Reef Blog

Spock says hi. Shot with a 105mm macro lens.

From time to time, my fish seem to want the spotlight.  I was about to shoot a cerrtain coral and this gal (yes, it's a female Lyretail anthias) decided to swim into the frame.  Fine, if you want to block my efforts, I'll just shoot you instead. Ended up with a really great shot.  

I took a picture of a lobophytum with a macro lens, and loaded that RAW file into Lightroom 5.0 for the normal adjustments.  This picture was taken under 20,000K lighting with VHO super actinics, and I used a flash to add some light from the side to avoid the dreaded shadows...

This is the original picture, only resized for my blog.

This is a Collonista snail. It's a little hitchhiker, and doesn't grow to be bigger than a bb. Usually you'll see them late at night coming up the glass as tiny round dots. Great little grazers. In one of these two pictures, you'll see an astrea in the shot for a size comparison. This little guy was actually bigger than most. I do feed a lot. lol

Collonista Snail

When I set up the 60g Anemone Cube, I knew I'd be using a Mp40w ES Vortech pump for flow, and that I would have to keep a sponge on the intake grate at all times.  Every few days I pull it off and give it a good rinsing because as it clogs up, the flow rate lessens due to restricted intake. Anemones do what they want when they want to, and you can't always predict their latest move, but you can protect them from themselves and the in-tank pumps. Find what fits your pumps and install one now, rather than after an accident occurs.

Shooting a few shots with my macro lens yesterday, I spotted an oddity on a branch of the staghorn coral and focused on that area momentarily.  It looks like a SPS polyp captured a small piece of a LPS hammer's tip that came off somehow. It's about the right size and shape.  It was moving in the flow, held on by mesenterial filaments. Hope it liked the snack.

What's a vermetid worm? It's a creature that casts a web into the water column to trap food as it blows by. Webs appear quickly as soon as the worm smells food in the water. To eat the trapped bits of food, the worm reels in the webbing and consumes those morsels. The web may irritate nearby corals, or you the hobbyist. You can break off the calcified tube and cover the spot with super glue gel to eliminate this pest. If you leave it be, you may end up with more of them in the tank.  Here's the page in the ID section on this site: 

Since MACNA, I've really enjoyed the mated pair of Golden Dwarf Moray eels I brought home.  They are quite active and out any time food hits the water.  While they live in the rockwork most of the time, one or both will swim in the open looking for food.  Sometimes they'll take up space in the Vortech pump since I shut it off during feedings, so I have to always check before turning it back on again.  They like krill, but I've also observed them eating sinking pellet food off the substrate.

When I'm really proud of my work, I shoot video.