Life under the sea (and in front of my couch)
Here are some pictures from my aquarium. None at all technically well done, or even artistically close to good photography, but the subjects make up for it.
First, a short polyped stony coral -- a rock builder. (For those interested: phylum Cnidaria, class Anthoxoa, subclass Scleractinia, family Acropora, god knows what specific type of acropora.)
Using calcium (they are prodigious users -- my aquarium is maintained at 420 ppm CA), magnesium and alkalinity, corals build skeletons of calcium carbonate (limestone) -- we've all seen the bleached skeletons of coral. This fellow is alive and has "flesh" over top of that skeleton. You can see some of his polyps opened for feeding. There is a mouth in each of those polyps which in this coral tend to extend more widely at night.
The colour is pretty rare in GTA circles, at least. How I got this guy, I don't know -- a store was tearing down their display tank where this guy was lusted after. The owner likes me, I watched him tell people it wasn't for sale and then I offered to buy the large rock it and another coral had grown onto and he and his partner played "good cop/bad cop" over wanting the coral for themselves and then they just agreed I could have it.
I know people who would break into my apartment to steal it, quite literally! Sheesh. This guy has grown from a fragment (frag), so was aquacultured, not taken directly from the ocean, although his original colony would have been. This coral about maybe 4 inches tall and 1.5 wide will grow quite fast. Each of those nubs will become branches and it will laterally encrust the rocks outward from the base, sending up more vertical stems and then more branches.
One has to farm the coral as they literally fill the tank. That entails simply snapping branches off, creating the frags. I've broken coral affixing them to the rocks and the shards I've found growing elsewhere in the tank, where they came to rest. The key is the proper type of light and that calcium mix I mentioned earlier. Oh and pristine water and a lot of food -- zooplankton and phytoplankton and other organic bits floating in the water -- like fresh fish ground up in the blender until almost liquid. Yup, the smell is as you might guess when doing that.
Ooops, boring stories about the aquarium, and there's more!
The next is a member of the large group of ocean fish known as surgeon or tang fish. So called because just in front of the caudal (tail) fin they have modified bones which are outside of the skin and are scalpel shaped and sharp. These spines face forward and can be made erect by the fish.
I've been sliced by a yellow tang's "knife" and as most are poison tipped to some degree my hand swolled up real good in a few hours and it continued to swell up my arm. Just as I was fearing I had blood poisoning after a couple of days, the swelling went away. I've often thought of dangling my... never mind, I digress.
In this picture you can see the peduncular spine. It is in the yellowish bit approaching the tail and appears as a horizontal bar. If the picture was in focus you'd see it clearly. A note on this picture. These are exceedingly fast fish. The pic was taken with my telephoto lens about 8 feet from the tank. I "chased" the fish with the lens and snapped away. I cropped the picture to remove a 2/3rds of the frame of nothing in front of the fish, as I got ahead of him with my pan.
Anyway, this guy, is among the most beautiful of the tang fish. Common name is Powder Blue Tang (Acanthurus leucosternon). Very prone to a disease called ich. White spots -- kinda fish measles. This tang had a few spots showing tonight. Inevitable -- the parasite is always present in the water; stressed fish become susceptible. Copper kills the parasite, but it also kills invertebrates and corals... The fish either fights it and lives forever (years and years) or it succumbs. Depends on the quality of the environment and as his new home is of superb water quality and there are parasite eating ("cleaner") shrimp in the tank (ich is a parasite), I have grand hopes for the survivability of this guy. He ate after being in my tank for 15 minutes. A very good sign.
Finally, a pair of yasha gobies (Stonogobiops yasha). This mated pair live in a wee tunnel (a series of them actually) dug by a nearly blind pistol shrimp (is lobster shaped and is named for its ability to snap a claw and produce a very loud retort for a very tiny creature -- I heard him early this evening). The shrimp is not in this picture. The lighting is bad, but they're living in behind a coral (those green lumps are lobes of a "brain" coral) and hard to get a good shot of. I put these guys in the tank weeks ago and saw nothing of them, but did see piles of sand where the shrimp was doing his thing.
Then just last week there they were sticking their heads out of a tunnel, the shrimp between them! These guys are very hardy and are said to readily breed in aquariums. The fry will be microscopic, of course, so survival is impossible but the hatchings will make nice natural feedings for the coral. They eat everything I put in the tank.
You may wake up now and return to your normal blog reading about angst and self actualization -- where this blog will soon return.
s.
First, a short polyped stony coral -- a rock builder. (For those interested: phylum Cnidaria, class Anthoxoa, subclass Scleractinia, family Acropora, god knows what specific type of acropora.)
