The Fashionable Urchin

Check out my new hat!

This Sea Urchin is definitely the prankster of the demo tank. Not content to pick up shells or coral and use them as camouflage, this little guy had to borrow one of the suction cups that was on the power head! Fortunately, this did not affect the angle or flow from the power head. If it had, I might have had to ask the urchin to remove his hat. In The Reef Aquarium DVD, A Set Up & Maintenance Guide, the same urchin roams around the tank with a Zooanthid coral on his back. He is great fun to watch as we never know what is going to grab his fancy. I don’t worry too much about my suction cup, as he always gets interested in something else, and will leave it for his next fashion statement. The Bumble Bee Snail that he also has on his back is not too happy about the ride, but then again, I am looking forward to what he has in mind for the summer.

Clam Caution

Don’t let a pull cost you 150 clams.

I noticed  my beautiful 8 inch Crocea had grown next to a leather coral of almost equal length. The Crocea was beginning to have it’s mantle turned away from the light and into the sub straight. Clams are photosynthetic, and if the situation kept up, I knew this would not help the clam as the mantle looked like it was going to go deeper and deeper into the sub straight, thus cutting down on its food source.

To my eye, it looked like the leather had attached itself to the shell of the clam, putting the clam in a precarious position.

Then I made my mistake. Since I thought the coral was attached to the clam, I pulled  at the leather to get it off the clam. This was not the case, as the clam had attached itself to the live rock at the base of the coral. Clams are delicate when being removed from a base, and must be twisted gently. Unfortunately, although I knew this fact, I misread the situation.

Once I realized what the situation was, it was too late. The clam died within two days and became an expensive meal for my hermit crabs.

So if you have a clam you want to move for any reason, take your time and twist gently.