LCDRDATA

I remember awhile back some discussion (perhaps Jimlin?) of some kind of thin, solid substrate with sand in a matrix (clear epoxy?) that gives the look of a sandbed without the concurrent potential issues. If I were re-doing a tank, I'd probably go bare-bottom or something like I just described, UNLESS I wanted to have fish that require a sandbed (jawfish, some wrasses, etc). Just a thought - no noisy crabs.

I'll try and get / post a decent picture later today. However, this isn't the overnight fading you describe. I've seen that, too, and this is something different.

So I've had this yellow tang for a couple of years now, and this morning my wife tells me he's turning white - especially his face. The only thing that's changed in the tank recently is the clownfish have spawned for the first time (eggs laid 3 Feb), and so have gotten very territorial around where the eggs are. I know they've picked on him a bit in that part of the tank. Other than that, I have no idea why his color would change - there's not sign of malnourishment, for example. Any experience/ideas? Thanks.

I remember when we were living in Hawaii in the late '80s, we were told about a pair of morays at least that size that lived 60 feet or so down in a particular spot at Molokini crater. At the time, Molokini was rated as one of the top ten spots in the world for both snorkeling and diving. Anyway, these two were so well known that all the local dive shops had them named - one was Garbonzo, I can't remember the other one's name. They said these guys were so old they only had like two teeth and probably would have long ago starved to death if the divers weren't feeding them. They'd see divers approaching and shoot out at warp speed to play and get fed. All the dive masters and their customers thought it was great - and if a particular client was particularly obnoxious, the dive master would just conveniently forget to tell them what to expect when they reached a certain point ... .

What's the height of the lamp above the surface? - the depth of the clam below the surface?

I also had an 8-bulb T5 unit, and essentially swapped out half the bulbs every nine months, for effective 18-month life for any given bulb. It seemed to work pretty well.

Thanks. I don't think any of those are an issue, but they're all worth checking. After looking at your list of triggers, I don't know if the fact that all the other fish are still eating makes me more or less concerned.

I'd recommend a sharknose cleaner goby. The ones we've had were always going in and out of holes, crevices, etc. and got along well with all their tank mates. You could also try an Orchid or Springeri dottyback, although you may not see them quite as much. Then there's a midas blenny, which I think would work well with what you're describing, although I've never owned one myself (although I've wanted to).

Well, we try to keep him well fed, but he still usually wants something at least twice a week, and its been at least two, maybe three weeks since he's eaten anything as far as we can tell. So we'd think by now he'd be hungry. We haven't seen him out at night, although I'll probably try checking more frequently. I've never seen anything pick on him -- except for a couple of apparently suicidal dwarf angels that he tolerated for awhile but eventually obliged. We have a humu trigger that does try to steal his food, which is why he pulls back into the tubing as soon as he grabs it. I've never seen any of the other fish (blue velvet damsel, scribbled foxface, and valentini puffer) pick on him, nor the humu directly. The CUC consists of a couple of large turbos and a pair of slate-pencil urchins that he couldn't really eat. As to being too fat, my wife has wondered about that also, but we used 2" PVC tubing. Moreover, if he had gotten stuck one would think he'd be a bit more careful going in after we blew him out, but he left his hidey-hole under the rocks in favor of the tubes as soon as he was sure the powerheads in the openings were gone - and we haven't seen him come back out since. So we're still trying to figure out how concerned we should or shouldn't be and what else, if anything, we can or ought to do about it.

Our snowflake moray, Erastus, hasn't eaten in at least two weeks. We've had him for several years now; he's never skipped eating this long before and my wife is getting worried. Generally, he sits in his PVC tubing, like so: He's usually visible like this about 25-50% of the time, closer to all the time when he's hungry. Sometimes, especially when he hasn't eaten in awhile, he'll come all the way out and slither around the tank: Last week, my wife was so worried I had to take two powerheads and stick them directly into two of the three portals to his tubing to try and blow him out to verify he was still alive. It took awhile, and he wasn't happy about it, but eventually he came all the way out. We looked him over as closely as we could, and while we couldn't tell if he'd lost weight or not there was no visible sign of disease or parasites. Still, he didn't want to eat then or the next morning. When we've put his food directly into the pipes we find it floating around the tank later (at least, what the trigger hasn't eaten). Nothing significant has changed in the tank. So, with all that as background, any ideas? How worried should we be (or not)? Any suggestions?

Is that official - "Weeping Angel" fungia? Of course, then they'd have to be gray.

Cool! I just hope that tank's got a really tight lid - wouldn't want him taking any unsupervised excursions!

Same experience here - I used to give them away when people came for frags, and I've seen them putting eggs/sperm into the water column, but now I haven't seen one in my tank in what seems like a couple of years.

Belay that comment ...

"Send in the clowns ... "

I thought mine -- which hosted originally in some dragon's breath macroalgae on a koralia powerhead and lately are either in discoma mushrooms or on my derasa clam -- had to take the cake, but you've got them beat.