Re: Your Brains...

 

Yesterday I was a zombie.  This may well have been the most fun day of my entire life, so much so that it deserves a gushing blog entry!

However, I'm heading out to the pub in a bit, so the blog entry will have to wait!  Stay tuned though :)

Another new addition



So another week goes by and my little marine community gains another new member.  This week we have a sand-sifting starfish who goes by the name of Malcador, and here he is!  I caught him earlier investing the water surface and it seemed the perfect opportunity for a nice clear photo.  Normally (being a sand-sifting starfish) he spends his time burrowed under the sand in the tank, so photo opportunities are rare. In fact this was him literally moments after being first released into the tank...

Five minutes after this was taken he'd completely buried himself and I didn't see him again for 24 hours!

He's a very funky little guy, but they do have quite the appetite so I'll need to make sure I'm supplying the tank with enough food in the coming weeks. I only have 5 occupants really who eat the fresh food - the two clownfish, the two chromis, and the cleaner shrimp - but I have a lot of detrivores in the tank who eat leftover, uneaten food.  This is great in terms of keeping the tank clean, but of course it also means I have to work out how much to overfeed the fish so there's enough leftovers to go around.

It hasn't all been good news this week though, my suspicions that Roboute Guilliman (white-legged hermit crab) had died were confirmed when I found Lorgar (pom pom crab) munching on his remains.  It was a shame, but I hadn't had him long enough to get attached, so I wasn't too gutted by his death.  I won't be getting another one though - both of my white-legged hermits only lasted a few days, so either they're a little too delicate for a beginner like me, or they had a bad batch in the shop.  Either way, with the addition of the starfish I think my cleaner crew's big enough now.  Any further fatalities will be replaced, but I won't invest in any new clean-up critters.

So at this stage my tank is almost complete.  Hopefully this weekend I'll be able to buy (or at least reserve) an anemone, and then in another few months I'll get a psychadelic mandarin to finish the tank off.  In terms of naming, I've now run out of primarchs from Warhammer 40,000 (I've already reserved Corax for the anemone and Horus for the mandarin), so I'll need a new theme for the next generation of critters.  I'm thinking Mass Effect, but hopefully everyone will live for a good long while, so I won't have to give it any thought for at least a couple of years.

More invertebrates

Well the tank is continuing to progress nicely. I'm still waiting for an anemone for the clownfish, but the only one they have in the store is too big for my tank, so I'm just waiting for the next batch of stock to arrive in a fortnight.  In the meantime, I've expanded my cleaner crew with 4 new members.

 These guys are a pair of Pom Pom Anemone crabs, also known as Boxer crabs. It's fairly obvious to look at them how they got their name. The 'pom poms' are actually crab-claw anemones, which live in a symbiotic relationship with the crabs.  The crabs use the anemones to pick up uneaten food and general detritus off the tank floor, and also for self-defence against predatory fish.  The one on the left is named Khan, and the one on the right is named Lorgar.

This little guy is a white-legged hermit crab. He's quite a bit larger than the two red-legged hermits I also have, and has noticabley larger claws which he uses to defend his shell.  The most striking part of this little guy is his bright blue eyes, which as really beautiful. I actually bought a much larger crab originally, but sadly he died after about 48 hours so I returned to the shop and bought this guy as a replacement. His name is Roboute Guilliman.

On top of these guys I also bought a large orange-spotted sand-sifting snail.  I haven't been able to photograph him because he spends his time buried in the sand at the base of the tank.  His function is to keep turning the sand over to keep it aerated, whilst also cleaning up general detritus. His name is Vulkan.

So that's the latest tank update. In two weeks time I head back for my next water change, and hopefully they'll have an anemone I can bring home for the clownfish as well, but we'll just have to wait and see!

Today I met legends.

Today was a pretty good day as far as my autograph collecting went, as I attended my first Collectormania in Milton Keynes.  Let me say first of all that it was a truly poorly organised event.  The car park was a shambles with people just parking up wherever they fancied and no system of marshalls to keep things in order, and once you got inside it was pretty much the same in terms of the arrangement and the system for meeting guests.

However, once all of that was out of the way I did meet some pretty darned awesome guests :)

First up I met Carl Weathers, the man who played Apollo Creed in the Rocky series and Dillon in the first Predator film.  Both were films I loved while growing up, and I'm still a big Rocky fan so it was fantastic to meet him.

Second up I met the legend that is Lance Henriksen (above). I have to admit I wasn't sure what to expect from him, but he was a thoroughly bloody nice bloke :) He was the only person I was able to get a photo with and I was able to have a decent little chat with him (even if it was largely about how rubbish the weather was!). I very nearly didn't meet him today due to a tight budget, but I was extremely glad I took the chance now.

Then thirdly I met Sean Astin, who you may know as Sam from Lord of the Rings, or maybe even Mikey from The Goonies! Unfortunately he had such a big queue of fans that it was a bit like a production line; you handed over your picture and a slip of paper with your name on it, he'd sign an autograph, hand it over and move onto the next person. This did feel like it was an organisational thing rather than Sean's choice, but it was a bit of a shame not to be able to stop and chat for a few moments. I did get a handshake off him though, and of course one more autograph towards my Lord of the Rings collection.

Would I go back to Collectormania? Absolutely not. As an event it was a miserable experience, even though the guests were all cracking people :)

Fingers crossed for more fishy friends!

Well the Clownfish are settling in nicely, and the next planned addition to the tank was to be their anemone, but a quick visit to the pet shop has changed everything today.

Originally today's visit was just to reserve myself an anemone to pick up next weekend, but they had a lot of stock in which I hadn't seen before, and some which they only get in very rarely.  The rarity was a Mandarin, which I've been wanting to get as the final fish for my community.  They only have the one in, so tomorrow I plan to speak to my regular guy there and see if I can reserve it for next weekend and place the anemone on hold for a fortnight.

The exciting new additions were rather large sand-sifting snails, and also pretty big white-legged hermit crabs.  A snail I'd definitely love to have - I already have a turbo snail, but the sand-sifter would help to eliminate the algae problem I'm having in the substrate.  The hermit on the other hand is a bit more iffy.  Very beautiful creatures to be sure, but I know that some hermits can have a bit of a rough temperament, so I don't want anything that will upset my small red hermits, or either of the snails, so tomorrow I'll be asking about how compatible one of those would be with the other tank members.

At the very least I plan to add the snail to my aquarium tomorrow, and if all goes well I'll be adding the snail and a nice big fat hermit crab as well :) And then it'll be a week until the Mandarin, a fortnight after that until the anemone, and then my little tank community will finally be complete.  Altogether I'm feeling quite excited at the moment.