Islandoftiki

Update from the fiance. Both fish are getting along fine. Mostly ignoring each other. The pistol has been busy, but she didn't think the goby and the pistol had bumped into each other yet, so they haven't paired back up yet. The goby hasn't started burrowing yet.

I picked up my new Yellow Watchman Goby and Tiger Pistol shrimp on my way home from work last night. Both are very small. The goby is about an inch and a quarter long and the pistol is just barely an inch long. Both look very healthy and active. They were obviously paired up at the LFS; I was happy to see that. I got them home and did a nice long acclimation. Obviously my biggest concern was adding a new fish with my existing sixline. Upon seeing the new fish, the sixline was obviously mildly agitated, but nothing extreme or concerning. I dug a small hole where I was hoping for them to make their home. The pistol shrimp went in first and went straight into the hole and began digging all the way to the other side of the rock. I then added the goby as the lights were turning off for the night. I figured this would give the two fish a brief introduction and then the sixline would go to bed and the goby would have some time to get familiar with her new surroundings. The goby was released right in front of the pistol shrimp and immediately headed in the other direction. The pistol shrimp continued to work on his new home. The goby didn't run into the shrimp rest of the evening, but seemed to be doing well. For the 15 minutes or so before the sixline went to sleep, she was inspecting the goby pretty thoroughly and turning herself sideways to it and raising her dorsal fin. She gave the goby a couple light nudges, but nothing excessively aggressive. She then went to bed and the goby had all night to poke around. I got up this morning just before the lights came on to observe the initial morning interaction. The goby was looking well, and as the sixline woke up, she again seemed mildly annoyed that she was sharing her space with a new fish. The goby showed no interest in the sixline and went about swimming around. Any time she got close to the sixline, the sixline would raise her dorsal fin, but again, no physical aggression. The sixline didn't seem to be very interested in breakfast, but did eat a little. Everything else in the tank was oblivious to the new inhabitants. My fiance is home all day and will be keeping an eye on their behavior, but I think they're going to be just fine after a couple days of getting used to seeing each other. No problems reported yet. Hopefully the goby and pistol find each other soon.

Look, I added a Vortech MP10!

Oh, I think I'll want it...

Hey folks, I've entered the pest tank in a competition on the Nano-Reef.com forum for tanks 3 gallons and under. To do it fairly, I had to break the tank down and start over. No worries, I was able to reuse the live rock with the hitchhikers, so I still have all of my pests that I started with. This weekend I stripped the tank down, cleaned it out, put in a new sand bed, made a couple modifications/improvements and put it all back together. I'm pretty sure it won't cycle again, or if it does, it'll be a mini cycle that won't bother the majanos, aiptasia or the poop-brown palys. Here's a link to my thread that's been entered into the competition: http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=297134 The rules are that the tank can be assembled, cycled and clean-up crew added, but no additional stock is permitted until April 1st. Then the tank can be fully stocked. So, I'll be holding off on stocking anything for the next couple weeks until April 1st, then I'm going to need any available nasties that you all can donate. Start saving anything icky you can find. I also have a separate spare tank that is cycled that could temporarily hold things like pest crabs or fire worms. I don't think I want to put aiptasia or majanos in that tank though. Can anybody think of any special or weird pests that I should keep an eye out for? I'm also thinking as a joke, photoshopping a couple of tangs in there.

Here's a quick video of the pest tank.

Quick update, the pest tank is doing great, hasn't had a water change in weeks. The majanos are looking happy as a clam and the aiptasia are looking great. I picked up a couple bubble algae bubbles from my LFS today and stuck them in the tank and popped them. Should get some bubble algaes coming up soon. Yay! I'll probably do a water change tonight when I do the water change on my display tank.

I finally had time this weekend to put together a little more comprehensive video tour of my tank. Things are starting to grow, and there are a lot of new bits and pieces. Enjoy!

Here's a picture of the tank with some of the rockwork that I got from pnkrcklives. He was also nice enough to throw in some amazingly underwhelming pallys! Such a lovely shade of brown. :-) One of the rocks has a nice carpet of algae, and a batch of colorless pallys that are nestled in the middle of a pile of majanos and are probably getting stung. Oddly enough, it's not bad looking for a pest tank.

