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Sorry to hear about the clown troubles Amp. Fish aggression is just the worst! We do all we can to keep these animals comfortable but after a certain point its just beyond our control, and there's no option but to separate them. Did you end up splitting the pair up on Sunday as planned?

 

Extremely vexing about the polyp-eating mystery pest as well. I wish I could offer some advice here, but all I can think to say is watch your tank at night, which you've already been doing. If the pest is in fact a night-crawler most worm-eating fish might be ineffective, since many of them are diurnal anyway. I hope you can catch the culprit some way or another. 😥

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Yeah, I'm iffy on the fish, but I figured the coral banded shrimp will be hunting at all hours. If it's a polychaete then that should mean trouble haha... Although the smaller species might not be super-effective at killing larger worms? Hard to say.

 

The aggressive clown is back at the store, the larger one now refuses to leave the wall-corner and barely eats, any sound or movement near the tank causes desperate panic-attacks, swimming into the wall -to the surface - playing dead in the bottom corner...

 

Still too beat up for me to consider adding any other animals, though if it stops eating I will asap.

Edited by Amphrites
Update on the clown
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I'm not certain if the blown-up image is actually the animal I removed from the montipora, it almost had to be manually-pulled out. I'm not convinced the monti wasn't eating it but I figured I would pull it out and get a closer look regardless. It was some kind of elongated shrimp-like animal with a whiskery-head that was sitting halfway-in the polyp-pore, maybe I have parasitic amphipods? It doesn't really look like those oldshool montipora black-bugs of legend, although it was translucent and bug-like with a black-spine while still in the pore.
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1 hour ago, Amphrites said:

I'm not certain if the blown-up image is actually the animal I removed from the montipora, it almost had to be manually-pulled out. I'm not convinced the monti wasn't eating it but I figured I would pull it out and get a closer look regardless. It was some kind of elongated shrimp-like animal with a whiskery-head that was sitting halfway-in the polyp-pore, maybe I have parasitic amphipods? It doesn't really look like those oldshool montipora black-bugs of legend, although it was translucent and bug-like with a black-spine while still in the pore.
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I once noticed on my monti cap a weird stringy creature coming out of a hole it had made in the monti(not a spinoid) there was no tube.

 

Around the area was all white and even a dusty detritus around it as if the wormy like creature was breaking down the monti.

 

Is that similar to what's been going on?

 

I got a polyplab blue flashlight and that has really made a difference for night viewing, I have been able to see things I never had before.

 

 

 

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23 minutes ago, Clown79 said:

I once noticed on my monti cap a weird stringy creature coming out of a hole it had made in the monti(not a spinoid) there was no tube.

 

Around the area was all white and even a dusty detritus around it as if the wormy like creature was breaking down the monti.

 

Is that similar to what's been going on?

 

I got a polyplab blue flashlight and that has really made a difference for night viewing, I have been able to see things I never had before.

 

 

 

Actually, yeah, that is kind of similar, the dent these buggers have made in my forest fire has been impressive but painfully-slow and the accidental-frag which got separated from the parent colony is fine. If you look back at the last page I have a photo of the perfectly-circular pock-mark where it seemingly bored-out a polyp from the skeleton.
Looks like I need a bug-eater... The springer's did an awful job, especially once it started eating coral instead of bugs lol.

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I just read through this, crazy that we all kind of went through some kind of tank disaster. Where do you guys get your corals? Maybe there’s a parasite that’s newly infesting corals!

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10 hours ago, I'm Batman said:

I just read through this, crazy that we all kind of went through some kind of tank disaster. Where do you guys get your corals? Maybe there’s a parasite that’s newly infesting corals!

Haha, my health means I've got the budget of an old fogie paying with dimes and pennies, so I've bought anywhere I can get animals for $10 or less.

 

Sniping local eBay auctions and getting the shipping swapped out to priority if it's within the USPS overnight range, hitting up locals who have too much or are farrr too generous, waiting until that same frag's been sitting on the rack for 3-4 months.

 

The trick is that Dino's are always in your tank, I think there's some merit to the idea of nastier strains being introduced, but it still takes a slip-up on the hobbyists' part or in the biome of the tank for them to explode and take-over.

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24 minutes ago, I'm Batman said:

Haha that’s about right!! 

Lol the title change and fluff references are mostly in regards to the new stocking, @Tamberav got me hooked back on the idea of an aggressive tank and what ended up inside this glass box was mostly going to depend on what the LFS around-town had in-stock or could access anyway. I went for a "kind-of" compromise. 
Unfortunately some of the new residents were a bit beat-up, so I'm treating prophylactically and giving everyone time to mend up before I go taking a bunch of pictures and getting too swept-up in things. 
This is the best the tank has looked and my final take on the scape, pretty much final-stocking, with the exception of one-or two very specific corals/inverts and/or fish, as well.

