How To Clean and Maintain Corals and Their Tanks

Salt buildup around the cracks in a coral tank makes observation difficult.

Cleaning the outer glass makes it easier to see and clean the inside of the tank.

Red algae, which is rather ornery stuff, sticks in little circular patches to the glass on the inside of the tank. It requires a razor to scrape it off.

The razor is already rusted and clogged with gunk from algae of days past.

After the algae has been scraped off the walls, it is time to siphon up said algae and snail poop on the bottom.
The snails eat a lot of the algae in the tanks (mostly the green algae), but their poop is also not good for the corals or the little microcosm they dwell in. Thus, using simply gravity, it is necessary to clean up all the little particulates and excrement on the bottom.

Lastly, here are some little snails at work, eating away the algae on the walls and subsequently excreting it all over the bottom of the tanks. Humorously enough, instead of the trail of slime left by land snails, there is often a trail of small oblong snail excrement left behind when they move along.

The Experimental Marine Vivarium

The touch tank in the Experimental Aquarium: where long stretches of time are lost as curiosity and playing with the harmless marine organisms distracts one from other priorities. It is a source of endless fun.

One of the largest sea anemones I have ever seen resides fearlessly in the touch tank in the experimental aquarium. It has some very pretty pink tips  

An unattached sea anemone resembles a true flower. This photo is too dark, but the anemone is like a sticky bulb out of which long tentacles reach.

The sun finally came out today! The air was warm, the breeze was pleasantly cool, and the waves were back to normal size (not big, but definitely not flat). Woo-hoo, perhaps summer has come once again to San Diego.

Some Acropora yongei corals dwell happily in their warm sea water tank under bright white light. I'll be taking care of these animals (yes, indeed, they are animals, not mere plants or rocks) now that Caroline is going back to Creighton University in beautiful Omaha, Nebraska.

The snails in the coral tanks actually help clean the algae quite well. Unfortunately, they also poop in disproportionate amounts. Even when there is only one little snail in a tank, there seem to be feces all over the bottom that must be siphoned out of the tank as often as possible. 

the Word of the Day

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We have a Word of the Day. Our word today is a new creation from Zachary Osborn of San Diego, CA, devised through a short consultation with Noah Schlottman and other members of the lab.

The word:

pHifying

(pronounced pee-H-if-I-ing) It is the action of pHification; that is, the process of testing and subsequently adjusting the pH of a solution to the desired level.

Example: 
"Are you done pHifying the Artificial Sea Water yet?"
"No."

"Yellow Che" Butterfly

Zach found a yellow butterfly in the Che Garden up in Revelle the other day (thus we named the specimen "Yellow Che"), so he brought it into the lab to look at under the microscope. I helped him with the microscope and camera settings so that we could take some cool pictures of what we saw.

The Head

This is the head of the butterfly. Note the hollowed out cranial cavity (most likely eaten by ants before Zach found the butterfly) and the interesting bug-eyes.

The eye resembles a speaker cover.

Entering the cranium

we can see

that if it is focused correctly

the camera can photograph the back of the empty head where the brain used to reside

There are also those strands of mucus of some sort that are laced across the dead insect's face

The antennae are huge compared to the size of the head

The antennae are so large they won't fit in the picture.

Close up, one can see the many overlapping segments that compose an antenna

From the back of the head, one can see where the wings were previously attached  (yellow fibrous material)

At the right focus, some long connecting pieces of some sort become visible at the lower part of the picture

The Wings

These ones aren't so good with ranch...

The photos below start out with pictures of the outer part of the wing to give a general idea of the patterns visible to the naked eye.

The veins and some tiger-striping is evident where the wings attach to the body (lower left-hand corner)

Some fancy finning and curves at the wingtips

Smatterings of blue and orange coloration

Individual scales are visible even at this magnification...

...in addition to some of the sensory "hairs"

Now we start to zoom in....

Here you can see some of the topography of the wing, which is not flat by any means, but quite ribbed, especially when it comes down to overlapping scales.

The yellow scales kind of fall into one of the veins

The black and yellow scales clash

A stray blue scale in an all-black area

The blue scales are scattered throughout the darkness

Some nice pictures of solid yellow scales

We wondered what the shiny blue-green stuff was...certainly not scales

Checkerboard

The four colors in one locale

From this angle, the interlocking scales is observable

The ridge of one of the ribbings or veins on the wing allowed us to see how the scales just piled on top of each other

These sensors, which make it look like the butterfly has hairy wings, help the insect pick up different information about its surroundings. According to Dr. Deheyn, other butterflies can appear to be very very hairy all over with all of their sensors.

The nice blue scales refract brightly

The bold orange

Under some quick accidental fluorescence due to a manual lens slide that was moved to the "Cyan" setting

A progression of photos bringing the 3-dimensional array of blue scales into focus one part at a time

A progression of photos bringing the 3-dimensional array of orange scales into focus one part at a time

It resembles more the tip of a feather than the scaly tip of a butterfly wing