We finally have a fish!! Want to see him?
Yeah. We can’t see him either. He’s a royal gramma, which sounded like a great fish to start with until we got him home, he disappeared into our live rock, and we googled for a bit more information. It turns out that these fish live in caves that they either find or make in the rocks in your tank. They venture forth occasionally, but mostly just stay in their lair. Our guy booked for the rock as soon as we let him into the tank. The entrance is in the back, and therefore invisible to us, but we can see through a tiny hole in the rock to part of his cave (The dark patch in the center of the photo above has about a 1/3″ hole in the back and we can sometimes see part of his fin.) So, basically we’re doing more rock watching.
Speaking of the rock, though, you can see some of our coralline algae (the maroon, purple, and pink on the rocks) — this is supposedly highly desirable and shows that we have good calcium carbonate levels in our tank. The plant at the bottom is about 2 inches in circumference. We had a worm munching on it, but he’s finally stopped. To the upper left of the fish lair cave, you can see five of our unidentified purple tube polyps: they have brown fringed exteriors and bright green interiors and are about 3 mm across. They look like short stumpy purple tubes when they’re closed. I’d love to know what they are. Finally, doesn’t the white rock w/ the splash of red just above the fish lair look like a skull with a bloody mouth? It gives me the creeps.
Really, you say. Enough gushing about the rocks! Show me a fish! Well, our guy is getting a little braver, so I got a photo:
Isn’t that great? You can see a millimeter of his purple head if you squint through that little opening there. So far he’s out of his lair, but sticks right by the entrance to it on the back side of the tank.
Since Kevin and I probably have more patience with this game than you do, here’s the best shot I have:
In person, he’s a lot more magenta than royal purple towards his head. I think that the flash and the tank lights are responsible for the odd color. I had to crawl around the side of the tank to get this shot, but isn’t he pretty?!
I love that you have so much to say about your fish and knitting! I know how much fun a new aquarium can be (I was really into freshwater tanks for a while, but have none after my move across the country) and it makes me want to buy a new one to relive that.