Chris Lasley » Aquaria

Reef ala Podcast

Chris — Fri, 10 Feb 2006 05:16:13 +0000

Sometimes I’m slow to catch on. Sometimes I’m just plain stubborn. In the case of podcasts I’m guilty of both. Last week I broke down and subscribed to a couple of reef based podcasts – TalkingReef and Reefcast. iTunes makes subscribing trivial and I have to say I’m sorry I held out as long as I did. Podcats ROCK and my commute just got a little less sucky.

Happy as a Clam

Chris — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 04:57:17 +0000

Picked up a Tridacna derasa clam from the local fish store, North Side Aquatics. I’ll have to keep an eye on it as they can grow upwards of 20 inches!

Meet Foxy

Chris — Sat, 14 May 2005 04:37:15 +0000

Say hello to Foxy our new Royal Gramma Basslet.

Foxy has been with us for a few days now and so far so good. She’s dug out quite a hidy hole where she spends the evenings. Although a bit of a bully at times she seems to be getting along nicely with her tankmates.

RIP Tiger

Chris — Mon, 09 May 2005 02:59:54 +0000

Okay this sucks. We came home from our Mother’s day visit to find our Lawnmower Blenny (aka Tiger) deceased in the overflow. We’re not exactly sure what happened. We’re testing and retesting our water parameters. Our snails, crabs, shrimp and coral are thriving so it’s doubtful we have water issues. We’ll try again next week with a Royal Gramma Basslet.

Case Solved – RIP Chip

Chris — Sat, 07 May 2005 03:13:06 +0000

The mystery is over – we found Chip tonight.

We had searched all around the tank when he came up missing. The one place we didn’t look was around the corner in the laundry room. Tonight we found him there against Simba’s litter box. Evidently Chip jumped out of the tank and either worked his way around the corner or had a little help from Simba. Regardless Beth and I are bummed.

Case of the Missing Goby

Chris — Fri, 06 May 2005 02:01:36 +0000

Okay, so Tuesday night we introduced a new Lawnmower Blenny to our reef aquarium. Our other fish, a Steinitz Goby (aka Chip), was moderately annoyed but didn’t seem too freaked out. When we checked the next day to see how the two were getting along Chip was *no where* to be seen. We looked under the rocks, on the floor around the tank, in the refugium, notta.

It’s been two days now and still no sign of Chip. We have no clue what happened. The Blenny is a herbivore so he couldn’t have been involved. We considered the Frogspawn coral but that seems unlikely. The only thing we can figure is either we have a rogue crab or mantis shrimp or Chip is an illusionist.

Reef Tank Progress

Chris — Mon, 02 May 2005 03:31:34 +0000

The reef tank is now a good seven weeks along. It went through a pretty massive cycle from all the dead sponge and assorted crud that came along with the Reef Bones. After 5 weeks a 50% water change helped clear things up a bit. If I were to do it over again I would strongly consider using fully cycled live rock. Let’s just say that curing mostly dead live rock is a nasty experience.

Now that the tank is fully cycled we’ve started adding livestock. So far we’ve added a cleanup crew, a goby, a cleaner shrimp and a couple of corals. Complete tank specs can be found here.