I originally posted this in my Expierience thread, but because of a rash of PM's enquiring about it I thought I would share it here as well.


I have always wanted a Blue Spot jawfish and when my LFS got a few in I jumped on the prettiest one. I figured my 2" deep sand bed was not quite enough so I decided to make a DIY burrow for the little guy





and bury it in the sand.



I brought her home the other day



and she took right to her new home.

Awesome!

that is sick, im quite impressed with your creativity. however that might turn into a poopy factory no?

No, jawfish are excellent housekeepers. If anything falls inside that they don't approve of they will immediately eject it.

Does it still use the burrow pretty exclusively? I really like this idea, and would love one of these fish.

The original fish stayed in it for about three weeks until I forgot to replace the screen on the top and he decided to surf the carpet. My new one has stayed in it since July. They leave it at night and swim around but always return. I guess they like it better than anywhere else in the tank.

Great Idea! This is where mine decided to pay rent! (whom i payed 22$ for LOL)

did not know that, you learn something new everyday. i also learned that they go for $109 on thatpetplace.com

would yellowhead jawfish do the same and do they make good house wives as well?

Excellent idea that I will use on my next tank. I would have to tear apart my nano to do something like that. Thanks!

i think im gong to do it to, its really sweet, however i think im gonna give mine a back door.

That's a great idea. What size PVC did you go with? What are the holes that you drilled in the PVC for?

Very cool

speaking of excellent house keepers mine just took a huge piece of poo and spit it out of his cave lol!

I dont see why not.



I used 3/4" PVC. The holes were mainly for ventilation and to let air escape so it would stay submerged. Be sure the holes are small enough not to let sand drop in or your fish will spend all day scooping it up and spitting it out his hole.

omg thats one expensive fish....but it looks soooo cool. too bad it likes to hid most of the time. its like buying a ferrari that u dont drive...my neighbor has a 360 and its always in the garage with the the car cover on............

Very nice I may have to do this, I really like jawfish and wasnt going to get one but this may have changed things, lol cool idea.


Casey

That is a excellent idea. i wonder if it use the whole pipe system. Did you use some kind of putty on the shell? and what is it, a big hermit crab shell? I wanna do this hence all the questions.. PM teh answers just incase I forget to check this thread..

See now I can get a Jaw fish ! Thank you !
I never could before for the same reason engineer gobies are a no no in a frag system.
They stir up crap insanely cleaning out and digging out their burrows and all the crap settles on the frags.
But with this little do dad I shouldn't have any problems !
Thank again for sharing this !
So what did you do just buy a composite barnical ?

i was wondering the same thing .. i have a set of barnicals but there small. so where can one aquire such a barnicle?

the "shell" looks synthetic...might be a plastic thing.
but love how it looks in the tank. makes me want to make a tank just for jawfishes...

So what is the top made outa?

The barnacle is real I cut it off of this colony I once used in a fish only system. I glued it on with reef epoxy.





Here is a little vid, A minute in the life of Stoneys Jawfish.

Awesome vid! it got me looking over my shoulder to check out 'spot'(my jawfish)

Do you remimber what place you got the barnical frome?

Some souvenir shop in Florida somewhere. They are very common, tons of people sell them on Ebay for cheap.

All right well thank you.

I have a couple of fist-sized clumps of those barnacles, what a GREAT idea! I was looking last night at some of the shrimp/goby combinations and I may rig up something like this for them.

thats pretty clever of you, good job.

So does he actually swim through the PVC piping or is it just used to anchor the barnacle? Do you know if they wouldn't mind living with neighbors? I wonder if you could set up a bunch of these along a pvc pipe and have a little colony in the sand.

Yes, he uses the whole tubing. When he enters head first he will swim through the loop and pop his head out from the other side. That is what he does at the end of the video, it's that fast. Sometimes he will hide inside and I cant see him, but he has his head out at least 90% of the time.

I wouldn't put two of them that close together, they are very territorial among their own species.

I am definatley getting either a Blue-spot or a YellowHeaded Jawfish when I upgrade, and I am going to use this design. Thanks for the idea.

i see you found it cody, pretty sick huh?

wow thats over the top cr4zy.
u gotta tell use how u did it.

Ah yeah I just watched the video again and see what you mean. Wow those guys are fast. Do you think if you put two barnacles on one pipe, so like two entrances he would like that or would that make him feel insecure. This is definitely a cool idea I really like jawfish and wouldn't mind trying it out.

BRILLIANT! thats absolutely an amazing idea! GREAT JOB!!!

Sometimes you just need to think like a fish.

Cool, i had one of these similar too.
Posting pics, to show a slightly different angel

What was the diameter pipe used?

All parts were 3/4" PVC. The list is small and cost only a couple bucks.

4-3/4" street elbows

1- small piece of 3/4" pipe (4 or 5 inches)

1- 3/4" Tee adapter ( I cut off the tee to fit the barnacle)

Reef epoxy

Barnacle shell ( not necessary, you could just use a PVC pipe to the surface like modernreefkeeper did on his version)

I did not use cement on any of the fittings in case disassembly was necessary.

Thanks for the info! Yeah I was thinking of glueing some LR rubble together to make the mouth of the cave or something. Of course all of this is in the planning stages I don't even have the tank yet!

I wonder if I could drill a hole in some LR with a 1" bit and camouflage it that way. That would be pretty cool.

There are so many options, I just used what I had. If I didn't have the barnacle I would have done it a different way. Liverock, shells, coral skeletons, they all would work equally well.

that is sooo cool..
u de man.. "creativity"

Agreed, that would be sweet!

stoney, awesome idea what you did right there!!!

Very nice stoney! I will now be adding a jawfish + "Stoney Waters Jawfish Condo" to my new tank list!

Wow, this is definitely an awesome idea. Beautiful fish by the way. I've wanted a blue spot jawfish for some time now. I plan to put one in my new nano. I'm definitely going to build one of these. Great job and thanks for sharing.

What do you guys think about building the pvc throughout the entire bottom of the tank with a few different openings for the fish. This would provide those who don't like placing the rock directly on the glass onto the pvc. Think that would work?

I do have one other question though. Isn't the end with the vents under the surface of the sand? If it is then is there really flow though the pvc keeping the water from becoming stagnant throughout?

In my opinion just the fish swiming through the pipe is enough to keep the water moving and refreshed.

I just built one of these. Ill take some pic of it and post it up here, cuz mine is a tad different.

For one i used a snail shell for the entrance. Im hoping my jawfish likes.

well here it is.

2- 3/4" 90 degree elbows
2- 1" 90 degree elbows



btw this is my first successful DIY ha.....

Very cool!

I just added a bullseye jawfish to my tank but luckily I have crazy base LR so it already formed tunnels in the substrate.