In my second trip to the LFS this weekend (yay!) I saw they had something I had not seen before. I was actually going wanting to pick up another Pistol Shrimp / Goby pair, but they did not have any Gobies that looked especially healthy, and they did not have any (small) Pistol Shrimps. They had the big Tiger Pistols - but I don’t want those guys in my tank.

They had two of these little ‘Panda Gobies’ (Paragobius lacunicolus). They were tiny, 1/3rd of an inch at the most. I bought one and dropped him in. I have had bad experiences with tiny gobies before - but this one is supposed to be a bottom dweller so hopefully he doesn’t end up in my sump like some of the tiny yellow clown gobies I have had prior.

Additionally, I was at a store doing some Christmas shopping and I picked up a salt shaker. I am hoping to pick up a Mandarin Dragonnet (Either spotted or target - I have no preference) the next time the LFS has some good healthy examples. I am confident that I can keep one as long as I target feed it with this feeding technique, in combination with my very active POD population.

Today I took a trip to my 3 favorite local LFS’s. I did a quick 10% water change before I left and brought my buckets to be filled. One of my favorite things to do is watch the progression and simply observe the reef tanks that these 3 LFS’s have to offer.

Anyways, I ended up with a Mushroom rock that was accidentally priced too low. It was a 4ish pound rock with tons of sponges and dusters on it. It had about 10 mushrooms (blue, green, red, purple) on the front and about 10 shrunken ones on the back. Not bad for $15!.

I took it home and scraped off the mushrooms from the back of the rock and let them float. I am optimistic that half of them will land someplace and call it home.

I put the rock in the last bare spot in my tank. It’s nice to look at with all of the activity on it.

I rearranged a few rocks so that my big colt coral pointed upright better.

After I was done with that I cleaned the inside glass of all of the coraline and wiped off the outside.

I have started to notice my clown pair looking around my large (12″) bubble coral. They peck at it, almost - and the coral will retract a little bit. Maybe they are trying to host in the bubble coral? Not sure.

After I cleaned everything up I noticed a brown flatworm on the glass. I wanted to make sure it was a) alive and b) not coraline so I poked it with a super long wooden toothpick. It moved! After a quick check on Melevsreef.com (http://www.melevsreef.com/flatworms.html) my suspicion was confirmed: Red Planaria - reef safe but can multiply quickly. I decided to let it alone because I have seen similar things before.

One thing I should note about my tank. It has changed a lot lately. I had been getting busy lately and was neglecting to do water changes (over a period of many months) and it looks like a lot of the life in the sand died (bristle worms and peanut worms) and a number of my corals starting looking not-so-hot. After 2 weeks of doing 20% water changes with real sea water, and another 3 weeks of 10% changes everything is on the up and up. Mostly everything has recovered fully with the exception of the toadstool coral which is about 60% recovered. Time will tell.