Using calcium (they are prodigious users -- my aquarium is maintained at 420 ppm CA), magnesium and alkalinity, corals build skeletons of calcium carbonate (limestone) -- we've all seen the bleached skeletons of coral. This fellow is alive and has "flesh" over top of that skeleton. You can see some of his polyps opened for feeding. There is a mouth in each of those polyps which in this coral tend to extend more widely at night.
The colour is pretty rare in GTA circles, at least. How I got this guy, I don't know -- a store was tearing down their display tank where this guy was lusted after. The owner likes me, I watched him tell people it wasn't for sale and then I offered to buy the large rock it and another coral had grown onto and he and his partner played "good cop/bad cop" over wanting the coral for themselves and then they just agreed I could have it.
I know people who would break into my apartment to steal it, quite literally! Sheesh. This guy has grown from a fragment (frag), so was aquacultured, not taken directly from the ocean, although his original colony would have been. This coral about maybe 4 inches tall and 1.5 wide will grow quite fast. Each of those nubs will become branches and it will laterally encrust the rocks outward from the base, sending up more vertical stems and then more branches.
One has to farm the coral as they literally fill the tank. That entails simply snapping branches off, creating the frags. I've broken coral affixing them to the rocks and the shards I've found growing elsewhere in the tank, where they came to rest. The key is the proper type of light and that calcium mix I mentioned earlier. Oh and pristine water and a lot of food -- zooplankton and phytoplankton and other organic bits floating in the water -- like fresh fish ground up in the blender until almost liquid. Yup, the smell is as you might guess when doing that.
Ooops, boring stories about the aquarium, and there's more!
The next is a member of the large group of ocean fish known as surgeon or tang fish. So called because just in front of the caudal (tail) fin they have modified bones which are outside of the skin and are scalpel shaped and sharp. These spines face forward and can be made erect by the fish.
I've been sliced by a yellow tang's "knife" and as most are poison tipped to some degree my hand swolled up real good in a few hours and it continued to swell up my arm. Just as I was fearing I had blood poisoning after a couple of days, the swelling went away. I've often thought of dangling my... never mind, I digress.
In this picture you can see the peduncular spine. It is in the yellowish bit approaching the tail and appears as a horizontal bar. If the picture was in focus you'd see it clearly. A note on this picture. These are exceedingly fast fish. The pic was taken with my telephoto lens about 8 feet from the tank. I "chased" the fish with the lens and snapped away. I cropped the picture to remove a 2/3rds of the frame of nothing in front of the fish, as I got ahead of him with my pan.
Anyway, this guy, is among the most beautiful of the tang fish. Common name is Powder Blue Tang (Acanthurus leucosternon). Very prone to a disease called ich. White spots -- kinda fish measles. This tang had a few spots showing tonight. Inevitable -- the parasite is always present in the water; stressed fish become susceptible. Copper kills the parasite, but it also kills invertebrates and corals... The fish either fights it and lives forever (years and years) or it succumbs. Depends on the quality of the environment and as his new home is of superb water quality and there are parasite eating ("cleaner") shrimp in the tank (ich is a parasite), I have grand hopes for the survivability of this guy. He ate after being in my tank for 15 minutes. A very good sign.
Finally, a pair of yasha gobies (Stonogobiops yasha). This mated pair live in a wee tunnel (a series of them actually) dug by a nearly blind pistol shrimp (is lobster shaped and is named for its ability to snap a claw and produce a very loud retort for a very tiny creature -- I heard him early this evening). The shrimp is not in this picture. The lighting is bad, but they're living in behind a coral (those green lumps are lobes of a "brain" coral) and hard to get a good shot of. I put these guys in the tank weeks ago and saw nothing of them, but did see piles of sand where the shrimp was doing his thing.
Then just last week there they were sticking their heads out of a tunnel, the shrimp between them! These guys are very hardy and are said to readily breed in aquariums. The fry will be microscopic, of course, so survival is impossible but the hatchings will make nice natural feedings for the coral. They eat everything I put in the tank.
You may wake up now and return to your normal blog reading about angst and self actualization -- where this blog will soon return.
s.
posted by Heipel at
11:39 PM
5 Comments:
Beautiful pictures.
I want a belt covered in those little blue fish, so I can throw them at my enemies. The first one will land next to their head with a noise like a ruler being thwanged on the edge of a table.
i love your yasha gobies...they are so funny looking but cute....hehe..^^...
oh I love aquariums! it's the only type of captivity where I have no conscience duelling problems with because I just love watching fish in big tanks. you must have an aquarium party. or take more pictures. or something. or we can all have fish and chips!
WTF is JOE?
I enjoyed reading your blog. I like aquariums. I live in Japan.There are a lot of tropical fishes in Okinawa perfecture in Japan. I feel like going to there and watch a beautiful fishes this summer.
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