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Can’t wait to see some pics come along as it matures!! I just cut a piece of GSP and glued it to my back glass. Already sending out growth fingers or whatever you call them! 

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1 hour ago, I'm Batman said:

Can’t wait to see some pics come along as it matures!! I just cut a piece of GSP and glued it to my back glass. Already sending out growth fingers or whatever you call them! 

The branching briarium I ended up with is kind of odd, its' new growth glows a white-green in my moonlights. Could just be a sweetspot in the spectrum, Dawns' on me that I haven't actually shown the new lighting setup, I'll have to tryin' remember to in the next update.

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Small update, still hesitant to post much for reasons I'll get into.
Like I mentioned earlier Tam got me hooked on the idea of an aggressive tank, on top of that nobody local had most of the other options and stocking was always going to depend on what was out there (supporting local businesses and such).

I re-arranged the scape into something a bit more similar to what I'd throw together for cichlids, though the nature of the peninsula-tank style means I can't really stack things against the back wall and create proper, jutting, horizontal territories and overhangs (nor do I really feel like dropping in a bunch of pvc lol). Using epoxy and a fair-bit of cyanoacrylate pretty-much made sure the whole thing is modular and in two or three easily-removable pieces. 
Oh and new light, Razor 120w that I was able to get and refurbish for around 250, after selling the Prime HD and the PAR bulb I'm only into it for about $50. 
I've got it off-center so the lps on the right get less light than the sps on the left.
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Here's a quick side-shot of the tank with a sneak-peak of the Perc's new little boy-toy.

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And here's a full-tank closeup of the new stocking!
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One of the stocking plans had been an attempt at keeping a whole-host of the chrysiptera species, however I was advised that, while that may work, it may be easier to attempt to pair-up some juveniles. Background fun; Proper-damsels are kind of interesting in that they're essentially the opposite of clowns.
Damselfish, while also starting out gender-neutral, morph in the opposite direction and the more-dominant become males. Unfortunately, much like other aggressive fish, the pairing isn't really similar to clowns at all in that the male usually allows the female(s) to exist near its' territory - there's usually not any proper relationship present.


Anyway my wife and I kind of fell in love with Randali damselfish and they're known to pair-up and even breed in aquarium. Unfortunately there's a bit of a catch, one of them was kept with an in-transition clownfish... The smaller one... and that went about as well as you'd imagine, I like this particular LFS as they tend to have fairly-healthy fish and refuse to sell until they've been in the store a few weeks for observation but I don't need to highlight how huge a mistake that was.
The smaller of the two damselfish was missing one of its' base-fins, had its' dorsal chewed almost down to the bone (it still doesn't fully-flare-it), it was missing scales and had a few noticeable wounds and sores on its' sides... Seeing it in the bag I very-nearly told them to forget about things, but if I had given it back I'm fairly-certain it would have been beaten-to-death within the week. 

I didn't want to start throwing-up pictures until I was comfortable with where it was at, it's still getting bullied by the bigger Randall's but it's mostly just chasing-off from territories and no new damage has been done (yet*, you never know with damsels but I'm hopeful as they're fairly peaceful at night which is when it counts).

Both are eating like pigs and there's no feeding-aggression yet either.

I may eventually add a elongate dottyback or a barnacle/fangblenny, maybe just a coral banded shrimp or a wrasse, but for now I'm pretty happy with where the stock in this tank is at. I've got more rocks and ideas laying around if I need to break things up for aggression and am hopefully going to be getting some awesome rock from reefcleaners. Originally I planned to throw it on the bottom of the tank and grow monti's on it, but now I think I'm going to fashion a little lean-to for the rightmost corner in hopes the clowns prefer it to the powerhead.

 

Back to some more pictures:

GSP with new-growth on the right-side and above-it the freshly-re-butchered remnants of the FF digi.
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Oh, one final tidbit, I'm going to be replacing the Aqamai powerhead. 

 

This might be an unpopular take, but I don't like the pump much at all, at least not for tanks this size.

Apart from the somewhat misleading flow-ratings and a lack of a proper way to gauge the pump's actual current flow (without going through a bunch of math as I ended up doing), the flow is just exceedingly-narrow and intense.

Even my sps don't care to have the powerhead pointed at anything other than the side of the tank, despite it being 30" away from them.

