Achilles Tang

You guys should read up a bit more about lionfishes before buying them! Feeding cleaner shrimps to them is gonna an expensive exercise! Even putting different species of lions together... Luckily for you... in the latest edition of Reefkeeping.. there's a whole lot of articles on lionfishes..... soak it all up! Reefkeeping November Issue

Is this the same place where they have a mini animal farm, a marine touch pool, FW and SW fish, vegetable farm place?

Well, this region is gonna be shut down for fishing and diving... best bet and cheap is to go up to Thailand... phuket... Or Bali.... heh!

Hi Chanbi... yeah I got the AT... but I have a feeling I bought a dud. He didn't look too good in the LFS already... but I thought I would give him a try. He's in my refugium alone, so I am providing him all the algae and stress-free environment he needs. He doesn't move much and I'm quite resigned that I may lose him. We shall see.

Tank warming party! What's the point of showing my lousy tank at the moment?

Nope... none what so ever... it's possible to have a nano tank plumbed into a big sump tank... I know some nano reefers who prefer a small ecosystem.. but want a big sump for water stability and equipment placement. In fact, it's also entirely possible for a nano tank with a big sump to look better than a big tank with a tiny sump... hahaa!

They say the guide is whatever your fish can finish in 1 or 2 minutes is the max. I find that hard to believe coz my fish can finish a lot of food in a few seconds...

Hope you took some photos and you can tell us how you made it in the DIY section!

Who me? Don't see any cyano or dino outbreaks... so I am not overfeeding. Nah.... I don't see lots of these.... only the isopods and copepods.... I think there must be thousands and thousands of these... inclusive the swimming kind. I think when I get a mandarinfish.... he'll become a pig!

Yeah he's in my overflow compartment temporarily. It's big enough for a few small lions actually... since its so big. It's dim, which they like... and water flow is very light and they don't move much. I used fibreglass netting to screen my durso pipes just in case they get too close. Once I partition up my refugium, they'll go there. We'll see!

Ain't he a beaut?

I am keeping a Volitan lionfish... and here's my Lionel... I am feeding him live adult brine shrimp and fw baby catfish... once I wean him off livefoods.... he'll be eating prawns and fishmeat soon! AT

Let's see some photos! Actually I have been there twice. Was there last year. And the last time in 1983.

So how any takers?

Its the one at Lor 8. Same row as the coffeeshop and fruit store.... opposite the hawker centre.

SH? Errr.. whats that? Sea Horse? Yeah, I caught my sea spider and now it's in its own little tank. I think I will flush it down the toilet too!

It walks in the water!!!! Exactly like a spider!!!

