Our First Corals

I have a love/hate relationship with this past Friday. I love it because Blake, my boyfriend, and I finally got coral in our saltwater tank! We have been waiting to do this for a long time, and finally our tank was ready for it! I hate it however, because Friday was the last day that I got to see Blake for one week and a day. Blake is in California, with his family on vacation, and I know it isn't very long but it is still lame! :)

After work Blake came and picked me up at my apartment. He had just come from the saltwater shop in Orem, because he was getting water from them. He informed me that they were having a buy 1 get 1 half off sale on frags, and I love a sale, so we went back! Frags are just "fragments" of corals. They are small baby corals basically, and eventually they grow and get bigger. 

The shop Aquatic Evolutions had so many to choose from but Blake and I had some idea of what kind of corals we wanted to start out with, and that helped us narrow it down pretty quickly. Sean, the owner of the shop really was nice to us and let us stay a little later after closing just so we could make sure which corals we wanted. Sean is an awesome guy!

After debating between a few types we decided to get three instead of two, and the winners were..... drum roll please... Hammer Coral, Cinnamon Polyps, and a Feather Duster. They are all sweet! When Sean picked them up from the tank they got afraid and kind of shrunk up. When we got back to Blake's house we let them  acclimate  in the water for a bit.

This is what they looked like when they were afraid ( those scary-cats) while they were acclimating.

Hammer Coral 

Cinnamon Polyp 

 Feather Duster

I understand that they look disgusting like this, all shrunken up and stuff, at least I think so, but trust me they are cool. The Hammer Coral, and Cinnamon Polyp are on little platforms called plugs, that way you can place them in the rock easier, you just put the plug in a little hole and eventually the coral will just grow around and cover up the plug. 

Blake being the best boyfriend ever, let me put the first coral in the tank. I picked the Feather Duster which is awesome. It actually isn't a coral at all but it is a worm. Weird right? The worm makes a kind of paper tube around it's body to protect itself. It has tentacles that are attached to it's head, which are what it is named after because they look like a feather duster. It uses them to eat by collecting floating organisms, like plankton. When it is afraid it can retract it's tentacles back into the tube where it is safe and if it is really freaked out, or if a fish bites off any of it's appendages, it can detach them and just grow it back later. 

This is our Feather Duster after it got use to it's surroundings and stopped feeling so threatened. I think it is so cool!

Blake put in the Hammer Coral, and the Cinnamon Polyp. Eventually the Hammer Coral became brave and went back to normal, flowing in the current. Unfortunately the Cinnamon Polyp still was stressed so I didn't take a picture of it. I will probably update this when I get a picture of when the Cinnamon Polyp actually looks normal. 

Just as another update on the tank, a few weeks ago Blake said while he was looking at the tank he saw a worm come out of the rock. I never had seen this worm so I thought he was being crazy, even though it is not uncommon for "hitch hikers" to come into your tank in the live rock. A couple weeks after the first sighting, Blake saw the worm again! This time he took a picture of it so i could see.

It is kind of hard to see in this picture so I zoomed in on the worm.

This freaks me out and I do not want it in the tank! After doing some research on it and asking around we are pretty sure that it is a Bristle Worm. The only thing is that some of them are good for your tank and some are bad and eat your coral. They have traps for them, but we will just see how our corals do, that way we will know if the worm is actually bad for the tank. 

It really was so awesome that we have coral in our tank now and I am stoked on that, but I still hate this Friday, because Blake wont get back for a whole week! Hopefully it goes by fast :)