Cool a look down Fish. I heard a rumor you got one. How is it behaving

J

Now that really follows the untamed theme! Nice.

Scott

Naw by then we'll be using Plasma bulbs...google it :) 6000 degrees Kelvin. same intensity of the sun :)

I was hoping to get AWAY from a chiller....!

It was a bit shy of the other fish at first, but now it gets right into the feeding frenzy and eats like the others. Does not sleep in the rockwork at night. It seems to just hang in the open water all night. I think it is a pretty cool fish. I suppose we'll see how large he gets...how fast. For the most part, every fish I have is going to be too large for him to eat. (with a couple of exceptions!)

Maybe it is like keeping small fish with a shark....keep him well fed and he won't be interested in catching fish.
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...000_0385-1.jpg

Hi Brad

Great looking fish. You need 3 or 4 more to give your tank the open ocean look.

That's a very nice addition. He will look great swimming in that middle water area.

Tom R

Ha..ha...No, I think I'll stick with one. I don't want to push my luck that far!

You always find some of the most amazing livestock to add to your system. Did you ever have a long term livestock plan, or do you just take it as it comes and add as you see fit?

I didn't have a fish "wish list" when I began to get fish...but I've been doing this long enough to recognize something interesting/appropriate when I see it. Also...having a very large tank, I'm fortunate that I can now purchase some things that were off-limits before.

Sometimes, I get it wrong. I just purchased a juvenile Naso from JL because I was certain it was NOT Naso literalus....but I was wrong. Now...he needs to find another home because I already have Naso elegans...I was hoping I had found Naso unicornis because it is almost impossible to tell them apart when they are young.

I kind of regret purchasing the Foxface...Now, I'm wishing I had held out to find a Magnificent Rabbitfish instead. So...sometimes I do the same thing as all of us...buy a fish without a lot of forethought.

Now that I'm having to be more selective about additional fish, there is a list. (I'm not going to share it, so don't ask...!) The Atlantic Blue Tang was on the list, but I got one of those a few weeks ago.

Thank you, very informative!

Sorry if I missed it, but did you get your scrubbing pads and manage to get the scratches out of the tank?

Do you find your atlantic blue tang a shy fish? Mine seems sort of shy, mind you he is new in the tank two days..but he will not leave the Tomini Tangs side. They are like best buddies, swim everywhere together.

I was certainly afraid for his safety when I first added the Atlantic Blue. Achilles was brutal to the White Cheek Tang...but the Altantic Blue got off easy. I think Achilles was just too busy to notice. Would only eat mysis for about 1 week, but has since begun taking clam and pellets, that's when I know a fish is going to be OK. Mine is not really shy...but he's bottom of the pecking order due to size, so that kind of defines his personality at the moment.

Testing out a new camera.... Not advertising...but this thing shoots good video!

Hmmm...it would seem that Photobucket dumbs down the resolution of the video somewhat. Trust me, what you can see here isn't as good as the actual video which is 720P High-Def. (Each video is just a bit over 50Mb)

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...h_100_0004.jpg
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...h_100_0003.jpg

They look pretty good even if the resolution is dumbed down some! They have a slightly sped up feel to them too, or are they realtime? It sort of looked like it might have been about twice normal speed?

I just timed viewing of the original file...then timed the viewing of the Photobucket version. The Photobucket version takes about 1 second less time to view than the original. Very interesting...you may be on to something there.

The tank was pretty active when I shot it. The fish knew I was there and they hadn't had dinner yet.

Bored....so I thought I would do some photography. It is good to just shoot the tank every now and then for no reason as it helps me to watch the growth.

Moe is such a willing subject...
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r.../100_0017a.jpg
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/100_0036.jpg
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/100_0006.jpg

There was a Lookdown for sale locally today....I so almost bought it. I've never seen one in person. Was so cool looking. New fish day is so stressful. :(

Well...I purchased two new fish yesterday. (addiction is tough...) I've got a pair of Orange Spotted Sleeper Gobies. The two of them share living quarters and seem inseparable, so I'm assuming I have a male/female pair.

