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Thoughts On Keeping Many Invertebrates In A Small Environment


animalmaster6

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animalmaster6

How to keep many Invertebrates in a Small Environment

 

If we can get enough info I think we can get this stickied.

 

Some invertebrates are simply stunning. Look at these

Ancylomenes-sp1.jpg

p-80360-shrimp.jpg

AAAADIY9q5gAAAAAALHcDA.jpg?v=1266698986000

 

There is such a diversity and many people would like to keep as many as possible. This can become very troublesome. If there isn't enough space even the most peaceful inverts will have to fight. This can lead to injury or death.

One of the greatest problems is food. If you want a garden of feather dusters you are going to need enough food for them or they will die.

 

There are ways to help these problems though.

 

 

Territories- Territories are so, so crucial. Every terrioroy means something can live there. A territory can be a coral or a chip in the rock.

Tips:

 

- Try to grow out corals as much as possible. Make things dense. This makes a lot of territories. For example, if you have two commensal shrimp that host Ricordia sp. you will want to have many Ricordias. The more the better so they can find a very nice and suitable home. Even three Ricordia would be not enough. The less Ricordia you have the less of a choice they have and they may not find a suitable home. THus, they will not survive and may possibly die. This happens with all commensal shrimps. Whether they host Acropora sp, Ricordia sp, Acanthastrea sp (acans), or any other corals.

 

This tank 3018091202-10001.JPG

has tons of territories. The tank has SPS that are not tiny frags but are large colonies. In some of those colonies there is even room for two host acropora crabs. The bigger the coral the better.

One of the biggest Acropora crab sp. mistakes include not having a big enough colony.

 

acropora_coral_metallic_green_rare_556.jpg

This is an example of an SPS frag that is not large enough to support an acropora crab.

466425372_HWcEN-L-1.jpg

This Green Birdsnest colony is perfect for an acropora crab. It is large and very complex. The larger the coral, the better.

 

 

Food- Food is extremely important. If you want to keep lots of invertebrates you will need lots of food. Not enough food, death. The best way to combat this is to study the species you're interested in and find out what they eat.

 

 

 

Hopefully this thread will help many people.

 

I will add much, much more into different species, food, territories, and more.

 

 

Please add you experiances with keeping invertbrates and any other tips you have.

 

 

Note- None of these pics are mine. These photos belong to their rightful owners.

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Great thread. Something I have been wanting to get myself but do not know a lot about them or which do better than others.

Right now all I have besides a few snails, couple scarlet hermits and a small pistol shrimp is a pepperment shrimp.

Had a couple more but they died, why I have no idea, but this one has held in there about 8 months now.

I have been looking for a couple nice porcelain crags but only ones I see locally are $20 a pop.

What info on these?

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so this is what you've been up to. mmm...

 

OK let me see what I can find.

 

AM would adding a list of inverts known to the hobby, both common & latin name, be possible.

 

here we go

 

http://www.thecephalopodpage.org/MarineInv...mboinensis.html

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_amboinensis

 

http://www.horta.uac.pt/intradop/images/st...z_and_DAcoz.pdf

 

http://academic.uprm.edu/publications/cjs/VOL17/P069-072.PDF

 

http://decapoda.arthroinfo.org/pdfs/28047/28047.pdf

 

sorry for not reading the whole thing first but looks good.

http://si-pddr.si.edu/dspace/bitstream/100...0587-Lo_res.pdf

 

you may like this one

http://www.aquariterraneen.fr/PDF_Ricardo_...taldecapods.pdf

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animalmaster6
Great thread. Something I have been wanting to get myself but do not know a lot about them or which do better than others.

Right now all I have besides a few snails, couple scarlet hermits and a small pistol shrimp is a pepperment shrimp.

Had a couple more but they died, why I have no idea, but this one has held in there about 8 months now.

I have been looking for a couple nice porcelain crags but only ones I see locally are $20 a pop.

What info on these?

Thanks!

What species of pistol shrimp do you have? This could be the answer to your Peppermint Shrimp problems.

 

Porcelain Crabs- These guys are very peaceful. There are many different varieties too. With them, you want to have enough territories. I think you definetly do. You have plenty of corals and rock space. You can get a couple. Cheaper ones are the Micro Porcelain Crabs. John Maloney has these from time to time on www.reefcleaners.org. They aree $6-$9

 

Found it :happy:

:happy:

 

I'm adding the Clam, Feather Duster, Gorgonian, Sponge part today.

 

very interest so i will follow this thread too!! thanks animals

Awesome! Thanks! :happy:

 

Definitely a great thread.

 

Following!

Thanks!

 

Brent- I was wondering if you and Pufferfreak could say some info on coldwater invertebrates. I'm going to try to get Jer, Jacob, Jamie, Lani, and Yoshii tog et some info on this too.

 

 

 

so this is what you've been up to. mmm...

 

OK let me see what I can find.

 

AM would adding a list of inverts known to the hobby, both common & latin name, be possible.

