Life In A Bowl

[Donya]

I managed to get a semi-focused pic of the progress on my 1 gallon:

Perhaps still not terrebly exciting, but I'm working on populating it with corallimorphs. There are 6 or 7 in there now. The white ones won't have shown up, but I think you can see one of the pink ones as a fuzzy bubblegum-colored blob on the substrate. I still don't know why they went for the bottom...I've tried putting them all sorts of places and they wiggle themselves back down there.

At one point there were 3 hermits, but I had to take one out because it kept getting into a fish with one of the others. My trochus also went and ate a bunch of cyano that I didn't know was there and croaked within 12 hours of eating it (Trochus = great brown fuzz busters, but seems they fall under the category of snails that don't handle cyano well). The tank is doing alright snail-less so far...params are stable, and the macro is out-competing the fuzz.

 

[Lynden]

Even though your tanks are small, Donya, you sure as hell do a good job with them

Good luck with the corralimorphs

-Lynden

 

[Donya]

Well, I don't know if I'd call my 12 gallons of nightmares a good job...it recently ran out of control and will probably creep over and kill me in my sleep soon if I don't hack it back.

At least the animals are happy. Fortunatey though the LFS wants to do a trade for some heaps of macro

 

[Donya]

Found a pic that actually has my original coralimorph showing up better...a nice little happy pink guy:

There are 3 in that picture total, but the one with the brightest color (oldest one of the lot) is the only one that ever shows up.

 

[Lynden]

They're like tiny anemones I actually didn't know what corallimorphs were until you made a post on them a while back.

And now I hijack your thread and ask, are they really just little anemones in body structure? Or are they different? They sure seem to be a lot hardier.

-Lynden

P.S., is your "Curly Cue" aiptasia still alive? They sound interesting and hardy, I was thinking about getting one. Not much of a threat to my Cladiella either

 

[Donya]

From what I understand, they are the inbetween things like riccordea/hairy shrooms and anemones. They have traits of both softies and nems. The tentacles have stinging tips, although it's not enough to hurt most inverts, but they also have the purse string closing style--they snatch stuff with their tentacles, pull it in, then purse string close on it. Oddly I've not read about them being all that hardy. Seems random luck whether the conditions are met. Not a lot is know about them, at least nothing in writing that I've found.

My little nem is still alive and well, but I am seriously doubting whether it is even Aptaisidae anymore. Superficially it looks like a pudgy curlicue, but it has a second set of whopper tentacles that it shoots out whenver it gets distressed. They are definitely not digestive filaments; I've checked several times. So far I've been lucky and managed to avoid getting nailed with those but it killed a bristleworm with one zap from the long set, and any macro algae in the way gets "fried" as well. Fortunately it's well behaved unless I jiggle the rock around that its attached to. It doesn't seem to like especially bright light, which is odd. It comes out the most at night. So, I wouldn't necessarily use my nem as a model for curlycue nems since it is tentatively back to being a Nemmus unknowniformus LOL

 

[Donya]

After some work on the digicam I have another semi-focused update pic. The bowl is not quite what it was originally intended to be since the two gargantuan brisleworms that I was keeping in the bowl finally seem to have pinched themselves into a bunch of 1" really fat wormlets and show no aggression anymore. While that was going on, the white ball corallimorphs I was cultivating managed to take over most of the substrate surface, making it impossible to keep any cleanup crew in the tank since, although they are cute and really awsome, they have a strong sting that can fry most anything. Fortunately I found that a couple minutes with a stiff-bristle toothbrush once in a blue moon keeps the front sparkling, so no need to torment any further cleanup crew...moved everything in that depatment to my 12g where it's content. I also added some other polyps as an experiment, since the corallimorphs arn't rock-goers. Not sure if it will work out in the end, but if it fails I have an alternate home for the polyps. Seems ok so far, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that turf wars don't start up and get out of hand. At any rate, it's not bad for a desk ornament and periodic distraction from work & study...I do love those little pink guys even if they did kick out my hermits lol

Best shot I could get (corallimorphs are hard to see...they're fully extended and therefore a bit too translucent to show up well)

btw I left off a shot with the top of the tank...that's deliberate because quite frankly, the rim is hideous right now LOL. With the hermits and snails out, the lid is unnecessary (evap is under control without it), and I sorta didn't notice that over time this ugly greenish black sludge had caked on underneither the rim...so I get to deal with that this weekend