Local Night Life

[George Burnt]

Last night I took a powerful flashlight to my aquarium to see if there is
anything happening in there at night. I was shocked!!!
My maderin was so white I thought it was dead! I did not lose as many
hermits as I thought, as my 140g seemed to have hundreds all over the place.
There was so many "bugs" that it looked like a donkey had died in my tank!
It was crawling with night life.
There is one creature that seems to number in the hundreds and looks to be
about 1/4-1/2 an inch long, looks like it has millions of legs, and the
hermits just crawled over it and ignored it. Would anyone know if these
"millipieds" are food for the manderin? Aquarium is about 5 years old and
have not added anything for almost two years, and fish all seem OK, so I am
assuming they are not harmful to fish, but I want to convert to a reef, are
these million-legged creatures harmful to a reef? If there are so many
critters in my tank, could I put in another Manderin fish?

[Marc Levenson]

Hi George,

Mandarins fade in color when the lights are out, possibly as a self-defense
measure. Mine almost got buried alive with sand sometimes, freaking me out.
Before you buy another one, please read this article.

http://www.melevsreef.com/mandarin_care.html

Also, mandarins only hunt for food during the daytime, so all that food at night
will go unnoticed.

You might be referring to bristleworms. Take a look on my ID page and see if
anything looks similar:

http://www.melevsreef.com/id/

Marc


George Burnt wrote:

> Last night I took a powerful flashlight to my aquarium to see if there is
> anything happening in there at night. I was shocked!!!
> My maderin was so white I thought it was dead! I did not lose as many
> hermits as I thought, as my 140g seemed to have hundreds all over the place.
> There was so many "bugs" that it looked like a donkey had died in my tank!
> It was crawling with night life.
> There is one creature that seems to number in the hundreds and looks to be
> about 1/4-1/2 an inch long, looks like it has millions of legs, and the
> hermits just crawled over it and ignored it. Would anyone know if these
> "millipieds" are food for the manderin? Aquarium is about 5 years old and
> have not added anything for almost two years, and fish all seem OK, so I am
> assuming they are not harmful to fish, but I want to convert to a reef, are
> these million-legged creatures harmful to a reef? If there are so many
> critters in my tank, could I put in another Manderin fish?

--
Personal Page: http://www.sparklingfloorservice.com/oanda/index.html
Business Page: http://www.sparklingfloorservice.com
Marine Hobbyist: http://www.melevsreef.com

[hyperoglyphe]

"George Burnt" > wrote in message
.. .
> Last night I took a powerful flashlight to my aquarium to see if there is
> anything happening in there at night. I was shocked!!!

[...]

I was very surprised when I did the same thing and found a 2 inch dark
purple sea slug cruizing across the glass. I have no idea where it came
from. I thought it was the snails doing that grazing.

Dave