Tag Archives: Chrysymenia wrightii

Aquarium Update 7

Posted on by under algae, anemones, aquarium update, cnidarians, fish, molluscs, not suitable for the aquarium, seaweeds

Long time no post, just been too busy! The aquarium is doing reasonably well at the moment, especially considering the fact that I have not done any water changes since the last update and I have added a bunch of new organisms. I have added two Beadlet anemones Actinia equina. They are a dullish brown (except for a nice blue band around the base); I have not found the bright red or green individuals yet. Very similar but more striking are Strawberry anemones Actinia fragacea of which I have collected three. They are voracious, I could easily feed them a shrimp a day. The same goes for the Sea scorpion. I am afraid of sticking my hand in now as it comes after me! Time to let this buddy go. This will also give me the opportunity to add some other things such as squat lobsters.IMG_4825I have taken a break from experimenting with seaweeds and am focusing on anemones instead. I have added a bunch of small Plumose anemones Metridium senile that I scraped of the side of a pontoon. Weird fellas, they can fill up with water to be quite large, or just reduce to a crumpled little pancake. I have four white ones; I could only find very small ones of the orange variety and these were all devoured by Cushion stars (interesting). I’d like to have a large orange one as well, but I have to wait half a year until I can go diving again (they are very common in deeper water).

IMG_4812On the sheltered, silty shore of Flushing I found two small anemones attached to rock and half buried in the maerl sand. My excellent Seasearch Sea Anemones and Corals guide told me they were a Daisy anemone Cereus pedunculatus (uniform greay with many very short tentacles) and a Red speckled anemone Anthopleura balli (purplish and speckled, for a better picture of a different colour variant see this old post). Both quickly half buried/half nestled themselves under a rock so only the tentacles and the mouth are visible. They take pieces of shrimp and so hopefully they’ll be able to grow; these species should reach a decent size: IMG_4721

IMG_4729My friend marine biologist Chris gave me a snakelocks anemone that he had cured from its symbiotic algae. A very cool, bright white individual but it has returned to its original purplish colour so it must have taken up symbionts again. The snakelocks I already had, grew big, split into two and grew some more. Interestingly, one of the individuals seems to be turning from the green- to the purple colour variety:IMG_4828So six anemone species in all. I would really like to have some Dahlia anemones, they are very colourful, large, and not uncommon (old pic here). I need to go anemone hunting at a good low tide soon (I have not been out in ages).

I had the Chryseminia seaweed growing attached to the Tunze for a while and it worked OK, but it looks a bit messy and so I will remove it. However, I see that little Chryseminia plants have started to grow from the rock in many places (see top picture). I have to give the glass a weekly clean (with a tooth brush) and the rocks have turned a bit too greenish recently. I have noticed however that near the Snakelocks anemones, tufts of filamentous algae have appeared, as the grazers do not want to come too close to their tentacles (this reminds me of a work by an ecologist friend of mine who studies how seedlings can be protected from grazers when growing close to thorny shrubs, I’ll have to tell him of this observation!).

There has been some snail mortality. I mainly have Grey top shells but there are less than half of them left. I do not know why, part might be predation (which is not all bad as at least they serve as food for other inhabitants). I need to collects some more in any case. The Netted dog whelks are doing well. They are usually hidden below the sand, but as soon as they smell a defrosted shrimp, they come up like a Shai-Hulud. Their plowing through the sand is definitely good in preventing mats of diatoms to appear. Their little cousins the Thicklipped dog whelks are also doing fine. They tend to creep up the Daisy anemone to steal its food. I still have a Sting winkle Ocenebra erinacea which moves slowly but is very pretty. There are a variety of other species such as Blacklined- and Rough periwinkles. The best species however are the truly sublittoral large Turban top shells Gibbula magus (some of which have died as well, one of the shells has been taken over by a hermit crab, wich are also doing fine):

