CRASH

No, not Community Resources Against Street Hoodlums, but the kind of crash that happens if a piece of live rock falls.

Woke up this morning to see my tonga branch on its side... and my crocea clam hanging by its byssal threads. I managed to erect the rock back to its standing position, but it came at a great cost... the flame scallop had attached to the fallen tonga rock and I was forced to pry it free, tearing some of its threads. I do not expect it to live much longer...

The rocks were balanced together and buried in the sand. Though they've been fine for months, the recent jostling I had to do to place my new squamosa clam probably tipped the iceberg.

Some good news... the scallop is displaying its mantle and seems to be ok, but the foot is so delicate, I will be surprised if it lives through this.

I'm going to move the tank anyway and use this time to putty together the rocks and hopefully give them a better base.

I'm killing my planted tank and I'm going to put the reef tank in its place, in a much better viewing location. A guy in my local reef club is taking the fish and moving them to a much better home, a 55 gallon planted.

Don't know what I'll do with the empty tank yet, but I'm leaning to making it brackish and then eventually low end saltwater, enough to support live rock.

- Josh
http://joshday.com

Puffers and gurus

I'm trying my hand at puffers again, and so far, this one is doing much better. He eats ghost shrimp and freeze dried shrimp, and there doesn't seem to be any sign of internal parasites. However, he's come down with a nasty case of ich. Good thing he's the only fish in the vase... though it's not like anything else could survive longer than 5 minutes.

I'm keeping the vase heated through the winter. Temp stays around 79-80. Not high enough to effectively burn out the ich, but it moves its cycle along fast enough and there's enough salt in there to kill even the most jacked up strain.

Been doing a 90% water change every other day. I have a new method for doing almost 100% water changes on the vase... I use some airline tubing and syphon it out, so the fish can remain in the vase and consequently they are much less stressed over the process. This also saves the plants some wear and tear.

I use a special syphon valve to regulate the flow so I don't have to mess with knotting the tubing. This makes drip acclimation much, much easier.

Before I move on, one more note on puffers.

I post pretty regularly on a somewhat popular internet fish forum. Lately a guy's been getting thrashed by a lynch mob because he dared to post that he was keeping a green spotted puffer in a ten gallon tank, and that he was confused by all the conflicting info out there on various puffer fish. I'd link to a couple of the mob's assaults on the guy, but I don't want to lend it any credit or send more traffic to the thread. Needless to say, it's quite nasty, quite one-sided, very typical of people's judgmental attitudes and outright hypocrisy, and also pretty darn funny, if you get a kick out of reading flame wars like I do.

Ok, now to my point... I have kept a green spotted puffer in a ten gallon tank with 4 juvenile kribensis for nearly 5 months. The assertions that puffers are messy and need daily or semi daily water changes to "live" and "not be stunted" is complete, unadulterated horseshit. I changed out ten percent of the tank's water once every two weeks, and nitrate never got over 40. Not once... and this is with a "messy" puffer and 4 ravenous kribensis cichlids.

And I also kept the fish in freshwater, with 2 tablespoons of aquarium salt to make it slightly brackish, though the aquarium salt didn't provide the necessary trace minerals for true brackish systems. The puffer was growing and was very alert and alive. I gave him and the kribs to a store when I started my reef tank, so I can't say for certain how the fish would be now, but I'd wager it would be fine.

Seems like a lot of Internet a-holes keep puffers. The loudest voices always scream that green spotted puffers and figure 8's are brackish fish, the GSP's requiring full marine at adulthood, but at best that's controversial and spotty and at worst it's completely wrong. While most tend to agree that green spotted puffers are brackish, different opinions exist about figure 8's. Check out all the different ways of keeping them in the links below...

http://www.aquahobby.com/gallery/e_puffer2.php
http://snipurl.com/lnmz
http://snipurl.com/lnn1

Also check out fishbase.org and get the skinny from fish scientists who actually collect these things from the wild and know their native habitats.

I believe puffers can tolerate a wide range of salinity conditions. However, for figure 8 puffers, I think they will likely do as well in freshwater as they would in brackish. No one has supplied me with a decent argument stating it's untrue figure 8 puffers are found only in freshwater conditions.

