Grinder0909

Update: Thanks for the replies! Finally bought some ghost shrimp today and he ate 5 of them, poor guy was pretty hungry. I have 2 questions; 1) Ghost shrimp are not his natural prey and are fresh water, but tons of articles say to feed them that, why ghost shrimp? 2) Best way to wean him onto frozen food?

Hello Members, I am in the dire straights, I bought a dwarf lionfish a week ago and still has not eaten! LFS did not get him to eat as I picked him up the day he arrived. Have been trying to feed him frozen krill but to no avail! I tried putting it on fishing line and dangling it in front of him, I try feeding him at least 3 to 4 times a day, morning & right after lights go out. Should I just bite the bullet and put some live food in there for him?

Thanks for the reply. 1) Very interesting your opinion that raising temps will impact greater than lowering pH levels, I would like to hear some other thoughts on this, I have seen first hand bleaching, especially of monitpora colonies and Faviidae colonies. Since its already happening, one should question if the temp fluctuation of +/- 1 degree would start this or if other factors are involved. 2) More specifically I have read about the impacts of sunscreens on reefs. For example, when I was diving in Hawaii they wouldn't let us use sunscreen and would only sell "reef" safe sunscreen. 3) I was trying to bring up the idea that maybe, only certain types of "hardy" corals will live through this change in environments, and in the next 100 years we will see reefs with less diversity dominated by corals that can handle lower pH and higher avg temps. 4) This is where my hope is, and feel that not only as hobbyists but as aquarists we will keep the fragile corals proliferating through aquaculture and reef farms. Anyone else's input would be interesting to hear, thanks for your response Tom.

Would like to start a discussion on this and see what ya'll think about it. I've traveled to a lot of places in the Caribbean and just got back from a trip to Guadeloupe. I went snorkeling and was appalled by the lack of diversity there, same as places in Haiti, Jamaica, Honduras, Mexico, Belize, DR, and even Hawaii, although Hawaii had the best diversity that I've seen. To keep this short, my opinion is this: 1) Acidification of the oceans is occurring due to the uptake of CO2, resulting in a reduction of: salt water pH, carbonate ion concentration, and saturation states of calcium carbonate minerals. 2) Pollution due to debris (plastics, trash), fertilizer run off, and tourism mainly people using Sunscreen and it washing off in the ocean only for them to reapply thus creating a terrible cycle of non-stop additions of reef harming chemicals. 3) We are changing the way reefs work, an ecosystem that took millions of years to evolve, being destroyed in 1 century due to man's inability to make a change. This will result in creating robust and less diverse reefs, dominated by sponges, invertebrates and softies. All the LPS & SPS corals will die, only to exist in the aquarist's living room. 4) I see no way to reverse this anytime soon, and believe its our duty to maintain our systems to proliferate aquaculture so that these species can eventually be placed back into the oceans when we fix things. Any opinions would be great, maybe someone to refute me so I may have some hope :(

Orgami > I actually saw this thread and looks maybe similar to my tangs symptoms, but I can only speculate. Der Abt > I feed twice a day usually in the morning and when I get home, somtimes only once a day if I leave before the lights come one. The food is New Life Spectrum Community Fish Formula, sinking 1mm pellets. Also sometimes some brine. I feed 4 small pinches, each pinch small enough for the fish to eat quickly, then do another and so forth...\ My nitrates are always between 10-20ppm; I do not remember the name of the test kit I use, when I get home from work I can post. I can't get them lower without doing a 90% change, my HOB skimmer blows, I just bought a Recir External Reef Octopus RPS 3000 skimmer, have yet to install it, as I need to redo all my plumbing. I do 30 gallon water changes every 2-3 weeks, make my water with an RO/DI filter and Reef Cyrstals. I have hair algae problems because of the nitrates. Will post pics when I get home from work.

Have had this blue hippo tang for about a year now, and when I purchased from LFS his colors were great, flawless no issues whatsoever. Brought him into my tank with a gramma, 2 percs, a file fish and yellow tang. He was doing fine, and then I noticed the color around his face started to go white, almost like an abrasion or he was rubbing it off. Well I figured it was stress related and didn’t worry about it too much, figuring it would come back. Well it's been a year and he still is white around his face, hasn't gotten worse but hasn't gotten any better at all. I notice he is still very shy when I approach within 2 feet of the tank, only comes out if I stand back from tank. Also notice he likes to wedge himself between two rocks when he sleeps or hides, I have a feeling this is what is keeping the color from returning to his face. Anyone else have a hippo that does this? I have heard of adding garlic to his food? Any opinions of why this is happening? And it is definitely not ich, or else he has had ich for a year and hasn't died from it, and none of my other fish have gotten it! I have a 75 gallon, he is only 1.5" in legth so the 75 should be ok until he gets a little bigger then I plan on upgrading. All my levels are solid, and he is the only fish in the tank having any issues at all.

The filefish eats invertebrates, or else I would have one. Thats a crazy amount of peppermint shrimp lol, what happens when food source is exhausted? I could start selling peppermint shrimp, no but I can def. get some more shrimp but there $8 at the LFS so maybe will get 3 lol.

Yeah I was a little surprised at how bad it is, but I don't really have any clean up crews, just a few hermits and that 1 peppermint. Sad thing is I bought a copperband about 4 weeks ago and I couldn't get it to eat, went away for a weekend and was dead when I got back. 1st attempt on the copperband...fail

I'll try the shrimp, I have 1 maybe they can work together, I'm def. going to try the nudi as well. They only eat aptasia, the problem is once they exhaust their food source they die.

Simple, my tank is infested with aptasia. I have had my 55 up for almost 1.5yrs, I have been battling these things for about 1 year to no avail. It started when I bought some live rock from someone on craigslist that was obviously infested. So my battle begins with researching these things and how to kill them. So after trying aptasia x & lemon juice it seemed that they just would multiply after each attempt. My next option was nuking all my live rock, which i was very apprehensive about but I did it anyways because it was getting out of hand. I made a 1:10 solution of hydrogen peroxide and dipped the rocks for 15 minutes, when I started seeing all my critters living in the rock bubbling up and dying I couldn't take it anymore. Maybe that was my mistake I should have killed all my live rock to exterminate these monsters. So long story short, I have aptasia and I can't win. I have many SPS, monti, staghorn, softies like frogspawn and hammers, mushrooms and zoas. Everything is doing fine, especially the aptasia. Here is my plea, I would like to try the berghia nudibranch to begin another slow battle, but hopefully with better results. Does anyone have any b. nudi's that they would be willing to sell. Or an option that doesn't involve killing all my rock. If I can't obtain any nudi's then I will order online, and become one with the nudibranch...

So my take from all these responses, which I really appreciate, is that he has ich and if I can get him to eat he should be fine. I dont have a qt tank, and wont have one till my next paycheck. Hes not eatin except what he finds on the rocks, soakin mysis shrimp in garlic is a good option? What about buyin an ich treatment?

thanks will do

I need some help, I have never run into ich before luckily, but I have only had my 55 reef tank up for a year. I do see what looks like some discoloration on my copperband butterfly's tail fin. If someone could help me out I would really appreciate it. I don't want it spreading to my other fish. I just got the copperband a few days ago, he was eating at the LFS so I took him in good hope that he would eat in my tank. He has been picking off the rocks but hasn't eaten any mysis, kril, brine or pellets yet so I'm still trying. But I really don't know how to identify it, and want to take preemptive action. Thanks, and check out the pics I hope it helps.