 

To make things even more awkward their flow patterns are fairly-homogeneous; the difference between random and smooth is that the random setting sits at peak-values for the duration, while the smooth spends its' duration transitioning, which is fair enough. (Although mathematically it means they're nearly-equivalent in gph)

However their wave setting is fairly annoying, it seems that instead of controlling the actual wavelength it only controls the duration of the crest, making it impossible to actually-create spaced waves that give the corals time to rest, instead it acts as a kind of constant-flow with a .25 second low-cycle (it cannot toggle the pump off).

 

I do not think these pumps function well in smaller tanks, they're probably perfectly-suited for 30+ gallons, especially if you're working with a pair of them, but in smaller tanks I would expect anything in front of the outlet to struggle and would treat all of the lower-percent flow options as about 400+ gph of near-constant flow.

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It was too dark for taking decent photo's, so I took some anyway.

 

Rather-upset chalice, got nocked a few days back when I cleaned the glass and still hasn't forgiven me, might need to scoot it to lower-flow.
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Big poofy Blasto's

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Flurfy Duncan

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Acro has started receding from its' base while still growing at the tips, I'm hoping it's just a flow or lighting issue

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"Stop taking pictures and go away"
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Are you gone?

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He won't leave...
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So, keeping up with these Randall's as they explode out in-size has been quite interesting. The tank has been through at least 6 or seven different re-designs, each motivated from observations on territories and patterns of aggression.

These saltwater fish are quite different from my experiences with freshwater species, the biggest difference is just flow. Chiclid tanks aren't really known for high-flow, usually the 5-8x lazy-river turnover is all the tank gets. I hadn't really planned-for or thought about how big an impact flow has on the territories and daily-routines of saltwater animals.  From what I've seen these damsels establish territory-boundries based on their "nest" and then a hard-point which allows them to protect their backs while swimming into the current of the tank, in a smaller-system with fairly unidirectional-flow this seems to result in damsels actually staying quite a while-away from their "nest" during the day, instead opting for a comfortable-spot to swim against the current and flit about the tank. 

It's that peculiar behavior which has made scaping for them so difficult, sight-breaks end up actually becoming a "resting-zone" during the day and are strongly-contested and protected by the larger damselfish, this has lead me to create a kind of no-man's-land in the center of the tank so I can better-dictate where the fish spend time.


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This scape has, so-far, drastically reduced aggression and terminal-chases (chases where the larger fish feels the need to either bite-at or fully-pursue/corner the smaller fish)
The larger nests at the far-left and the smaller towards the center on the right, which brings me to the glaring flaw in this scape.

 

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Because of the direction of the flow returning off-the-rockwork to the powerhead, the larger damsel prefers to hang out with his back to this rock in the middle of the tank.
This causes intermittent chasing and bickering between the two, I would guess the larger feels threatened with its' back exposed to the smaller or when it comes out from fussing in its' nest and see's the smaller near its' preferred daytime "safe-zone".

As they continue to grow larger I'll likely need to redesign again, however I'm not entirely-comfortable with my plan-B.
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Quick doodle and slapped-together edit, just for a visual example, the gist is that the current-problem rock would be relocated either to the far-left or to the far-right and used for more caves. In addition the, now sawed-off, piece on the edge of the left-most rock is actually able to stand-up vertically and would be re positioned into the center of the tank as a new "comfort-spot" for the bigger damsel and as a sight-break. Hopefully creating even more empty-space in the center of the tank and replacing the contested rock with a tall-narrow vertical-rock (now with room behind it for territory separation) would alleviate almost all of the current bickering.
 

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I'm fairly-concerned about the prospect of changing that much of the tank all at once and getting rid of the center-horizontal bridge which the smaller-fish is occasionally-able to retreat into, but this is pretty much the final-idea I have and will almost certainly be necessary as they grow larger.

All that out of the way these Damsels are absolutely-beautiful and just wonderful to watch, they're moody, expressive, and exceedingly-active with their little bursty-swimming patterns. Couldn't be happier to put in the work to keep them happy in their environment.

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Here are a few quick-shots of corals as a thank-you for reading, if anyone has any experience or advice for scaping I'd love to hear it.

 

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This condition has made me awful at sitting idle when I feel there's something I can be doing lol... Plan B happened this evening.
And I forgot to mention, so I will now, I was able to get a cleaner-shrimp and a pretty teal-tipped torch for just over $20, I cannot stress how thankful I am that there are people out there trying to keep this hobby affordable and really possible at all for those on a budget.

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I really admire your dedication in keeping those damselfish from murdering each other. I wouldn't even consider keeping two of those (or even one, honestly) in a 20g tank, but it seems like you're making it work! So kudos to you sir. 🙏 I'm curious to see how the fish adjust now that "Plan B" has gone live.

 

Excellent pictures too. It looks like this tank has bounced back quite well after the recent crash. 👍

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