Coral Pictures

Our new Frogspawn Coral.

!@#$ ROCKS!

So, yesterday morning I looked at the rocks and said to myself "We really need some better real estate for the coral" and thought "Well, we could always get a few more pieces of live rock to rearrange the corner".  This was a very, very, bad idea.  It was bad on an almost atronomical level, it was so bad that I should have been drug into the bedroom by my cats and beaten with the pillows and their fluffy tails until I came to my senses. 

Of course our cats never did this because they don't care about me, and Frank thought it was a great idea.  If he wasn't so sweet and innocent I would be absolutely sure that they were plotting against me.  Even though he is caring, gentle, wonderful, and innocent, I am still suspicious. 

Lights, Camera, Ack!

Last night we brought home three new coral, which finishes off our additions for at least a month if not longer. Hopefully we can see some growth and expansion from our coral, there was much epoxy used, many curse words, and I nearly fell off the stepstool and hit the ground. Thankfully my arm was in the tank which kept me up or I get the feeling I would not be such a happy camper this morning. Granted while I have a large bruise in a perfect line where I fell backward and caught myself on the lip of the tank, I think that’s better than smacking the back of my head into shelves lined with geodes.

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.

Moving Day

There are those times where you should be smart enough to just do something right the first go round, then there are those times where you are just so exuberant that you don't realize you did something wrong until it's a real pain to fix the problem.  We did the latter instead of the former through blind ignorance and then really didn't want to rectify our little oops.  Though if you could have sidestepped moving a very full and very heavy aquarium you would too...trust me.  It isn't laziness, it's called avoidance and unfortunately avoidance rarely works out well.  At some point you have to fix things and then you get really annoyed because you should have fixed it right out of the gate but dangit you were too busy doing other things.  That's my story and I am sticking to it. 

The $%!@ing List

I love lists, lists are helpful and wonderful things, under appreciated by the lazy do-nothings of the world and people who aren't just a tad crazy.

Asterina Anomala

There's always a silver lining.  We went to the fish store to pick up some more live rock and deal with the lights, just ten pounds, so not much.  I wanted a few small decorative pieces so that I could make the tier prettier. 

I of course knocked down the entire column and had to rebuild it four times until it was something that I wanted to look at.  While waiting for the water to clear up so that I could tweak said column and (probably) ruin it again I noticed our first hitchhikers on the glass:  Asterina Anomala's.  Considering they're so fricking cute we're keeping the two and well aware there are probably more.

I also found and frantically showed to Frank, and we can't decide if it's a sponge or an SPS coral that we have hitchhiking behind another piece of rock.  Our only worry is that it's stark white (bleached by the store on accident?) and could be dead.

Either way, I am happy to have destroyed my column to find our first stowaways.

The second I hit post I noticed we also have a tiny clam!  Huzzah!

Chemistry can be fun!

Chemistry can also be a royal pain in the...well, you get it.  I ran full tests this morning and was happy with the results (for the most part), and I am sure I will have to test again tomorrow once I get the aquascaping done and do a partial water change.  I find the fact that the tests state they are "Harmful, Corrosive, Irritant" very endearing.  Please use these caustic substances to make sure your fish are healthy!  That may be a slight exaggeration as you don't actually put the chemicals in the tank, but that bit of honesty doesn't sound quite as ominous. 

Cycling, not just a hobby involving bikes!

You learn a lot about yourself when you start building a saltwater aquarium.  Sometimes they are things you really didn't want to know.  Okay...mostly they are things you really don't want to know about yourself and what you're willing to give up for the sake of fish.