 

here we go

 

http://www.thecephalopodpage.org/MarineInv...mboinensis.html

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thor_amboinensis

 

http://www.horta.uac.pt/intradop/images/st...z_and_DAcoz.pdf

 

http://academic.uprm.edu/publications/cjs/VOL17/P069-072.PDF

 

http://decapoda.arthroinfo.org/pdfs/28047/28047.pdf

 

sorry for not reading the whole thing first but looks good.

http://si-pddr.si.edu/dspace/bitstream/100...0587-Lo_res.pdf

 

you may like this one

http://www.aquariterraneen.fr/PDF_Ricardo_...taldecapods.pdf

Thanks Bitts!

 

Great Stuff!

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Thanks!

 

Brent- I was wondering if you and Pufferfreak could say some info on coldwater invertebrates. I'm going to try to get Jer, Jacob, Jamie, Lani, and Yoshii tog et some info on this too.

 

I'll PM him and see what we can come up with.

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animalmaster6
I'll PM him and see what we can come up with.

 

Awesome thanks Brent!

Cool thread AM. You know I love my inverts big time!! I'll be following.

Thanks Jeffro!

 

Would you like to write some info on pairing Pom Poms? I am gonna ask Sublunary too.

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Well I'd love tout it just kinda happened when I had the two in my biocube 14. The one pompom started to carry cluches of eggs on her underside. Not completely sur that pompom crabs pair per say. As some other shrimp and crabs do. I believe they more like mate once or a few times and carry the sperm till it's needed to fertilize. I may be wrong and they could be mating in my tank this whole time. Although I've never seen them together since I put them in my tank. They like to have there own territory.

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animalmaster6

Nice info!! Thanks!

 

I agree that nthey amte a few times snd then leave in the wild.

I'm going to search MOFIB soon about Pom Poms.

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Small co-existence comment....

In the NC28 I have a Harlequin shrimp pair, a fire shrimp and an emerald mithrax. They have never had any problems, they just stick to their own territories....

 

In my 20L I have 1 mithrax, 2 pom poms and 9 sexy shrimp. No problems so far either!

 

AM nice thread, following for shizzles!!

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animalmaster6
Small co-existence comment....

In the NC28 I have a Harlequin shrimp pair, a fire shrimp and an emerald mithrax. They have never had any problems, they just stick to their own territories....

 

In my 20L I have 1 mithrax, 2 pom poms and 9 sexy shrimp. No problems so far either!

 

AM nice thread, following for shizzles!!

Thanks Carlos!

How big is your Emerald?

 

What corals do you have in your 20L?

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Both of my mithrax are fully grown, I'd say about 2-2.5in across the carapace.

 

 

In my 20L I have acans, favias, shrooms, about 10 frags of sps, chalices and some zoas...

I know it's been said before but please if you do have zoas make sure your sexy shrimp are fed or they will go for the skirts...

 

One thing I did notice was that the emeralds love duncans... They were both "hosting" my 8 headed duncan before I moved one of them to my 20l

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animalmaster6
Hey AM are you going to do a right up on pairing cleaner shrimp and pairing pistol shrimp with goby?

Not on pairing Cleaner Shrimp, I'llg et some links for that. With pistol shrimps and gobies absolutely I will. That's mah thing! :lol:

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Awesome i want to try and pair a pistol and goby but every time i get a gobe he jumps out. Oh yeah i forgot your the master of the pairing gobies and pistols.

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I have not seen any aggression whatsoever between any of my inverts.... It's funny though, I started the 20 long in the hopes of doing a reef/angler tank but for some reason I've been more attracted to inverts. Once I saw all my params were stable( it was fast cause I used fully cured lr, sand and water from the other systems) I added a Hasha Yasha/pistol combo and they were great, but cryptic as yashas and the pistol were I barely got to see them.... Bout a week later I walked into my Lfs where they had just gotten an order in as they were unloading the animals I saw a little baggy with 2 pom poms I had read about them before so I knew their reqs but I had never actually seen them in person.... BAM! Fell in love and bought the pair. First few days I was very watchful I was kinda worried the pistol would crack em but nope, nada the pistol does not give a damn even when they go by his abode's entrance.

 

Then came the sexy shrimp I wanted to experiment in getting a whole community going so instead of the usual 3-5 I got 9. I wanted to see if I was gonna be able to keep em all together on one side of the tank. To my surprise it worked they only venture on the left side of the tank if they feel like some tasty orange zoa morsel...

 

So it breaks down like this... Left bottom side of the tank is the yasha/pistol combo's territory.

Left upper tank is the pom pom's area, mine love hanging out on shrooms waving their little pom poms around. The whole right side of the tank belong to my sexy shrimp. They hang around together for about half the day then in the afternoon each one goes to a different spot(still only on the right side of the tank) some on Acros, some on shrooms, some on acans and they just chill.

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animalmaster6

Carlos- That's really helpful info. That shows that you have success because of your corals and many territories are laid out. Can you post a FTS? :)

 

 

Awesome i want to try and pair a pistol and goby but every time i get a gobe he jumps out. Oh yeah i forgot your the master of the pairing gobies and pistols.

lol I do know my gobies and pistol shrimps. Today I would like to get an article on goby/shrimp pairing and sponges.

 

Shrimp Gobies are prown to jumping. You need to have a top with them.

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Yeah i built a eggcrate top and i had a gap for the powercord of the powerhead and bam he found that gap and jumped and of course i wasn't home when he jumped out so i go and look at the aquarium and i see something on the floor and its the fish all shriveled up.

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