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Coral Vue Hydros

My First Nano


lshane

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So I am thinking of adding a couple of cleaner shrimp next week to have something to watch... Any suggestions on types of shrimp to add? I've seen a lot of people have added 'sexy shrimp' are there any other really good ones to add?

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I have a peppermint shrimp and a cleaner shrimp. The cleaner shrimp has more personality, eats from my hand, and cleans my hand if put in the tank. I think they have OCD. lol. He stays out front in plain view and comes to the front of the tank when I am near, the peppermint shrimp hides mostly till night time. So if you want one, look at one that likes to be out and about. I have heard that sexy shrimp are fun too. The peppermint eats Aptasia and the cleaner shrimp apparently will clean fish of ich. So they do have their uses to me, something else to consider.

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I have always been a dog person. Always figured that other animals just didn't have as much personality as dogs (which I still tend to agree with). However I have begun to notice even some of the smallest animals seem to exhibit a personality. Two of my three hermits are always seeming to get stuck in holes, its like they really are hermits, or else not to bright. The odd thing is that often they are both in the same hole... is this normal? Also two of my snails are super active, cleaning for most of the day, and then I have another snail that moves around for about an hour a day, and then finds a corner and sleeps...

 

Animals sure are strange.

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I found two new crabs yesterday. One of them I caught eating a eunice worm! Very cool to watch. I think one of them (the ugly one) is a gorilla crab. The gorilla is the one I caught eating the worm. I will have to get rid of it eventually, but for now I will keep it, and hope it gets rid of the other two worms.

 

I know that the worms are probably okay, but I saw one attack a snail, so I'm not sure I want to have them around, and they are impossible to catch.

 

The other crab is a porcelain crab. Very pretty, and it seems from what I read I can keep this one! The other thing I have found beginning to emerge on my rocks is aptasia :angry: There are a bunch of little tiny ones and one big one. The big one I think I can kill myself, but I am wondering if there is a crab or shrimp something that might eat the other ones... Any ideas??

 

Crab 1 - Ugly Crab...

 

IMG_6761.jpg

 

Crab 2 - Pretty Crab

 

IMG_6779.jpg

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  • 1 month later...

So my aquarium has been up and running for almost two months now. I have added a number of snails/hermits for the CUC and just this week I added my first fish, a diamond goby.

 

The first day after I got the goby i couldn't find it. I have been told that they often hide out for the first few days so I didn't worry too much. Four days later I was beginning to think the fish had died, but I couldn't find evidence of it anywhere. I tested the water to see if the ammonia had spiked and it was fine, so I googled the goby and I found out they like to jump.

 

I have a closed top on my aquarium, so I knew it wouldn't be on the ground, but I checked the filter chambers and found it!!! It seemed to be happy in the third chamber on the back, but I thought moving it to the aquarium would be a better idea...

 

It took me two hours to catch the stupid thing! My net wouldn't fit so I had to modify it, and even then it was super difficult, I finally succeeded by using a chopstick to coax it in to the net. It is now happily digging holes in my main fish tank and I have temporarily made the wall a bit higher on the back... I will need to find a permanent fix, any ideas???

 

:)

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  • 3 weeks later...

So I am beginning to more fully stock my aquarium. So far for fish I have a diamond sleeper goby, and new yesterday is a yellow clown goby. I also have two peppermint shrimp, three nasarius snails, three turbo snails and three blue hermits. I have numerous small mushroom frags and a few zoas and I also bought a small frag of xenia yesterday.

 

I would like to keep my small tank fairly peaceful, really colorful and interesting to watch. I was thinking of adding a couple more inverts and one (maybe two) more fish. Does anyone have any ideas of fish/inverts I could add that would be really colorful and have lots of personality (and not kill my yellow clown goby)!

 

Thanks!

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Why a Diamond Goby? Your tank is too small for it, IMO.

 

The diamond goby (Valenciennea puellaris) was a newbie purchase... I went to the LFS where I bought the tank and asked for something to help shift/clean the sand (without doing research before hand) and that is what I came home with.

 

I have seen that a lot of people add these to there nanos though. He seems quite happy right now digging his tunnels and eating the sand. It is a super cute fish to watch. He is only just over 1in right now, I will watch his size and if he gets to big I will give him to my mom who has a much bigger aquarium.

 

If he does get to big are there smaller sleeper gobies that will do the same job (eating/sifting sand)? Criticism is okay where it is warranted, but it is much more helpful to give advice with it so I can improve.

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lakshwadeep

 

The diamond goby (Valenciennea puellaris) was a newbie purchase... I went to the LFS where I bought the tank and asked for something to help shift/clean the sand (without doing research before hand) and that is what I came home with.

 

I have seen that a lot of people add these to there nanos though. He seems quite happy right now digging his tunnels and eating the sand. It is a super cute fish to watch. He is only just over 1in right now, I will watch his size and if he gets to big I will give him to my mom who has a much bigger aquarium.