Hi everyone, I woke up at about 4 plus this morning and was happily looking at my refugium teeming with thousands of pods... and was happily shooting them when I spotted something I saw some time ago... which I thought was an ordinary house spider that dropped into my tank and was drowning. Imagine to my surprise when I saw it again, swimming in the water! It looks almost like a land spider and this is it's sea cousin, the Sea Spider! Here's some of the photos I took this morning: That's one thing I love about this hobby... it's even the small things that are fascinating! More info on sea spiders here and here. Here's more information on these fascinating creatures: Sea Hare Predators - Pycnogonids (Sea Spiders) PHOTO: Pycnogonid, Anoplodactylus evansi. Coffs Harbour Region, northern New South Wales, Australia, Dec 1990. (Leg length = 15mm). PHOTO: Bill Rudman. Anoplodactylus evansi is a generalist predator of small opisthobranchs, and is reported to attack and feed on small individuals of at least 13 species of anaspidean, sacoglossan and nudibranch gastropods, as well as other soft-bodied invertebrates (Rogers, de Nys, & Steinberg, 2000). It hunts opisthobranchs on benthic algae, immobilizing them with movable claws on the front legs, before consuming them. It eats whole opisthobranchs, including the nudibranchs Bornella stellifer, Austraeolis ornata Angas, 1864, and Spurilla australis Rudman, 1982. Another species, Anoplodactylus carvalhoi has been reported to only eat nudibranch cerata (Piel, 1991). One of its main food items are juvenile Sea Hares and a recently published report (Cary, et al, 2000) investigated whether the diet-derived compounds in the Sea Hare Aplysia parvula acted as a deterrent against attack. Anoplodactylus evansi was not deterred from feeding on A. parvula by the diet-derived secondary metabolites from the red seaweeds Laurencia obtusa or Delisea pulchra. However, increasing the quantity of metabolites present in A. parvula by treatment with adult extracts did deter A. evansi from feeding, suggesting that high levels of diet-derived materials in sea hares may have deterrent effects against a predator. Aplysia parvula stores the bulk of its acquired algal secondary metabolites in its digestive gland, so pycnogonids would avoid exposure to high concentrations by rejecting this organ, and pycnogonids were sometimes observed rejecting the digestive gland when feeding on Sea Hares. Although Anoplodactylus evansi has been collected at several sites along the New South Wales coastline, and as far south as Tasmania, its local distribution seems to be very patchy. This is probably a result of its reproductive behaviour in which it broods its young, limiting dispersal to nearby seaweeds. This leads to resident populations of pycnogonids occurring at particular localities. Over a number of years Aplysia parvula was significantly less abundant on the red alga Laurencia obtusa at sites where there was a resident population of the pycnogonid. Anoplodactylus evansi is able to tolerate low levels of secondary metabolites and feed successfully on a wide variety of small opisthobranchs with different defensive substances. The opisthobranchs investigated here are known to sequester different metabolites and juvenile Aplysia parvula which contained secondary metabolites from the algae Laurencia obtusa or Delisea pulchra, were consumed nonetheless. This pycnogonid can apparently tolerate a variety of secondary metabolites in its diet, including compounds found in sponges, cnidarians, bryozoans, as well as opisthobranchs. References: Rogers, C.N., de Nys, R. & Steinberg, P.D. (2000) Predation on juvenile Aplysia parvula and other small Anaspidean, Ascoglossan and Nudibranch Gastropods by Pycnogonids. The Veliger, 43(4): 330-337. Piel, W. H. 1991. Pycnogonid predation on nudibranchs and ceratal autotomy. The Veliger, 34:366-367.

Care level for this coral... occasional feeding with prawn meat (once a week or two). It's a hard coral. It has a round skeleton. They are capable of expanding to many times its size. They don't sting. They can bleach like any other coral. My red one has been bleached before due to many chiller episode. It's now very white and pink. I am hoping it will recover soon. My green one is fine. As for anemones, yeah, they look lovely in a reef tank but when mine decided to start growing big, they were stinging my corals or brushing against them so much so that they don't open like they do before... so I removed them from my tank.

1 & 2. Scolymia Vitiensis (doughnut, meat, tooth or locally... 'roti prata'! 3. Anemone (long removed)

If you stay around TPY, there's a LH LFS shop selling at $3 a packet. If you stay near at Serangoon North ave 2, Petmart has them too.

I am of late prone to 'less LR, more open space' school of thought... too many tanks are of the 'rock wall' look.... and when you dive... you see stuff like pinnacles, valleys, caves, sand lagoons... and so I try to recreate that for my new tank. Many corals are sand dwelling and reefers place them on rocks mostly. Did you know that elegance corals are found on sandbeds, lying on THEIR SIDES? If you have a narrow tank like my old one, I have caves at the bottom and the rock wall look above. For my new tank's landscaping... I use rock racks to free up more space below for maximum flowthrough of water circulation and rock only to hold up some corals up higher mostly. To me, if you have a 'true' DSB (6" or more), you won't need much LR for denitrifying effect anyway, as a DSB has a much much wider surface area compared to an equal or more amount of LR. My advice to you is to do what you want... I think its a personal preference unless you are telling me that you are a true berlin style person, or if you have a very shallow sandbed, 1 or 2", then the more LR the better for your system. AT

I captured a video clip instead coz its hard to focus on & shoot the swimming worm... Swimming Worm in refugium

I paid them $100 to stand still facing right.. Actually, they are sandwiched between the glass wall and the black acrylic backdrop inside the tank... I think some of them have wedged themselves in too tight... and can't move no more! Yes I just saw a thin white worm about 2 cm long twirling in my water mid-column in my refugium. Haven't seen those 'mickey mouse' tunicates taking hold in my tank yet.