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Morbid Florist posted:Goby question. This Randall's is my first goby and I seem to be doing myself more harm that good by trying to keep him fed. I've got brown algae starting so I obviously need to cut down the food. My problem is that the gramma I have is a prick, takes the pick of the litter for food, AND can get in the goby's face a bit. Astreas are supposed to eat diatoms, and since they're small and cheap, I'd probably add 3 more or so. My 24g has 5 astreas and a turbo, as well as 3 nassarius and a bunch of tiny hitch-hiker snails (not sundials though). My tank still has plenty of algae for them to graze on. I've only ever lost nassariuses. As far as the goby, I've lost 3 two-spots so far, so I'm done with fish in my tank. My two tank-raised percula clowns are the only fish that survive, so they'll continue to be the only two fish in my tank. The first goby and my bicolor blenny succumbed to the arrow crab, and the LFS gave me bad advice and claimed that the last 2 gobies were a mated pair. The 2nd goby only lasted a few days and was probably killed due to stress from the other goby. The other goby just up and disappeared in the last week. Its burrows are still there, but it is not in them, and the substrate is getting dirty again. Since I'm in rant mode, I had two separate pieces of the tonga branch coral in my tank just up and fall on the same day. First (larger) piece fell into the substrate and narrowly missed a nassarius, but the 2nd piece fell onto my frog spawn which 1) dislodged it from the rock it was on and 2) burst a few of its tentacles and released some weird stringy poo poo. It seems to be fine now, but I'm planning on removing all that tonga crap this weekend. Maybe I'll just break it apart and put it in the areas where I can't see it -- I just don't know how much biological filtration 8lbs of tonga will provide. I still have ~30lbs of normal fiji rock. The tonga just gets in the way, can't be stacked without fear of toppling, and seems to just breed diatoms / algae. What a frustrating hobby.
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Mar 27, 2009 19:52
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Well how do you like that. I never knew they ate diatoms, that just wasn't mentioned on the sites I looked at before. That's excellent I guess more of them it will be.
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Mar 27, 2009 20:47
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Morbid Florist posted:Well how do you like that. I never knew they ate diatoms, that just wasn't mentioned on the sites I looked at before. I don't think they specifically target it, but if it's on a surface and short enough, a snail will eventually lick it up. Nice thing about turbos (or specifically mexican turbos) is that they're the only species of snail I've encountered that will eat red wire algae. So many people on the internets told me that what I was describing was a form of Cyno. I was always like "LOOK! I know what cyno looks like! this ain't it!" Then I would post pictures of it online, and people thought it was something else. Eventually SOMEONE recognized the poo poo (as it had completely taken over my tank, and nothing I could do or find would stop it), and told me to go pick up a few mexican turbo snails as they were he only snail species he knew of that would eat it. Sure enough. Within a week, that poo poo was GONE. In other news, I finally got "Shortbus" (my eel) to eat tonight. Eels don't actually eat that often (usually about every 2-3 days for a larger one like mine), but considering he hadn't eaten since I got him (about a week ago), I was getting a little nervous. Of course, I SHOULDN'T have, as even though Eels normally eat every 2-3 days, when stressed, or when there's no food around, they can literally go for weeks without eating. But he must have been pretty hungry. I didn't try to feed him last night (as I had every night since I got him), but tonight when I was feeding the rest of my fish, I saw him come out of his burrow so I knew something was up. So I took one of his shrimp (a rather large one, in the 45-60 tails per pound range), sliced it in half, and put it on the metal skewer that I was given to feed him with, inserted the shrimp half into the tank.... ... and then "Nolby" my trigger fish comes out of nowhere, snatches the shrimp and runs behind the rock structure with it. Nolby is actually the phonetic translation of my trigger's name. It's actually a pronunciation of NLB - an acronym for Nasty Little Bastard. He proved his name tonight. Little fucker. Shrimp piece was bigger than he is. Anyway, after that debacle, I got the other side of the shrimp, got it down near Shortbus' burrow SNAP!! He raced out, snatched it off the skewer and ducked back into his burrow. Sweet. He WAS hungry. Now he has fed, but he's only had 1/3 of his normal meal. So I try to feed him agan. He's having none of it. poo poo. Oh well. Maybe I'll try a little later. Later on, was a more interesting feeding. After the lights were off, I stuck another piece of shrimp into the tank. Slowly, lazily I see Shortbus coming out of his burrow, moving slowly towards the skewer. He sees the food, and is all like "Hey. Food. Sweet....<sigh> I guess... maybe I'll have some food now." So he arches his body over to the skewer, and then gentle as a puppy, slides the shrimp off, and slowly goes back into his burrow as if saying, "Hey, thanks man! This is pretty sweet!" This eel is indeed turning out to be pretty cool. I can't get pictures of him quite yet because he doesn't like to come out of his burrow during daylight hours yet, but as he adjusts to the tank's schedule, the feeding schedule, and my schedule, chances are I'll be able to snap some pics soon.
