Pants

I have a clown goby and a pair of yellow watchmen and they are fine together. Its actually the clowns (ocellaris) that pick on the clown goby when he gets too close to them. My tank is pretty similar (46G) with 2 clowns, 2 yellow watchmen gobies, 1 yellow clown goby, 2 bangaii cardinal fish. I'd say ditch the chromis and go with a pygmy angel or maybe a wrasse (not a lot of choices for a 30g) and consider a big personality fish like a jaw fish, barnacle blenny, or longnose hawkfish.

I tried that awhile ago, he refused to eat. That guy hated the QT tank like no fish I've seen. It might be better to remove the female next time I try.

I've been watching the two adult Bangaii doing their fertilization/passing eggs dance today. I'll be watching carefully this evening to see if the male is eating or not. Only 5 of the original 11 baby Bangaii are still alive. Its quite disheartening. They will need to be off to their new home by the end of June so if everyone interested in having some of them can reply or PM to let me know if you are still interested. My mated pair of Yellow Watchmen Gobies also have eggs atm, but I won't be raising those.

Quick update. I didn't catch any new fry. We still have 6 of the older fry. One is quite large and one is still quite small. I am still trying to get a feel for who is aggressive and who is docile so I can try to give out properly sexed pairs. I think there will be mistakes.

I might just take you up on that. Taking care of my (now 4.5 month) son (why won't he sleep?!?!?!), my 40 tomato seedlings (stupid cold nights kept delaying planting), and the fry has been more work than I'd wanted (well that and the botched surgery). I feel like I got pretty lucky catching 11 this last time though. The mother hunts them down and eats them fast so I have to be checking every few hours the days they are being released to to catch them and I stupidly didn't record the day the father stopped eating this time so I don't know exactly what days to be staying up late checking. Still no eyes looking back at me from the father's mouth so I think I have at least another week.

We lost one more to Sudden Fright Syndrome shortly after my last message but none since then. I think my BIG mistake was using freshwater cyclops instead of arctic cyclops (what I thought I had). So while I thought they had been on marine food for weeks they had actually been exclusively on freshwater food. Now they are eating Marine Cuisine. The only trouble with this stuff is that it has such a ;arge variety of particle sizes that a lot goes to waste. They have started getting very aggressive in feeding. They attack the pipette when they see it and tear into meat that is too big for them. Some are now twice as big as the smallest most passive fish. On that same note all the fish that died were the smaller more passive fish, so I only have one that I think of as passive. This might make sexing them harder. They are now in a breeder net in my display tank instead of a hang on tank. I might buy another of these and attach a larger mesh size. So out of the 11 original fish I now have 7 that are all now finally on an exclusively marine diet and appear to be eating well. I am still on baby watch for the next brood so we don't know yet if I'll be raising those (but I'm going to try to catch them when released). The father is being very shy this past week so I haven't gotten a good look. About a week before he releases the fry you can see them in his mouth starring back at you. I've dropped my fake urchins in the tank just in case.

Bad news. We lost 3 in the last few days. 2 Just disappeared but we saw what we think happened to them with the third today. While feeding it freaked out and stopped moving. It eventually ended up on the bottom breathing slowly until it stopped breathing. We tried to get it up moving in the water column but it just kept swimming a bit then just sort of stopping again. It is very much like what Sharkey18 had described so I suspect this is a fatty acid issue. The ones we lost were all the smaller ones so I suspect they weren't getting much of the frozen mysis and other marine food. I'd hoped I was past the point where this would be a concern after I discontinued the brine shrimp but it seems not. We still have 8 but there are still 2 small ones I'll be worried about for awhile. I bought a second enclosure for them so I'll be able to move them into something bigger and collect any new fry that get released next if some of you who won't get fish from this batch still would like some (so we're talking like nearly 7 months from now when they would be available).

Well if this many people are interested I might try to catch and raise the current eggs as well. I don't have a good handle on when he stopped eating since I was sick at the time so I may not catch any but I'll try.

sachabballi, 3 is doable as I have heard people who do 1 female and 2 males in a large enough tank for the males to be far away from eachother, but if you tank wouldn't work for that sort of situation the males will kill each other. If it is big enough and with enough rock work for that then it can be the ideal situation as the female will alternate mating with each male which gives the males more time to recover between broods. Sexing is also very difficult in this species. Some think thyey can do it in adults, but in juveniles it is near impossible. What I have offerred to do for others is what Inland Aquatics (my source for the parents) did for me. He selected a dominant member of the group assuming it would be male and then one of the more passive fish. I will try to do the same for anyone who wants more than 1 fish but it may not work. It might be best for all involved if we coordinate in the months after all the fish find new homes and if people notice fish fighting we can try to swap them around to see if we can't make everyone happy.

