[sihaya]

Some of my favorite filter feeders...

This guy was hardly visible when I first got him on a small piece of live rock. I swear he's now at least 20x the size he was when I got him. I also love the beautiful yellow sponge behind him...

These guys are so much prettier than these photos show. They're bright yellow with blue neon and red dots... and they're reproducing!


These guys are my crown jewel filter feeders. I'm so proud I've had them almost a year now! And not to brag, but they are the bigger christmas tree worms I've ever seen in an aquarium.

And my newest friend... this guy is like a little miniature reef all to itself. Unfortunately, this image doesn't show all the hitch hikers. But there's a little crab (or shrimp?), lots of pretty sponges (including a beautiful pink one on the other side), and lots of feather dusters right there in the shell!


More to come!

[sihaya]

[sihaya]

And yes, I do have a bit of an aptasia problem... who doesn't?

My peppermint shrimp are helping though.

[charlie]

Hey, aiptasia are filter feeders too!!!!! Love the pics, especially the Christams tree worms.
Just recently, my sandbed has become home to a ton of tube worms, started about 4 months ago. They sure are neat. I don't feed phyto, there must be enuf stuff hanging around to feed them tho.

[Poseidon]

Great critters Sara! I really like that first duster.

[sihaya]

Yeah, that first feather duster is very special to me because it was in my very first reef tank (a 5g nano). Can you believed it survived the cycling of the tank it's in now?!

[Poseidon]

LOL! I think you are just going thru a rough spot, think "Hurricane Season" at Sara's house! I am sure all will get back to normal soon. BTW who could argue with your success!?

[sihaya]

LOL What are you talking about? The pesticide thing? Oh, Mike... that was soooo 2 weeks ago! My tank is almost completely recovered from that (partly thanks to Dennis Tagrin who helped me re-establish a lot of the critters I lost). Even the coral I call "Pheonix" (who I thought was dead), is about 75% back now (important lesson I learned... even corals that look totally dead might not actually be dead). So now I think I totally over-reacted to that. Things just looked really really really bad for those first few days. But in the end, I saved all the coral and clams and most the snails. All I ended up losing were the fish, a few snails and some critters (but all ones that reproduce in captivity and should replenish in time).

[sihaya]

Oh, and I should tell you all something interesting about that coral those christmas tree worms are on. It wasn't always mostly dead like it is now. When I got it, the whole coral was alive. But it was slowing dying away and I couldn't figure out why. It fustrated me for the longest time until I finally figured it out. I had it lying flat on and apparently this coral (whatever it is), is VERY sensative to sediment. As soon as I propped it up on it's side it stopped dying. I figured this out because I noticed that the valleys in the coral were what were dying whereas you see the raised parts (like where the worms are buried) are still alive.

Now I'm honestly starting to wonder if coral positioning isn't an underestimated factor in their health (certainly at least for some corals like this one).

[charlie]

Sara, is it possible that the coral wasn't getting enuf lite? Porites is a lite loving species that is fairly tolerant of just about anything. It likes good flow too. Maybe when you tilted it sideways you afforded it the chance to receive both.

[sihaya]

Oh dude, it's definitely not porites! Take a closer look. It's some kind of favid or favid-like coral. But even if it were porites, it's directly under a 250watt 10k DE MH. Trust me, it's got all the light any coral could want.

[charlie]

Sara, I hate to tell you this, but Christmas tree worms live on Porites. Check out Bornemans book. There must be porites where the worms are living.

[sihaya]

Originally Posted by charlie

Christmas tree worms live on Porites.

Yes, very true... but not exclusively. They're quite common in other corals too.

[sihaya]

And there's a nice article by Rod Toonen if you're interested....

http://www.reefs.org/library/article/r_toonen21.html

[sihaya]

It is actually kinda funny though how the hobby seems to only see them in Porites when it's not like that in the wild at all. As Toonen says in that article, it's actually one of the corals they do the worst in.

Like you though, I used to think they only came in porites (because that's what everyone says). So I thought I'd never be able to keep them since I didn't think I had the skill to keep porites (again based on another common myth that the worms can't live without the coral because the coral feeds the worms). That's actually why I got these. I thought I had found some super-rare christmas tree worms that just by some freak accident were growing in a favid. But after reading a few of Toonen's articles I learned just how misinformed I was. As the theory is now... the reason the worms tend to die after the coral dies is more likely the result of being more volnurable to predation (not because the worms in some way feed off the coral).

[charlie]

Just did a little more reading and you are correct that they don't only appear on porites, (Fossa- Nilsen). It does seem strange tho that the only ones you see in stores, aside from yours obviously, seem to appear on Porites.