treesprite

Hi Sydney, welcome.

better yet, a guy with a doctorate in marine biology

so now they all know you're looking......

I've been wondering the exact same thing

absolutely hillarious!

I live in G-burg and the nitrates in the tap are not detectable with eithre Salifert or API test kits, so I'm wondering, did you test it right from the fawcett and get different results? (same goes for phosphate). Until you get an RO unit, you could do what I do. The Safeway by Lakeforest Mall has a fill-it-yourself purified water machine.... its only 39 cents a gallon when you use your own containers, which is practically nothing (to use their containers, it's 64 cents but you would only have to pay that the first time to get the jugs, and even then, it's cheaper than getting water off the shelf. There's a brand name on the machiens, which I think is Glacier but I really am not sure. I would skip on the canister filter. I was using one until a few weeks ago and kept having to open it to clean it up to keep it from holding nitrate. Ha, now the hoses are being used for my uv sterilizer. With the plain tap water, in addition to other things, I would be concerned about flouride. I didn't know it was being added to the water until recently when I read up on all kinds of health problems people have been having from it.

but would itr be ok in a tank that small with a damsel?

awesome

have you shown your clowns the safer sex video yet?

Hi there, Welcome to WAMAS and back to the hobby! It's good to see someone else who lives up here and not in Virginia!

very nice

LOL

more humans eating more of earths creatures....

you know how people are on Craigs list, sheez

Awww poor fish! OR Lucky NEW fish! The more aggressive damsels I've heard do fine with triggers if the triggers aren't huge but are bigger than the damsel. I would have loved to have a jewelled or velvet damsel because they are beautiful fish, but they are true beasts. If anyone DOES know of a little fish that can go with a mean damsel in a 10g, let me know!

how can a frag tank be sexy?

welcome back to the hobby, and welcome to WAMAS

if you put mesh that is too fine, however, stuff that needs to get to the sump to get skimmed isn't going to get there.

Rascal, Im trying to envision what you're saying. I keep changing the rock around, so there's nothing to see in pictures. I'm supposedly a really creative person, but for some reason this tank stuff totally escapes me. It's like this mountainous challange, I swear!

if you pay for them they may still keep them for you for a couple weeks

When I got the orchid dottyback, I researched around on it and they are apparently the exception to the dottyback aggression rule. They are still bold and will be territorial of the space they make home, but other than that can even be kept with gobies when the other dottys can't (so I've read, anyway). It clearly isn't aggressive like a damsel because the damsel tore off most of it's tail in a couple hours, but it isn't afraid to steal big chunks of food right from the big clown's mouth. Very entertaining fish... spends lot of time in the rockwork, but is always interesting when swimming about the tank.

Actually it does matter. It's such a narrow tank that doing anything with depth is very difficult. An absolute need for a tank that is only 12" wide, is for space in the back right corner behind the rock that is like a cave but facing backward, is big enough for both clowns to fit in at the same time, has big enough spce in the back and the front with big enough openings for the large clown to fit in from every angle. No matter what I do with the rock, the clowns always go to that corner whether there's a cave or them or not. Right now the only thing decent about arrangement is that the clown cave area is adequate. I had to put a piece of rock with the coraline side facing down because it was the only way I could put the rock in a way to give me the right cave arrangement. Even when I'm messing around in the tank the clowns - especially the female - stay in that corner. I was scooping around sand with a tall container in that corner, and ended up with a lot of sand AND a large female clown in a container with a diameter the size of the fish itself (I couldn't see very well with not enough light). It scared the daylights out of the fish and she was covered in sand.... I was afraid she wouldn't recover from it. If the tank was wider, I wouldn't have so much trouble with it. I took some of the rock out because I didn't know what to do with it (actually, everytime I mess with it, I either put some back in or take some back out, not always the same pieces even). 12" practically leaves the formations to being 2-dimensional! I decided that I'm not going to buy another tank until I can afford to set up something like a 75g, unless someone actually gives me a tank, so I'll have to keep struggling with this one.

Hi, wlecome to WAMAS. Jason is the DIY king - I bet you can get lots of ideas from him.

Anyone who has a 45g could you possibly post pics to give me aquascaping ideas? I'm having a rediculously hard time and my rock arrangement is always messed up because I get frustrated with it. I need to get it right once and for all and stop re-arranging every month. It has to be 45g, unless there's some other gallonage with an area of 36x12. Thanks

Well, I had taken the damsel out of the tank, re-arranged all the rock, put the dottyback into the tank and waited a bit, put the damsel back in the tank, and there goes the dottyback's tail. This is a very aggressive fish. I'm not sure what the typical demeanor is for blue & gold damsels, if it's generally worse than other damsels or if I just happen to have one with that kind of a personality. bad pic, but here's the monster