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Cultivated Reef

DIY Jawfish house


kgoldy

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Played off making a jawfish home as "arts and crafts time" with the girlfriend. She's a teacher and nanny, so it almost worked... Haha. Actually she ended up pretty bored. Tried things like "do you want to learn how to use spraypaint?!" ... That didn't work at all...

 

I skipped the photos of the cutting and trimming, but I used a chop saw to trim the 3/4" PVC fittings as short as I could so that the pipes don't take up so much room. The shorter the pieces get, the harder they are to put together, so I had to bevel the edges down on all the ends of the pipes- again using the chop saw. I wouldn't recommend this to anyone who isn't very experienced with the power tools they're using. Overall, the PVC is nice and soft when you're running a coarse wood cutting blade, so it wasn't that hard to get the edges exactly the way I needed them.

 

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Sprayed it with some off-white-ish Krylon Fusion after I roughened the PVC up a little with some coarse files. There's some real nice looking textured Krylon Fusion that looks like it'd be the perfect texture to grow coraline on quickly, and blend in with sand... But I'm not sure if I want to experiment with it, because it says it has "Metallic flecks"...

 

 

 

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Nanoreefwanabe

looks great, i think leaving the pipe open wasnt a good idea though...the water in there will likely get stagnant and more then likely also collect detritus. out of curiosity why didnt you just aquamend it to a piece of LR and call it a day?

 

i dont know for sure but i thought Jaw fish burrowed in the sand, and also got pretty big...either way it looks cool...i am sure there will be a blenny or a goby or two that would love to hide in those barnacles..

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The fish moving in and out of the pipe should prevent it from getting stagnant. If I really was worried I could drill holes around the pipe... But I'm not.

 

The pipe is hollow so the fish can go in head first, swim around the loop, and come out head first. Making it able to quickly dart into it's home head first makes the chances of carpet surfing a little less.

 

3/4" pipe was chosen because it's just big enough for a blue spotted jawfish.

 

Jawfish do burrow in the sand, but given the opportunity, they'll often take an established burrow- be it a pipe, or a burrow that a smaller goby and pistol shrimp made.

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very cool idea. i too didnt get it at first, i didnt realize you had intended to fish to be able to swim through the barnacle and into the pipe and back around, very nice. its like a play ground for a jawfish. too bad we will never know what kind of shenanigans he has going on in there. he could set up a whole little pimp pad !! haha

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I understood what this was for. I didn't understand what the aquaputty was for. Out of curiosity, why did you do all of that with the putty? You could have used Teflon tape but that's besides my point. Does it need to be sealed shut for the jawfish? Thanks,

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I understood what this was for. I didn't understand what the aquaputty was for. Out of curiosity, why did you do all of that with the putty? You could have used Teflon tape but that's besides my point. Does it need to be sealed shut for the jawfish? Thanks,

 

 

Like the guy above said, the putty was because I trimmed all the pipes. I had to shave down the new ends of the straight pieces of the pipes just to get them to fit into the elbows... And because I didn't have the patience to slowly grind them down for a perfect fit with a dremel or something- the putty filled all the gaps for me. I also used a little super glue just to make sure everything stuck together permanently, since putty didn't seem to want to stick to the wet barnacle at all.

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Not very exciting videos- but they show how the BSJ loves the house- and keeps it tidy. I dumped him straight from the shipping bag into the barnacle... he evicted the hiding firefish and yasha goby, and immediately started scooping detritus from inside the pipes and spitting them outside into the current.

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

So awesome that he took up residence there.

 

Going to be doing this exact same thing.

 

I assume the barnacle was from John down in FL?

 

I'll have to post here if my future jawfish takes up in his too.

 

Thanks,

D

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So awesome that he took up residence there.

 

Going to be doing this exact same thing.

 

I assume the barnacle was from John down in FL?

 

I'll have to post here if my future jawfish takes up in his too.

 

Thanks,

D

 

 

Yup, it was from Reef Cleaners. You can encourage the jawfish to adopt the home your build for him by dumping the fish straight into the hole from the bag. That's what I did- and it worked like a charm.

 

Oh, and btw... This has been happening every few days. It's hilarious how mad the fish gets.

 

 

Turbo vs BSJ

 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Haha that's great love the vids. I was wondering how deep your sandbed was? Was thinking about doing this in my new tank but read that they needed deep burrows. Thanks and nice execution.

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The pipe is 3/4" ID (interior dimension)- which means 1" OD (outer dimension). The elbows are about 1/4" inch larger than that... So- your sandbed would need to be a little more than 1 1/4" so that the pipes of this particular build is completely covered with sand. No need for a deep sandbed.

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The pipe is 3/4" ID (interior dimension)- which means 1" OD (outer dimension). The elbows are about 1/4" inch larger than that... So- your sandbed would need to be a little more than 1 1/4" so that the pipes of this particular build is completely covered with sand. No need for a deep sandbed.

 

Fantastic news! Thanks!

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  • 1 year later...

another approach to building with pvc: you can bend it.

 

first fill the pvc pipe with fine sand or a steel spring

then heat the pipe with a heat gun

*use gloves* it'll be hot

bend the pipe to the radius you prefer.

 

it would be difficult to get it at square or as tight as this example, but you might be able to build a loop with enough patience

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