The Asterina Return

After not seeing a single tiny starfish since we posted regarding them last night two returned to the glass with much pomp and ceremony.  I'm pretty sure they were plotting with the Jefferys on how best to annoy me.
 
Last night I made an executive decision toward bringing us a saucier aquarium. Frank came to pick me up at the office (and I left the fabulous new headset I received as a gift for my PS3 [apparently I need to hear and offer up profanity in 5.1 surround sound] on my desk) and after an obligatory trip to Starbucks we dashed over to Southwest Saltwater before they managed to escape our now twice weekly visits.

While perfectly happy with the three coral we started with on the 1st I still felt that the tank was a little barren and Frank did as well, though we’re both aware that the coral will grow and begin to expand across the tank we still value diversity in our aquarium. As we are going to be keeping so few fish (4 with possible expansion to 6) once the tank is fully stocked we want to have some other life to sort of perk things up.

Concerns regarding our lighting notwithstanding I was more worried about the flow in the tank and the fact that our Favia had yet to open up in the evenings. I scoured the Internet and finally decided it had to be flow, maybe a tinge of lighting issues that was keeping our little friend so tightly closed. We picked up a Koralia Evolution 750gph pump to start with and added a green Caulastrea Furcata and a purple Goniopora sp. to highlight the tank. We’ve been very careful with placing our coral so that they aren’t too close the last thing we want is crowding when they begin to grow or any accidental stings between them that creates issues.

The Candy Cane has yet to open, but I am hoping that by this evening it will have fully extended polyps. The Flowerpot is half extended, so I am worried that both are placed in areas with a little bit too much flow. If they haven’t opened I will move them around again and see tomorrow. If all else fails I will call the store and get some advice. I had hoped to put up some pictures of our little beauties in their new home.

The pump is fantastic, once I maneuvered it into position the green Torch shot out feeders longer than we have seen before and started feasting on the detritus that blew off of the rocks. Once the lights had been off for an hour our Favia for the very first time started to open up and show off those adorable little feeders. This is a huge improvement considering the Favia is on the other end of the tank compared to the Torch who is just a few inches under the new Koralia. We are talking about getting another so that we can place it on the other side of the tank closer to the Favia.

Next week we should be getting our scorpionfish in, and they’ve agreed to keep him in their tanks so that we can make sure the bioload is evened out before we bring him home and he isn’t sickly. We should also be getting an Actinodiscus sp. since we haven’t seen one in town they’re going to pick one up for us.