You can see in the latest pictures, my sand bed is anything but clean. I've long looked for a fish or two that might do the job of munching up the sand. The cuke's do a pretty good job, but they just don't cover enough area fast enough.

These two have gone about immediately building a burrow. In fact, they've surrounded their new home with a good 3" or 4" pile of substrate. It is very dramatic the change in the tank that they have caused in such a short time.

So far, I can't interest them in any food. I'm sure there is a lot of stuff in the sand bed, but I sure would like to see them eating something that I can see.

When they sand-sift, they tend to just sit on the bottom and sift. They don't rise up in the water as they sift, so the sand is generally staying on the ground and not ending up on top of my coral.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/100_0045.jpg

Cool Looking picture, I have a ladder glider that does the same thing...they really can do wonders for sandbeds.

OK..these two are quite the busybodies...Anyone who is tuning into the webcam is getting a good show of how busy these two are. Compare these pictures, and look at what they have accomplished in only 2 days!

The tank is often milky as they are disturbing a lot of really fine sediment. There is so much water movement that this sediment doesn't seem to be settling on anything yet. It may lead me to run mechanical filtration of some kind. Or, it might just clean itself out as they keep at it. Regardless, these guys are doing a marvellous job of cleaning my sand (and stacking it!)

Before Gobies:
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/100_0006.jpg

After Gobies: (check out the sand pile around the rock in the middle)
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/100_0053.jpg

"The chomp line"...
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/100_0056.jpg

Hi Brad

You are pretty lucky.

In my tank those two gobies would have made their little home somewhere down the back of the tank, never to be seen again.

Tom R

Your tank just keeps getting better with age!

web cam
 

i was wondering if you could post a link to your web cam again i seam to have missed it and i would love to see your tank in real time
thanks

I love those diamond gobys, I had one in an old tank then one day he never came out of his home. Mine used cover his hole every night then dig himself back out the next day. Do yours do that?

Yes, every night they close up the entrance to their burrow. I'm watching them very closely to ensure they are eating something. Right now, I'm injecting mysis into the sand so they can "find" them in their regular chomping. I hope I don't need to that for very long. Typical of most new fish, they are a bit thin when you get them.

over 90k views
 

Congrats on over 90,000 views.

I'm glad that I tuned in many months ago, so that I didn't have to read it all over again. I must say there were many idea's that came from your system that I incorporated in mine!
Thank you!

Cheers!
Geoff

Nice additions too your tank I was thinking about you today OA has a nice Majestic angel there a big one he must be at least 5" I thought he would fit in your tank quite well.

Did you get another cleaner I only saw one when I was there?

It looks like the gorgonians on that rock contracted the gobies to build them a wall around their property. :P

I was also at OA today. They actually had two of those Majestics. Ran into TomR at the same time...small world. I wonder how long it takes a Majestic to get that large? Mine is nice and fat, but isn't growing noticeably. (not like the Vlamingi, who I swear gets bigger every single day. He just passed the White Cheek Tank in overall size a few days ago)

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/000_0295.jpg

I did start with one cleaner, but added the 2nd one quite a while ago. They split up frequently, so they both may have been there.

I have a couple of non-fishy friends that drop by regularly to see the tank and they thought I built the mound myself. They couldn't believe that the fish did it in only a few days.

They build so fast that they buried a large snail. When the snail decided to move out, it caused a collapse near their entrance. It was really amazing to watch them set about to repair it because they carefully selected large objects to fill the hole. The larger one grabbed a very large rock from some ways away and dropped it directly over the hole. The smaller one then manipulated that rock to test fit it a few different ways before they moved on to bury that rock with additional small rubble.

Another entertaining few minutes at the tank!

Ca Reactor challenges
 

For some time now, I've been challenged to keep the tank's alkalinity up. Each time I noticed the alk falling, I would increase the flow to the reactor a bit. Eventually, I hit the max output of my pump (117ml/min)...and began to think..."this isn't right!".

