A side note* If you have a reef system, your lights should be on for at least 6 hours and not longer than 9hours.  This should give the coral enough light energy to remain happy and healthy.

Bumblebee shrimp are a perfect livestock choice for a nano reef. They don’t eat corals, are safe for fish, and grow less than an inch long. When it comes to feeding, they are not as picky as Harlequin shrimp or Bongo shrimp. They are carnivores who love to eat the tube feet of echinoderms like sea stars and urchins, but will also eat some small bits of frozen mysis or Cyclop-Eeze. If you provide enough sea stars, they will easily survive the attentions of a pair of Bumblebee shrimp. It’s also a good idea to stock your nano with some Stomatella snails, as the Bumblebee shrimp snip pieces from the Stomatellas to eat without killing the snail. My Bumblebee shrimp is often seen harassing one of my many quickly-reproducing Stomatella snails.

Harlequin shrimp make are a great “showy” creature for a nano reef. Their beauty is surpassed by few other crustaceans. Harlequin shrimp are large enough that they are easy to spot, but small enough (only a couple inches) that they can be kept in a nano aquarium. They can be kept singly, but it’s much more interesting to keep a pair. They seem to use their giant, paddle-like chelipeds to communicate with one another, perhaps coordinating their sea star attacks.

It is very easy to sex Harlequin shrimp. Females have tiny, color-spotted swimmerettes on the underside of the tail. Males have a clear, colorless underside. Two males or two females should not be housed together, but males and females pair easily and without aggression.

Unlike the Bumblebee shrimp, Harlequin shrimp consume the whole star, not just the feet. They use their large front claws to pinch and pry the legs of sea stars from their substrate, then force the sea star onto its back where it is helpless. They can keep a sea star alive for long periods of time while feasting on them.

Harlequin shrimp only eat sea stars. They don’t eat brittle stars, however. The most readily available food sources for Harlequin shrimp are the tiny, hitchhiking Asterina stars, Chocolate Chip or African Knob, Linkia, Fromia, or Sand sifting stars. Linkia and Fromia stars are difficult to keep in captivity and more expensive. Remember, though, that the hardy, inexpensive Chocolate Chip and African Knob stars are not reef safe. It is possible to house a few Chocolate Chip stars separately from your nano aquarium and cut a leg off to feed the Harlequin shrimp, then allow the removed legs to grow back.

Hawaiian Harlequin shrimp are the most colorful, but they command pretty high prices and are more rare. The Indonesian variety is a little less expensive and may be purple, blue, or a combination.

Bongo shrimp are related to Harlequin shrimp, and eat both Sea Stars and Brittle stars. They are much smaller, growing to only an inch. They’re also much more rare and command a price between $100 – $130 a pair.

Here is a video by Liveaquaria.com of Bongo shrimp eating brittle stars.

Published recently in PLoS ONE, researchers Thomas Adam, Russel Schmitt, and others found an interesting case when evaluating severely damaged coral reefs in the South Pacific in French Polynesia. The reefs fully recovered after being nearly destroyed by predators like the crown-of-thorns starfish or from cyclones. They wondered why this occurred as normally when a reef is decimated by similar forces (especially in the Caribbean), the affected reefs never really bounce back and remain heavily algal-covered.

What Adam and the other researchers found was that when these reefs in French Polynesia were destroyed, the herbivorous fish population exploded shortly thereafter. When surveying the surrounding fringing reefs, they found their answer.

The fringing reefs were the nursery grounds for many of local populations of fish, most notably surgeonfishes and parrotfishes which are herbivores. The heavy herbivore population helped keep the algal cover to a minimum which in turn helped the remaining coral recover.

“We discovered that these fringing reefs act as a nursery ground for baby fishes, most notably herbivorous fishes,” said Andrew Brooks, co-author of the paper. “With more food available in the form of algae, the survivorship of these baby parrotfishes and surgeonfishes increased, providing more individuals to help control the algae on the fore reef. In effect, the large numbers of parrotfishes and surgeonfishes are acting like thousands of fishy lawnmowers, keeping the algae cropped down to levels low enough that there is still space for new baby corals to settle onto the reef and begin to grow.”

