Category: fishtank 2008

I’ve been waiting to post a photo of our new little dude due to superstition. I wanted to give him a few days to make sure he was healthy and coping with the transition to his new home before sharing the photos.

He’s easier to catch on film than our last yellow tang, but still does his fair share of darting away, resulting in photos like the one above. He really doesn’t trust us, but he spends a lot of time, fins flared, dead still despite the current, just watching when we come into view.

I’m totally enamoured with him.

We took my parents to the fish store, and came home with a new xenia and the tang. He didn’t eat for the first two days until we moved the nori clip to the bottom third and back of the tank, at which point he tucked in with enthusiasm. Over the last week, we’ve moved it to the bottom half of the front of the tank, and he’s still eating which is obviously making us cheerful.

We have him on the kitchen counter in the 10 gallon quarantine tank. Some pvc elbows for cover, a 600 maxijet for circulation, a filter with carbon, and a CPR Backpack II skimmer. We’ll keep him there for a month, barring any signs of illness. On day four we started noticing black ich (little pin-points of black – it’s a tubeworm that tangs are very prone to) and some sort of unidentifiable fuzzy, white, fibrous growth by his right tang. We did a pH-adjusted freshwater dip, which seemed to take care of the black ich, and the next morning the white fuzz seemed quite diminished. We’re keeping an eye on him, and he might get another dip soon if the fuzz doesn’t completely disappear. He’s been very active and eating, dealt well with the dip, and doesn’t seem stressed (knock on wood). Here he is careening around the tank while we did a water change after the dip:

Click and Clack joined us three years and a week ago! So, a belated birthday to them!

Kevin got some great closeups of Click:

And of Clack:

Here’s to many more!

Well, we have a new dude in the tank. We took Kevin’s family to the fish store on their last day here. (To be fair, we merely suggested it as an activity and then they asked – we didn’t drag them.) Along with the typical late December purchases of new lights, more sand, and the hermit crab and snail cleaner crew, we brought home an emerald crab.

The upside to emerald crabs is that some people claim that they eat bubble algae (a constant nuisance, and we have plenty). On the other hand, many people say that they also eat corals, other crabs, and any rock-dwelling fish (like the gramma) that they can corner. I don’t doubt it – those claws are pretty big. But Kevin’s family was here, he loves them, and he promised to trap it and bring it back to the store at the first sign of problems, and so we came home with one.

Once in the tank, he promptly acted like a crab (ie, dissapeared into the rocks and became nocturnal). We’ve seen him a handful of times since.

See him? His green forearms and pinchers are hugging the top of the acro. (There’s also a brown shell of a hermit crab on the acro just under the tips of the crab’s claws, and the pointy purple shell of a medium-sized snail to the left.)

I’m still deeply distrustful, and Kevin’s disappointed that he isn’t more visible. New name: Green Monster? He’s certainly big enough…