The Birthday Beerfest and more friends in my fish tank :)
First...the birthday and citizenship party. There is a great pub called the Bree Louise near Euston Station. They have 10 beers on tap - 5 on *gravity* and 5 on handpump (plus the assorted lagers that the weaker of the species enjoy - you know who you are!!!! :) As soon as I heard that they would sell you the whole keg and you could have a party I knew what I was doing for my birthday this year (and it was months ago! :). I haunt the place, as it always has great beer that I am more than happy to consume a pint of :) So I booked the party, sent the invites, arranged with the publican as to what kind of beer I wanted and he delivered! I had a beautiful keg of Cottage Ales JT, from their Whippet series. It was spectacular (and I know, because I drank a lot of it over the 8 hours we were in the pub :). Here I am getting the first pint! :)
A brought a cake and another friend was also celebrating a birthday so there were 2 cakes! Perfect. Carl and Kate gave me a hat so that everyone knew who the new citizen was as well :)
A great time was had by all (and everyone made it home safe!
Now...for some more tank pictures :)
Here is the best picture of Minty yet! He was chasing the new shrimp (more below :)
I went a bit crazy the other night at the aquarium store. I had to wait for the expert guy (who has been amazingly helpful and tempts me with beautiful sun polyps :) so I saw them feed the stingray some worms while keeping the usually very calm, but now very pushy, giant gouramis (gouramii?) away from the tasty worms :) Then I checked out all the tanks, said hello to all the new critters :) and organized my questions and picked out some new things for the tank!!!!
I knew we wanted another Xenia as we love the one we have. We (A was expressing interest and that is always a good thing :) wanted the tiny white handed one so I had my eye on one. We had already discussed the serpent stars...they are interesting, but we decided there wasn't enough room for one (they can get to be a foot across!). We love Minty and Sam Yamato, my freshwater shrimp and I have wanted a Pacific Cleaner shrimp from the beginning. The aiptasia problem meant that Minty was the first arrival but next in the queue...I had my eye on one of the smaller cleaner shrimps. Then it was back to the coral tanks. I put some new mushrooms in the last time - just single mushroom fragments that will grow over time and spread - so it was time for something a little more interesting. I talked with the fish guy, he showed me some gorgeous sun polyp sort of like this (I'm linking to someone else's photo - no photos allowed in the shop :)
but these belonged to another guy that had ordered them and had just come in to collect them - they were gorgeous!!!!! I will have to get some, I think, even though they are much higher maintenance than anything I have tried so far. Anyway, I saw a couple of other things and ended up taking home 4 corals and 1 cleaner shrimp. I pedalled very carefully on my bike :)
So...some of the new additions. Here is Xara, the new Xenia. I think she has a nasty aiptasia on her rock, but she also has some star polyp that is a bit different than Heather. Beautiful, isn't she? Now visualize her hands pulsing open and closed.
Here's Jack, the cleaner shrimp. There was Jacques in Finding Nemo, but this guy is a Brit, so he's Jack :). He's probably half the size of Minty. He started his attempts at cleaning in the first 20 mins he was in the tank - he was giving Otello a feel with his antenna. It was awesome to watch.
This is a new coral that I think is a Dendronephthya. It was about a quarter this size in the coral tank at the shop and it was bright purple, it's more muted in the lights of my tank. It just opened up over night and expanded into what you see here. Wow. It has very specific feeding requirements, as does the other new one, which is just a very small stalk of what I think is Scleronephthya, in a bright chromium yellow/orange (you can see it in the lower left of the photo). The purple one is upside down because it usually hangs from the roof of caves and it seems happier like that - and I want my new guys to be happy :)
More as I have it! Enjoy!
