Mandarin fish blog entry #10
All the fish have been eating well and getting along. However, I realized that my aquarium was missing something -- not color, not form, but movement. One of the most beautiful sights when snorkeling or scuba diving is watching the coral fronds sway back and forth in the current. Since my existing corals had been for the most part motionless, I have added a wavy long-armed green star polyp, Pachyclavularia violacea, and Heteroxenia fuscescens, the pom pom xenia.
Giovanni the green mandarinfish hovers between the two star polyp corals, hunting for copepods.
Pachyclavularia violacea, native to the Indo-Pacific. Primarily photosynthetic, the neon green tentacles extend only during the day.
Crassie the bicolor angelfish peers at me from behind a screen of Heteroxenia fuscescens, the aptly named pom pom xenia. Xenia hail from murky lagoons and silty coastlines, and actually prefer nutrient rich waters and will not thrive in an aquarium that is kept too pristine. The polyps of this coral are constantly in motion, opening and closing to absorb dissolved nutrients from the water.
There's an old saying regarding business and murky water that goes like this: if the water is too clear, you can't raise big fish. Meaning that if you want to accomplish big things, at some point you will have to deal with some shady compromises.
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