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Apr 1, 2009 10:09
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I've been banning myself from adding corals and such to my tank but once a month -- to keep things stable and also prevent me from going bankrupt. So, for my monthly round of coral additions, I added a open brain coral and a torch (6 or 7 heads), bought with a gift certificate from christmas, and a flowerpot coral. Unfortunately, I read about how picky gonioporas are after I already picked it up -- any advice to help this coral live a long life? I'm already planning on replacing my 245 gph return pump (Maxi-Jet Utility 900) with a Maxi-Jet Utility 1800 (474gph), as well as replacing the stock canopy on my AquaPod 24 with a SunPod 150 HQI. I'd also like to either get a side-mount refugium to hold some chaeto on an opposite light cycle to stabilize pH a little better (currently swings from 7.8 to 8.2 throughout the day). Other changes: I've removed some of the tonga branch coral, broke it down into rubble and other pieces, placed most of it in unseen parts of the tank. I only had ~8 lbs of Tonga, so I don't think I reduced my filtration capabilities too much. Before:  Click here for the full 1280x853 image. After:  Click here for the full 1280x853 image. All in all, I'm pretty pleased with how its coming along; even if I can't keep any fish in it (only fish that have kept are my two clowns which I've had from the beginning -- everything else is either eaten or dies after a few weeks).
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Apr 1, 2009 18:27
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Wow is that a 14gal? My fish place swore to me I didn't want clowns in mine. The gramma they swore would not be a prick is a step away from a white hat and polo shirt.  Nice tank
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Apr 3, 2009 16:07
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Morbid Florist posted:Wow is that a 14gal? My fish place swore to me I didn't want clowns in mine. The gramma they swore would not be a prick is a step away from a white hat and polo shirt. It's a 24 gallon AquaPod. I just ordered a SunPod 150, sapphire nanoskimmer, and a 474 gph Maxi-Jet 1800 utility return pump (to replace my ~140gph Maxi-Jet 900 utility return -- supposed to be 240 gph, but not even close). I haven't had the greatest of luck with fish, but my tank-raised clowns are the kindest things I've seen. They're extremely hardy too, apparently. My arrow crab couldn't touch them, they've never picked on any of the other fish that were in the tank, never nipped on corals, and are not shy. Maybe the skimmer will allow me to get another fish. I'd like to get another bicolor blenny -- had one before but the arrow killed it. I've gone through 3 two-spot gobies, so they're off my list even though they did an excellent job of keeping the substrate sparkling clean.
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Apr 3, 2009 18:18
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If I thought I stood any chance of catching the gramma without tearing the whole tank apart I would turn him in for a clown 
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Apr 3, 2009 18:58
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Morbid Florist posted:If I thought I stood any chance of catching the gramma without tearing the whole tank apart I would turn him in for a clown I cycled my tank with 3 yellow-tail damsels.. yea I had to remove all the rockwork to get them out.
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Apr 3, 2009 18:59
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Psimitry posted:If it's your first aquarium, I might recommend taking the size up to a 29 gallon tank or thereabouts. The nice thing about the equipment they've put on there is that it will grow with the tank somewhat. The remora is an aging design, but it's a solid skimmer that my buddy had on his 55G reef for quite a long time. ludnix posted:I agree with everything Psimitry said. The remoras are supposedly vary from skimmer to skimmer but I had a good experience with mine on a 30g system. It seems like a pretty good price as well. Thanks for the input guys, as it turned out I just moved to a bigger and nicer apartment so I'll definitely be upgrading to a 29 gallon set up when I do this. Sadly it does mean that I have to wait a little while longer to get the spare cash together. Good question about the sand, it appears not. I'll have to ask at the shop what their deal on that is. I also saw a gorgeous pair of black and white clowns at the shop, is there any reason not to buy those instead of the typical white & orange?
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Apr 4, 2009 03:44
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The black and white ocellaris should behave no differently than regular ocellaris. They are usually more expensive though.
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Apr 4, 2009 04:07
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ludnix posted:The black and white ocellaris should behave no differently than regular ocellaris. They are usually more expensive though. Actually, I've seen that they CAN be slightly more aggressive. Mine, for example, are little bastards to me (they really don't like it when I put my hand in the tank). Most clowns don't like it when other fish get too close to their anemone (mine will chase away any and all fish that come near their anemone, but when I stick my hand in the water they will actually leave it and come after me).