 

If he does get to big are there smaller sleeper gobies that will do the same job (eating/sifting sand)? Criticism is okay where it is warranted, but it is much more helpful to give advice with it so I can improve.

 

Any sand sifter is not going to survive solely on the sand bed of a nano tank. Also, I strongly discourage the "if it gets too big, I'll put it in a bigger tank" argument. There is a possibility that the goby will die of starvation before getting "too big". I know that many people keep sand sifters, especially diamond gobies, in there nanos, but I haven't checked to see how they do after 6 months or a year in the tank. Finally, there is no major reason for something to sift the sand. The gobies/starfish that sift the sand are not cleaning it in the sense of removing detritus. They are instead eating many of the small crustaceans and other animals that help make live sand "live". So, in a sense these sand sifters are sterilizing the sand bed of beneficial organisms.

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Any sand sifter is not going to survive solely on the sand bed of a nano tank. Also, I strongly discourage the "if it gets too big, I'll put it in a bigger tank" argument. There is a possibility that the goby will die of starvation before getting "too big". I know that many people keep sand sifters, especially diamond gobies, in there nanos, but I haven't checked to see how they do after 6 months or a year in the tank. Finally, there is no major reason for something to sift the sand. The gobies/starfish that sift the sand are not cleaning it in the sense of removing detritus. They are instead eating many of the small crustaceans and other animals that help make live sand "live". So, in a sense these sand sifters are sterilizing the sand bed of beneficial organisms.

 

 

Thanks for your input. My diamond goby eats when I feed the tank. (i alternate mysis, brine & green stuff... all frozen). Do you think I should catch it and take it back to the fish store? Selfishly I would hate to do that as he is so fun to watch! What fish would be better for a tank this size?

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PICTURE UPDATES!!!

 

I thought it was time to add some more pictures... Here is how my tank is looking so far

 

FTS.jpg

 

sideshot.jpg

 

And a few close ups of my livestock...

 

Mushrooms

 

coolmushrooms.jpg

 

spottedshrooms.jpg

 

Zoos

 

zoa.jpg

 

zoas.jpg

 

Goby peeking out of its cave

 

peek-a-boo.jpg

 

Turbo Snail with Fro... (might be time for a trim)

 

SnailFro.jpg

 

It is fun to watch things grow! One of my mushroom frags has a little baby mushroom and my hermits have changed shells three times now! I think the turbo with the algae is especially funny, but I'm not sure if having all that algae on it is good for it?

 

I'll post some new pics in another couple months...:P

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  • 2 months later...

Okay so it has been a while!!! My tank is coming along great. I will have to post some new pictures but things are growing and changing quickly! I moved my diamond goby back to the lfs he came from and traded it for the more appropriate blue striped wrasse. He and my yellow clown goby get along well uless they go for the same food particle, or if the wrasse goes near the goby's mushroom. Then the goby chases him away :)

 

I have a bunch of mushrooms which seem to be multiplying very quickly as well as a lot of zoos, a xenia (which is growing way faster than I thought it would!!) and a torch coral. I am also 'baby sitting' a leather coral frag (with a pipe organ coral that attached itself to the same rock) for a friend while they move some stuff around).

 

I am pretty happy with the way things are looking and i have discovered I really like the zoos and mushrooms as they are so colorful so I plan on continuing mostly with them. However recently I have run into three problems.

 

1 - my peppermint shrimp seem to be eating my torch coral. I have fixed this by making sure that they are being fed enough, but these are really greedy shrimp and so they like to be fed a lot which (i think??) has led to my second problem.

 

2 - I am getting a little bit of red algae on my sand. other than that I haven't had a single algae problem, just corline and green algae growing on the glass and back. I'm not sure how to get rid of it, but I tried cutting down on feeding and it isn't going away.

 

3 - finally I am also having problem with flow. It seems that the water is not flowing through my media basket properly (steveT's). I have emailed him about this today so he will probably get back to me, but I thought I would see if anyone else has also had this problem? It just seems like it gets backed up and starts to flow over the sides. I have polyfilter material and chemipure elite currently in the media basket.

 

Thoughts?

 

Thanks for the feedback, I will update pics once I find my camera!!

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sometimes the red slime alge can be caused by lack of flow so you could get a coraila or anothe rpupmp like that to have more flow. :)

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sometimes the red slime alge can be caused by lack of flow so you could get a coraila or anothe rpupmp like that to have more flow. :)

 

Good to know. I moved my power heads around a bit to change the flow, does anything eat this kind of algae?

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  • 6 months later...

I just wanted to say I like your tank very much. I am thinking of setting up my first SW tank as well and your thread is very inspiring. Can I ask yo where did you get your liverock from?

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