New Addition: Macneill's Basslet

During the holiday season, the Marketing department picked up a few new additions to the tank: a purple nudibranch (now deceased), a cleaner shrimp and, my personal favorite, a Macneill's Basslet aka the Blue Assessor.

The nudibranch was an impulse buy; he was beautiful, affordable and ... available. Had I done my homework, I would have known the likelihood of his survival in our aquarium was next to nil.

From the research I conducted after the fact, I learned that purple nudibranches rarely live longer than 90 days in captivity. It seems to be a consensus among hobbyists that, in a case like this, you shouldn't buy such an animal so that the pet store will learn its lesson and not stock it in the future.

Let this be a lesson to other novice reef keepers out there: don't buy livestock spontaneously!

The cleaner shrimp is turning out to be a nice addition to the tank. He's a stark contrast to our huge coral banded shrimp, Corey Feldman, who is very timid and only emerges from the rock work once or twice a day (if that). The cleaner shrimp (name TBD) isn't the least bit shy and stays active throughout most of the day. I worry about him at night when I'm not in the office; that's why we make sure Corey Feldman always has a full belly before we leave for the day!

Everything else in the tank is doing great. We've been on a regular regimen of Prodibio's Bio Kit Reef and Purple Up since August '07 and everything is doing really, really well. The picture below doesn't really do the tank justice but it's the most updated I have.

Whataya think?