It was going too well; my Diodogorgia research that is. I am just about done with the original set of feeding movies. I am in the last batch, those where the animals were feeding in currents of 24 cm/sec. And I am not finding any feeding events on the films. I did pretty well at the lower velocities, but at 16 cm/sec and 24 cm/sec, the animals just do not seem to be feeding at all.
The do seem to be shaking a lot more than they should. These two “movie runs” were done early in my project and, I suspect, I didn’t have the colonies oriented properly in the chambers resulting in too much vibration and that, in turn, meant that the didn’t feed much. Here is one of the few good feeding episodes that I managed to capture. It is a big movie and takes a while to load, please have patience. 
Nauplius Capture at 16 cm per second, Laminar Flow
Fortunately, I just ordered two more Diodogorgia colonies, I was going to set them up to try to keep them in my reef tank. They arrived yesterday. So, I think I will be cutting one of them down to the size that fits into my apparatus, and I will be doing another couple of experimental runs. If all goes well, I will be able to complete the movie making within a couple of days, but the evaluation and analysis will take several weeks.
ARRRGH!!!! I thought I was getting done with this part of it!!!!
Oh well, at least I can remedy the problem.
Eye candy
The bird below is a western tanager. They normally live in the mountains around here, and we get them at our feeders as transients when they are migrating though. This year, for some wonderful reason, probably shelled peanuts in one feeder, they have stayed. I counted 12 males in one feeding aggregation a couple of days ago.
Western Tanager male on the roof of a feeder out my office window in Wilsall, Montana.
Until next time,
Cheers,
Tags: avifauna, azooxanthellate, Diodogorgia, gorgonian, laboratory research., migratory bird, Montana, resesearch, soft coral, western tanager, Wilsall