gerbilbox

This is Maturin, he's acclimating to my tank:


I wasn't planning on getting another coral so soon, but I was visiting the much raved Aquatic Collection for the first time and spotted this beautiful orange Fungia. My first corals were doing well, I was planning on a plate anyway, and Fungias are known to be very hardy, so I decided to nab him on the spot. He's less than 2 inches across, so he has plenty of room to grow. This is the only coral in my current master plan that's comprised of a single polyp, so I had no problem with naming him. I'm usually not very big into naming things.

I'm excited to find even more unexpected diversity in my tank today:


This is Spirorbis, a annelid tube worm in the family Serpulidae. Serpulids have a hard calcium tube, a door (operculum) that they close when they retract, and usually elaborate mouth parts that filter food particles out of the water. Most people are familiar with the larger and more flamboyant serpulids, the Christmas tree worms, but this one is much less than a millimeter across. I sketched this picture because my camera wouldn't be able to resolve more than a handful of pixels. There are dozens of them all over the glass.