squintin

i've seen my brittle star kill the entire molt of one of my peppermint shrimps before. not quite sure how the brittle star would be fast enough to catch a live shrimp though...those things are quick!

went by again today too and man...sad how it looks so much more empty now. i guess i'm in the minority when i see stores close but this store's been here since i was in elementary school (and quite possibly even before that!). hate to see a staple of my 20+ years here to just vanish like that.

hmm... so apparently now everyone's doing their own thing and i see no bones or corpse in sight. is that normal? just don't want the nitrates to suddenly spike but i really can't find any sort of body like...anywhere...

yea...an hour after taking the pictures all the shrimp and crabs were off doing their own thing while the star was hidden in its cave, clownfish body unseen. stingy indeed!

i was thinking that too when i was photographing this. there was no way i was beating that lionfish picture though!

so for reasons unknown to me, my clown decided to plop dead on me today even though nothing picks at it and it gets fed plenty. very strange and a little disheartening especially when its buddy is doing just fine. clean up crew looks mighty happy though!

for tanks themselves, they had a marineland oceanic 12 gallon cube for $95.99. said it was originally $160 which is around the cheapest i can find it online. wanted to get one but figured that it's smaller than my current 14 gallon biocube and if i'm going to spend any money on more equipment, it best be for something bigger and better. good for someone looking for a nano though! i also saw the marineland 5 gallon hex for $35.39. i've seen it cheaper online but usually with shipping extra. i hate wanting more tanks...

the petco near my area (herndon, at the clocktower off centreville road) is closing. they still have a pretty good amount of stuff so if you're looking to stock up on food, test kits, or whatever, they're advertising 30-50% off. just an fyi.

they're still in the tank. after destroying my hammers, it appears that they've cooled off a bit and have yet to choose their next target. either that or they just really liked hammers for some reason. my frogspawn doesn't look as good as it did before but it doesn't appear that there are chunks ripped from it or anything. just doesn't want to open for some reason i suppose. the hammer actually looks a little as though it's trying to grow back though! guess only time will tell... i have noticed that the shrimps refuse to touch this one aiptasia that i've been eyeing for the last month. must be just too lazy to clean when i end up overfeeding the tank.

saw this in person yesterday. pretty cool setup!

well...woke up this morning and found the last head half gone. guess overfeeding the tank wasn't enough to save it

somehow when i checked this morning, those little puckers managed to escape the breeding net. they still looked really pale and clear in the morning but now when i check them, they look as though they've regained their color and my hammer coral is still intact (for now). this is just weird....

well this is kind of odd... after netting the peppermints for a couple hours, i noticed that both of their stripes started to fade. now they appear to be almost clear. is this something i should be worried about? too much stress?

just as i feared. came back to see the remainder of the one head gone. ended up catching them and confining them to a breeder net. going to check the next few days to see if the last head can recover from this entire ordeal, since it looks like it's had a couple heads clipped off. those empty coral skeletons sure do look depressing...

i'd like to say i'm pretty sure it's not a camel shrimp since it doesn't have the obvious hump, and it seems to look a lot more like the pictures i see of peppermints over camels. obviously i could be wrong, but then again, i've read that camels don't touch aiptasia and my tank was filled with those until the shrimp were added. i've seen them dig into coral after i feel the tank with them simply picking out the food and running into their caves, but every morning i wake up now with a little less coral. it really does appear to be because the one shrimp is carrying eggs now though, since that's the only thing that's changed in the last week. i'm just hoping that when i go home tonight, i'll still have the 1.5 heads remaining so i can try and isolate the shrimps into a breeder net or something...

well i'm not 100% sure it's them since i haven't exactly caught them in the act, but i really can't think of anything else in my tank that would be the culprit. just seems odd that they'd randomly decide to start going nuts now...

or at least that's what i think it was. for some background, i had a bit of an aiptasia problem until i introduced some peppermint shrimp into the tank. they quickly rid my tank (14 gallon) of the pest and until now, were seemingly happy with just pick off whatever food i was feeding the tank. unfortunately, i've lately discovered that my hammer coral, which originally had 3 heads, is now down to 1 and a half. at this rate, it means that i will no longer have a hammer coral by either saturday or sunday. has anyone ever had this happen to them?! the only difference i've noticed from before (when they wouldn't eat my coral) to now is that one of the shrimp appears to be carrying eggs. must be the cravings...