We have Eunicidae!
Is that the correct way to spell out plural Eunicid worms? My Latin is more than a little rusty. Anyway, confirmed sighting! And a possible identificiation. I had mentioned a while back here in October that some small worms I saw swimming in the water column were identified as possible baby Eunicid worms. Not a sign of them since, thankfully. Then on July 1st I reported spotting an unknown worm near the ricordea mushrooms.
Well, I stayed up a bit later than normal these past two nights to check the tank out after the lights are all off. There is definitely a eunicid worm in the tank! Right now it’s fairly small. I don’t know how long it is, but it’s less than the width of a pencil, give or take. Difficult to really determine coloration using my flashlight; the exoskeleton reflects a bronze color although it may be a bit redder or even clear depending on the angle of light. I did notice a distinct coloration change a few segments back from its head… very similar to this one which I found on the Polychaete Gallery hosted by the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County.
So now the question is – what to do next. It does not appear to be munching on any corals or livestock – yet. Actually, the worst thing it has done that I am aware of is move some ricordea rocks to hide the entrance to its burrow. I don’t know much about this worm in particular (the family as a whole has a bad reputation). Will it subsist solely on detritus? Is it actually a beneficial tank member? Will it need to move to larger food items to stay sated? I think a proactive approach would be best here – I’m going to try to set a trap for it. That won’t be easy, it is a very cautious and seemingly intelligent little guy. It will take some patience on my part. Then of course comes two follow-up questions. What do I do when I catch it, and are there more in the tank…??
Follow-ups to be posted soon.
And on a much less exciting note, I forgot to post that the male pajama cardinal is carrying eggs again. I think I first noticed that on Monday.
Water change, night sights
Did a 5-gallon water change and cleaned the skimmer tonight. Nothing very exciting, used the same method I have been lately – targeted siphoning of detritus out of the live rock and patches of algae. This seems to have helped knock the red cotton algae back quite a bit by removing its food source, and in some cases removing the algae itself. After publishing this post I’m going to make another 5 gallons of top-off water.
Got home (relatively) late last night and decided to grab my flashlight and check out a corner of the tank. Primarily because something keeps moving a ricordea mushroom rock overnight and I’m wondering what it could be. I was taken aback by all the feeding tentacles that met me. The acans, green bubble coral, and trach were really extending some feeders. I haven’t looked at the tank late at night for a long time and wasn’t expecting that sight! It made me want to either stay up late a couple nights a week and feed the tank some mysis or someday set up an automatic feeder that could get frozen or refrigerated foods into the tank. I’ve seen setups using medical dosing pumps and wine bottle coolers; they always looked a bit ghetto but maybe they would do the trick… ?
It’s baaaack…
Well, the aptasia I thought I may have killed by snipping it in half at its base is back in full force. Already grew a new head and tentacles, and darn near the same size it had been! Amazing regenerative powers. Unfortunately, I still want this thing gone. Time to try a new plan.
Spot fed Mic Jagger last night (red lobo, see photo to right) a couple Spectrum pellets. Also cleaned the skimmer. Planning a water change for some time this week.
That’s it for now!
A little more cleaning
Tonight I focused on removing some caulerpa, bubble algae, and cleaning the tank walls.
I thought the caulerpa had been killed off during the kalk incident back in April. Well, it appears I was wrong. There’s certainly a lot less of it, but it’s not gone. I noticed tonight that there was some all around the pink millepora frag. Managed to remove quite a bit, but I’m not kidding myself. It’s going to be a long uphill battle to rid the tank of this stuff.
I spotted some bubble algae in the branches of the octobubble frogspawn, so decided tonight was as good a night as any to pluck it out. I popped a few by accident, which may have released some spores. I’ve read small bubbles don’t have spores yet, so maybe I got lucky…
Cleaned the tank walls tonight. Two of them I did with a couple credit cards, scraping off coralline and hair algae, the third I just used the magnavore and didn’t worry about the coralline as much. There wasn’t much on this wall, so it’ll be good for a while.
A purple staghorn has been battling for growth ever since the kalk incident. The tip grows, but the bottom side of the coral and base has continued to slowly die off. I decided the coral wasn’t able to overcome on its own so fragged off a small piece of the tip. Hopefully it doesn’t get infected, and begins to encrust the plug!
Water Change & Some Cleaning
As the title says… tonight I did a 5-gallon water change. Also changed the media reactor – new Phosban and carbon. I’m now out of Phosban, better order some new media! I’m trying something new with the carbon reactor – hooked the supply and return lines up in reverse, so the water flows from top to bottom… we’ll see how it works. I had read online that this would prevent channeling of the flow and would minimize tumbling of the carbon, which allows little dust-sized pieces to break off. I also cleaned the skimmer. It started up surprisingly quickly tonight.
