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Old Man Sea's Shallow Reef Creative Contest Pico Tank - FTS 2018 - Mangroves have leaves; Green Banded Gobies


OldManSea

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Here is my required Dec FTS.  Things have been busy with the holidays but I have kept up with water changes (100% weekly). 

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I added a fourth RFA taken from my 5.5 gallon tank.  I should probably remove one of the two identical-appearing ones to go back to three.

 

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No leaves on the mangroves yet but they are growing roots.  The leaf buds seem to be swelling on two of the propagules so maybe soon....

 

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I scraped a lot of blue coralline algae from the glass prior to taking the pictures.  It is growing luxuriantly.  I will soon add a Pedersen shrimp and look for some other small Caribbean creatures to add.   I will do a better update in January.

 

Pictures to @Felicia

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18 hours ago, Orangutran said:

This is looking awesome! love the RFA and mangroves!! I am growing mangroves in my normal tank, and it's actually very satisfying to watch the roots grow and leaves budding! 

I am excited about that too. The mangrove on the right has now reached its roots into the substrate and the leaf bud is growing rapidly.  The roots of the one on the left are just above the substrate now.

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On 1/13/2018 at 11:05 AM, OldManSea said:

I am excited about that too. The mangrove on the right has now reached its roots into the substrate and the leaf bud is growing rapidly.  The roots of the one on the left are just above the substrate now.

Yeah, since I suck at growing corals, I get more excited about growing mangroves! lol Once I set up my bigger sump (already got it), I will get more! They do suck up a lot of magnesium as advertised, I am having to dose more now...

 

But seriously love all your coral choices too!

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  • OldManSea changed the title to Old Man Sea's Shallow Reef Creative Contest Pico Tank - Jan 2018 FTS

Here is the January 2018 FTS

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The main update is that the mangroves are beginning to leaf out - finally!

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The roots are getting very long and growing smaller side roots.  It will be great to have leaves as well.  The corals and anemones continue to do well and the macro algae is looking very nice.  I remove some every couple of weeks now.  I am surprised that 4 RFAs are doing well in this small tank.  I still intend to remove one since this is a lot.  But with the 100% water change every week the nitrate and phosphate stay nice and low.  

 

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I continue to scrape coralline algae every week but in these closeup's there is a lot at the sand level.  I will have to get a finer plastic scraper.  Next in will be a Pedersen shrimp - can more than one be kept in a tank or will they fight?  I am still tempted to add a small fish, a goby or blennie to add some more movement.  Fish don't often get added to such small tanks so I will think about it for a time yet.  I want a species native to Florida or close by but this time of year makes it tough to source one.  

 

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I have Pederson shrimp and green-banded gobies coming. I looked on fishbase at all Atlantic gobies and then focused on Florida and green banded showed up as being collected in 80% of survey collections along the western islands of tHe Keys including Key West.  I see them included in other slightly larger tanks so I decided to try them.  If they don’t work out I can move them to the “big” 5.6 gallon tank.  I think I will have to move one the RFA’s to the larger RFA tank.

 

 

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8 hours ago, OldManSea said:

I have Pederson shrimp and green-banded gobies coming. I looked on fishbase at all Atlantic gobies and then focused on Florida and green banded showed up as being collected in 80% of survey collections along the western islands of tHe Keys including Key West.  I see them included in other slightly larger tanks so I decided to try them.  If they don’t work out I can move them to the “big” 5.6 gallon tank.  I think I will have to move one the RFA’s to the larger RFA tank.

 

 

A GBG was my other choice but LA was out of stock when I ordered. They're so cute! My Pederson's shrimp was originally going to be two but one did not make it.

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2 hours ago, debbeach13 said:

Did you get the shrimp and gobies? 

 

1 hour ago, teenyreef said:

The bowl looks great! How are the gobies and shrimp doing?

I did receive 4 gobies, which are doing great.  They are very active and eat like pigs - tigger pods, ricordea pellets and even flake food.  I have ordered the shrimp 3 times when they were listed as in stock, but they quickly run out - this is Live Aquaria, who did send an email message apologizing.  They said they have about 20 people on the email alert list and they are only getting 2 or 3 at a time from their collectors at this time of year so the shrimp are gone within a few minutes of the alert going out. KP Aquatics also said this is a really difficult time to collect them.  I had to try for the gobies 3 times before hitting the jackpot.

