Fox Face, Feather Dusters, & Pearl Coral

Well, we have finally figured out that the "red stuff" that is taking over the tank is NOT cyano, it's algae!  So, we bought a type of rabbit fish (these fish are algae eaters) for the tank.

This is our new Fox Face.  We named him Zorro!  ;-)  (I saw the name online and thought it suited his species really well!)

Fox Faces are venomous fish.  They shoot their venom through the dorsal and anal spines in their fins.  I've heard it's painful, though not really harmful any other way unless you're allergic, of course.

This is called pearl coral.  It is a very pretty pink color, but it's sort of washed out in this picture.  :\   

We also got a couple more feather dusters since they were on sale.  We aren't sure if our diamond goby doesn't like them and keeps burying them or if they are just, simply, in his way?



Josh spent A LOT of time cleaning the coraline algae off the back of the tank.  Coraline is good algae and a lot of aquarists let it build up on the back of their tank, but since we already have so much "red stuff" in the tank, it was keeping the aquarium from looking more crisp and clear.  It made a HUGE difference and it looks SO much better!

If you compare this to the picture of the tank I put in the last post, you'll see what I mean.

After over a year of having perfect water quality in the tank, we've started having trouble with the nitrate levels in the tank.  Everything else has stayed on track other than that and we aren't sure why.  We've been doing more larger and more frequent water changes, but that doesn't seem to be helping much right now.  :\

Copper Banded Butterfly, Coral Banded Shrimp, & Anemones

Wow, over 6 months since the last update :-S.   Well, we've slowed down on adding things to the aquarium.  Here are the "new additions" since the last time I posted:

A Copper Banded Butterfly:

We actually bought another one before this one, but he wasn't strong enough to survive the "mean fish" in the tank. In fact, we really only have one mean fish - the neon velvet damsel. When we got this new butterfly fish, he started to go after him too, so we exiled Mr. Neon Velvet Damsel to the sump tank.






This is another Long Tentacle Anemone we bought for the Ocellaris Clowns:

Unfortunately, as seems to be our luck with anemones, it didn't last long in our tank.  We found it shredded to bits a couple days later.  The strange thing is, this one wasn't shredded by climbing into the overflow grating, it was just spread across the tank in bits.  I can't imagine any of the clowns would or even could do this and all the other fish should have felt a sting from it.  Weird.  I suppose it's just as well.  Our ocellaris clowns just do not seem to get how to host with an anemone AT all.  *shrug*


This is a Tube Anemone:


We got this anemone a few months ago, because we loved it's bright colors.  (and, thankfully, it has remained bright and colorful. Many things we put in the tank "wash out" and kind of blend in. They say many of the invertebrates get "bleached out" during transport due to the way they have to transport them to keep them alive.  Super-transfusing them with oxygen and the lack of other food.)   It's a pretty purple color with the bright green center, but it's "tube" looks like a disgusting wad of dryer lint.  Kinda funny!







This is the Coral Banded Shrimp:

It didn't take him long to find his favorite spot to hang out, and I do mean "hang." He likes to hide out, up-side down in a cave of rock on the right side of the tank. All though, he's fairly easy to spot with the extremely long white antennas.

This guy is a "big hairy" crab.  Yep, that's his name.  He's very colorful and fun to watch, but he's also a menace.  He likes to knock anything he can possibly move over.  He's by far the very largest crab we've had in the tank and he just moves everything around to make a path for wherever he wants to go.  So, he ended up getting exiled to the sump tank as well.  LOL

This is called a Bird's Nest.  All though, it doesn't look like a bird's nest, I suppose it does look like a tree a bird might like to nest in?  LOL  It's made of the calcium it collects from the tank and is quite hard, but easily brittle.









Finally, this is a picture of the tank as it looks now.  We ended up rearranging everything again.  Mostly because we had to remove all the live rock to catch the little neon velvet DEVIL!  LOL  Took about an hour - sheesh!  But, at the same time, I had also been wanting to move the toadstool leather to the center of the tank and give him a lot more room to spread out.  He'd been rather cooped up in the right corner of the tank.