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Apr 4, 2009 06:11
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Psimitry posted:Actually, I've seen that they CAN be slightly more aggressive. Mine, for example, are little bastards to me (they really don't like it when I put my hand in the tank). Most clowns don't like it when other fish get too close to their anemone (mine will chase away any and all fish that come near their anemone, but when I stick my hand in the water they will actually leave it and come after me). I've heard that but I've really never seen a clownfish that wasn't a pain in the rear end when hosting so I don't know if there is really any noticeable difference. My female clownfish does the same thing if I'm anywhere near "her side" of the 120.
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Apr 4, 2009 10:41
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ludnix posted:I've heard that but I've really never seen a clownfish that wasn't a pain in the rear end when hosting so I don't know if there is really any noticeable difference. My female clownfish does the same thing if I'm anywhere near "her side" of the 120. That's funny. It's my female that does it too. But poo poo - mine, it doesn't matter if I'm on her side or anywhere else. If my hands are in the water for more that a few seconds, I can count on her biting at me. Doesn't hurt, but it scares the crap outta me.
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Apr 4, 2009 10:49
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A while ago you had mentioned that you see a nice benefit when thoroughly cleaning your skimmer, so ended up taking the whole skimmer out and cleaning the whole sump up. Since I had the skimmer out I decided to experiment with the needle wheel on the pump. My original pump had went out a few months ago so I had an extra impeller to experiment with. I tried the fishing line modification where I interwove the line onto the impeller to help with the bubble chopping action and noticed a significant decrease in bubble size. Since the mod and cleaning I've been pulling out more skimmate than ever before. I ended up having to throttle the water line down from where it used to be since the bubbles are climbing so much higher now. I'll have to see with time how the fishing line works out. I imagine I have the potential risk of the line either coming undone or stretching so I'll have to check on it during the scheduled cleanings.
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Apr 4, 2009 11:04
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My female ocellaris is a little bitch. If I even just take the lid off the tank, she comes right to the top ready to bite whatever she can. She'll even jump out of the water trying to take my face off. I'm pretty sure she's the one that killed my chromis. She doesn't get along well with others. Glad she's only 2 inches long.
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Apr 4, 2009 19:23
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Mine aren't black and white so maybe that contributes to them not being quite as aggressive as yours and psimitry's but they will do anything they have to for their anemone. When I had to remove the rock with their BTA on it they refused to leave it even as I pulled it from the water, they sat on the gelatinous blob as I moved it to the transport bucket.
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Apr 4, 2009 22:45
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Got a little bit of video of Shortbus chowing down some shrimp tonight: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qzEmYMfITag
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Apr 6, 2009 05:20
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Hey Bob are you still in Pensacola? We got a pretty decent Reefclub going on if you ever want to trade frags.
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Apr 6, 2009 05:52
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Here are a few new photos: Hand feeding my bumblebee   Here is by button coral eating some shrimp  Here is my porcelain crab  Here is a video of it eating: 
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Apr 6, 2009 08:05
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Speaking of rear end in a top hat fish, are there any sort of baited traps you can put in a tank to avoid ripping everything apart? The gramma picked open warfare with my peppermint shrimp this weekend and is still making life hard for my goby, so he's vetoed. I had to take one of these out of a much larger tank and even THAT was a whore. Are there no little plastic boxes I could put some food in, wait for him to swim in, and drop the door on him? For those who might put a gramma in a nano tank, JUST SAY NO.
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Apr 6, 2009 17:11
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Morbid Florist posted:Speaking of rear end in a top hat fish, are there any sort of baited traps you can put in a tank to avoid ripping everything apart? The gramma picked open warfare with my peppermint shrimp this weekend and is still making life hard for my goby, so he's vetoed. I had to take one of these out of a much larger tank and even THAT was a whore. There is a commercial fish trap sold at my local fish store, I don't know who makes it or how effective it is though. I tried using one of those cheap plastic critter cages as I've heard of people having luck with them, but I never was able to catch anything with it.
