Mighty Morphin'

[andywg]

Well well well.

It seems the little Antennarius maculatus wants to be a different colour. He is almost text book copying the A. maculatus from Reef Fishes Volume 1 as can be seen by the pics below. For those that don't recall, when I bought him and got him home he was mostly a dark green with some orange on him:

Now though (one month later):

And I even got some of him with his lure out (first time I've had a camera when he has it out). He is currently sulking as he went to strike a shrimp and missed it. The shrimp jumped straight up into the flow of a powerhead and was blown across the tank meaning the frog will have to work for his dinner.

In other news, I still have the ribbon moray in the reef

I have a sea pen which seems to have rooted and begun feeding well (excuse the horrendous black sand in the tube of sand to keep him rooted)

As well as Aiptasia I also have a small number of Mojano

But I do have some pretty cool free algae from my recent live rock purchases (currently in the fuge)

 

[AK77]

That is one ugly-assed fish lol but really cool!

I watched a short documentary on video google about the reefs and marine life around the Philippines and it had these chaps in it. They use their fins to kind of walk around the rocks. It was really strange to watch. These have the fastest movement of any animal on earth. Something like 0.006 seconds to suck a fish into its gob.

It was pretty good. Lots of eye candy and information.

Link here

 

[fishwatcher]

Those are awesome creatures! I think he's just fantastic!

 

[Danno]

Could some of that algae be some grape calurpa? I can see some bowl shaped areas. Cool nonetheless.

 

[cheesy feet]

That fish is one sexy beast! If only I had the money for a marine tank.

 

[kkyyllee]

ugliest fish ive seen so far

 

[SkiFletch]

Nice pics Andy

 

[LuckyCricketMafia]

Very cool fish

 

[andywg]

Nice pics Andy

Nothing to do with me, all to do with the new camera. Fuji F31. It truly is the best point and click camera there is, despite being only 6 million pixels. Rather than getting morepixels in, Fuji concentrated on getting every pixel to be good.

I have seen shots of it up against a digital SLR and (while obviously inferior) it holds its own pretty well. I only really got it for diving (so have the underwater housing too) but it takes brilliant macro shots.

 

[zeo]

Wow, never seen anything like them before.
If you didnt say they were in your aquarium I woulda thought they were just some prop's from a sci-fi movie.

I was about to say the top one looks really fake

 

[@ombomb]

They do look like cratures from "Stopit and Tidyup"!

I'd love to keep one at some point.

 

[zeo]

They do look like cratures from "Stopit and Tidyup"!

I'd love to keep one at some point.

ah memorys.. Didnt they die or something?

 

[demonmagus]

love the algae - I saw it in a book once and it said 'rare' - ah well

 

[shibby]

looks awesome andy! i was ploughing through some books today and i have come to associate frogfish with you lol! saw a really nice pink one a colour morph i belive was nearly convinced to plough money into a nano for it! i also heard they will eat lionfish is this true?!

 

[andywg]

looks awesome andy! i was ploughing through some books today and i have come to associate frogfish with you lol! saw a really nice pink one a colour morph i belive was nearly convinced to plough money into a nano for it! i also heard they will eat lionfish is this true?!

Colour means nothing when identifying frogfish. Both A. pictus and A. maculatus have been seen in white, orange, red, yellow, green, pink, red, brown and black (often with more than one of the colours at a time). Also note that they can change their colour quite swiftly to match a camouflage site.

Frogs eat anything that fits into their mouth, including animals larger than themselves. They are completely unaffected by scorpionfish venom. Scott Michael tells a great story of keeping a frogfish (Antennarius sp) with a scorpionfish (Rhinopias sp). He put some grass shrimp into the tank to watch the two fish feed. as the scorpionfish walked around a rock stalking a shrimp, the frog ate the scropionfish. I have little doubt that the frog then preoceeded to eat the shrimp as well.

Scott Michael has also taken some amazing photos of a frog eating a lion which (with the fins extended) is much larger than the frog. The frog just grabbed the head and pushed the fins back as it swallowed down the lion.