A big thanks to pnkrcklives for donating a couple pieces of heavily majano infested pieces of rock to the pest tank! Now I need some green majanos and maybe some pest crabs. Perhaps a bristle worm or two. I'll contact some of the folks who offered up the green majanos after I get the rockwork all dialed in. I suspect the tank is nearing the end of it's cycle, although I haven't tested yet. I'm starting to see diatoms. I'll test it this weekend and see where it's at. Then a couple snails and maybe a pest hermit if it's ready.

I don't know, but I want some of those!

Brilliant! That will ensure nothing good gets into the pest tank. Don't want any pesky corals mucking up the look of the tank.

Also, in researching pests, I'm learning some new trick for removing them from a display tank. For Majanos, try this trick... Place a piece of a shell on top of the majano, the anemone will climb up on top of the shell to get back into the light, sometimes withing a day. Then simply remove the shell and no residual bits of majano in the tank.

I got a free brown majano from Nick at Rose City Aquarium last night. He didn't have any greens. He's going to save some pests for me when he finds them. He's got a beautiful green mantis shrimp, but it's too big for the 2 gallon. New Majano. There's another one floating around the tank somewhere.

Oh, how exciting! This is almost as much fun as my main display tank! First off, I would like to thank George for his generous contribution of both live rock and a wicked huge aiptasia. He gave me so much live rock that I had to scramble and put together my old empty Mr. Aqua 7.5 gallon freshwater cube tank and set it up for saltwater. Yay for having enough extra bits and pieces to throw together an impromptu holding tank. It's now running and hosting what must be about 10 lbs of live rock. Thank you, George! Here's the 7.5 gallon and 2 gallon next to each other: And here's the largest aiptasia that I've ever seen. Thanks George! I'm still in need of more pests, and I'll be getting in touch with folks as I'm excited to host some mojano, bristle worms and other nasties! I think I'm going to remove about half of the sand bed from the tank and hopefully add some more nasty, infested, pest addled live rock to the tank!

Yeah, people consider it a pest. Emerald crabs love the stuff. Some say Emerald crabs will eat corals if they get too hungry, but mine has been a model citizen... and bonus, no bubble algae. But the pest tank is another story altogether! Bring on the pests! It's going to be a battle royale to determine the ultimate winner! Does anyone have any hitchhikers they want to get rid of? Nuisance crabs, pistol shrimp, mantis shrimp? Send 'em my way! In all seriousness though, I'm excited to give a home to these misfits.

Awesome! PM sent.

I'm not sure if my schedule will allow me to get down there any time soon. I should be at the next meeting, I hope. I'll put another call out for pests just before the meeting. Does anybody have any chunks of live rock that they're ready to give up on? It's only a small tank, about 6.5" x 6.5" x 8" tall. 2 lbs should be enough.

Ok, so I'm about to get the 2 gallon pico back up and running. This time it's going to be a pest tank. That's right, a tank full of mojano, aiptasia, bubble algae, unknown crabs, etc. If anyone has any pests that they want to donate to the project, let me know. It's not like you can go down to the local fish store and specifically ask for aiptasia without being looked at like a crazy person, so I might need a little help with this one. I think my first order of business is to find some infested live rock. Cheers! John

Nice work. I'm looking forward to watching this build progress.

I'm curious to try a chalice coral, but I hate the way you can always see the frag lump or plug under them. Maybe I could hollow out a frag-plug sized depression in a nice piece of live rock and put it in flush with the rock so it looks more natural.

Tonight's project was to move all of the ricordea to one rock. The only rock with no corals on it so far. I can't say that they were too excited about being razored off of their current rocks and rubber banded to the new rock, but they should be ok in a week or so. Top left, fluorescent pink and blue with fluorescent green mouth. Middle two, Fluorescent blue and purple with fluorescent yellow mouth. Lower right, light green with fluorescent orange.

A couple of new pics: My sixline being curious as always. The war coral frag is just starting to grow down onto the rock. My xenia and a couple magicians in the background. GSP: AC70 Filter/Fuge: A couple of FTS:

Sorry for the indelicate nature of this post, but my elephant ear mushroom coral just released from it's oral disc something truly disgusting. Wow. Nasty. Ick. I do have a real question though. Should I target feed it now? Also, I hear these things can eat fish. Is that only fish that host, like a Clown fish? I see no way this thing could possibly catch my sixline.

Looks like I'm going to be a daddy to some delicious babies for my sixline. The one on the left just dropped her eggs down to her underbelly.