snails went into my son's 29g as well.

While on flashlight duty, I discovered a number of baby whelks in my 55g, so I retrieved 4 babies and a larger one, and threw them in the refugium. I saw one other larger one, but it disappeared when I finally got to that part of the tank. Whelks are what ate my baby Maxima clam, and thus I need to be sure to remove them all from the display. I might even have to get them all out of the refugium as well, to avoid them finding a way back into the main tank!

I saw 4 keyhole limpet babies in the return pipe tonight. I really miss the original one that was almost 2" in size. I did find its shell a few weeks ago when I was swapping tanks (my 29g). :( It is still nice to see a bunch of little ones in the two systems.

A psammacora frag was missing in the 55g, knocked off its spot by a snail or uchin no doubt. I didn't even realize it was missing until I thought about it. I realized during our meeting tonight that it wasn't in the spot it normally was, during a flashback moment. I clearly saw the empty spot in my mind's eye. Crazy! I located it and moved it to a better location.

The new clownfish, once released, went to join the other one within 30 seconds. They looked adorable together, the new one being half the size of the other. However, within a minute, the bigger one seemed to aggressively nip at it. I'm not sure why this was so, but hope it is merely a dominance thing and the bigger one is the female and thus acting normally. At the moment, the larger one is 'sleeping' where it normally does, swimming against the current just over the sand bed. The newer clown is about 2.5' away, all alone. I really hope they work things out, because the last pair were inseparable. When I pulled out the larger one for a medical issue, the other one looked so sad all by itself. By the time the sick fish was healed and returned to the tank two weeks later, the lonely clown was gone. So I had to replace it so they would be a pair again.

At the fish store, I talked with several people about anthias. They are beautiful pink/orange; they shoal together, usually one male and 6 to 8 females (harem). I was told they eat live planktonic matter, and need to be fed three times a day. I decided to get only one, and it is a beautiful male. Acclimated like I acclimate all my livestock (approx 1.5 hours), it seemed to be in trouble when I was about to pour it into the tank. It was lying on its side, quite still. I poured it in gently, but it seemed to sink more than swim. Whether this fish was asleep or lacking oxygen, I've got no idea. It did swim a few strokes into the rockwork, but its labored breathing was very obvious. I really can't imagine what it was suffering from, as all the fish in the tank are fine and the new clown didn't display any distress at all. After the cleaner shrimp attempted to go over the anthias only to be chased away, the fish seems to be resting vertically in the rockwork. This isn't promising at all, but I'm hoping to see a few good signs that he'll be okay.

Because Anthias feed on live food, I immediately started a new batch of brine shrimp that will be ready in 48 hours.

The Green Linkia is in the 29g, as I've not had any starfish in this tank ever. It is interesting looking. The store also had burgundy ones, but I thought the spotted green ones were less common. I hope it does well in there. While in the tank, I decided to move my Maxima up into a more prominent spot in the rockwork, since it was being covered over by red mushrooms and anemone tentacles all the time. The BTA looks better and better each day, so the bi-daily feedings are making a real difference. At this point, I don't mind how large it gets, as there isn't anything within its reach that can be harmed.

The Coral Banded Shrimp was displaying a tiny new arm to replace the last one, we noticed yesterday. Within the past couple of hours, it molted again, and it has a larger arm than before. Oddly though, the other new arm came off, as I saw it lying on the rock near the CBS. So it could be some time before this creature has full use of both pinchers. Still, he's got a number of little feeding arms so I'm not concerned that he'll go hungry.