Welcome Princess Grace!

We have had some major algae growth! It's even starting to grow on our hermit crabs which are meant to be in the tank to eat the algae! 

However, fear not as we now have our latest addition, Princess Gracitas or Grace, a lawnmower blenny who will hopefully join forces with Bella the cowrie snail and the crabs to clean up the algae hair invasion!

Lots of new developments!

Quite a bit has changed since my last post! 

1) We have a supply of live food as the pink ladies appear to be quite picky eaters! We currently have a mix of daphnia which we are breeding, and brine shrimp. Did try some blood worms but they didn't seem to be anyone's cup of tea so they were soon ditched! They were gross anyway!

The tub to the left is the breeding tub, and we will be feeding from the other three tubs. We are feeding the daphnia a mix of dry active yeast and bicarbonate of soda. We are hoping to get these ladies onto the same frozen food as the others eventually though.

2) Marcel has bought and installed a wave maker to simulate the natural currents of the sea, and Nemo and Olaf are loving it!

The foam padding is to satisfy Marcel's paranoia that the fish won't get sucked in!

3) We also have a protein skimmer which bubbles the water up into foam and then collects the foam which has dirt in to clean the water.

The pink ladies!

As you may have already seen, we recently bought five new additions for the tank! Welcome to our marine world: Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow White, Ariel and Mulan. These are tukas anthias and are currently all females. Apparently one may turn into a male and this one will be called Mulan - this might make more sense for people who know this story!

Marine Care 101

We probably should have started this sooner but luckily all is still well! 

We have bought a marine care test kit which measures the pH, level of ammonia, nitrites and nitrates. Boring stuff but necessary. 

I have been told various other test kits are available to test for magnesium, calcium etc before we are able to have corals. Will keep you posted!

Home cooked food is the best!

I think we may be getting a little bit obsessed with this fish keeping business but we looked into making our own fish food as 1) it seemed like fun and 2) it would be much cheaper than store bought food if it worked!

And........the fishes loved it! Here's our recipe:

40g each of defrosted prawns, white fish and mussels

20g of ready made salad

2  cubes of store bought frozen brine shrimp

The mixture was blended with a splash of orange juice and water, and frozen in a food bag

We barely broke into the supply of frozen food we bought for this project so this stuff is gonna last us forever! For our next batch, we are going to include some peas, zucchini, squid, octopus and vitamins - will keep you posted if it's a success!

Homemade feeding device!

So...we had a bit of a problem with Nemo being a bit of a greedy bugger, he would often consume all the food before any of the others had a chance to even sniff it! Needless to say, he is now a bit more rotund than when we first got him!

Anyway, Marcel constructed an amazing device which now allows the frozen food to melt and disperse before it is leaked into the tank through small holes. And now everyone gets their fair share of dinners!