rtelles

Bit of a rant, so feel free to gloss over. I don't think there are many in here who are qualified to comment on whether or not this was a bad venture. Maybe the few who have been keeping fish for a decade, and who they themselves have only figured out what they were doing through trial and error. Many of them did initially comment, but then they offered suggestions, despite their apparent frustration, and that was very much appreciated by some of us relative newbs (I've only got about 2 years). Most of us have tried, and failed to keep specific fish that were our own form of trophy fish. I'd venture to guess that, if mortality was the primary measuring stick of keeping an aquarium, the vast majority of us would be our own version of genocidal maniacs, and we also all contribute to an industry that kills untold numbers of fish before they even make it to wholesalers, who kill untold numbers of fish before they get to retailers, and so on. I've also read plenty of frustrated posts from many of the actual experts in here who, if their post histories are any indication, have lost fish from silliness such as not having a top while owning wrasses or other jumpy fish. Is Mark, if the OSF does die, any worse than an owner of any fish known to jump, including basic fish like clownfish, who doesn't cover the top of their aquarium?There's also been a bit of moral aggrandizing going on in here, often from other relative newbs based on their own posts and histories, and that's a bit frustrating. I saw the first couple of posts and my own immediate thoughts were "poor OSF, it's gonna die soon," but Mark was sincere in his attempt to do everything possible, based on what he knew, to keep it alive and healthy. As he's explained himself, the plan could have been thought out a bit better and less improvisational, but he took everyone's feedback, attempted various ways of keeping it going, and continues to try and do what he can to be successful. So although the attempt may ultimately be in vain, and I do feel bad for the OSF, Mark did much more than I would guess 95% of aquarists would to try and keep a difficult fish. It also hurts because the OSF is such a beautiful little guy. I also feel my own sense of guilt due to fish I've lost for really stupid reasons, most despite doing plenty of background research, so much of the intrinsic frustration I feel is directly linked to my own sad experiences. All that said, I think, as seems to be the consensus, that some fish are incredibly difficult to keep unless you have a very set plan, and even if you do, that may fail. That's fair, but when someone is open and upfront about it, we should consider it a good thing, although I do agree with others that the OSF, from what I've read, is generally bad news and should possibly not be collected at all or at least be incredibly expensive to make them less desirable as a "try it out" fish. That some fish (CBB, Mandarins, OSF, etc) shouldn't be so readily and easily available, if at all, and that they should come with very specific instructions about how to keep them, so that they'll at least have a fighting chance - I'd imagine most LFS would gladly sell an OSF (or mandarin, or CBB, Dragonet, etc) and tell you that they can be weaned onto prepared foods if you just do x, and we all know that that's bunk. I'm a big fan of LRS reef frenzy, my fish are fans too, but the LRS package has a huge picture of a mandarin right on the cover of their most popular product, and that's the worst kind of false advertising. That's systemic, and there's nothing we can do about it. Lots of random thoughts, but I do find these threads really useful and interesting, and it's one of the reasons that I do appreciate WAMAS, despite the semi-rant.

I have a nuvo 20 office tank. Love it. The leaking issues from the earlier models was due to the rounded from edges, from what I read, which the newer models don't have.

Good point. I've had both spotted and green mandarins, and the spotted (target) mandarin was much easier to maintain and wean. The green mandarin took an inordinate amount of work, and got really big.

If you don't have a large (90+ gallon aquarium, at the minimum), with lots of live rock and an established pod population, it's possible to keep them, but it takes a ton of work, is messy, and potentially expensive. It's possible to get them to eat prepared foods, but it's messy, and you have to do it multiple times per day, and even then, you should have a sizable pod population. I used newly hatched baby brine shrimp and a pipette to get the mandarin interested in the pipette, then I slowly added enriched brine to the pipette along with the bbs, then just the enriched brine once he figured out it was something he liked. Then he would eat pretty much anything I fed from the pipette. The big issue (aside from patience) is that they're verryyyyyy slow, methodical eaters, so even if you get lucky and get one that eats prepared foods, or have put in the work to wean them, you still have to turn off all of the pumps, put the pipette right in front of their face, and release the food slowly so that they eat it. If you have any greedy fish in the aquarium, you either have to feed them first or off to the side. Even if you do get them to eat prepared foods, you have to have pods for them to graze on throughout the day, and if you don't have a large population already established in the aquarium, they're incredibly expensive to maintain. A mandarin will eat through a $20 bottle of pods in a couple of minutes (the point of the bottles is to start a colony in your tank, not as a regular food source itself). Again, even if you can get them to eat frozen foods, you have to feed them multiple times per day and still have a viable pod population. If not, they'll wither away over the course of a couple of months and die. I kept mine in a 30g shallow frag tank with a bunch of live rock and a 20g refugium that had a sole purpose of being a pod factory, fed him twice a day with the pipette, and reintroduced pods into the 'fuge and in and around the main tank every few months, and he was a fat, healthy, spoiled, bold little dude. I ended up selling him when I downsized and he almost immediately died due to a parasitic outbreak in the new tank (they can, in fact, get ich or other parasitic diseases). I miss that little guy. Super cool fish.

