I had a really good and bad day with my tank yesterday. It started badly, but ended up okay.
First, the bad news.
I accidentally turned off my 2 Vortechs on Wednesday night before bed, so when I got home from work yesterday, the tank looked "off". I quickly realized the issue and without looking I flipped the switch. Immediately, one of the pumps made a bad noise and I flipped the switch off. I looked up to see what the problem was and saw a very sad sight. My lawnmower blenny had decided to camp out inside the propeller housing. I managed to get him out and he was still alive, but hurt badly. He ended up dying later in the evening. I am so sad.
Worst part is, that is the only fish in the tank that my 3yo daughter named and it was her favorite. She saw him hurt and was very upset. So, it is off to Captain Nemo's tomorrow to see if we can replace him. I felt so bad for her.
Now, on to the good stuff. During a break in the Phillies game (don't worry, they will win it all) I went over to check on the blenny who was barely hanging on and noticed what I thought were thousands (maybe millions) of micro-bubbles in the tank. Before I had a chance to react (thinking I was sucking air in somewhere), I saw my clam "smoking". It looked like there was a major fire ready to break out inside of him.
Getting a closer look, I realized that the tank was full of whatever was coming out of the clam. I grabbed my video camera and got a full minute of HD video before the battery died...arghh.
So, I had to revert to my little Canon SD1000 digital camera to get some raw video. I only took a minute or so of footage, but it is really cool. It turns out that the clam was spawning!!!! I have never seen that before! It was very cool. I don't know how long it went before I noticed it, but it continued at a slower pace for another 20 minutes after I caught this video: