Post-move inventory

My critters and I have been in Campbell River a month now, so yesterday, when I changed the water and cleaned the tank, I did a quick inventory to see how well they have coped with the stress of the move.

"Doing just fine, thanks!"

I moved with 20 hermits, from two pinhead-sized ones to several large grainy hand and hairy hermits. Yesterday, I counted 20, but the tiniest have moved into larger shells; they're growing up. Good!

(As usual, I moved the hermits to a bowl while I cleaned the tank. I forgot to feed them their shrimp pellet treats until I was almost ready to return them, so I fed them, waited about 5 minutes, and then, impatient to be finished with the job, moved them one by one back to the tank. And each one came with his hands full, carrying his goodie bag back home. Even the tiniest, about the same size as the pellets, held onto their haul all the way.) 

The two small shrimp, one red, one blue (he was black, but now he's blue), are fine.

The two big anemones are still thriving. The baby proliferating anemones have disappeared, and so have all but one of the tiny orange-striped anemones. Stress, change of water, or just the season? I don't know.

Of the worms, there's a 4-inch polychaete, umpteen tiny two-tentacled worms, and one scale worm, who was about half an inch long when we moved; now he's at least an inch. Doing fine!

The sand dollar is still active, and maybe growing slightly. So is the one clam, and the green shore crab.

There seem to be fewer Nassa snails, but the rest are as plentiful as ever. So are the limpets. The three leafy hornmouth snails have even laid eggs since the move. All is well there.

I could only find three live barnacles. The leafy hornmouth snails and one small whelk eat them, so I'll have to go "shopping" for more.

I'm pleased.

Busy bubbles

A family of bubble shell snails came home on the last batch of eelgrass; 2 adults and 4 tiny ones, still just wriggly brown balls. Two of those got lost, eaten, or crushed, but the other two are now full-size.

And they're all working on re-populating the tank. I keep seeing couples twisted together; later, almost every day, there's a new batch of eggs, some on the remaining eelgrass, but mostly on the glass wall.

Bubble shell underside, on glass wall. Cream and grey, with egg-yolk internal shell.

The largest of the bubble shells. This one has dots of orange on his back, and a dark rear end.

One of the egg masses, a transparent jelly with almost white eggs arranged in a rough spiral.

Smaller bubble shell, with new egg mass. It looks like his inner shell was cracked at some time, although he has recovered. The shells are paper-thin, and brittle.

The egg masses gradually disintegrate over a week or so. Looking at a mass a few days old through the microscope, I can see each individual egg; a solid centre surrounded by its own transparent container. Most of these will be spinning around, slowly the first few days, but more rapidly as they develop.

I haven't seen any new babies crawling about, though. It is possible that they get dragged into the filter and destroyed.