This stands in stark contrast to the Caribbean where over-fishing has heavily impacted the herbivorous fish population. With low numbers of adult herbivores, Caribbean reefs struggle to recover.

This research should also be highly interesting to managers of Marine Protected Areas as well.  Their findings indicate that not only is it important to protect the reefs in general but also the fringing reefs that act as nurseries for the local fish population.

“Our new and very novel results suggest that it also is vital to protect the fringing reefs that serve as nursery grounds. Without these nursery grounds, populations of parrotfishes and surgeonfishes can’t respond to increasing amounts of algae on the reefs by outputting more baby herbivores.”

Lysmata amboinensis are protandric simultaneous hermaphrodites, meaning every cleaner shrimp is born a male but develop female reproductive organ as he matures.  Sexually mature L.amboinensis have both male and female reproductive organs but can not self-fertilize, so they must pair up with another shrimp to reproduce.  Anyone looking to breed cleaner shrimps – or regularly spawn shrimp larvae to serve as natural zooplankton for their corals/fish – only needs to place two shrimps together in the same tank.

However, if you place more than two cleaner shrimps in the same tank, the situation can get ugly.  Researcher Janine Wong and Professor Nico Michiels (University of Tubingen) placed cleaner shrimps in multiple groups of two, three or four in separate small tanks.  Within 42 days, all tanks only had a pair of shrimps still alive. The dominant pair simply killed off the other shrimps in their tank.  The researchers hypothesize this aggression is motivated by reducing competition for clients (and subsequently food source) within their cleaning station area.  All subjects in this experiment were provided ample food, so the results suggest cleaner shrimps may be genetically “hard-wired” to behave this way.  The big question that lingers: How large of a cleaning station area (e.g. aquarium) do cleaner shrimps require to allow for more than one pair to coexist?

Their research, “Control of social monogamy through aggression in a hermaphroditic shrimp,” is published in the scientific journal Frontiers of Zoology.  The paper’s abstract states:

Exactly one individual in each triplet and exactly two individuals in each quartet were killed in aggressive interactions, resulting in group sizes of two individuals. All killed individuals had just moulted. No mortality occurred in single and pair treatments. The number of moults in the surviving shrimp increased significantly after changing from triplets and quartets to pairs.

So for anyone considering buying more than two cleaner shrimps for their aquarium (at least smaller aquariums), reconsider;  Chances are, you will still end up with just a pair.

An interesting side-fact about Lysmata amboinensis: Cleaner shrimps can only assume the female role a few hours after molting, while they can assume the male role at any time, even when incubating eggs.

Before you begin to clean your aquarium, what really important is to do numerous tips. First, you have to be aware that implementing aquarium service is diverse related to type of tank or fish that lives in the aquarium. Second, you have to be aware to the circumstances of your aquarium that is possibly being too much food, crowded or less of change in the water. Finally, you have to make a regular schedule for aquarium service program. It is important to ensure that aquarium condition is totally fine. You can do once every two weeks.

Generally I can say that aquarium service can be separated into two factors, cleaning the tank and substitute the water. To begin cleaning the tank, you may refresh the water by using glass scrubber, pay attention on the algae there. You must not forget to clean the filter tools with pure water, it is not recommended to mix chlorinated water or tap for this because it will result the filter being vulnerable.

Aquarium service is absolutely central activity to keep your fish, so the health and life quality will be related to how we keep them. In the case you can follow above measures and regards, you have to consult to the expert for another way of aquarium service.

Today pictures of this rare yellow euphyllia surfaced from high end coral wholesaler Oculus Aquatics. Hammer coral may not be the rarest or hottest thing on the market right now, but this color sure did catch my eye. This is the perfect addition to any euphyllia collectors tank with a color that no other piece will likely match.

The heavy blue lighting from the Kessil Ocean Blue A150W LED pendant really allows the feather duster to stand out and essentially glow along the live rock backdrop. Feather dusters come in a huge variety of colors, shapes, and sizes, with each individual depending heavily on plankton-based foods for long-term health.