Some photos from Last Sunday at Castle Beach in Falmouth. Above, the periwinkle Littorina littorea, which aggregrates in great numbers on the upper shore. Below, three echinoderm cousins: a Cushion star Asterina gibbosa and a little Sea cucumber Pawsonia saxicola with a Brittle star in the background. It was the first time I saw this beautiful colour variant of the Risso’s or Furrowed crab Risso pilipes. More common is the very similar Montagu’s crab Risso hydrophilus, there are usually 5-10 individuals under a single rock. The small ones especially come in a range of colours that make them excellently camouflaged against the pebbles. Next a juvenile Shanny Lipophrys pholis, a detail of a Corkwing wrasse (I could pick it up, that is how low the tide was) and a shot of the beach, showing the versatility of the mzuiko 60mm lens. 
Tag Archives: Lipophrys pholis
Macro Practice II
I am running out of original blog post titles; these are just some more macrophotos practicing with the mzuiko 60mm lens. Friday afternoon was a gorgeous sunny, windstill day here in Falmouth. Although I somehow did not manage to find a stalked jellyfish, there were plenty of other things to see floating around in the shallow pools. I tried my hand again at the European cowrie Trivia monacha (see last post) with better results. It is hard to get the strobe position right, so I now hold it in my hand (rather than attached to the ‘tray’ that also holds the camera) to try to take as many different shots as possible. Below, a small Light bulb seaquirt Clavelina lepadiformis and the colonial seasquirt Morchellium argus. Finally, I noticed a shanny Lipophrys pholis hiding in a crevice. It was too large to capture its whole face with the macrolens so I tried to get one eye at least. It will be fun to try to get some fish portraits next time. Btw, catch me on instagram: @an_bollenessor.
top ten animals for the unchilled aquarium: 10 – 6
As the aquarium is currently in a state of limbo, I thought it would be fun to take a look at the critters that have been most rewarding to keep in the year or so I’ve had my aquarium. Based on my personal experience, I have made an, admittedly completely arbitrary, top 10 of animals for a Cornish (or North-Western European) marine aquarium. I picked animals that were both easy to collect (i.e. common), easy to keep (not requiring live food and resistant to water temperatures up to 25C) and fun to watch. Here goes with the first part of the list!
10: Netted dogwhelk Hinia reticulata
Not the prettiest of molluscs maybe, but very easy to find and very easy to keep. Burrowing in sand, and moving surprisingly fast over the bottom when smelling food. Their smaller (and prettier) cousins the Thicklipped dogwhelk Hinia incrassata never survived for long in my unchilled tank.
9: Common hermit crab Pagurus bernhardus
Hermit crabs are especially fun to watch scurrying about. Mine never really lasted very long but that is probably because of predation by blennies and gobies (see below)….
8: Shanny Lipophrys pholis (or Rock goby Gobius paganellus)
Shannies are probably the most common fish to find in rock pools. They are very easy to keep, their coloration is not particularly vivid but not dull either and they are quite active. The only downside is that they prey on molluscs and other small critters. Feeding them a bit more might prevent this, but especially the rock gobies are so voracious that I doubt that (one was so swollen I thought it was dying, until I realized that it had gorged itself on defrosted artemia…). Montagu’s blenny Coryphoblennius galerita is prettier and smaller than the shanny but much harder to find (see this post for experiences with other fish species).
7. Thicklip grey mullet Chelon labrosus
Most rock pool inhabitants live on or near the rocks, but it looks nice if the aquarium also have some fish swimming in the water column. Mullet are very common, and small individuals form nice silvery schools (which are almost impossible to photograph as you can see). They don’t really interact with the other tank inhabitants.
6: Painted top shell Calliostoma zizyphinum
One of my favorite local molluscs: a bright purple shell with an orange colored snail inside. Shells are never covered with algae as the snail wipes it clean with its foot (the shell can still be damaged of course as seen in this individual).
The next post will feature the top 5 of animals for the unchilled aquarium.
