In all the excitement of launching the second Shinobi Mystery, BLADE OF THE SAMURAI, I may have forgotten a couple of Tuesday Reefs…
I’ve still been taking pictures, however, so fortunately there’s something to share today. Here’s a photo-status-update of the reef!
Ghillie the seahorse likes to sit under the new sun coral – to reference a favorite book from my childhood, he’s a regular Ferdinand:
My abalone, Oscar, spends his days consuming algae. Unfortunately, he’s nearsighted, and can’t always tell the difference between an algae-covered rock and a seahorse:
When he does find his way to the algae, however, he’s diligent about eating every bit he can scrape off the glass (or the rocks, or anything else it grows on):
Jett and Tai, the dragonets, have not only adjusted to one another but become close friends. Is there a romance on the horizon? Only time will tell.
Finally – Ghillie likes to hitch to almost anything in the tank, including the plastic heater-guard at the back of the tank.
I like this shot, in particular, because you see not only Ghillie but also the turquoise palythoas (a variety of soft coral) that “walked off” from the larger colony on the rocks to the left of the heater and established a new colony on the glass at the back of the tank.
Like many corals, the palythoas are basically sedentary, but capable of movement if they “decide” to uproot and move to start a colony elsewhere. It’s one of the interesting parts of owning a reef — the realization that corals really are animals (not plants) and that even though they don’t have brains, they do have “wills” and the ability to interact with their environment.
Did you know corals could wander off if they wanted to? Do you find it difficult to think of them as animals, rather than plants? (I did, at first, and sometimes still find myself thinking of them as more flora than fauna.)