430gal., L-shaped display

I'm excited to be able to say that I think my RSF Cerith population may be making a comeback. I'm starting to see a _lot_ of juveniles that look like small Ceriths to me.

cerith_juv_3-31-10.jpg


Those are grains of sand that they are keeping clean.
 
Looks like one of my corals is spawning, a sort of clavularia-type. These are brooders that hold their planulae on their tentacles before releasing them (tentacle brooders):

coral_spawn_01_4-14-10.jpg
 
I feed all my animals a seafood mush, with everything run through the blender until is as small as possible. Then I feed it frozen: The fish get bigger chunks and as it thaws the particles just get smaller an smaller. The idea is to aim for something like Rod's Food, but I can't afford Rod's at the quantity I feed. It's much cheaper to make my own.

Anyway, this colony lives right under where I add food in my display tank. It picks up tons of food from the messy fish.
 
I feed all my animals a seafood mush, with everything run through the blender until is as small as possible. Then I feed it frozen: The fish get bigger chunks and as it thaws the particles just get smaller an smaller. The idea is to aim for something like Rod's Food, but I can't afford Rod's at the quantity I feed. It's much cheaper to make my own.

Anyway, this colony lives right under where I add food in my display tank. It picks up tons of food from the messy fish.

Andy, do you rinse it when you feed or just dump it in?
 
No, I don't rinse. The whole point is to get it in while frozen so it's still in big enough chunks so the fish can eat it. But I'm buying good quality, fresh (non-phosphate-sprayed) seafood.
 
Could you write something up on what all goes into your food mix? Do you use any gelatin to bind it together?

It seems weird that the only bigger pieces are still partially frozen when the fish eat them. I have this funny image in my head of a fish with a brain freeze.
 
sweet!!! i had snails populated before, but tank fail before they had chance to mature. when they repopulated, they look like a bunch of tiny dots all over the tank....was quite interesting

I'm excited to be able to say that I think my RSF Cerith population may be making a comeback. I'm starting to see a _lot_ of juveniles that look like small Ceriths to me.

cerith_juv_3-31-10.jpg


Those are grains of sand that they are keeping clean.
 
Could you write something up on what all goes into your food mix? Do you use any gelatin to bind it together?

It seems weird that the only bigger pieces are still partially frozen when the fish eat them. I have this funny image in my head of a fish with a brain freeze.


I have no set recipe. I use _lots_ of shrimp and some of everything else of marine origin that they have. I mix in a lot of algae (nori or dulse mostly), often spirulina, hufa enrichments, etc. I hate gelatin foods, so I never use that. My goal is to make the foods easy to break down so the cleanup crew has as little work to do as possible.

I've never heard any complaints about brain freeze but I'm also not very good about checking the fish suggestion box. The complaints usually only say "Send more food" and "Get rid of the cleaner wrasses" anyway. :)

Chewey: Cool. What kind of snails were they?
 
Thanks! It's all just practice, though. My lovely bride bought me a camera as a present when I got my first tank because my photos sucked and she hoped my skills would improve with tank photography.

-------------------------------------------------------

It's been a while since I played with the fluorescence gear.

This Acan. was my very first coral and is the only coral still alive from those days. It managed to live through a couple of years in a decidedly under-lit, tiny nano tank with not enough water changes.

fluor_01_5-2-10.jpg


Some weird creatures that have always lived on this coral. I still have no clue what they are.

fluor_02_5-2-10.jpg


Another polyp:

fluor_03_5-2-10.jpg


And individual zooxanthellae, backlit by the coral's own fluorescence.

fluor_04_5-2-10.jpg
 
coral_spawn_08_5-14-10.jpg


Of course, the interesting thing isn't the blenny, but the coral underneath:

coral_spawn_07_5-14-10.jpg


coral_spawn_06_5-14-10.jpg


This is the coral's second spawn. It looks to be associated with the days right around the new moon.

Thanks!
 
Back
Top