FInding new life

While studying my refugium very closely tonight, I saw a tiny shell move. I watched intently, but it was so small that I had to get a magnification loop to see whether it was a itty bitty hermit crab or a snail. The shell is the shape of a Cerith snail, and I didn't try to touch it to see if it was hard or soft. It turns out it is a tiny snail, and it travels on the sand and the acrylic walls. I checked the other refugium and found more of them. I don't know where they came from, and I'm hoping they aren't something I'm going to regret later. I did take a few pictures, but it may be hard to ID them. After all, they are very very very small, maybe 1mm wide and 2 - 3mm long.

It was kind of fun studying the substrate line with the magnification loop. I saw smaller bristleworms that normally would be overlooked, and tiny white (benign) flatworms. I also came across a few brittle stars. Also interesting to see were tiny pods swimming in the corner. Pods are the food we want in our tanks for some species such as Mandarin fish. Under magnification, I was able to notice they have a tiny hairlike tail. It was very short, but you might compare what I saw to a tadpole. I couldn't make out the body, but I did see more than I've seen to date.

And it is very cool to report that my Frogspawn is developing a second head. I've had it for months in my 29g, and it was a single head, but tonight while on flashlight duty I could see that it is elongated and the center had a bubble formed. I don't know how long it will take but it is definitely going to happen.

On a more somber note, some corals recently have taken a turn for the worse in this same tank, and I don't know why. I've done three 10g water changes for three consecutive days, hoping to resolve what was wrong. One coral was immediately put in the 55g and it looks better. Another coral (Psammacora can be viewed on my ID page) looks faded, unhealthy. I believe it has begun to color up again, but I'll know for sure in the next 48 hours. A nice group of zoanthids look like they are in trouble again.

Tomorrow I'm going to recalibrate my refractometer and see if my salinity reading is off. And I'll do the weekly water tests too. It might be a chemical warfare issue, because the tank has a ton of red mushrooms again. Running carbon might help clean things up that I can't test for.