I went to sunny and warm Florida to visit my parents - a nice inbetween Thanksgiving and Christmas visit that meant that I got to avoid the hoardes at the airports :). We also got to do a lot of Christmas shopping and I brought back loads of things to keep A warm - her body still wants to be in India where it's lovely and warm all the time :) This is Charley, all dolled up for the holidays and hanging out by the pool :) We went for a walk every morning and I wore the poor puppy out throwing the ball for him retrieve.
While I was away the zoanthids took a header off the rock and landed on Chihiro...zoanthids are a little toxic, especially to sensitive clams, so Chihiro was not long for the tank. The zoanthids have been taking a header off the rock about once a week but this time Chihiro was under them when they fell (she had been doing her squeeze trick to move herself around a little bit). Poor A woke up to the shrimps dancing on her carcass and I got panicked text messages telling me to WAKE UP!!! It was 3am in Florida :) By 4am I was awake and talking to A on the phone, calming her down. A got what was left of her out of the tank and I explained that it wasn't anything A had done, that it was probably the zoanthids, and that the care of the reef tank was still safe in her hands :). It was very sad - Chihiro was A's clam and she was the prettiest thing in the tank. R.I.P. Chihiro. We will get another clam, just not right away, because....
Before I left I was told that a sun polyp, a tubastrea, was soon to be mine! Due to crossed wires I didn't get it before I left but we picked it up a few days after I got back. This is another high maintenance baby, but she is also very beautiful. A and I carefully cycled/brought her home and then I carefully acclimatized her and put her in the tank. Then a bit later I put some of the new cyclopeze in the tank to see how everyone liked it - it was brine shrimp time for the clownfish - and after a bit of a fish and shrimp feeding frenzy (they like the cyclopeze :) the new sun polyp was coming out! I had been told it could be DAYS before she came out but here she was.
Just before lights out she had opened up this much:
And when I fed her Monday night she was REALLY coming out!
I was going to call her Sunny, but A has named her Surya for the Hindu God of the Sun.
Happy Christmas Eve and Merry Christmas!