Ok, back to fish forums and flaming, and I'm done. My red flags go up whenever some hardliner shrieks theirs is the only way... this is so rarely true in all things in life, and it's definitely not the case in fish keeping. As I continue to learn, I discover there is not one way or two ways but multiple different ways of keeping fish alive and healthy. Also, I've learned to instantly distrust and take with a grain of salt any pushy or rude advice which says this way is the only way, and I also examine the person along with what he or she is saying. How someone handles himself and presents his information goes a long way, especially on the Internet.

Now I'm done. :)

J
http://joshday.com

Mandarin update for the new year

2006, green mandarin in a ten gallon nano still A-OK

Nothing new to report. This is good, of course, but I have some future plans in the works for the mandarin as well as this whole project...

I may be moving soon to an actual house. I'd like to upgrade the tank to a 20 gallon long and add an HOB refugium chocked full of chaeto, scrubber pads, and small pieces of live rock, while keeping a healthy flow.

I feed approximately 1/2 teaspoon of roe every other day (off days cyclopeeze), rinsed in tank water to get most of the unnatural dye before it hits the tank. Pods are visible in the tank at night so a steady number appear to coexist with the mandarin. I supplement sometimes from my vase, which is crawling with pods, by swapping out a pourous rock of shitty starburst polyps and zoanthids.

For a while in Nov. and Dec. I got lax. I only dosed roe about twice a week during the holiday shuffle. Finally, when I spent a couple hours looking at the tank, I noted the mandarin's abdomen was concave. Still well-rounded and healthy, but his stomach looked as if he were sucking in.

Not good.

Immediately I started a daily roe feeding program. In three days he was back to himself... full stomach, no trace of lines on the side. A healthy mandarin looks chubby, like a fat muppet from Sesame Street, and when you see his stomach on the underside it should either be flush with his body or slightly rotund.

The daily feedings of rich foods like roe obviously take a toll on the tank. I do weekly water changes, 1-2 gallons, which is about 20% due to the live rock and sand that takes up some of the volume. Nitrate has not once tipped over 5... actually it has never registered on my test kit, and I hope to keep it that way. However, green hair algae is a constant problem, thanks to the high nutrient content and dosing of phytoplankton, but the water changes and chaeto macro I keep in the tank seem to keep it in relative check.

I had a breakout of mild cyano and nasty red string hair algae a long time ago but an extra powerhead kicked that, along with some nassarius snails to stir up the sandbed.

Everything in the tank is thriving. Green star polyps are frequently fragged, but even so a portion of the encrusting purple mat is growing up the side glass, enough to cover my fist in green star polyps. The crocea clam is doing wonderfully. It's grown a whole ridge and starting another, evidenced by the fresh white calcified growth on the shell. I do not dose kalk or any additive so I attribute this to my strong lighting and weekly water changes of fresh trace minerals in the salt... and possibly DT's phyto. The brittle star is getting huge and most likely in a year or less time I'll have to give it away. This won't be so difficult cause the monster is practically tame... comes to the top whenever cyclo is introduced and its tentacles skim the surface like conveyor belts. Also the scallop is still alive (yes it's a flame scallop and I guess I'm a 2-time offender for throwing that into the mix, or maybe I'm just flame bait). No shrinking or withdrawal of the mantle. I've had this specimen from the beginning of October, according to this blog. Can't conclusively say anything about its true longterm survival, but the fact it's still alive and looks better than it did when I took the first pics is heartening. Hitchiker featherdusters are also thriving and growing, so I'm likely doing something right.

Honestly, I attribute my success to the lack of skimming on this tank combined with my routine water changes. This makes me wonder about the general effectiveness in skimming in the first place. Given the history of the saltwater and reef hobby, many devices and gadgets have come and gone, some of which were the supposed Holy Grail of marine keeping, only later to be proven detrimental. I would not be surprised if skimmers are in the future shown to be not as great as they are believe to be today.

But only time will tell, and no one can truly predict where the hobby is evolving.

Josh
http://joshday.com