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Aquarium Update 6

Posted on by under aquarium update, planted aquarium, Red Sea Max 130D

Time for a quick update on the aquarium. I could not resist trying to see how a school of mullet would fare with the sea scorpion around. Actually, the prawns formed a bigger immediate danger: one fish was grabbed and killed straight away, another fish I could save just in time, so I decided to remove the bigger prawns from the tank. The Sea scorpion picked off a bunch of the mullet in the first night and a couple in the week after but the number has stabilized at eleven, natural selection in action! Also added two Strawberry anemones. The Chrysymenia seaweed is growing very well and I have had to remove quite a bit already so it is forming a good nutrient sink. I have added more Cushion stars and Grey topshells to keep the algae and detritus in check.IMG_3310

Aquarium Update 5

Posted on by under aquarium update, planted aquarium, seaweeds

It was high time to get some rocks in the aquarium; always a bit difficult to do this aesthetically I find. Perhaps I should add some more but for now there are at least surfaces to hide under or attach to. I removed all seaweeds except for the fast growing Chrysymenia wrightii (I have had to prune parts of it already so it might act as a good nutrient sink). It is bright red and there are very few algae on it now I’ve placed it downstream of the Tunze pump. I will not add anymore seaweeds but instead wait for them to naturally settle and grow from the rocks. Tired of die-offs and algae problems! IMG_3193I replaced the first Sea scorpion with a smaller individual. I’ve decided to go for more sea anemones, which means it would be cruel to have small fish (juvenile Corkwings or Two-spotted gobies) around, so I might as well have large predatory fish in there as well. I hope to catch one or two more Sea scorpions (they’ll have to be similarly-sized otherwise they will devour each other). I will make sure I always have some shrimp in the tank to serve as live food (they are fun to watch in their own right of course). I will also add another Snakelocks anemone. It would be nice to also add a commensal Leach’s spider crab but I am afraid it might get eaten by the Sea scorpion so I’d better not. I have added a couple of white and orange Plumose anemones Metridium senile (I found them on a pontoon, more on that in a next post).They are quite small and sometimes shrivel up, so I have been handfeeding them pieces of defrosted shrimp and they already look better. I will try some Strawberry or Beadlet anemones too; other anemone species are hard to find when not diving (although that hopefully wil happen soon too!).

Aquarium Update 3

Posted on by under aquarium update, planted aquarium, seaweeds

The aquarium is still looking OK. The water is very clear and there are no algae on the glass whatsoever, but the brown algae still spread on the seaweeds, even with frequent skimming and the use of Rowaphos. There is some snail mortality, partly because of the Corkwing (who is not that keen on frozen food). I have added some Dulse Palmaria palmata (front left) and also some Chrysymenia wrightii (right, back), which I had growing in the aquarium succesfully before. This is an invasive species from Japan, first spotted in the Mediterranean three decades ago, spotted more recently in Galicia and now also appearing in the British Isles. (So the ‘back row’ of the tank consists entirely of invasive species, Wireweed, Harpoon weed and C. wrightii). In the Mediterranean it occurs in shallow water whereas in the Atlantic it seems to be a deeper water species (see here). It occasionally washes up in Flushing, see the pictures below of a very large plant I found last week (wellie top left yor scale). I hope to go snorkeling some time soon to try to see how much of it is there.IMG_1574

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Seaweeds in the aquarium part III

Posted on by under planted aquarium, seaweeds

A final post summarizing my experiences with seaweeds and writing this, I have regained my enthusiasm for trying to grow seaweeds in my aquarium. My New Years Resolution will be to get a proper marine planted tank going again! (The fact that the aquarium, currently devoid of seaweeds, looks less than great at the moment has made the decision to change it around easier as well…)

5. Some seaweeds establish naturally in the aquarium

I mentioned in the first seaweed post that it can be hard to ‘plant’ seaweeds in the aquarium but sometimes they just settle by themselves. One of my favourites, Chrysymenia wrightii (consistently misidentified as Dudresnay’s whorled weed throughout this blog…) started growing spontaneously from a rock:

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This is currently happening with bright green Sea lettuce Ulva and what is probably Devil’s tongue weed Grateloupia turuturu. The outlet grid of the Tunze nanostream is a good place for seaweeds to settle it seems; I have currently a little pluck of Flax brick weed Chaetomorpha linum growing and had a couple of other species there in the past too. Spontaneous growth is of course the best way to get a seaweed aquarium going.

