LCDRDATA
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Posts posted by LCDRDATA
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My daughter was a bit older than yours when I got my main tank (at the behest of herself and my wife); however, I'd suggest the following as a few of her favorites:
- cleaner goby, esp. sharp-nosed (G. evilinae)
- yellow clown goby (G. okinawae)
- "scooter blenny" / ocellated dragonet - she named ours "puff" because of the puffs of sand coming out of his gills as he fed. Make sure to get one that accepts prepared foods, as the size setup you're describing likely won't sustain a large enough pod population, particularly when new
- skunk cleaner or fire shrimp
- good-sized brittle/serpent star
- nassarius snails as part of CUC (she used to love watching them "erupt" from the sand bed at feeding time)
- pulsing xenia - while it may take some effort to keep under control, the constant self-generated movement never ceased to be entertaining
- frogspawn, hammer, duncan, or other "tentacled" LPS
You could probably maintain any/all of these together in tank the size you're contemplating. Good luck, and keep us posted!
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I remember this too. Was it sand glued to starboard?
More or less ... I did some searching and found the thread that discusses this.
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I like the finer looking sand personally but if and when I do it again I would probably go BB or literally just enough to cover the glass, I did BB on my Biocube and loved it except for the clicking sound of my CuC running on the bottom of the glass, I had no idea crabs could be so noisy.
I dont think it really matters what sand you pick, as long as you're happy with it.
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.
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How white? Mine loses color at night and gets a white spot on his body.
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Warren
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.
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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.
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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 ...
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What's the height of the lamp above the surface? - the depth of the clam below the surface?
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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.
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I had an eel not eat for 3 months. Hunger strikes are not completely uncommon but there is usually a trigger.... Reasons in the past for me were changes of tanks, slight water quality issues, and current (electrical) and copper in the tank from a cracked heater (big water quality issues).
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.
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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).
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He looks really well fed..... maybe he's just not hungry?
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.
Check the tank at night to see if he comes out. Nothing else in the tank picking on it? I've had angels and large tangs develop a nipping for eels. They were fine together for years then started nipping. I agree with Sharkey, he does look fat. Any fish, shrimp, or crabs missing in the tank? Is it too fat that it might be stuck in there? I had one eel go for a solid month without feeding.
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.
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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?
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Like the doctor who statues they only move when you're not looking at them
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!
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I used to have thousands of these, and have seen the same spawning behavior. Now they are very rare in my system. Not sure what caused their decline, as I don't have any predators that I know of, especially in the frag tank & sump. I guess whatever algae they prefer must have disappeared. Hopefully that is cyclical, and they'll rebound when their algae comes back.
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.
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Look carefully!! lol
Belay that comment ...
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"Send in the clowns ... "
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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.
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My return pump is dialed back. So I decided to use that extra flow recirculating my sump water ... As far as the pods are concerened im not sure how many make it past my pumps so I've never personally been concerned if they mind tumbling or not. I throw so many away everytime i harvest my cheato its something I stopped thinking about
OK, so you do have additional flow, and if you're throwing away that many pods they apparently don't mind it too much.
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I'd thought about the "extra parts" approach but both time and money are tight right now so I didn't want to go that route.
Do you have an extra source of flow to tumble your cheato (small powerhead, etc.) or is the flow through enough to move it? Do 'pods like it or do you have just the cheato? Thanks!
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Nobody on either issue?
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I'm hoping for help on two semi-related issues. First, the plumbing. I have two tanks with CPR overflows (a 55 FOWLR with a CS50 and my 75 DT with a CS100/102). I want to re-do the plumbing and connect to the threaded exterior of the bulkhead on each of these boxes; however, I can't seem to find anywhere that gives the size the bulkhead in terms of what I need. In other words, I'm looking for what size female coupler / adapter I need to connect the threaded bulkhead with the piping going downstream. It could be threaded / slip or threaded / threaded. I also know the CS50 inner diameter is 1/4" less than the on the other CPR boxes, but I'm not certain if that's true for the exterior threads. I don't want to disassemble the plumbing until I'm ready to proceed to completion, and can't figure out another way to determine the sizes I'm looking for. Does anyone out there know? I wish I could just drill the tanks, but they're tempered so that's not an option.
Second, the fuge. Recently I've noticed my chaeto isn't growing like it used to, although the GHA in the tank itself I need to knock back periodically tells me the nutrients are there. It seem that some of it develops bubbles (probably oxygen, which ought to be a good thing), floats to the surface, and then shades the rest of the growing area. What lighting cycles are folks using (x hours/day, concurrent or counter-cycle to main lighting)? Also, does anyone run additional circulation / flow in their 'fuge beyond the regular through flow? I've seen the "swirling ball of chaeto" videos, and while it's certainly attractive at one level I suspect the 'pods would be less thrilled.
So, I'm wide open to the collective wisdom of WAMAS. Thanks in advance!
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If they're like the ones I had they probably live mostly in your live rock. So one thing you could try is to get a bucket or similar container and put the pieces you can take out of your tank into it one at a time and blast the rock with a powerhead or turkey baster. That should rinse at least some of them out into the water of the bucket, at which point you can just strain them out. This won't get all of them, by any means, but it should get some. As far as that goes, if you're close I'd be happy to take some off your hands once you get them separated. Good luck!
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... Now I have to re-design the surface skimmer to be clingfish proof even though in 15 or 20 years no other fish had decided to take this trip. I got him out and he seems fine but he doesn't care one bit how much work I had to do to take all this stuff apart.
Well, we certainly wouldn't want you to get bored with your setup ...
St Thomas Mushrooms
in General Discussion
I believe Jan used to get her St. Thomas mushrooms here when she did her group buys. I don't remember them having the spectacular colors that start off this thread, but there was a variety, and the price ($12, if memory serves) was certainly hard to beat.