SuncrestReef

Dragonface pipefish. They are the ones known to eat acropora red bugs.

Mine never ate any frozen food, but then again they had plenty of live pods to pick from in my tank. Maybe if they didn't have their preferred food source they would eventually eat frozen, but I don't have any first hand experience with that. They seem do do fine even in higher flow. While they're not great swimmers, they are good at navigating out of the direct flow and shelter themselves behind rocks or corals that block the flow. From there they just stay low against the rocks and get around fine.

Take a close look at your rocks with a flashlight at night. You should see quite a few tiny pods scurrying around and scattering when the light hits them. Some will be barely big enough to see with the naked eye. Also, if you have a refugium you probably have a pod factory in there. If you don't have pods you can always seed your tank with a jar of pods from Algae Barn or other vendors. The jar you receive will just look like water with a few specs of dust. But under a microscope, you'd see thousands of tiny pods.

The pipefish was great. Everyone got along, and he was eating live pods from day 1 with no problems. I originally got the pipefish to combat my red bug infestation, but he rarely went near the corals so that didn't necessarily work out. He just spent all day sucking up pods off the rocks, sand, and glass. Just very fun to watch. At the last meeting I saw they had some larger pipefish at All Things Aquarium. I might pick up a couple to see how they do with the red bugs.

Nice! I wish I could have gone. Maybe next year.

He didn't make it. 😥

I used my endoscope and found him stuck in the valve. I opened the valve all the way and that flushed him down into the sump where I can now see him, but he’s not moving. I’ll need to empty and remove the refugium tank to be able to get him out. Here's the video from inside the overflow pipe, and you can see at 1:24 where I opened the diaphragm valve to release him:

This morning I can’t find the pipefish. I think it may have found its way down the drain pipe, but I can’t find it in the sump either. I’m worried it got stuck in the diaphragm valve that controls the flow from the tank to the sump. 😞

Not as easy as it sounds. Here's a diagram of the situation. He's 20" down in a narrow box, in between 3 vertical pipes limiting access:

He's actually stuck at the bottom of the overflow box, not inside a pipe: This box is 20" deep and has 3 pipes from the top connected to bulkheads drilled through the bottom. There's no safe way to remove the pipes from above. I'd need to pull out my sump and unscrew the bulkheads from the bottom, which is more work than I'm willing to do. I'm planning to use a 1" hose to try to siphon him out into a bucket.

I removed the weir from my overflow for 2 minutes to clean it, and of course my pipefish got swept down when I wasn't looking. Now he's stuck at the bottom of the overflow and I'm not sure how I can get him out. This is on a Red Sea Reefer which has 3 pipes that take up most of the space, so there's no way I can fit my hand or a net inside. Any ideas to rescue it, or just accept the overflow as his new home?

I’m too distracted by the aiptasia to see anything else. 😳🤣

Lefty keeps growing, so I tossed a new shell in the tank for him today. Within 2 minutes he moved in:

Thanks for the info Andy! This might explain why my cleaner shrimp have been hiding more than usual lately. They’re normally out and about more frequently, especially during feeding, but for the past week they’ve been hiding under my rock arch. Someone at R2R sent me these photos of the eggs:

At night I like to use a flashlight to see what's going on in my tank after dark, and tonight I was surprised to see thousands of tiny white specs drifting around in the current. I managed to capture and look at one under my microscope. It appears to be some sort of tiny shrimp. Take a look at this video and let me know if you can ID it. The video starts out at 40x magnification, then I switched to 200x. The specimen is about 2mm in length. I currently have two skunk cleaner shrimp and a single pistol shrimp. I'm wondering if these could be baby cleaner shrimp?

After more thought, I realized that you could easily overcome the water level fluctuation messing with the ATO if it's controlled by an Apex or other controller. You could program it so every hour the wavemaker pump is shut down for about 10 minutes. During this time the water level will be stable and the ATO can then refill any evaporated water. Then the controller turns off the ATO and resumes running the wavemaker, so the two systems just run on opposite schedules with no conflict.

With a fixed-position overflow in the DT, I think your idea would cause more of a water level fluctuation in the sump than in the DT as the return pump evacuated water to refill the DT, but no water is draining into the sump to replace it while your wavemaker box fills. This would then trigger the ATO to add fresh water. It seems you’d need some way to have a moveable overflow pipe that works in conjunction with the wavemaker. Seems pretty complicated.

Next time we’ll set you up with a body cam to record everything. 🤣

Did this event happen? Just curious to hear how it went and if anyone has cool photos to post.

How large are those leafs? Would these do OK in a backyard pond with a waterfall feature?

Last year I started seeing a lot of hydroids on my rocks, but after a few months they subsided. Now they have returned and are getting pretty thick on shaded areas of my rocks. Is there anything I can do to get rid of them other than scrubbing them off with a toothbrush?

And each of the club Officers and Board Members get a pair, right??? 🤣🤣🤣

Wow, I never knew Norwesco had a location in Washougal. That’s a good price! Yes, I have a temperature and salinity probe fully submerged in my salt mixing tank. They work fine and have been in there for about 16 months now.

I got most of the fittings at Aquarium Specialty: https://www.aquariumspecialty.com/parts-plumbing/pvc-parts.html The 3-way elbows I found at FormuFit: https://formufit.com/collections/3-way-pvc-corner-elbow/available-colors_orange