Took a risk and acquired a bubbletip nem.

Sk8r

Staff member
RC Mod
I'd sort of thought of adding one, and had a chance at a good one. Inserting one into the tank is always problematic, because they not only walk, a nem can puff up and fly, causing general mayhem, aiming their fragile tentacles for a downflow intake or sometimes a wavemaker intake, and dying with a flourish that includes most things in the tank.

So, yeah, careful here. I aimed it by hand until the last foot of descent. 36" depth on my tank, and I was reaching over a 10" rim. I let a go in the corner in a gentle area of current and down it went.

Atop a watermelon mushroom frag. Sigh. I got the reverse end of a cat toy 'fishing pole' and moved the frag, which, do it credit, the nem was trying to move off of, instead of planting its foot.

I let it alone, in a patch of shadow, next to a rock spire that will give it exposure to as much 'sun' as it wants---they climb like bandits.

With 15 minutes it had climbed to a tunnel in the rockwork, part of it in shadow, part in tank-bottom light, and clamped down. Best-behaved nem I've ever handled.


My clowns are, of course, ignoring it. Par for the course. There is a technique of setting the nem in a bucket and putting the clowns in with it alone, until they go through their bonding process (including wiggling in and out for a couple of days) ===but catching two clowns in my rockwork is too problematic and disturbing to the tank. So ---- we just wait. And expect they'll do like clowns, which is whatever they decide to do.
 
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It's about the size of a golf ball, or was. Today it expanded out of its cave, stretching out about 2/3 foot before its poof of middling-expanded tentacles, toward the light. It's healthy and willing to climb. Come the first darkening of the light toward dusk it collapsed alll the way back down into its cave.

But the clowns are taking to doing a wiggle dance, which they haven't done since I got them a year ago. They haven't approached the nem yet, but they are cruising over there. The nem is a rose bubbletip, and I think ocelllaris clowns are amenable to the type.
 
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