some more fluorescent shots

I used my old Fuji this time. The old girl is awesome under difficult light and pruduces less red noise than the canon. 

Hermit Crab Video

...getting into a new home ;-)

Rili shots

captured in their "breeding" tank. I'm not really breeding them by purpose, this is more an accident. 

Marine cube: more new species

I would appreciate any help to id these lifeforms. Thanks for the fantastic help I got last round, let's try this again :-)

Feather Duster Worm, but which one?

This is growing there from nearly the beginning but I just realized that it is growing. 

Cyanobacter? :-(

a real paludarium

Aquarium comes from the latin word "aqua" which means "water".
Terrarium comes from "terra" which means "soil".
Paludarium comes from "palus" which means "swamp". Sadly the most Paludariums are just Aqua-Terrariums. There's nothing wrong with them just the word is a bit missleading I think.

I build mine from a damaged 60L standard aquarium. I cutted the glasses and build a 60*15*15 tank where I keep some leftover waterplants which I didn't like to throw away.
The soil in this tank is permanently drowned. I set up this thing round 6 weeks ago and all plants I used are submerse grown plants, that's why it's still work in progress. The plants need much more time to adapt from submers to emerse than vice versa. The dominant moss in the left foreground is weeping. It does pretty well, grows fast and nicely.

The cylinder in the tank's middle is a cutted wine bottle which carries the cover pane.
The tank decorates my east window without any extra lightning, I just refill the water once a week and add some fertilizer every two weeks. I will show this in some weeks again, when the plants developed their whole emerse beauty.

marinus cube: new tiny lifeforms appeared

I have just a barely idea of who they are and what they might want. If anyone could help me to identify (one of) them, I would really appreciate.

"selfmade" TiBees, the F1

The easiest step is done, I bred a black bee female to a blue tiger male. The following pictures show the offspring of these two guys.
Surely, this is heterosis at it's best. Not mainly phenotypocally, but the growth rate is incredible.
At the moment they are just semi adults and stay as "visitors" in a tank with my yellow fires, I will prevent them from breeding to early and I hope they don't like the water hardness so they won't breed until I made my selection.

But, where to go from here? That's the main question now. I will try two ways. First I will pick the best male and the best two or maybe three females and breed with them, but I will also use the best male (or maybe a male which is nearly as good as the best one) to breed with snow white females (out of the original black bee line I used).

Possibly I will also cross a TiBee female back to a blue tiger male, one of the best two or three for sure.
That's what breeding is all about:
Breed the best with the best and hope for the best! I'm surely not an experienced Bee or TiBee breeder but in this case it's allways the same. You need a strong will to cull. Sure every single creature on this planet has it's own beauty, but look at mother nature: there is no progress without selection.

I will use the same way of selection I use on my guppies successfully for many years. First selection round I go in a kind of "colorblind mode" and pick the nearly adults which are best grown. At this point I already culled the small guys and the precocious males. Testosterone is antiproliferative, a precocious male will never reach a good size and this is some kind of quatitative genetic, so it needs to be culled. I had a strain of oldschool snakeskins once, during the breeding process I allways picked the late-maturing, big males. After some yearst this was genetically established and the males become mature with around 4 up to 5 month and a size of 2,6cm (bodysize, fins not included). For sure without "bomb feeding" and "overheating" them, just because the testosterone didn't kick in too early and they could develop harmonically.

After I picked the fittest I go for the second selection round and pick the beautiest and here it becomes more difficult. What is more important? Color or shape? We all are allways looking for the perfect one and let me tell you a thing: if he isn't there, you didn't raise enough fry ;-)
I said "he"... yeah well, picking females is kinda different. First round I pick the girls with the most perfect body shape, than I go for the color (if they have color) and than I look at the size. Look at strains from breeders who do it opposite: the girls look ugly. They often have a hunchback ore something else and sure the males have this too, just don't show it this clearly.

Whatever, I get far off the subject, here are the pics:

Marine closeups

just some random shots 

this tiny (1mm) feather duster worm I discovered some days ago

I fed a small fish today to this Euphyllia, fascinating to observe them eating

blue moon ;-)

Some shots with the blue night lightning... the corals are fluorescing.

This is hard to photograph, especially because everything is moving and I need a slow shutter speed but you will get an impression how amazing this looks like.

new adventure: marine cube

My newest mission: learn it the salty way...

I started with a 60 litre marinus complete plus cube from Dennerle, thanks to you guys ;-) It comes with all the technical stuff you need, the tank, lamp, pump, heater and also with salt, gravel, food and so on.

The live rocks I got from Aquarium Tonndorf in Hamburg, where I also shot some marine fishes, I will show them later. Big thanks to the whole team too, you guys are amazing! There is no marine aquarium without living rocks and they picked pretty nice ones for me.


I also got some coral offset from my old friend Matthias Klein. Some of the corals do well, others are still acclimating, thanks to him too for all these beauties.

Bernd Terletzki (who answers all my questions) from Aquarium Tonndorf told me I need to check the water daily, because I put the corals in way too early. Until today the water is fine. First liveforms show up from the live rocks. I discovered a beautiful goosefoot starfish with a red spot on the middle, a very tiny feather duster worm and a bristleworm, which I sadly couldn't catch before it disappeared. 

Wish me luck with my new project :-)