35 Solona Gigantea species tank
 

Hi there

This is the species tank that i set up for my Gigantea and untill 3 days ago it was one but have now added a second.Although i think an upgrade will come within a year as this guy just gets bigger by the week it seems.

Tank is lit by a Lumenarc 250 watt pendent with a 12k reeflux bulb on a ice cap ballast!!

The brown Gigantea is 5 months in my care now and have had no issues at all and the purple is just with me for the last 3 days:)

http://i468.photobucket.com/albums/r...0/PIC_0284.jpg

http://i468.photobucket.com/albums/r...0/PIC_0277.jpg

http://i468.photobucket.com/albums/r...0/PIC_0279.jpg

http://i468.photobucket.com/albums/r...0/PIC_0283.jpg

http://i468.photobucket.com/albums/r...0/PIC_0282.jpg

http://i468.photobucket.com/albums/r...0/PIC_0286.jpg

And here is one that shows how tiny the purple really is to the other:)
http://i468.photobucket.com/albums/r...0/PIC_0285.jpg

Cool tank!

I am hoping to grab the Green one from J&L if it's still there and let it take over half my tank LOL.

Awesome tank :biggrin:

Looks great!

Do they eat fish often?

That is sooo your former tank...lol

But thank-you i kinda like it:)

Out of all the ones i have had in the last year they have never eaten a fish. I have had sandsifters that were right by it and they don't get em:)

Its the hard part of getting them healthy and then keeping them alive.
I think it was Tony who said...Step one is the 2 week mark,then a month ,then 3 months,6months,9 months and a year.

I have had the brown one 5 months so i feel a little more relaxed but still a little up tight. I think the key is a healthy specimen from the beginning. No gapping mouth and good colour and a feeding response.
My first yellow one started to deflate and inflate from day one and had no feeding response at all. He lasted 2 months and that was it.

These two were both mouth closed tight and good colour and very sticky with awsome feeding response. I feed the little on tonite and it took about a minute for it to take the shrimp from the outside tentacles to the mouth and to swallow it:)

Beautiful though and worth the effort...Tony knows this all better than i do and everything i know i have learned from him:)

No - gigantea's are really well behaved compared to their haddoni cousins (or tapetum for that matter :p )


I had a mandarin who would sleep at night under my brown gigantea..

I had my brown guy for close to 5 years, never lost any livestock to it .. I've had my green guy now for 4 years, and still nothing. However when I had haddoni many years ago, I'd lose anything that would touch it (snails included, it would spit out empty snails shells every couple of weeks..)

I just tried my hand at two baby raccoon butterflies, barely 1.5" in length. Sadly, I lost both within days. (Don't really want to talk about this actually.. my life sucks.) I'd say let's not go there, but I do bring it up because the fact that my green carpet in the tank they were in could easily have scavenged them but didn't .. there's no doubt in my mind that were it haddoni instead I would not have found anything of them.

I'm sure it's not unheard of that they eat a fish by accident but of the several that I've tried, they have all been planktivores. Their ideal food size is mysis and they'll eat up mysis like crazy (well, when healthy anyhow), but larger pieces are usually shunned.

It never looked that good when I had it though....:lol::lol:

Cheers

Ok thanks...I just realized that the one I was looking at is a Haddoni I think though! Actually I am very sure it is. So I will stay away from that one. I lost enough fish to my small carpet, don't need a huge one that eats fish!

Too bad because its such a beautiful BRIGHT lime green.

I guess I should double check the species, but I think it must be Haddoni.