Yessss, that. I didn't catch the sign. Loved it.

Just saw it yesterday. I was really impressed with their small setups. The leaf fish (I think that's what it was ) in the tube anemone tank was great, as was the mantis shrimp. They also have a really beautiful blue carpet anemone, and a condy/rbta tank that was pretty impressive. It's a tiny little exhibit, but a well-maintained one. Also, on the freshwater side, they have these little shark looking catfish downstairs that eat like champs.

I'm glad to hear that you're giving baby brine shrimp a shot. Since you've already seen the OSF exhibit a feeding response with pods, I'd be more confident that he may take to them. I'd highly recommend the feeder as well (which it seems like you're going to make), since it'll concentrate the pods into one area and make life easier for the OSF.

I had a wavepoint super blue and daylight led over my CPR HOB 'fuge and all of the caluerpa and chaeto grew exponentially faster than the regular daylight bulb I had over it before.

May be a long shot (albeit an inexpensive one, so worth trying), but there are number of articles online that suggest that OSF's may take to black worms. There's also a youtube video that shows a pair chomping away. They're really cheap if you can find them (tropical lagoon in silver spring pretty much always has them), and they seem to illicit a really strong feeding response from finicky eaters. Worst-case, the OSF doesn't go for them and you've lost $5 or so. Best-case, you have a dense and nutritious staple food to work with. You may also want to give newly hatched baby brine shrimp a shot. I may as well be Paul B at this point, but you can't knock what works.

There are asterinas in my tank that are laying waste to my zoas. It's only a 20g nuvo, currently fallow due to an ich outbreak over a month ago, and I won't be adding any fish until February. Given the tank's small size, I guess I could try manual removal, but I know that it won't actually fix the issue. I also don't necessarily want to go with the nuclear option and get a harlequin shrimp or pair, since they'll only have a few week's worth of food before they clear out all of the starfish. Does anyone have experience with bumblebee shrimp?

So cool. One of my favorite tanks. Love the minimalism.

Naoko fairy wrasse. I've seen a few and the yellow really pops. They're also considered peaceful. QR has them sometimes but they're way overpriced there. Other places like incredible corals sometimes carry them as well.

The footprint of the AIO is pretty small and will be sitting on the corner of my desk, so the ai sol light would be a bit too wide and intense if I don't create some kind of cover, although I guess that's an option if I want to keep the light just above the tank and keep it on a very low setting. I also don't have access to a wireless connection in my office, so I wouldn't be able to use the wireless link I have for it and would need to get a wired controller of some sort. Hadn't thought of the evergrows, so I'll check them out. I have a reefbreeder (which is more or less identical) above my 40B and it's been a workhorse. I was looking into the ai prime as well, but again, no wireless connection in the office. I used to run a small wavemaker led above my 12G fluval edge and it was strong enough to maintain lps, although they didn't grow much, so I'm not sure that would be sufficient lighting for a small rbta.

I plan on picking up one of those nice new Artfully Acrylic 16 G AIO's pretty soon and setting it up as an office tank and transferring my clownfish pair with their anemone. I currently have it sitting under an older model AI sol, and it seems relatively happy. That said, that light will be a bit overkill for what I envision, so does anybody have a suggestion for a relatively affordable ($100-$150) nano light that could sustain an anemone and maybe a few softies (zoas, palys, mushrooms, etc)? I would love a nice kessil as much as the next guy, but I can't justify $300+.

