Questions that this forum cannot answer?

[Small Heavens]

Hey

I notice that Polymnus change their eye colour when being dominated (from black to gold) and I was wondering if this is caused by the lens or iris physically changing or if triggered by some kind of chemical compound.

Also, I keep a LTA and notice it has some kind of zooplankton living inside the tissue, they do not seem to multiply or harm the Nem. The zooplankton moves both ways, so it is unclear to me if it has a front & end to it or not. The one end of it is round and other end is split in two.

I hope some people have some insight or anecdotal observations to offer here, because we should really be able to have a vibrant forum here with the amount of human experience that is gathered here.

Have a nice day y'all.
~ Sofie

 

[OrionN]

Hey

I notice that Polymnus change their eye colour when being dominated (from black to gold) and I was wondering if this is caused by the lens or iris physically changing or if triggered by some kind of chemical compound.

Also, I keep a LTA and notice it has some kind of zooplankton living inside the tissue, they do not seem to multiply or harm the Nem. The zooplankton moves both ways, so it is unclear to me if it has a front & end to it or not. The one end of it is round and other end is split in two.

I hope some people have some insight or anecdotal observations to offer here, because we should really be able to have a vibrant forum here with the amount of human experience that is gathered here.

Have a nice day y'all.
~ Sofie

I saw the video of your small crustacean inside your LTA. I think that is a parasite living in him. I have seen other people provided video of similar situation before, I don't remember which species of anemone. The two mass on the side are egg sack of the crustacean. That is the tail end.
The color and size of the eye or pupil of the clownfish was never observed by myself. I have many pairs of clownfish over the years. I spend hours each day, to the unhappiness of my wife, observing my fish, anemones and coral. I did not have the same observation you did.

 

[Small Heavens]

Ah, a crustacean with eggsack, that sounds very plausible.

I don't think it is parasitic in nature, I have seen this in 3 different LTAs and never did they seem bothered.

Also I notice zoas often have zooplankton that exit them in the morning, do a round along the zoa and then enter back into the zoa and stay there until the next morning.

Although these I never see leave the LTA, I think they are more like janitors living with the LTA but I can only guess since I have such limited experience and nobody else is actually studying that or at least no studies have been made public online that I am aware of.

But as I said, I only see the LTAs having them, or perhaps the LTA makes it easier to spot them running up and down the tentacles and more exposed oral disk.

In regards to clownfishes, they don't interest me, except the Polymnus clown, again, I only have super limited experience with SW in general, because I specialised instead of branching out.

The Polymnus is completely clearly showing a reaction of either chemical or mechanical colour change, when the fish is either afraid, stressed or so to speak "being dominated".

If you make a general video search on Google (most good marine videos get uploaded other places than YouTube it seems), you can easily verify that videos of polymnus in the wild will show that only the biggest fishes have black eyes, all the smaller fishes are kept in some kind of responsive mode, where they eyes keep turning paler. Since I saw the reaction, I started taking a good look at the wild polymnus I could find videos of, and sure thing, dominance and eye colour does go together in that sp.

Since I don't care about the more rubbery and flamboyant clownfishes but only the Polymnus, I don't know if other clownfishes just don't show the same, but I strongly suggest that somebody starts to study the effect in Polymnus because its so clear that its easy. They can literally go from velvet black to actual golden in perhaps 15-20 seconds and I am surprised nobody have made some study public about some aspects of this

I am also rather surprised that anybody can be near your tanks without spending about 24h each day looking at them

Thanks for the reply!