The first part of the road to is here. Yesterday I cleaned the aquarium and was able to see what was living in there again (or not). All the short stories can also be found under the topic for the specific inhabitant together with some pictures.

The Fish

The Flame Angelfish hasn’t been seen for a while, I’m afraid he is no longer alive. Hope that I am wrong about it but I fear the worst.

Then there is the Salarias, still doing well. He is the main reason for not cleaning the windows too often, that’s where he gets most his food nowadays. All the rocks are clear of algae except for the brown stuff covering parts of it. Mostly it’s covered with a grey dust like substance.


The Foxface is also still doing well. His favourite hiding place is still near/inside the toadstool mushroom. He now also eats from my hand and seems to be stress free, hopefully the rebuilding doesn’t cause him to stress as much again.


The Blue Tang is hiding a lot lately. You can still see him between or behind the rocks, but he doesn’t appear much in the front anymore. Might have something to do with the lack of green algae on the rocks now. Also the reason I couldn’t get a picture of him.

The clownfish are doing well together, they still eat from my hand. Also with cleaning I finally found a way to make sure the male didn’t attack me, I used gloves. The idea was that I wouldn’t feel much of him biting me, but currently he is still scared of it…so that also works :p


The firefish still does as he always did, hiding a lot. Just like yesterday, so I couldn’t get a picture of him. But he still looks fine.

The Corals

The first stone with button polyps, it grew pretty fast when I first got them, but now the brown stuff makes it hard for the buttons to open. The location it now has is a good one, but it will move a bit in the new situation. Also hope the brown stuff stays away then.


The toadstool mushroom is still strong and big. It has a lot of small fragments now, two of them growing pretty big already. I’m going to leave the small fragments alone, unless they start to be in the way of each other or break by accident like one part already did.
The small fragment got lost unfortunately. Maybe it will show up when I take everything out, or maybe it is dead now. Hope for the best of course, was really curious if it would do good by itself.



The Xenia is slowly dying, or maybe it is eaten by something/someone. Not sure if it will have a place in the new environment when it keeps going like this, might decide to leave it out.


The star polyps still have trouble with the algae. Hopefully after rebuilding things will be better/easier. In the new situation I also want to give them a new spot, hopefully that helps also.


The green mushroom is growing well, just like the red mushroom. Don’t really think I will change their location much. I am hoping I can find some loose mushrooms in other colours to add to the rock, because I like the colour variation on it. Only then the Halimeda has to be removed.


The Kenya tree is also doing fine, he is going to be hard to get out though. It has attached itself to the rock behind it. So I’m afraid that we have to be very careful when getting it out, not to damage it.


The colony polyps also have trouble with the algae, also a part of it fell behind the rocks. I hope to find that when we take everything out, if it didn’t die yet. And also hope that the algae problem will end after the rebuild.


Invertebrates
The peppermint shrimps, haven’t had much fun of them so far, and actually don’t really think they are still alive either. Hope to find them when removing the rocks, but don’t really expect it.

The sand shifting sea star seems to have disappeared. While cleaning the sand a bit yesterday couldn’t feel or see anything that looks like the sea star. No idea what happened, but hope to find him soon.

The blue sea star also nowhere to be found. My hopes for him are even less, since I’m really afraid that losing his arm was too much for him. But who knows what surprises come out when we take out the rocks.

Then finally an invert that is still visible, the tube worm. He does hide a lot during the day time, but at night he is always visible.


Also one that shows a lot, except for yesterday when I took pictures, the dwarf red tip hermit. He is an excellent cleaner so far, for such a small animal. You can really see where he has been. I’m thinking of maybe buying one or two more, maybe different hermits.

The little fan worms don’t come out of their shell much anymore. Hopefully new ones will show after rebuilding, because they will probably be damages by the whole process.

The Bulb anemone has disappeared also. He wasn’t doing well, got more grey and smaller each day. Tried feeding him by hand directly, but that didn’t help much either. And all of a sudden he is gone. He was still able to move, I have seen that, but don’t know if he moved now or is dead.

The cleaner shrimp is one of the inverts that is still alive and visible, at least…not when I’m taking pictures, but still often visible :p

Both the sea anemones spotted earlier have been killed now. Unfortunately now new ones appeared on the rock where the toadstool mushroom is located, so back where we started. But we will take care of those next week when taking everything out.

Plants (Algae)

Besides the brown algae stuff that is a problem now, and the grey stuff on the rocks which I don’t know what it is there are also nice algae.

The Neomeris has been overgrown by the brown and grey stuff. I’m afraid I have to declare it dead and gone, because there isn’t a single one to be found anymore.

The Halimeda has less trouble with the brown and grey stuff, it’s still expending rapidly. It’s a good sign though, because it lives of Calcium, which is also food for a lot of corals, so if the Halimeda can grow the corals using it can also grow perfectly.


Then there is the Grape algae. We are trying to keep it rather big, and let it grow over the back wall now. I hope it will continue to do so when we rebuild the whole aquarium and it has a new location.


And finally, we have this balloon like algae thing. No idea what it is yet, but it is pretty hard. It is getting bigger and bigger.


And that’s an update on every non closed topic so far.