The Silly Things Bristle Stars Do

For a while now I've seen where folks will exclaim that, during feeding, their stars will "reach out and catch" things as they drift by.  I always thought that was a little over-stated.

Two things have happened to start to sway my opinion:

I did a little "light" reading on Brittle Stars (how they aren't really starfish, their digestive system, nervous system, skeletal system, etc).  I learned the nerves in their legs are sensitive enough to detect light (which is how they know when it's dark even though they have no eyes), and that those nerves are also sensitive enough to be able to detect smell.

Over the past week or so, I've noticed that during feeding time (at least with mysis cubes) the Brittle Star, which generally has a few ends of his legs out on the substrate, will begin to sweep the substrate looking for food.  Today there was nothing of the Brittle Star exposed... until the cube hit the water.  Two or three legs came out from his hole almost immediately.  They were dancing around like a couple of Keystone Cops trying to get out of each others way.

Those legs didn't have too much luck with catching mysis... I noticed one, maybe two shrimp that the Brittle had caught.  It wasn't until I noticed the mysis starting to settle upon a rock positioned above his hole that I became a believer.  A leg pops out of a nearby hole, grabs the mysis directly, and disappeared back from where it came from.

I'm thinking that specific leg detected the odor of the mysis and went straight for it.  It's not quite like plucking food out of the water column that is drifting by, but almost.

So I think I'm more open toward comments as such.

It's also been a while since I've posted some pics.  Here's how things are going now:

Notice the tank has a mostly-green color.  That's the prevalent color of the species of coraline algae that is proliferating.

Looking closer at the coraline, it's still mostly green with some hints of purple at the top right and bottom left.  The bottom right rock seems to be encrusting with a grey coraline.  Hair algae can also be seen bottom left, as well as the last remnants of cyanobacteria.  The center rock, at it's bottom, shows the white color those rocks used to be.  And the mushrooms seems to be very happy.  The specs on the back of the glass are "chaeto critters", some sort of "pods".  They are everywhere.

Here you can see more purple and green coraline algae.  The anemone bowl is also starting to take some coraline.  The longer white specs on the bowl are some sort of tube worm.  The smaller specs are just substrate.  To the left, the chaeto can be seen.  It's about twice to three times as big as when I got it.  Not a good sign for my water, but at least I'm combating the nitrates and phosphates in some fashion.  Hopefully a RO/DI system is in my future.

I have a sponge and some sort of white feathery things on the vertical rock bottom right.  The Star Polyps (center) are still doing great, as is the Anthelia (top left).  The rocks to the left are still brown.  The purple coraline seem to prefer these rocks more than the green.

Look Ma! No Aiptasia!

Or mojano, either.

Went by the LFS today to spend my $20 weekly allowance (or at least it seems that way).  I've been waiting for a couple/few weeks to pick up some Aiptasia-X.

On a side note, I think I had a "Hey Norm" moment at the LFS.  The owner called me by my name, lol.

Fast forward - the wife wanted to watch because I'd built this stuff up so much, including showing her a video of what happens.  I did the hard-to-reach aiptasia first - the one on the back of the anemone bowl.  While she watched, she directed me since I couldn't judge depth too well since I was looking over the top of the tank through the surface.  She let me know when it was dead.

Then I hit the mojano.  We saw some sort of bristle worm come out of there once the mojano was dead.  The worm was maybe a little over an inch long.  She about freaked.  Makes a person wonder what else is in  the tank.

The last two aiptasia were pretty big.  Big enough I had to regroup for another vial full.  Those are now down, too.  Here's what that problematic rock looks like now.

The purple barren spots on the bottom left of this rock had two aiptasia anemones.  They are now gone.  Also the barren spots in the center (with the white clumps) was where the mojano anemone was.  RIP.

I'm hoping the Star Polyp Coral will reclaim those areas of deep purple in time.

Definitely a good $15 spent.  And there's plenty left over for whatever surprises I'm yet to get.

Oh yeah, and today's pictures.  The cyanobacteria is still continuing it's march.  Also had to clean the glass today of both diatoms and cyano.

Post Tribulation Observations

Don't let the title fool you.  We're not out of the woods yet, but things are beginning to look up.

(Still nothing in the skim cup... checking that almost every couple hours it seems).  The anemone has started to show signs of ... not being on the brink of death?  At least it's moving again inside it's bowl-shaped rock.

Speaking of the anemone's rock...  When I got the anemone, it was attached to a small not-quite fist-sized rock. While the water was drained down in the tank, I was attempting to pull the anemone out.  I had planned to put it in it's own water... just in case.  Short version - I wasn't able to remove the anemone (which gave me hope it was still alive prior to doing research on it), but I was able to remove the small rock it came attached to.  Apparently it re-situated itself in the last couple of days.  It's now attached to the bowl-shaped rock it's lived in for who-knows how many years.

With the anemone's old rock out, I simply put it in one of the buckets.  I thought I would let it dry out and maybe use it as a desktop remembrance if the anemone were to perish.

Once I began cleaning up the "triage", I removed the rock from the bucket I'd placed in it and put the rock temporarily on a TV tray.  I went to stack the bucket along with the other buckets and noticed something curled up in the bottom of the bucket about where the rock had been.  There's still a little saltwater left in there, so I thought maybe this "thing" was still viable.  I fish it out with the net and let it drop into the tank...  I still don't know whether that was good idea or a bad one since I don't know what it is.

It came alive once it hit the bottom.  It looked like it was attempting to borough under the crushed coral substrate.  It looked like a red leech with spikes running along the length of it's body on both sides.  The only reason I mention a leech is because it seemed to flatten itself out when attempting to burrow.

Here are some pictures of it.  I'll be looking it up when the thought hits me.

UPDATE - It's a Fire Worm, which is a type of Bristle Worm.  A very good member of the Clean Up Crew.  I wonder how many more there are...

UPDATE Mar 31, 2011 - There was a second fire worm in that rock.  Too bad that rock had been sitting in an empty bucket for three or four days.  It was DOA.