sea squirt. beautiful !!!
- Thread starter calero
- Start date
Monkey_Bone
New member
Nice! Be sur eto keep them well fed with phytoplankton or they wont be nice and large for long.
Amphiprion
Premium Member
You have a nice little Polycarpa aurata.
Ascidians don't usually eat phytoplankton (possibly except for very very small phytoplankton). They will need plenty of bacterioplankton and associated material and aggregates (bacterial coated detritus) that are supplied by established, healthy tanks. Even then it usually isn't enough. Good luck.
Ascidians don't usually eat phytoplankton (possibly except for very very small phytoplankton). They will need plenty of bacterioplankton and associated material and aggregates (bacterial coated detritus) that are supplied by established, healthy tanks. Even then it usually isn't enough. Good luck.
Well it's good that you got the rock they were attached to. I bought one of these when I first got into the hobby. Unfortunitly I didn't know much back then, so when the guy just ripped it off the rock and said it would be OK I believed him...only lasted about a week. I hope you have much better luck as they are a very nice yellow and purple.
FeffersFish
New member
wow, those are so cool. Wish my LFS carried them 
Amphiprion
Premium Member
Not sure what phytoplankton is available that small (if anyone else knows, let me know as well), but bacterioplankton is produced by healthy tanks in abundance. If you have a small specimen and a fairly large, very well established tank, then you may be OK.
MCsaxmaster
New member
Unfortunately bacterioplankton really has to be grown in situ and can't really be bought. The only effective way I can think of to get more is by dramatically increasing the water volume and surface area available for bacterial growth and having a lot of bioturbaters to stir them up into suspension a bit. Essentially, having a very, very large refugium is the only thing that has much of a chance of working very well. If these were a purchase it would probably be wise to return them.
cj
cj
waterfaller1
New member
I have them growing as hitchikers in my 65. One is red/yellow and has many openings like the one pictured here. The other type is huge and grey in color, and has one opening on each side. I do not feed them anything special, but this is a semi-aggressive tank so it's a bit "dirtier" than most tanks.
Amphiprion
Premium Member
A refugium would certainly help. Having large sand beds that are disturbed (like chris said, by bioturbation) would probably help the most--additional ones in large refugia would certainly help as well. Some people also like to 'blast' the rocks off occasionally and that, too, would free up some bacterioplankton and associated aggregates.
tacocat
Premium Member
Re: sea squirt. beautiful !!!
Just a friendly FYI calero
Tunicates aren't LPS corals. They aren't corals at all. They are animals from the phylum chordata. They are considered the evolutionary ancestor to fish because of their larval stage.
Here is some basic reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunicate
I agree, they are purdy.
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7639695#post7639695 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by calero
i wanna share my new piece, a beautiful rock with 3 huge sea squirts ( tunicates )
Just a friendly FYI calero
Tunicates aren't LPS corals. They aren't corals at all. They are animals from the phylum chordata. They are considered the evolutionary ancestor to fish because of their larval stage.
Here is some basic reading:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tunicate
I agree, they are purdy.
boomsticks
New member
Actually they are considered the ancestor of us as well. Weird huh? I always thought we evolved from artichokes. Hah stoopid me. I have one that "appeared" in my tank about five-six months ago little brown ugly thing nothing as colorful as yours though!
Mike
Mike