Bretagne: Erquy
Last week we crossed the channel to attend a friend’s wedding in Bretagne (Brittany). This of course also called for some rock pooling action, first at the village of Erquy. It was interesting to compare the shores of Bretagne to Cornwall (or at least Falmouth and this small stretch of coast in northern Bretagne). Immediately noticeable was the large amount of oysters on the rocks (with some locals busy collecting them, quelle surprise); these are pretty much absent in Falmouth:
Similar to the Cornish coast, wireweed Sargassum muticum was abundant. This Pacific invader surely must have a large effect on the native flora and fauna:
Invertebrate diversity was strikingly low compared to my local rock pools. For example, the only fish to be found were Shannies (and not a lot of them), there were no Cushion stars and no large crustaceans except for the shore crab. However, we did find a Common spider crab Maja squinado:
As there was not that much to see, I turned my attention to some of the less spectacular life forms, such as Pink paint weeds, red algae forming a calcified crust. The particular species pictured below forms a patchwork of individuals, crinkling up at the edges where they meet. This could be Litophyllum incrustans, but species are hard to identify by non-specialists such as myself. The little spots on the surface are the openings of reproductive structures called conceptacles.
The European sting winkle Ocenebra erinacea was quite abundant and distinctive vase-shaped egg cases could also be found:
quick rockpooling session
Went to Castle Beach in Falmouth after work this week for a bit of rock pooling. I saw a beautiful grey-red Sea scorpion Taurulus bubalis; I could not tell the difference) or but it was gone before I could even attempt to catch it. Below the much easier to spot Shanny Lipophrys pholis Giant goby Gobius cobitis (after lifting up a rock):
I spotted a small Eel Anguilla anguilla for the first time on the beach; it was quick but I could scoop it up from a very shallow sandy pool. Nice, but not of interest for the aquarium!
Also spotted for the first time: a European sting winkle Ocenebra erinacea. This I took home for the aquarium:
A tiny white Edible crab Cancer pagurus. I do not know if it is an albino or whether juveniles are generally white. I had a bigger one in the aquarium (carapace width 6 cm or so), but every night the light went out it came out of its burrow and started to rearranging the tank, knocking big rocks against the glass. This one is only one cm so I hope it will be better behaved:
introduction
Hello! For the last half year or so, I have been messing with a marine aquarium housing sea weeds and critters collected from local rock pools here in Cornwall. I thought it would be fun to blog about my aquarium project, especially after I discovered that it is quite easy to take nice aquarium pictures using an iPhone (which I found nearly impossible using a standard digital camera). After doing some internet research, I settled on a Red Sea Max 130D ‘plug-and-play’ aquarium (I will post about the actual tank later). I could not find much information on the web on temperate marine tanks, especially ones without a chiller or a sump. and few of those seem to focus on seaweeds. So who knows I may have found a niche. Below I have posted some pictures from when I was setting it up last year:
Half a bucket of gravel collected from a nearby beach, RO water taken home from the lab where I work (carried back 2×10 L at the time, the tank is 130 L) mixed with a free bucket of sea salt that came with the tank. Few sea weeds and not too many rocks. I have since replaced the rocks with bigger ones; most critters are benthic and you do not want to have too much ‘open water’ around with nothing in it. Although too bare, I do like the purple look of this set-up, which has since disappeared because of inevitable algae taking over from the purple crustose seaweeds.
A shanny Lipophrys pholis, this is a very common fish around here that can easily be picked up when turning stones at low tide. The branched seaweed on the left is Solier’s red string weed Solieria chordalis; in the back on the right there is a little pluck of Berry wart cress Sphaerococcus coronopifolius.
A snakelocks anemone Anemonia viridis. Behind it some Slender-beaded coral weed Jania rubens. This weed died off quite quickly; first it turned a bright orange, then white.
The Star ascidian Botryllus schlosseri, a colony-forming tunicate. It did not survive for too long, but that might just have been because the particular broad-leaved red seaweed they grew on are very popular with prawns and hermit crabs. What animals and sea weeds do well has been trial and error. I might compile a list of ‘easy’ species and ones to avoid at some point.
An Bollenessor 