These photos were taken on 12 Feb 13 of the new pico aquarium I setup. I guess I should try to post the latest photos because it looks very, very different now.
One thing I must say is I will never buy live rocks from Jireh Marine Aquarium anymore because they are not properly treated and are ridden with lots of algae. When I came back from the trip, all the filamentous and bubble algae were growing all over the rocks and have spread throughout the aquarium. In fact, there are strands of the algae on my feather duster fanworm tube and I am pondering how to remove it. Meanwhile, I removed two of the worst algae covered live rocks from the aquarium to prevent further spreading of the algae although I think the damage was already done.
Now everything I feed Sunny and the pink Suns, it becomes a feeding frenzy for Felicia the elusive Fire Shrimp, Chris the Skunk Cleaner Shrimp, the Sexy Shrimps, Penny the Pom Pom crab and even the Nassarius snails. All the shrimps learnt to station themselves next to the Sun Corals and snatch whatever mysis shrimps that they can land their hands, oops I mean, claws on immediately after I feed them. Next to the pink sun are some unknown purple sponges? Only time will tell what they are. Today I even spotted a small crab, which probably hitch-a-hike from the other corals that I am temporarily holding here before introducing them to my office tank.
Yes, my colleague bugged me to start a new pico reef in the office and that was what I did. We started one just a couple of days ago and there is now Franco the Clown Fish with two feather duster fan worms. I will be bringing the Jasmine Polyp that I kept in the breeding container shown here soon.
By the way, the 16th photo onwards were taken using my iphone 5. From one of the photos, Coco can be seen growing out 2 new crowns. Thanks goodness!
It's almost the end of the month soon and before I list down all the live stock I have in this pico aquarium of barely 27 litres, I will post more photos of them in my small tank.
Penny has become bolder and has been seen venturing out into the open more often now, especially when the Sexy Shrimps are blatantly swinging their butts all the time.
I just pity the mini Zoas and mushrooms because now they get trampled all over all the time.
Coco is opening up beautifully, I must say. Oh, I think I have been neglecting Claudia for a while and haven't been paying much attention to her despite her efforts of sashaying across the waters all the time. She too, appears to be hosting the single red mushy amongst the mini green Zoas.
By the way, I feel very freaked out by the Nassarius snails because they glide at incredible speeds across the aquarium. When I fed Sunny yesterday, one of them appeared out of nowhere and climbed all over it. After feasting on Sunny's food, the detritus eating snail went back into its hiding place in the sand and sent out its long proboscis, like an alien's probe out of the sand. I tell you, their behaviour is creeping me out.
Looking at all these, I feel tempted to do a 1.5 ft tank instead so that I can house more stuff.
The title may be a bit confusing. It does not mean I used to be a marine, but that I used to keep a 3 feet (about 180 litres) marine tank, mainly stocked with fishes and soft corals, then downsized it to 1.5 feet then completely stopped keeping any aquarium from 2006 onwards.
I was suffering from a bad back then and had no choice but to give up my hobby because I had a hard problem keeping up with the regular water changes.
In fact, I have been keeping freshwater fishes for so many years before finally taking the plunge to delve into the marine aquarium hobby sometime around 2003. Sadly, I don't have many past photos to put up and when I do, like these photos, I discovered that my lighting was bad. The lights I put up did not show my aquarium in good light, literally.
Anyway, it was a hobby that was both gratifying and yet gruelling. Gratifying because I really had fond memories sitting in front of the marine aquarium everyday and at every moment staring at the swimming fishes, which included my favourite clown fishes, banana and sixline wrasses, fire gobies, damsels, and invertebrates, such as cleaner shrimps, leather corals, mushrooms, star polyps, feather duster worms, zoanthids, Xenias, with their polyps etc all waving against the water currents. It was gruelling because this hobby was time consuming and a lot of hard work went into keeping it this way. All the water changes were a nightmare because every week was spent maintaining my aquarium where I had to bring buckets of water too and fro between the aquarium and the bathroom and to wash the sand and so on. Eventually due to neglect, cyanobacteria won the battle and covered my entire aquarium with the slimy red algae and I officially ended the marine aquarium saga.
It was a very bittersweet experience, I must say, and a lot of experience I did pick up. Even though I gave up my marine aquarium for years, I continue to keep freshwater aquariums in small tanks of about 10-15 litres. Of late, I picked up the interest in keeping crystal shrimps. Now, I have a renewed interest to start a pico marine aquarium again towards this year end although I know I must cut back on a lot of my favourite fishes and corals.
I am currently scouting around for the materials and will be converting my former freshwater tank, which I am using to keep plants, to a saltwater one soon. With a capacity of only about 10 litres, I know there are a lot of limitations but unless I try to push the boundaries, I won't know what I can achieve with it. I must admit that El Fab's Pico Reef:2007-2010 gave me a lot of inspiration.
