What happens when you let your saltwater tank evaporate off for a month or so, then do a water change?

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The punchline here is BABIES.  It turns out that some sea animals, in this case featherdusters, some kind of worm, and snails all like to reproduce when they are put under stress.  Specifically the salinity dropped from 40+ PPT (S.G. 1.032) to 28-30 PPT (S.G. 1.021), the temperature probably dropped as I added room temperature or colder water.  I also agitated the tank with a turkey baster to help the filter pick up snail waste and to dislodge some stubborn algae.

Anyways, here are some pictures of the creatures I noticed, including some nocturnal bristleworm looking things, and copeopods, which I missed in my last post about the denizens of the tank.

These guys crop up with some regularity actually.  I suspect some of them dont make it, and others rapidly grow up.  Occasionally I see some that are just 1-2mm long, this one was about twice that size.

At first glance, this is just a really bad photo of the aquarium where the AF decided to focus on the glass.  But when I looked closer…

 

 

 

I noticed teeny tiny feelers coming out of this guy.  When I tapped the glass, he snapped back into his coil-thing, just like the featherduster!  I can only assume that they are related.  I can’t wait for these to grow up; there are a whole bunch of them sprinkled around the aquarium.

This guy may not be a baby, but it certainly caught my attention with its weirdly bifurcated body.  It seems to be due to trauma and not genetic, because one side is much longer and the bifurcation did not seem to be symmetrical.

This guy (to the right of the pink thing in the middle) is a copeopod.  These are ALL OVER the tank, and they feed on pretty much anything.  They like to pester the featherdusters (the burrow/shell of which can be seen directly below the ‘pod).

Thats all for now.  Tomorrow I may go chiton hunting somewhere on the shore of mass, so there may be forthcoming posts about that!

Despite having added only live rock and snails, the 5 gallon hex tank is showing an amazing amount of macro biodiversity.  This is a short post to document what is growing in there!

These guys are the workhorse of the algae fighting army.  There are many of them, in many shapes and a variety of sizes.  They like to crawl up and down the sides of the tank, and will occasionally congregate there.  Sometimes they hitch a ride on the back of larger snails!

If I had to pick the coolest looking species of snail in the tank, it would be the Florida cerith.  Between their green coloration and rippled shell, they are hard to beat!  Not to mention these snails can self-right themselves!  These are are the largest snails in the tank.

If you zoom in you can tell this is a nassarius on a florida cerith snail.  The nassarius is easily distinguished by its single long stalk that probes for algae.  These guys are speedy!

My nerites are identifiable by the deep grooves that run along their round shells.  they have two long feelers, unlike the nassarius.  These guys are also very speedy.  Here, the nerite is harassing a dwarf cerith.

This guy was quite the find! It came as a hitchhiker on some live rock I bought.  It seems to have grown some since the rock was introduced, and it certainly is less skittish now.  there is another one on the same rock with a green/purple coloration, but it is hard to get a picture of that one because it is shy and very well hidden.

I thought this stuff was algae, but I was wrong!  It turns out to be purple cyanobacteria.  Its HUGE, and the snails seem to nibble at it from time to time.  I really don’t mind it, although it is considered a pest.

Thats all for now!  Maybe I will notice more stuff as time goes on.