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.