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Apr 6, 2009 18:24
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Morbid Florist posted:Speaking of rear end in a top hat fish, are there any sort of baited traps you can put in a tank to avoid ripping everything apart? The gramma picked open warfare with my peppermint shrimp this weekend and is still making life hard for my goby, so he's vetoed. I had to take one of these out of a much larger tank and even THAT was a whore. I caught a couple of my yellowtail assholes, er damsels, by taking a 1L bottle (washed very well obviously), cutting off the opening about 2" down, inverting it and taping it to the rest of the bottle. put some flake or pellets in there and submerse it. caught one damsel in about 3 minutes, the other about 30 minutes later, and had to destroy the tank to get rid of the 3rd haha
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Apr 6, 2009 19:25
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optikalus posted:I caught a couple of my yellowtail assholes, er damsels, by taking a 1L bottle (washed very well obviously), cutting off the opening about 2" down, inverting it and taping it to the rest of the bottle. put some flake or pellets in there and submerse it. caught one damsel in about 3 minutes, the other about 30 minutes later, and had to destroy the tank to get rid of the 3rd haha That's not the worst idea in the world. I don't know how well it'll work for a basslet since they're sleeker than damsels, this guy can shoot between anything. But it sure beats the $30 the traps seem to cost. I get the feeling I'll only get the chance to fool him once though, I'd better make it all it can be.
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Apr 6, 2009 20:30
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About how much would it cost for the ideal peacock mantis shrimp setup? I need to figure out how much to spend. I don't want to keep anything else in there that doesn't involve feeding it.
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Apr 7, 2009 00:20
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Hypnotized posted:Here are a few new photos: Aw I love these guys! I have one right now, and I'm getting two more. They're really full of character for shrimp. 
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Apr 7, 2009 00:38
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Managed to ID my two free corals. One is a Tonga Purple Bullseye and the other seems to be an orange mushroom. These seem like pretty hands-off corals which I need right now. So I think I'm gonna sell the gramma and apply him towards a little new coral. I like the look of green glove polyps, which they claim to have in stock. I've read polyps spread like wildfire, but nothing about what that actually means. Will I be spending hours a week trying to contain them, however that's done? Will they just take over the rock they're on or will I be looking at a full tank invasion?
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Apr 7, 2009 19:56
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Morbid Florist posted:Managed to ID my two free corals. One is a Tonga Purple Bullseye and the other seems to be an orange mushroom. These seem like pretty hands-off corals which I need right now. Nothing will grow so fast that you can't contain it easily. My GSP has tripled in size since I bought it, but this is over a period of 6 months. It's actually starting to grow on the back wall, which (IMO) is cool as hell. I'd imagine that encrusting corals will grow more quickly than corals that grow by division (zoanthus, ricordea, etc), but I'm still new to the hobby. Here's my GSP when I first got it sometime in December:  Click here for the full 1280x853 image. Here it is as of a week ago: Click here for the full 1280x853 image. I just checked out a few other 'local' fish stores (about 30 miles away), and they were epic. Picked up some ricordea, a couple very cool colored zoa frags, a dark blue zoa rock, and some red people eaters. I'll try to get a pic tonight. I saw a hitch hiker baby brittle star on one of the frags, but all my shrimp swarmed the frags, so I'm not sure if it made it.
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Apr 7, 2009 21:29
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optikalus posted:I'd imagine that encrusting corals will grow more quickly than corals that grow by division (zoanthus, ricordea, etc), but I'm still new to the hobby. It totally depends on the tank. My encrusting montipora spreads faster than most of my zoanthids (though this is no longer true of a particular zoanthid colony that is spreading like crazy now), but the main difference is you won't be able to remove zoanthids, GSP, and anthellia like you can a hard encrusting coral. Sometimes you can pull the zoanthids up and they will peel off but hard encrusting corals are extremely easy to control in comparison.
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Apr 7, 2009 21:50
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it just gets better. now the son of a bitch has ich. won't come out of hiding, won't eat. he's forced my hand. I get to go home at lunch and hope he's less than spry, catch him and bring him to the fish store before it spreads to my goby (who is loving life now that the gramma is more than less out of the picture)
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Apr 8, 2009 16:39
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Morbid Florist posted:before it spreads to my goby Too late. If there are ich parasites in the water (enough to infect fish that don't usually get endangered like this), then there's enough to get every fish in the tank. Get a couple cleaner shrimp, and start adding a garlic additive to you feedings to induce a stronger feeding response. That's really all you can do. With any luck, your Goby might be one of the types that's immune to ich.
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Apr 8, 2009 17:34
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Some more recent seahorsey goodness.  This is a baby Brazilian, a bit of a rescue after being sucked into a sump. We'll see how she does...  And my pipefish like to dance. 
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Apr 8, 2009 17:45
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Psimitry posted:Too late. If there are ich parasites in the water (enough to infect fish that don't usually get endangered like this), then there's enough to get every fish in the tank. no room for more shrimp it's only a 14gal with a peppermint already. I just got back from the store. He looked loving fine when I got him out, but he wasn't trying to get away. They sold me some ich stuff that won't harm corals. I'll do that stuff and hope for the best. He better be ok, he's the entire reason I wanted to ditch the gramma in the first place. He was all out and about last night now that he wasn't being muscled around.