My Ca/Alk usage shouldn't be extremely high...yet. My corals aren't large enough and there are lots of other tanks with much more coral that haven't max'd their Ca reactor.

One popular theory was that I was flowing so much water through the reactor that I was not allowing time for the media to dissolve. I began to measure the alk output of the reactor. My first reading was 13! (I was hearing other people had readings over 20).

So I began to turn the reactor flow down, and measure the output every day. I got right down to 65ml/minute and the alk had only increased to 14. No...this wasn't a flow problem.

So I started working on the pH. I dropped the pH of the reactor from 6.6 to 6.55...no change. I dropped the pH to 6.50, no change....

Then, I recalibrated my pH probe and dropped the reactor to 6.45. Alkalinity jumped to 24! As always, because I had done two things I don't know which solved the problem. I strongly suspect that the probe had become inaccurate.

Anyway...the lesson learned is.."Calibrate your reactor pH probe frequently".

Routine day in the tank....
 

The gobies continue to make a remarkable difference to the overall look of the tank. My entire sand bed is now perfectly clean and tossed, all the time. The down side is that the water column is not as clear as before. There is always some very fine sediment being kicked up by the gobies somewhere. I'm hoping it clears out eventually, but I can live with it if it doesn't.

Twice now, the gobies (Bonnie and Clyde) have piled up the gravel so high that it starts to cover some corals on the lower rocks. They have smothered a couple of corals and some have had some die back.

Bonnie (the smaller one) gave us a bit of a scare recently when she disappeared for nearly 3 days. From what I've read, this might be consistent with breeding behaviour. It is possible that she would have disappeared for longer if her health had been enough to sustain her in her burrow. As is, it may have been a practice run.

Enough words...here's some pictures!

The Atlantic Blue Tang is really striking colour. It is really hard to describe, but I've come close to capturing it with this picture.
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/100_0079.jpg

The dynamic digging duo....
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/100_0075.jpg

Pitstop at the cleaning station...
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...h_100_0084.jpg

Beautiful Atlantic Tang.
Mine has blue edges and just a hint of blue anywhere else, still very young.

Naso Tangs...
 

It would seem that I've got a thing for Naso Tangs. (I think it is those big doe eyes)....Here is my latest addition - Naso unicornis. I do hope he is a male, because I would love to see him develop a horn. I suppose I won't know for a year or so.

He doesn't nearly have the appetite of the elegans or the vlamingi. In fact, so far he has not shown any interest in nori at all. As a result, he's not packing on as much weight as I would like...but he seems to be doing OK on a diet of mostly formula 1, 2 and mysis.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/000_0454.jpg

Since I'm talking about Nasos...here's a shot of the three amigos. The really significant thing about this picture is the fact that the vlamingi (Freckles) is almost as large as the elegans (Moe). It was only almost three months ago that the vlamingi tang would have been 1/5 the size of the elegans (Moe). Between the two of them, they eat 1/4 sheet of Nori less than a minute....
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/000_0444.jpg

Gorgeous tang collection..and the picture is beautiful!

Hi Brad

If you get any more Tangs you will have to change your (untamed) to something like Tangs Unlimited.

Looks great Brad

Tom R

The educated eye might have noticed the fourth Naso (literatus) in the background. I'm not allowing myself to get attached to that one as he/she is going to go to another home someday soon. Three is certainly enough.

I'm done with large fish. No more (fingers crossed). Even with 400 gallons of swimming room, you have to draw the line somewhere. The only fish left on the 'list' are some small coral gobies, and some very small affordable schooling fish (ie: food for the Lookdown!) I'm wondering if damsels will school if they are frightened enough....? These won't be added until the coral has grown up enough to offer protection.

The vision is to recreate what I've seen many times in THE aquarium, where the school hovers above a coral head and disappears into it when threatened.

Does that sound untamed enough, Tom?