Maybe just shy of a centimeter circle. I am usually looking down on them so I don't know how accurate my perspective is. If I find time this weekend I plan to move them to a larger enclosure or at least clean their current digs so I should get a better idea then.

4 are spoken for so far so that still leaves 7. It will be 4 more months before they are ready (unless you want to set up a tank for them and finish them yourself which I am cool with since you know what you are doing).

Another month and they are all alive and well. They are entirely on frozen food now (cyclops). I'm going to need to find bigger accommodations for them soon. And the father is holding eggs again! I've been pretty neglectful of the tank as I've been dealing with kidney stone, surgery for the stones, and bad drug reactions for the past 2 months but everything seems to be chugging along well through all the neglect.

Its dead. I got it here http://www.brineshrimpdirect.com/Algae-Pastes-c6.html

I cultured rotifer for a few weeks recently and since I didn't want to bother culturing phyto at home I bought the refrigerated slurry. I'd recommend it and if you wouldn't mind driving to me I'd just give you mine. Also if you just want tips on culturing phyoplankton I'd be happy to help. I mostly just have experience with dinoflagellates but folks in my lab do greens and its all pretty much the same. Most you can also grow on slants for backups in case something goes bad.

Is there base a coral/anemone? If yes it might like eating the pellets the clowns eat.

Since I study dinoflagellates I feel compelled to mention this is a dinoflagellate (Karenia brevis). This is not one of the species I have found causing problems for hobbyists. It is conceivable though that this one would pop up in a home aquarium since it would be easy to have it carried in on some live sand.

planaria. I used flatworm exit. Did the test to see what dose would kill them and followed up every five days 3 times. I would have gone higher on the dosage but it was clearly bothering inverts. For example the cerith snails we completely paralyzed until I stopped.

I have flatworms too. I tried the chemical treatments and found mine too resistant even if 20x the recommended dose to be killed by it. I gave up. Then I bought a pair of watchmen gobies and now I only have flatworms in the refugium. They aren't one of the typical choices for flatworm control but they seems to do the job for me.

I am a graduate student working on my PhD. I study dinoflagellates. I have worked on corals and various tetrapods in the past. All the work revolving around evolution and systematics (one of those annoying people who keeps changing the scientific names you used to know). If you can magnify the algae a bit it should be pretty easy to tell what it is. Pest cyanobacteria are filamentous while dinos will be individual cells (little ovals).

Hard to say from the photos but it kind of looks like cyano growing over the hair algae. Do you have a magnifying glass or some other magnifying device?

All 11 are still alive and well. The live rotifer culture isn't dense enough to feed yet, but it might have been unnecessary as they are already eating frozen rotifers and frozen cylops in addition to the live brine. I have them in one of those little acrylic things that hangs on the side of the tank and its getting dirty fast. I need to figure out a better way to clean it than what I have been doing. I've managed to keep them alive long enough now though that I'm feeling good about the prospects of getting all/most to full size.

Its been a couple days and I still have all 11. They are hanging out in a fake urchin I had made previously. They are gobbling up frozen rotifers and baby brine. I also started a culture of live rotifers today, but it will be over a week I think before those will be harvestable.

I rescued 4 more tonight. My brine still haven't hatched (grrrr) so I fed frozen rotifers all day. I love how they school together. I'll try to get a decent picture tomorrow. I know there must have been some I didn't capture since it looked like mommy was hunting them yesterday and both mommy and daddy fish looked to be on the hunt tonight (they were right up in my fake urchins). I feel pretty good about saving 11 though - way more than I have managed the past few times. If I can get these brine to hatch I'm pretty confident I'll get a few to adulthood.

Thanks for the gratz. The babies survived their first night. I keep squirting frozen rotifers at them. The brine haven't hatched yet, but I am hoping soon. I got a good look at dad (he is always skitish when carrying fry) and he definitely still has quite a mouthful of babies so I'll be on the lookout for more the next few days.

Well I just finished up capturing 7 new bangaii fry. Dad is still not eating so there may be more. I am trying something different this time. Instead of setting up a QT tank I have the babies in one of those little plastic hang on tanks that uses an air line to circulate water from the DT. I fed them some frozen rotifers and started up some brine. Hopefully they will stay alive until the brine emerge as I still don't know if they are actually eating the frozen - they aren't supposed to from what I have read but it kind of looks like they eat it. They are so small its very hard to tell. I caught 3 in our long spine urchin, 3 were in a cluster at the front bottom of the tank (some might have been eaten by a big favia they were hanging out near) and 1 made it to one of my fake urchins I dropped in there a few days ago. I'm so excited! Jenny has the only one I've managed to raise so I'm eager to try again. I'll be home full time (watching my newborn son) so I'll be able to look after these guys more easily.