Given that you're going to have a wrasse that might also be munching on pods, it might be worth picking up a pipette and, along with providing Paul's brine shrimp hatchery, spot feeding the mandarins to get them to eat frozen enriched brine and/or mysis. It's not too difficult and has worked for the fat spotted mandarin I've had for nearly a year in a 40B. You feed baby brine shrimp, or even better, some pods (but man they're expensive) through the pipette and spray them right in the mandarin's face. They're smart little fish and will pick up that the pipette means food, and you feed only live bbs for a week or two. They'll soon warm up to the pipette and stay in their spot when you put it in the water. Then you slowly start adding frozen brine/mysis/nano LRS (I've found that my mandarin ignores the normal sized lrs but will go for the nano blend) to the bbs in the pipette, and again, the mandarin is smart and will start picking it out. Once that happens and the mandarin develops a taste for whatever's coming out of the pipette, you can start enriching the frozen brine/lrs/mysis with vitamins/fish oil/selcon or whatever else you'd like and skip out on the bbs. Better yet, if you pick up some live black worms or white worms you can start mixing those in so the mandarin has some live food, and it wouldn't be all that expensive. I turn off pumps and spot feed mine twice a day. I'll also spray some around the rocks that he likes to pick at during the day as well, but it's probably not necessary. All that said, I do have a HOB fuge with a healthy pod population that I replenish every few months when there's a 2 for 1 pod deal online from one of the various dealers. All that was to say that two mandarins in your setup is feasible, but you'll need to figure out if it's worth the effort. It's really sad to read about how many of them just waste away over the course of a few months.

It's a stress split, so it'll take a bit of time before the new anemone gets comfortable. It's probably a good sign that it's coming out at all. My first nem had recently split when i got him, so I started out with two. The smaller one was incredibly droopy and sad looking, had almost no stickiness, hid under a rock, and wouldn't reach out for the light during the day. He did, however, start opening up at dusk every once in a while. Then started inching his way towards the light over the course of a few weeks, and now he's massive about a year later. I would monitor it to make sure that it's not disintegrating, in which case you'll want to remove it, but I wouldn't stress out too much about it, and I definitely wouldn't try moving it or touching it. It also may be that your light is on a high setting and the nem needs to adjust to the intensity.

They sell the white mesh and spline at quantum reefs. Had to buy the frame from Home Depot. Have it sitting on a few clips on my rimless. I've seen my firefish trio picking on each other and jumping into it a few times, so it's already more or less paid for itself.

The color in this picture is pretty washed out, and it's difficult to gauge the size of the 12+" nem (the foxface and anthias are right up against the glass and the nem is about 10" behind, so it makes the nem look smaller) but even then you can see how deep red the rbta is and how thick its tentacles are. He was a 3-4" droopy split that didn't seem like he'd live. A little tiny bit of food goes a long way with these guys.

I use a turkey baster to spot feed my fish a combo of LRS/mysis/brine shrimp and just spray a bit of that into the tentacles of my rbta every couple of days, and he's become a monster over the past year (from about 4" to his current 12+" when fully open). I used to do that with two others and they outgrew my tank and have since been sold. You really don't need to feed them, but if you do, you want the food to be really small pieces so that the 'nem can digest easily. If you feed the 'nem and it spits up even a little bit of food, then the pieces are too large, and from most of what I've read that tends to happen with silversides.

Enablers! The lot of you! (there's always room for more.)

Thoughts on mussels vs. clams? Grocery stores in my area stock plenty of mussels, but rarely clams.

Bit of an obvious one, and not a fish, but I had a goby/pistol shrimp pair for a while and the shrimp never made a peep until I consolidated my two tanks, which included introducing another tiger pistol shrimp/goby combo. It sounded like the world's smallest cap gun war for weeks, and I was too new to reefkeeping to figure out what was going on. Luckily they called a truce and now share burrows.

He's with his people now.

If I'm not mistaken, didn't his last hawkfish also terrorize other reef inhabitants and kill a few, or was that someone else? Beautiful fish, though.

Mine never floated to another spot before the split, it always crawled, and one of the ways I kept them relatively stable was to separate the rock work into two sections and keep the nems on one side. That said, when it split, I had no idea it had done so, and the clone walked or floated over the sandy area to the other side, which is how I lost the zoas and hammer. You could probably isolate it in a corner by giving it a rock pile to itself separated from the rest of the corals by sand (a pile because mine always likes to keep its foot in a dark area - not sure if this is universal or just the ones I've had). My remaining rbta has stayed in the same place for about 8 months, so they do tend to find a spot and hunker down so long as they're not disturbed too much and the water is stable. Again, my remaining rbta began as a pathetic 3-4" split with a droppy mouth that seemed like it wasn't going to survive and is now a solid 12" when fully expanded during the light cycles, so keep growth in mind. You could always get a 2-3" colorful nem and see how you feel about it after a few months. One positive is that they're pretty easy to resell if you decide you don't want it.