 

I had never before seen live green banded gobies which is surprising since they occur in the Florida keys, and back in the late 60s when I was keeping fish, they were never around.  Hundreds of new gobies though.

 

It has been forever since I bred clowns.  I think I will give the gobies a whirl.  They seem to be easy to raise now that the most appropriate rotifers are known.  Of the 4 that came in, one is about twice as large as the other 3 so that one should develop as a male and most or all of the others as females.

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  • OldManSea changed the title to Old Man Sea's Shallow Reef Creative Contest Pico Tank - FTS 2018 - Mangroves have leaves; Green Banded Gobies

A quickie update this evening to make the February deadline, I have been running from thing to thing for work.  I will do a better job tomorrow.  During February, two advancements -

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first, two of the three mangrove propagules now have leaves!  A long time coming but now here.  I did find that the light bulb was too close, it began to burn the leaves.  I moved it 6

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inches higher.  The plants are happy and the corals have not complained, either.  The second advance is that I finally got green-banded gobies, 4 of them.  Here is a cell phone shot of one of them.  I will work to get better shots and try to get all 4 in one image.  They dart around really fast.  I did find by accident just before lights out that when I turned off the

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circulation pump and dropped some live tigger pods in one spot, all 4 gobies congregated at that spot very quickly.  While the larger one spends most of its time amongst the red macroalgae, the smaller ones spend most of their time under the coral on the opposite side.  I haven't noticed any fighting as all of them move around a lot, and when food is added, whether flakes, frozen, or tonight, live, all of them know nearly immediately who has the food and congregate.  Even though I have had them for a short time, if I am staring down at them, they think I am going to feed them and come to the top of the water near me.  If I stay a long time, the largest one begins to challenge me.  Very engaging little fish!  They have as much personality as the two flame hawkfishes in the other tank.  I should have time tomorrow afternoon to work with them with the DSLR and yellow filter to get better shots - assuming I can get them to be still long enough.  

 

I have noticed the last couple of weeks that I have to change water two times a week to keep the tank clean.  I will remove the largest of the anemones this weekend.  I always thought I have too much bioload, and now, with the fish and extra food, that is clearly the case.  I have not yet had success getting Pederson shrimp.  I am on notification lists for both KP Aquatics and Live Aquaria (the source of the green banded gobies).  They each get a few but if it takes longer than a few minutes after getting the email alert to respond, they are already gone.  Last Wednesday I received an email message from Live Aquaria at 5:30 pm and KP Aquatics at 6:30 pm.  I responded to both at 8:30 pm and both were already sold out.  

 

 

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Practicing taking pix of the gobies.  With the circulation pump off, I pipetted some live tigger pods at the right edge of the rock under which the 3 smaller gobies spend most of their time.  As expected, this resulted in all 4 of the gobies becoming very active.  Here is the largest one on his way from the red macroalgae side of the tank.  He must see or hear the others going after the copepods.  This close shot also reveals a couple of aiptasia among the blue zoa polyps - @!#!!  I will have to get the Aiptasia-X out tomorrow.  I was confused looking at the bubbles but now realize they are floating at the water surface.

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Here is a shot with all 4 of them visible.  Very cool little fish.  They all stayed out the rest of the day looking for 'pods.  The rock flower anemones really like the live pods as well.  They were snapping them up.  Last week I was feeding live ghost shrimp to the leaf fish in my larger tank.  Once got away and charged into an RFA which went crazy catching it and eating it.  Certainly was MUCH more interested in a live shrimp than the frozen mysis it usually gets.  Those Aiptasia are really bugging me!  I want to scrunch my finger into the screen to crush them.

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The contest is coming to a close!  March 31st will be the official end of the competition and then the voting will begin.  In order to help the community decide what tanks to vote for, each remaining contestant will need to do the following:

  1. PM me three (3) final photos that you think summarize your container reef.  The composition for two of these is up to you, but one of them should be a final FTS taken sometime during the month of March.
  2. PM me a written summary of your container reef build and experiences throughout the competition.  This should be no more than 250 words.
  3. These items must be private messaged to me by midnight (Pacific Standard Time) on March 31st.
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