Shopping for rocks, yes, indeed.

The store thought they had my sand in, but didn’t. It still ended up being great, because they had rocks. Wonderful rocks. I need some more rock, because this tank is bigger. And I need spires, because damsels love to chase one another around spires, which define their ‘kingdoms.’

Damsels are wonderful for large enough marine tanks, bright, colorful—cheap—and though they can get sizeable (up to 4″) they’re still rated small, among marine fishes, and being on everybody’s menu, they never stray more than 1-2 feet from their kingdom. Perfectly suited to a 100 gallon marine tank. They have their entire livespans predator-free, each with their own kingdom, and a wonderful show of constant movement.

Too often, fish stores sell one to a guy with a 30 gallon tank, and all is well until the unsuspecting novice puts in another fish. Well, what do you think would happen? The damsel’s got a guy in his 1-2 feet, who just won’t leave. It’s like tossing a guy over the fence to meet a guard dog in a 10 foot enclosure. It’s not going to end well.

These are the kind of things I wrote the fish book to try to prevent.

And back to my rock—it’s splendid, complex shapes— I can turn this into a wonderful thing!

With lots of damsels.

And…on our fishy outing, we got some baby koi, silver and black, to replace the poor koi gotten by the cats: we have the netting in place, and right now the fish are figuring out they’re no longer on the menu.