Fish & Invertebrates
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How to Acclimate a Cleanup Crew: Snails, Hermits and Stars
The box comes off the UPS truck, you float the bags, and twenty minutes later you have a bucket of snails that will not move, hermits pulled deep into their shells and a starfish that looks like it has given up. Most of the time all of that is normal. A cleanup crew spends a…
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Pederson Cleaner Shrimp: Care, Anemones and Tankmates
Hang still in front of a Keys reef ledge long enough and you will see a fish park itself beside an anemone, fins out, mouth open, while a clear shrimp about an inch long walks across its face. That is a Pederson cleaner shrimp working its station. It is one of the best small animals…
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Dusky Jawfish Care: Sand Depth, Burrows, Feeding and Lids
A new dusky jawfish spends its first day hiding. By the next morning there is a hole in the sand, a ring of shell bits around it, and a mottled brown face watching you from the entrance. Get the sand right and that burrow becomes the center of its life. Get it wrong and the…
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Caribbean Biotope Reef Tank: A Florida Keys Species List
You snorkeled a patch reef off the Keys and saw a jawfish hovering over its hole, a rock beauty darting under a ledge, sea rods swaying in the surge and rock flower anemones tucked in the sand. Then you went home and looked at your tank full of Indo-Pacific corals. A Caribbean biotope tank is…
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Reef Safe Crabs: Which Crabs to Trust in a Reef Tank
Your zoanthids keep closing on one side of the rock. Your clownfish has a ragged fin. Then one night, with a flashlight, you catch a crab sitting right where the damage is. Was it a crab you bought or one that rode in on the rock? And is it actually the one doing it? This…
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What Eats Hair Algae? An Honest List From a Keys Collector
You pulled a fistful of green hair off the rock on Sunday. By Thursday it is back, an inch long and waving in the current. You bought ten snails. The snails are sitting on the glass, ignoring it. This is the honest list of what actually eats hair algae, what only looks busy, and what…
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Lettuce Sea Slug Care: Bryopsis, Diet and Light
Your bryopsis came back for the third time. It grips the rock like little ferns, the snails walk past it, and pulling it only seems to spread it. Somebody at the club tells you to get a lettuce slug. They are right about the bryopsis. What they may not tell you is what happens to…
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Arrow Crab Care: Bristleworms, Tankmates and Molting
You turn on a flashlight an hour after the lights go out and see pink bristleworms crawling out of every gap in the rock. Most people who buy an arrow crab buy it for that moment. It is a good choice for the job, as long as you know what else it will eat. Looking…
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Rock Flower Anemone Care: A Florida Keys Native
Dive the back side of a patch reef in the Keys and look down into the sand next to the rock. Every so often there is a flat, round disk of short beaded tentacles lying open in a crack, green in the middle and banded out to the edge. Touch the water above it and…
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Juvenile Queen Angelfish and Rock Beauty: ID and Care Guide
A diver comes up off the reef line here and describes a little dark blue fish with glowing blue bars and a yellow tail, hovering over a sponge while a snapper holds still beside it. That is a juvenile queen angelfish running a cleaning station, and it looks nothing like the gold-and-blue adult on the…