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Pants

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    Frederick, MD
  • Interests
    dinoflagellates, gardening

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Tang (6/13)

  1. I used to do about 30 minutes (though I wasn't strict about it). It was extremely dense though, so that clouds of the stuff filled the whole feeding area. Gut loading adult brine should be a bit easier. You could even check under a microscope if their little bellies are full.
  2. Based on my experience weaning baby cardinal fish off baby brine and onto food with healthy PUFA profiles, I'd suggest always mixing the baby brine with whatever food you are transitioning to. Also soaking the baby brine in selcon was sufficient to prevent PUFA deficiency related deaths. I'd also focus on maintaining a diverse set of foods rather than aiming just for enriched frozen brine.
  3. I'd love to take a look at them under the microscope and post some photos on algaeid.com but you are kind of far from me. I'm not saying its algae, but it would be nest to add pests that look similar. Any chance you could make it up to College Park with that rock, or maybe hand it off to someone would gets up there or to the Frederick region?
  4. This is a bit out of left field, but take a look at this page: http://www.fatalii.net/Bonsai_Chiles_Bonchi about a 1/4 of the way down he shows how to get cool roots by playing a rock under the roots of the bonsai. You can later remove the rock. The trouble a lot of people run into with mangrove tanks is the roots just go straight down and don't spread out giving that cool look (and wonderful habitat. If you have something obstruct the roots and force them to spread out then you can sort of train them to grow fanned out like you see in more natural environments.
  5. Its hard to say from those photos, but I've seen massive dinoflagellate outbreaks start as just a bit of brown snot on a single coral.
  6. Mine is almost a year old and I'd never cleaned it. It definitely wasn't moving as much water as it used to. I recently did a vinegar soak and its back to how it was on day 1.
  7. Some of you know that I study dinoflagellates and set up a website to help people ID what pest dino is causing problems in their tank (algaeid.com). Since I set up the website to help people ID their dinos I've been trying to expand it to other pest algae as well. I was very excited therefore when I found a frag of mostly dead goniopora with bryopsis growing on it. I could get some pictures of the bryopsis and nurse the goniopora back to health! score! Both the goniopora and the bryopsis have been doing wonderfully with new growth. Unfortunately, this morning I caught my new toby puffer (~1.5") pecking at the frag and on closer examination the little guy ate ALL my bryopsis!
  8. Give them to me? When I've wanted to move my mushrooms I take my bone cutters (you can borrow them if you need them) and I cut the rock under the foot. This way you don't leave behind any of the mushroom and do less trauma to the mushroom.
  9. I have the babies in a tiny hang on the side aquarium with some caulerpa. So its not directly under lights and they have lots of algae to hide in. The goniopora is in the display tank on the sand bed. It is doing well much better polyp extension and color. It is a red goniopora with dark purple in the middle. Still watching for signs of new polyps. The tank is skimmerless and I feed the coral daily.
  10. So the babies from my last batch are now 11 days old and already eating non-live food. I tried something new this time. I recently rescued/bought a 90% dead goniopora and bought a bunch of different goiniopora food to nurse it back. So I've been mixing a little bit of the goniopora food (goniopower, reef chili, and reef roids) in with the live brine and selcon. Well yesterday I didn't have any baby brine left by the end of the day so I just used the selcon/goiniopora mix and the bangaii fry still ate it up. I'm going to continue feeding the live brine for awhile, but I think this is promising.
  11. Thanks. It's kind of stupid how much money I have spent on epoxy making those things. So yesterday and today my male bangaii released his fry . I didn't get an exact count but it looks like something around 17-20. They are eating and hanging out in some dragon's breath macro.
  12. People will often use pvc to build little tunnels for jawfish to make them more comfortable in shallow sand tanks. Their burrows in the wild are several feet deep. If you go for a bluespot be aware that they do best in lower temperatures than your typical reef tank. They will adapt to higher temps, but don't live as long. From Tropical Fish Magazine: I think a Mantis Shrimp (stomatopod) might be a good fit. Take a look at some youtube videos of them. They are very colorful and have a lot of personality (like a jawfish). They don't need great water quality and can be fed intermittently. They eat frozen food easily. You can even often get them for free or very cheap since many people consider them pests.
  13. What are the tank dimensions? Acrylic or glass and how thick? (wondering about a temperate tank with catalina goby). How is the filtration? Could you handle the feedings for seahorses or pipefish? I'd think it is too small for a jawfish. Perhaps stomatopod?
  14. The non sprayed urchin don't hold up well in the water for long. The styrofoam is completely covered in the epoxy puddy. I'm spraying with krylon.
  15. I have a couple weeks before another bath of baby bangaiis emerge from papa's mouth and I am all out of sea urchins. I even found a better home for the real sea urchin. So I began constructing a new fake urchin. I've found that the easiest way to catch the babies is to slowly move the fake urchin they are hosting with up to the surface of the water and then move it into a net or cup. The babies follow it and I don't have to go chasing them around the tank or try sucking them up in a turkey baster (previous methods). So the new urchin will be a styrofoam ball I cut in half and inserted some neodymium magnets into. I hot glued the magnet in place. Covered the whole thing in plumbers putty and then stuck it full of toothpicks. Tomorrow I'll spray paint it black. I'll be able to hold it to the side of the tank with the magnets and move it up without getting wet or having my hand scare the fish. I can even remove the outside magnet and let it float to the surface. I'm hoping this will make capturing them much easier. Not the cheapest urchin I've constructed but I'm still in a lot of pain from the car accident a few months back so less time hunched over an aquarium is awesome. Someone should make fake reef rock with magnets in it to help with aquascaping.
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