Our New Marine Red Sea Max S Series Tank and the Incredible World in our Oceans and Seas

We have had a number of marine tanks in the past few years, some were too small, some were too large and others were relinquished when we moved house, recently we chose to install a Red Sea Max S-400 tank in our home, this is a complete tank unit and fairly new to the UK, we've had some slight complications but two of our local fish centres have been wonderfully helpful (see links on the right).

This is an ongoing project and each day there is something new to adjust and there's always something fascinating to watch. Alongside the creatures and corals that we have purposefully placed in the tank we have found a number of 'hitchhikers' that have arrived inside rocks and corals and which suddenly appear 'out of the blue' (sorry about the pun) and have happily set up home in our home window into an amazing marine world.

With decisions and thoughts on the tank and its contents becoming all-consuming, and during our search for prospective additions to add to our little piece of the ocean at home, so with that in mind I decided to pull together some amazing videos both of our own tank, other people's amazing marine tanks and the incredible professional videos of our oceans and seas that mesmerize me.

Our latest hitchhiker to arrive is a Stomatella Snail, it is grey in colour and therefore perfectly camouflaged against the rock but when we saw how fast it moved and that it stands up on it's tail to turn quickly we realised that we were looking at a whole new snail and something totally new to us. It also looked more like a slug than a snail, in fact it does have a shell but it's very small and it can't retreat inside it for protection, I suppose that's why it's adapted to move much faster than a normal snail can. It took a bit of research on the internet to find out what it actually was but once we had found out what we were dealing with we were hooked. It's most spectacular habit is that at certain phases of the moon it will make it's way to the highest point in the tank, stand up vertically on it's tail and then it spawns (releases eggs and sperm into the water). My daughter didn't like the sound of that when she first heard about it but one night when we were out I got a very excited call to tell us that the snail had chosen that particular evening to spawn, her video of the spawning is too short for you to really see what's going on so I have found another one on YouTube and here it is:

So with everything in our life revolving around the marine tank at the moment we just can't get enough of ocean videos of marine life, having stood on a sand-encrusted jellyfish as a child while playing on a beach I have always been amazed by them, more so now that we have HD videos of how incredible they are and footage of some hitherto unknown species. So here are two of my favourite jellyfish videos for you to watch:

This second video is not only of jellyfish but of all sea life, including one of my favourites the Sea Angler Fish, all of this selection have a bioluminescence ability - amazing, amazing footage of life in our oceans:

In this video are many varieties of squid, I'm particularly fond of the ones that can change colour to attract a mate, the colours really look electrical and neon, they seem to have their own little electricity generator going on. Another that I like are the little ones that look like they have long curly hair on top of their heads - they are beyond cute.

In the marine tank today we have placed some Pulsating Xenia, it's an amazing soft coral which looks like a pinkish-white flowery fern, and it open and closes constantly filtering the water around it and uses the strong lights in the tank to feed and grow.

We have recently placed a Green Anemone into the tank, it has moved three times since it's arrival but now seems to be very happy inside a group of rocks and our two Saddleback Clownfish (pictured above) have set up home in it. The photo on the righthand side is the anemone when first purchased and placed into the tank, and below you can see further photos and a video of what it looks like now, as you can see it's tripled in size.

These gorgeous little babies are Zoanthids, most people call them 'zoos' and often referred to as the tiny flowers of the reef.

Well this is our marine tank adventure so far, I will be doing a hub on the complete set-up of the Red Sea Max S-400 shortly for those of you who are interested and I will be doing another update on the tank in the next few months so please keep checking back to see what's happening in our little marine world at home.