At long last.....

........I have my first fish!! Meet Krusty the Clown fish!! Cost me £17.95 from Swallows Aquatics in Colchester on Saturday! I have to say it was worth the wait and very rewarding to see him take to his new home so quickly and not immediately float to the surface dead! He seems to like it in there although he looks a bit lonely so im looking to get a second fish fairly quickly, what fish i don't know but until then Krusty will have the whole tank to himself, obviously minus the Clean Up Crew.

What the hell is that!!!!

It would appear that we have a new hitch hiker on board. I first noticed this "thing" a couple of weeks ago but didn't think anything of it, thought it was excess Algae growth or some kind of Coral. A few days ago tragedy struck! I noticed that one of my Peppermint shrimp had completely dissapeared, and it coincided with me really noticing movement with this "thing", with me panicing trying to find out what it was i searched the net! Got a couple of shots here.

So the search continued, and finally after checking about 20 different websites on Live Rock hitch hikers, it is called a Mossy Chiton, a form of sea slug. By the looks of it, completely harmless and a good cleaner although i am yet to have that confirmed. It moves pretty slow though so i doubt it will cause much of a threat to the other tank mates. As for my lost peppermint shrimp, i don't have a clue where that has gone! No sign of it at all!

I get my first Fish this saturday, a Percula Clown, to most people out there a "Nemo" fish. Hope he likes his new home!!

Another 2 weeks down!

Well people, it's been a couple of weeks since my last post, been a bit busy, but my boss has been bugging me to put another post on so he has more material to take the mickey out of me over, although secretly i think he is a bit jealous and is really getting tips on how to set his own tank up.

Since i last posted we have had some big changes, the main change is that finally, after 4 weeks of nothing much happening, the clean up crew is in!! YAY!! The crew consists of:

1 Cleaner Shrimp (I named him Jack)

2 Peppermint Shrimp (Pepper and Mint)

1 Red Legged Hermit Crab (Scarlet)

1 Blue Legged Hermit Crab (Bluey)

2 Star Snails (errrr called.......Snails!)

Here i have a lovely array of photos for you to look at and see how cool these creatures are!

This is the climitization process, the shrimp in the bags, adjusting to the temperature of the water. A tip is to add half a cup full of water to the bag every 5 minutes for about 20 minutes. Then disguard the water they came in and fish them out of the bag in a net.

Then this is the little guys in the tank getting to work and having a good clean up!

This is one of the Peppermint Shrimp.

I left the tank for a week and let the shrimp settle in then got hold of the crabs and snails. So that the crabs could move home if needed i added a few empty shells.

This is Scarlet the Red Legged Hermit Crab.

Hard to get a picture of Bluey but this is as good as i could get. There is a peppermint shrimp in the background trying to get in on the shot as well. Turns out they are posers, just like those idiots that stand behind news reporters, although the shrimp isn't able to give you the W****R sign!!

These are a couple of the extra shells i put in the tank incase the Hermits wanted to move home. As you can see, Scarlet the Cleaner Shrimp wanted in on the action as well.

Last but not least is a shot of one of the star snails, he is sitting on the rock slap bang in the middle of the photo. Note, he doesn't resemble a Star at all, more like a cone!

Water tests on Friday night showed that everything was absolutely bang on, and that i could probably put some fish in now however im going to wait another week or 2 just two make sure everything is spot on. My PH level is slightly high at the time of writing this so i have actually just finished doing a 10% water change which will hopefully reduce the PH a bit.

There you go Steve, that should give you a bit more ammo!!