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Apr 8, 2009 19:12
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Having that gramma out will probably help more than the treatment they gave you. The goby should be more comfortable without him and better able to handle having ich in the tank. There is a direct correlation between ich and stress so having that gramma out of there should help a lot.
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Apr 8, 2009 20:09
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ludnix posted:Having that gramma out will probably help more than the treatment they gave you. The goby should be more comfortable without him and better able to handle having ich in the tank. There is a direct correlation between ich and stress so having that gramma out of there should help a lot. That's what I don't get, why the gramma got it of all things. All he did was intimidate the shrimp and goby. Life was good for him but I guess karma's a bitch. Or my goby is a plague angel in disguise
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Apr 8, 2009 20:48
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Most fish don't usually maliciously go after other animals (unless they are potential food) so maybe it was a territorial issue which could have caused him stress. I'm not familiar with a royal gramma being very aggressive as all of mine have been pretty docile, but maybe being an rear end in a top hat was a stressful endeavor.
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Apr 9, 2009 01:27
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ludnix posted:I'm not familiar with a royal gramma being very aggressive as all of mine have been pretty docile, but maybe being an rear end in a top hat was a stressful endeavor. The only aggressive Royal Grammas I've ever seen have been GIGANTIC specimens that are like 5-6 years old and pretty much live in their caves all the time. The only time that they are aggressive (though they are aggressive in this) is whenever someone else comes near their cave. Doesn't really matter what. Fish, hands, food, crabs, they'll run out and bite it. Interestingly enough, they also have the tendency to decorate their caves. At one point, my friend was wondering where all of his zoos and small shells were running off to. He thought that some crab was eating the fish. Then he found that his bigass royal gramma (thing was HUGE) was coming out of his cave, grabbing a zoo polyp and running back into his cave with it. He poured out the rock, and like 10-15 nearly dead or dead zoanthid polyps, some shells, etc came pouring out.
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Apr 9, 2009 01:48
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That is fascinating, I had no idea royal gramma would do that. My pink and white spot goby snagged a small cluster of zoos that had seperated from his main rock and placed it on top of his cave, but in my case it worked out good because it was the perfect spot it. How big did the royal gramma end up getting? Mine was the smallest I had ever seen when I got it and is a mere 2"ish now.
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Apr 9, 2009 02:23
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ludnix posted:How big did the royal gramma end up getting? Mine was the smallest I had ever seen when I got it and is a mere 2"ish now. It got probably about 4" long. I base this on it being about the same size as my buddy's fully grown ocellaris female. But yeah, it takes a WHILE for it to get there, and they get awful grumpy in the process.
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Apr 9, 2009 05:47
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Psimitry posted:The only aggressive Royal Grammas I've ever seen have been GIGANTIC specimens that are like 5-6 years old and pretty much live in their caves all the time. The only time that they are aggressive (though they are aggressive in this) is whenever someone else comes near their cave. Doesn't really matter what. Fish, hands, food, crabs, they'll run out and bite it. This guy wasn't mature even, the store thought he might have been a year or so. He swam up to the shrimp, put his rear end right in his face and would keep backing up until the shrimp finally had enough and antenna-slapped him. The goby would stand his ground oddly enough but never came out of his hole very far, was always meek eating. Oh well, he's gone, and the goby was up on rocks last night and the shrimp was all over the joint. The tank is a little boring to look at right now, but they're happy as poo poo. Green clove polyps on their way this weekend  edit: now that I look at other pictures of these polyps, I think the place is selling me daisy polyps instead. I can see the confusion since they're so similar. I hope I just got a bad view, or that they have the green cloves still when I get up there Morbid Florist fucked around with this message at 16:38 on Apr 9, 2009 |
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Apr 9, 2009 14:51
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Well, I feel like an idiot. Just figured out that my LFS sold me a nearly-dead open brain coral a week ago. I didn't know what to look for (first time I've seen them for sale). My peppermint shrimp is feeding on whatever little flesh it has left, so I've moved it into my cleaner shrimp's corner, who happens to not be very friendly with the peppermint entering its space. Hopefully it'll protect the coral while it recovers. The peppermint has eaten about 1/8" of flesh through the skeleton ribs in some areas Anyways, some updated tank shots (now with ricordea, red people eaters, and some epic blue zoas) under my new 150w SunPod HQI  Click here for the full 853x1280 image.  Click here for the full 1280x853 image.
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Apr 10, 2009 04:16
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