At the beginning of August, Kevin was perusing KSL, while I
was trying to unwind after a long day of work. He came bounding into the living
room, and asked me if I wanted to go get a free clown fish with him. I gave him
a strange look and asked him how we were going to care for a salt water fish,
as we did not have a salt water tank. He reminded me that he had bought one
earlier in the summer. He had some salt left over from when he bought his fish
tank four years ago, so we spent the next ten to fifteen minutes trying to
figure out how to jump start a salt water tank. We figured out the salinity,
then we were off with our bucket to get the fish. Clown fish are quite small.
So small in fact that they really don’t fit into a bucket. It was a harrowing
drive back home, as the fish was stressed in being moved so many times in one
night, had been in extremely warm water, and didn’t really have enough water to
properly cover him unless the bucket was quite tipped. This of course did not
work well for my mental state (I actually used to have a strong fear of fish
prior to my house being turned into an aquarium, and there are still remnants
of that.), so Kevin had to both drive and keep the fish alive. For the first
couple days we didn’t expect the fish to still be alive when we woke up or came
home, but he made it, and we were soon on our way to salt-water aquarium-keeping.
Our next additions to the tank were a hammer coral and a
zoanthid. I didn’t go with Kevin when he bought it, so no stories related to
these two.
 |
| Hammer Coral |
 |
| Zoanthid |
Our next trip was to Daybreak. We went with the intention of
buying some more live rock, but left with some rock, a mandarin goby, a snail,
and some hermit crabs, including a ginormous one. Apparently I haven't taken a photo of the snail with my phone. Maybe I will find it on the camera at some point?
 |
| Mandarin Goby and a blurry Elvis |
A few weeks later we got lost on our way to the next house.
The guy was horrible at direction, and his tank was kind of atrocious since he
was never around to clean it (why he was selling stuff). We bought a brown tang
(a Dory-fish) named Elvis and a leather thumb. Elvis’s growth was horribly
stunted from the bad conditions, and he sadly ended up dying about a month
later or more. The leather was kind of dejected-looking, but it was now plumped
up.
The next addition to our tank was a shrimp. Kevin bought it
from a guy by the U of U. I was at work, so Luna accompanied him on that journey.
He gave us a scare a few weeks later when we thought he had died. We felt bad
about it, but while I was attended area conference with my mom (Kevin was home
sick), the following text conversation occurred (I tried to figure out how to
do a screen shot, but it was a lost cause):
Kevin: My shrimp is
still fine it just molted and I didn’t know that the molt had so many features
to look like the full shrimp.
Megan: I guess we need to study shrimp behavior. That is
kind of funny.
Kevin: Ya. I thought it as well when it magically came out
while I was looking at the tank. Lol.
The shrimp molted again a few days ago, but it was only
slightly unsettling this time.
We also bought a couple of maroon clowns from the same guy
that we bought the hammer coral and zoanthid. They are smaller than the tomato
clown, so he bullies them. It was amazing to see this guy’s tank. He lived with
his parents in a double-wide, yet he had this awesome tank full of corals in
his bedroom. I guess it is all about where you place your priorities. I would
rather have my nice house and such than an amazing reef tank (Yes, I know that
we have our huge stingray tank, but that is beside the point.) Unfortunately I
don’t have any pictures of the maroon clowns, so I guess that will be a later
update.
Next we bought a toadstool from another Daybreak resident (He
lived in one of the Energy Star solar powered houses which was kind of
interesting.) It is ginormous and pretty much takes up the center of the tank.
It is actually quite beautiful when it is fully “bloomed.” However, it is quite
finicky and shrivels up at the slightest irritation. The picture below is not
its full “blooming,” but you kind of get an idea of what it looks like.
We also got an anemone a few weeks ago, but I have not
uploaded the pictures of it yet, so I guess that will be the next update. As
you can guess our tank is getting a bit busy (especially since the anemone split
recently). From pretty much the beginning of getting into the salt water
aquarium, Kevin has wanted to upgrade to a larger tank. We went and looked at
quite a few tanks along the Wasatch Front, but eventually found one in West
Jordan (go figure). Most of the others included fish, coral, and rock, but this
one didn’t. That might seem like a bad thing, but it actually isn’t. A lot of
the tanks had not had the greatest maintenance, so the corals didn’t look
fantastic and most of the fish weren’t really stellar. Plus, it takes a bit to
set up a salt water tank, so we would have had to buy everything at once to get
up and running. This tank was just a metal stand, the tank, and a really nice
sump tank set up. It isn’t the prettiest, but the stand is built out of metal
and really sturdy, plus we don’t have to worry about water damage to the wood
like on many of the stands. Currently it is sitting empty next to our little biocube.
At some point we will set it up, but we still need lights and a pump, so it is
taking a while to get there. Plus, the small tank looks really nice as it is,
so Kevin isn’t overly worried about it.
And now for the freshwater tank update. We sold all of our
African cichlids (so most of the fish in the update from April), and we have
consolidated all of our fresh water fish to two tanks (plus the guppies, but
they don’t really count). It is mostly just bass and stingrays now, but we
still have Jack, the albino Oscar, the Flower Horns, and our arowana. Here are some pictures of the big tank:
 |
| Kevin's pride and joy, the female mantilla |
 |
| The male Bahia, another one of Kevin's favorites |
 |
| The jaguar who looks like she is getting ready to attack something. (It looks like I was working on scout stuff at the desk.) |
 |
| Fatty just being big. |
