Starting a reef tank

"Pszemol" wrote on Mon, 1 Oct 2007 :
"Don Geddis" wrote in message ...
Another example, mandarin fish - it is difficult because it will only eat
live plankton. Because it is usually hard to have plenty of live plankton
in the reef tank carying for a mandarin is difficult, but only in certain
situations (small tank, new tank etc). After a while, when reef is mature
and tank is big enough to support a mandarin, carying for that fish is
EASIER than carying for other fish: mandarin will feed itself from the
rocks!

Yeah, I've got a couple of those too. Even easier than the regular fish: I
don't even have to feed them! I have no concern that I can take off on
vacation for a week or two, and the mandarins might starve. Maybe the other
fish, but not the mandarins.

I got a "reef safe" black spiny sea urchin at one point. Only to discover
that within half an hour it basically found and devoured one of the rose
clones. I pulled the urchin off, but the anemone was hard and bleached
white over 3/4 of its body. I'll admit, I threw that one out (and
returned the urchin).

Well... Urchin damage is only mechanical damage if I am correct

Actually, this didn't seem to be.

so it would likely survive the injury if given a chance... Different story
is with predatory sea stars, they engulf prey with their stomach outside of
their body and start digesting the prey even before consuming it. This kind
of chemical poisoning would be in my opinion much harder to heal for an
anemone than urchin bite.

The urchin sure looked like it did exactly what you are talking about with
the sea stars. I don't think I saw the stomach come out, but maybe it did.
But this was no mechanical ripping. There was no question that 3/4 of the
anemone, the part touched by the urchin, was chemically destroyed and already
rotting, within an hour. The color went from the usual translucent pink, to
solid white. Just horrible.

-- Don
__________________________________________________ _____________________________
Don Geddis http://reef.geddis.org/
Winner, "Papers I wish I hadn't written" contest:
Montagnino, Lucian A., "Test and Evaluation of the Hubble Space
Telescope 2.4 Meter Primary Mirror" Proc. SPIE, Large Optics
Technology, Vol. 571, August 1985

Long spined urchins have venum in the spines.

Wayne Sallee



Don Geddis wrote on 10/2/2007 8:06 PM:

The urchin sure looked like it did exactly what you are talking about with
the sea stars. I don't think I saw the stomach come out, but maybe it did.
But this was no mechanical ripping. There was no question that 3/4 of the
anemone, the part touched by the urchin, was chemically destroyed and already
rotting, within an hour. The color went from the usual translucent pink, to
solid white. Just horrible.

-- Don