6. A list of Seaweed species I had in my aquarium

Perhaps of interest to a handful of people… I have tried to list all seaweeds I managed to identify and remember, and whether they did well (YES) or not (NO) in my unchilled aquarium (lighting spectrum and intensity used varied somewhat over time). Why some species did not do well I have no idea (see previous post); in some cases, seaweeds were eaten. I have not tried larger species such as Kelp as my aquarium is not that big.

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Above: Green (Velvet horn), Brown (Wireweed) and Red (Harpoon Weed) seaweeds in the aquarium.

Red Seaweeds:

Solier’s red Stringweed Soliera chordalis – YES

Chrysymenia wrightii (no common name) – YES

Dulse Palmaria palmata – NO (eaten)

Harpoon weed Asparagopsis armata – NO

Common coral weed Corallina officinalis – NO

False eyelash weed Calliblepharis jubata – NO

Dumont’s tubular weed Dumontia cortorta – NO

Clawed fork weed Furcellaria lumbricalis– NO

Red grape weed Gastroclonium ovatum – NO

Bunny ears Lomentaria armentata – NO

Devil’s tongue weed Grateloupia turuturu – YES

Iridescent drachiella Drachiella spectabilis – NO

A tangle of different Red Seaweeds:

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Brown seaweeds:

Estuary wrack Fucus ceranoides – YES

Serrated wrack Fucus serratus – YES

Bushy berry wrack Cystoseira baccata – NO

Bushy rainbow wrack Cystoseira tamariscifolia – NO (still my holy grail)

Wireweed Sargassum muticum – YES (this proved to be the easiest one of all to keep)

 

Green Seaweeds:

Common green branched weed Cladophora rupestris – NO

Flax brick weed Chaetomorpha linum – YES

Sea lettuce Ulva (lactuca) – YES

Velvet horn Codium tomentosum – YES

So 9 out of 21 species did OK in my aquarium which is actually not too bad (although I have forgotten a number of species that did not do well). Unsurprisingly, the invasive species were easiest to keep (5 YES in 16 natives, 4 YES in 5 non-natives; the difference is not statistically significant though).

Finally, I just wanted to mention that I have been updating the ‘links’ page recently. Regular commenter Marius has recently started a great blog about his new native marine aquarium with organisms collected at the west coast of Ireland: Irish Rockpool Aquarium Adventures, go check it out. A very nice rock pooling blog also is The Salty Scavenger which features loads of seaweed pictures. From now on, I will also register my rock pooling finds online here; with lots of volunteers doing that a great resource will be created that can be used for protecting marine habitats which of course is very important! I have also added a bunch of really useful links to facebook pages, for instance the ‘Coldwater Marine Aquarium Owners‘ group page.

Some Red Seaweeds

Posted on by under rock pooling, seaweeds

Last weekend I took a little stroll on my local beach in Flushing and had a quick look at the variety of red seaweeds washed ashore. I saw some that I did not know, some that I knew, and some that I thought I knew….
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I have recently joined the facebook group ‘Seaweeds of the NE Atlantic‘ and so immediately asked the experts for some help in identification. It turned out that the only one I correctly identified was the one on the bottom right: Solier’s red string weed Soliera chordalis. This (invasive) species did well in the aquarium and so did the one on the top right, which I always thought was Dudresnay’s whorled weed Dudresnaya verticillata but it isn’t! It is actually Chrysymenia wrightii, which is also an invasive species. Moreover, my ID of the bottom left species was also wrong: not Fine-veined crinkle weed Cryptopleura ramosa but Beautiful fan weed Callophyllis laciniata (I should have known this as I have found crinkle weed in France this year…). The small flat seaweed on top is Cock’s comb Plocamium cartilagineum. The dark mop top left could not be identified based on this picture so I have to go back to take a better one. So dear reader be warned and take my identification of seaweeds in previous posts with a grain of (sea)salt!