Took some neon green caulastrea (see photo to right) frags that had been getting blown around the bottom of the tank and put them in the sump. They had been getting pretty badly stung/burned by other corals – especially a frogspawn – that they were blown against. Hopefully they fair well in the sump, I think the CFL lamp should be enough to keep them alive while they recover. If not, back into the tank they’ll go.
Big Update
It’s been a while since I updated the blog! I hope I can remember what’s happened in the past week. Let’s see…
I chickened out on feeding that much food 3 times a day. I saw increased algae growth on the tank walls. I will likely need to do something different to add that much food to the tank. I want to continue knocking back the algae in the tank (slow but steady progress, I believe), and then I can consider increased feeding possibly in conjunction with carbon dosing (VSV). That will take some time I think.
I did not do a water change over the weekend, so I’m still running the same media in my reactors (carbon and phosphate). I need to change them out tonight, I think the filter pads on the reactors are clogged. Two nights ago I stirred up a bunch of detritus that had settled in the sump, and then repeated last night. My flow through the reactors last night went to almost zero in the span of a few minutes. I didn’t feel anything stuck in the impeller of the MJ900 pump I’m using, so I’m assuming it’s the filter pads… either way I need to change the media.
The chaeto in the sump seems to be growing well. I also have 2 other types of algae. A red branching bubble algae, and a type of sea grass. Both seem very easy to control so far, so I’m happy. The chaeto is doing great under the CFL lamp hanging over my sump. In fact, it grew so much it clogged the intake of the MJ1200 I was using for sump flow (and hence I had detritus build-up). I’ll need to keep an eye on that.
I have been seeing larger pods in the sump. There are still some flatworms, but they’re definitely not the red planaria and they are not experiencing a population explosion. Not going to worry about them for now, but I think I eventually will treat the tank. Aptasia is still a single stalk in the same place on the sump wall. Not regretting leaving that in yet.
Which brings me to the display tank. I may have finally killed off the one aptasia I had in the display. I had this photo of the monster posted on the hitch hikers page of our website.
Aptasia
The head was about the size of a silver dollar and I could never kill it with kalk paste, hot water, vinegar. It would react too quickly and pull back into the rock. Normally it never exposed more than just its head. Well, the other night at light’s out it was really extended. At least an inch and a half of body was sticking out the rock work. I thought – this is my chance!! I don’t know what I planned to do, maybe try to pull it from the rock, but I grabbed a pair of locking forceps and squeezed down as close to the rock as I could. It immediately tried to retract itself, but wound up ripping itself in half! I don’t know what kind of regenerative powers these things have, but I’m hoping it dealt iself a deathblow. Fingers crossed.
I noticed a sponge on the move. Pretty cool to see. It had been on a piece of rock along the back wall for quite some time – months and months – and several weeks ago started to travel. I was really surprised to see that. It extended thin strings and seemed to slowly pull itself along the rock. We’re talking fractions of an inch a day. Until recently. It happened to have been a few inches away from the new torch coral I put in the tank, which had a white sponge on part of its skeleton. Seemingly overnight, the other sponge suddenly moved at least 2 inches – right on top of the white sponge. It’s been planted there for a solid week now. I assume there’s some level of sponge-warfare going on. It doesn’t seem to bother the coral at all, so I’ll let it be.
Have been adding 2 rounded tablespoons of kalk powder to my top-off water, which is still hovering at about 5 gallons per 3 days. Measured the tank calcium levels the other night (quick test, didn’t do alk at the same time) and it was at 400. I think the parameters are pretty good, the corraline algae is taking off. A bit too quickly in my opinion, I can’t keep up with it on the tank walls. I need to buy a scraper, I think.
I may also need to buy new lamps and new RODI filters. Looking back at my records, the RODI filters are from 2007 and the Iwasaki lamps are a year old. I have never read anything definitive on the life of the Iwasaki 175W lamps, so I should plan on replacing them soon. If I had some fun toys I could take spectral analysis plots and PAR readings and track how the bulb degenerates over time. But I don’t have those toys, so I need to guess. On the other hand, I DO have the TDS meter I need to measure the output of the RO membrane and DI bed. I have the solid gut feeling all of the RODI filters need to be replaced – including the original RO membrane – but that’s an easy thing to test.
On the fish-front, Alvy has been eating well, swallowing larger pieces of food and fighting for position during the feeding frenzy’s. The dwarf angels are fat and seemingly happy. The pajama cardinals have been breeding regularly, but I haven’t done much about it. The only thing I did was turn the return pump off two nights ago when I expected the male to spit, so all the larvae would stay in the tank as fish and coral food. It seems to have been successful. The next morning his mouth was empty, but there were no larvae to see. I figure, if I’m not able to raise them, they might as well feed the tank inhabitants instead of the skimmer.
OK, I think that’s my big update. I’m sure there are some little things here and there that I missed, and probably something bigger that I really intended on blogging about. But that’s what I get for waiting a whole week before posting an update on the system.
