Category: fishtank

We finally got a second glimpse of this creature!

No idea what this is called. We’ve been calling it the “zebra naked snail” – it’s a black-bodied snail-like creature, about an inch long, with yellow spots and a white and black patterned mini-shell. I’d seen him for an instant a few weeks ago (by the time I realized that I had no idea what he was, he’d vanished), and then Kevin got photographic proof of the second sighting.

Very neat.

We went to the fish store on Saturday, and put some gift certificates from Christmases past to good use, buying our first corals for the new tank. So exciting! We now have a little pink pom pom xenia in the back, pulsing away. It’s in a pretty low-flow spot near the back wall, and it seems happy there.

And some spectacular zoos – half are shades of kelly green with yellow fringe, and the others are red with blue centers and yellow fringe. (Note blue-legged hermit crab, just to the left.)

It’s a little frag now, but it will hopefully get its feet under itself soon and start growing. The colors are so bright. We put it near the front, so you can see this one from the kitchen and the table.

And that green!!

And then on the side by the futon, we have these subtle pink zoos. They were only $10, but I think they are so pretty.

The tank is starting to really purple up nicely, especially in the paths of the blowers.

We’re planning to swap out one of our purple lights for a white, which should help some of the color shift you can see here. (After you look at the tank for a few minutes, everything has vivid yellow cast to it when you look away.)

Our little tank watcher has been very busy keeping an eye on the snails and hermit crabs. Here he is, checking up on them after dinner.

[Catching up in Fall 2012 on the missing posts from Fall 2011.]

We filled the tank a few days ago, only to find that the stand made a horrible vibrating sound when the pumps turned on. Bummer. Discouraging. So here’s our solution, tons of vibration dampening gel/foam, cut in squiggles and laid inside the stand for the refugium to rest on.

And a zoom out to show Kevin’s pretty plumbing inside the stand. Ooh.

[Catching up in Fall 2012 on the missing posts from Fall 2011.]

I rather gleefully decided that it was my turn to try to make some progress on the PVC needed in the garage. Kevin had to walk me through all of the bits of equipment (skimmer, sump, water tanks, pumps) and I had to go back and forth from the house to the garage several times to get a handle on all of the pipes through the wall. There’s a main loop (gravity fed from the main tank through the sump and skimmer, then back into the refugium, then pumped from the refugium back up to the main tank), and a closed loop (from the main tank back into the main tank, only adds circulation, no filtering). The main loop has a valve so that we can quickly drain water from the tank for water changes. (No more lugging 5 gallon buckets and making siphons!!! I’m so excited about this part.) We’ll have a large fresh water reservoir off to the left, and two smaller salt water mixing containers for water changes – all three will pour into the sump, either gravity fed or pump fed.

So, armed with my chart, I started cutting and measuring and scheming. I moved the two pumps under the table instead of under the sink (since they aren’t supposed to be in contact with water, and the sink sometimes splashes. Should also reduce some of our sound. It will make the skimmer placement a bit easier, and it requires less run of pipe for the pumps, and fewer twists and turns so the water flow should be greater. The blue post its are where I need Kevin to drill through the counter top.

The original plan had been to use flexible tubing to get the water back up to the main tank. I think it’s going to be easier to make that rigid, though.

So fun. PVC is so satisfying.