rtelles

Good looking fish there. He (she?) is gonna love being able to stretch a bit. Maybe this is the excuse you need to take advantage of that nice 6' you have sitting around? (hah, any excuse to upgrade, no?)

So it looks like my female just needed some time to establish boundaries with the new rbta. The male has healed up almost completely and is now regularly sleeping in the smaller rbta with no issues, though he gets kicked out in the morning and when the female decides he has to go (clownfish are weird). They follow each other around the tank and the male has started regularly submitting. They've always tolerated each other, but I guess I'll go ahead and call them a pair now, which is both exciting and a huge relief.

I see that you're thinking about a pinkbar goby, but I'd be remiss if I didn't recommend that you check out a Randall's Goby. They look similar, but their stripes are thin and orange and a bit more pronounced, and they have this really neat spot on their back fin. Mine is pretty peaceful and has paired with a pistol shrimp. That said, the pinkbar is pretty darned nice as well. Goby/shrimp combos are my favorite - can't really go wrong with them. Love the aquascape and look forward to seeing more updates.

Been having some issues with my clowns since I added RBTAs. My hybrid maroon/ocellaris female has become a bit of a territorial ass and started pretty aggressively nipping at my mostly juvenile black ocellaris, who only wants in on the action. They hadn't ever fully paired, but they'd mosey around the tank together and hide in the same spot in the rocks when I'd do water changes or accidentally spook them. Now a few of his fins look pretty ragged, though he's still hovering right next to the anemone and sneaking into the smaller one (it split right before I purchased it) at night to sleep. That said, I saw the two of them chilling literally inches away from each other with zero issues yesterday. Clowns are weird.

Plastidip is a spray-on rubber coating that was originally created to coat tools for better grip and to increase the durability of their handles. I like it because it's moisture resistant and can be peeled off if you don't like it (I spray the back of my tanks with it instead of using permanent paint and it's worked really well. I've also painted a number of pieces of furniture with it). A lot of people use it on their cars, but I'm not a fan of the look. Regular ol' glossy spray paint would work just fine as well, Either way, if you own or could rent/borrow a powerdrill, you can get wood screws and 2x4's cut at Lowe's or Home Depot and build a stand for $30-$50 that is much more durable than a store-bought version. I don't have much of an opinion regarding cubes except to say that I've seen a few that were really nice. If I had a large, square room instead of a long, narrow one, I'd probably want to throw a rimless cube right in the center of it.

I've had a 40B for about a year, which is my first reef tank. Good footprint, easy to moderate flow, lots of surface area for smaller fish, easy/relatively inexpensive to light, and the width/depth make it look much larger than it is. I'm a pretty short guy, so although the 65 has the same dimensional footprint and would be nice to have, the extra height would be tough to work with. Mine's not drilled so it looks like a mad scientist's lab (large HOB skimmer, converted aquaclear baby 'fuge, canister filter, etc.). That said, the 36" length does limit the livestock options and i'm about to upgrade to a shallow 66 long for convenience, but I will continue to enjoy the 40B and use it as a secondary nano reef. Can't really go wrong, with the 40B, and they're pretty much always in demand if you decide to sell it and upgrade at some point. That Mr. Aqua tank really is a steal, though, and I'm surprised nobody's claimed it. As for stands, there are a number of builds on this forum, but I've built and used a version of a King of DIY stand from a youtube video he put out two years ago titled "How to: Build an aquarium stand/canopy." I'd link it, but I'm not sure how to on this forum. Really straightforward directions and the thing was basically an inexpensive wooden tank that could be modified to your creative heart's desire. Add a few coats of plastidip and you have a presentable stand with plenty of room to drop a 20L sump/refugium under.

Hello. I've had a female mai tai clown (hybrid maroon and ocellaris) and juvie black ocellaris for about 5 months, and though the mai tai has asserted dominance in the past and nipped at the smaller clown, they generally get along fine and share the same half of the tank without issue. I recently added a pair of rbta (purchased just after the larger nem split, so one of them is quite small) that the female immediately hosted and her aggression has kicked up considerably. The smaller clown has some relatively badly nipped fins (tail and back, mostly) and I'm not sure what threshold I should use before deciding whether to separate them. He's still swimming okay and seems perfectly normal aside from the missing fin pieces, and he still hovers near the rbta (and sleeps in the smaller one) and crosses paths with the female regularly without issue (I just watched them swimming right next to each other for a few seconds without any problems), but every once in a while she'll become incredibly aggressive and drive him away from the nem. My question is whether any of you have had similar experiences and if this is something I should really worry about. I've read on these and other forums that often times it takes a while before clowns pair up and that dominant displays and nipping often last a really long time, and that it can be exacerbated by the addition of a nem, but at what point is it clear that one clown has rejected the other? I also wonder if anyone else had had experiences with a hybrid like my female? Worst-case, if the aggression continues, I'll rehome the female and try to find a more appropriate tank-mate for the black ocellaris, but for now I guess I'll keep an eye on them. Thanks in advance for any responses.

This is a really great thread. It's amazing how far along the nem has come in a year, considering the shape it was in. I recently picked up a rbta that had recently split and the smaller of the two looked absolutely haggard and had almost no stickiness. It has since improved and reading through threads like this was really helpful. Glad to see it's doing well!

PM Sent re. RBTA

Downtown dc resident here. Used to purchase premixed saltwater before I picked up a rodi unit, which I now use for water changes/top-offs. That said, my unit shows a tap reading of anywhere between 10-20 tds (I assume the reading is correct) which is way lower than I expected. I used to top off with distilled unless I was lazy and used tap+prime. Never noticed much of a difference aside from a negligible bit of extra algae growth.

Agreed on all fronts. The new fish guy at the Coheights Petco chatted with me for 20 minutes and it was clear that he was the catalyst for the improvement, but he also noted that there has been a noticeable shift in, for lack of a better phrase, management's giving a **** about the marine sections lately that probably came from up the chain. Also FWIW, Sustainable Aquatic's largest customer is petco and one of the owners gave a bit of a shout out in a recent talk about Petco's improvements over the past few years (search youtube for "TCMAS - Sustainable Aquatics Presentation - Fall 2014"). He makes the point that they are a key supporter of sustainable breeding programs. What should probably be noted is that it's in Petco's best interest to fund research into improvements in marine breeding and health in order to meet consumer demand and provide a buffer for the unpredictability of wild harvests and in the event of an (inevitable) crash in wild populations due to overfishing and habitat degradation. As much as we all prefer to do business with LFS' that have years of experience and know their products, I'd imagine that Petco sells an astronomical number of livestock compared to our LFS', and we should all hope that they continue to move in the direction of better breeding programs and higher quality livestock. Any improvement at the national level due to the finalized purchase of LA will have a large impact on reefkeeping as a whole. Here's hoping.

FWIW, I stopped by the Petco in Columbia Heights a few weeks ago and was shocked by the quality of their small marine fish section - it looked clean and well taken care of and the fish looked healthy (I know, right?). I used to spend a lot of time in the neighborhood last year and would stop by that store to pick up cat stuff and their saltwater section used to be horrid. At one point they had 3 picasso clowns with ich swimming in milky water in one display and 3 poor sick little yellow tangs in another, with the random dead fish here and there. As much as I'd like to believe that purchasing LA was the catalyst for the shift, it turns out that they hired a new fish guy who owns a few tanks and made it a project of his to clean the things up and make the section respectable. That said, he told me that they had been receiving healthier livestock lately I still probably wouldn't buy any livestock there unless absolutely necessary (which should never be the case with TL a short drive away), but it was nice to see such a stark improvement.

PM sent regarding Skimmer.