Tank upgrade- pico to (change of plans) JBJ 45gal

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Well, I've been keeping saltwater fish for probably about 6 years at this point, albeit in two separate portions, and I finally have my first clownfish. I don't have any nice pictures, because they're currently conspiring to freak me out by interspersing their "where the heck are we" swimming around the QT tank with laying on the bottom. They don't seem to be breathing especially fast (for small fish who were just unboxed), so I think this is normal clownfish weirdness, rather than a sign that something is wrong. They're in clean, oxygenated water that's the same salinity as their shipping water, they should be fine. 

 

I do have this screenshot from the clip the breeder sent me when I was picking them out. The slightly larger one is a basic black-and-white Darwin-style ocellaris, and the smaller one is what the breeder calls a black panda. He's got some blue tinges to his white stripes, and should mature to fully black and white. They're both pretty small, with the larger one being 1.75" at the most. 

 

They'll be getting a prophylactic chloroquine phosphate treatment, just in case, and I'm hoping I can get them to eventually wind up hosting a patch of pulsing xenia within easy viewing range of the cat. Or just hosting something (that they aren't slowly killing) in general. 

[Tired]

The clowns stopped pretending to be dying animals after a couple hours, but the will-be-female has now set to running laps of the place, pretty much nonstop. I'm not sure if something in the tank is freaking her out somehow- I don't know what would be. They've got heat and oxygen, indirect light, a couple little caves to hide in, and a bit of sand on the bottom so it's not just a mirror. My only thought is that maybe being away from all the other clowns in the breeder's holding tanks is unnerving her somehow. The other one is patrolling similarly, but much slower. 

 

Hopefully they settle down soon. They're lovely little critters, and I'm interested in seeing how they compare in personality to other fish I've kept. All I can tell about their personality right now is that they apparently don't hide when scared. 

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I don't name fish until they're through QT, but my gosh. At this rate I'm gonna name these two The Reasonable One and Ma'am Please Calm Down. 

[Tired]

She has finally (mostly) calmed down! 

 

In other news, 

I wasn't going to even consider acros in this tank, but AquaSD just sent me one as a freebie with an order. I think this is a Red Planet? Apparently these are easy to grow, as acros go, so I may go ahead and give it a shot. I have been wanting a showy branching coral to put somewhere high in the tank. 

 

Are there any non-acro corals these are comparable to, in terms of care? I don't mean as in light and flow requirements, more as in tolerance for parameter shifts and general nonsense. 

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About a week ago, I transferred my two 'keeper' destructive-type crabs out of a temporary breeder box and into their new home in a HOB 'fuge. I noticed that one of them is apparently a sexually mature female, as she was carrying eggs.

She'd been in that box with no other crabs of the same species since March 1st. I assumed these were infertile. 

 

They were not. I now have a load of commas dipping around in the 'fuge. I'm assuming/hoping they won't make it to adulthood, but... hoo boy. If they do, I'm gonna have /so/ many gorilla crabs. 

 

At least they're not too hard to catch, and they take awhile to get to any concerning size.

[Tired]

Well. It's been awhile. I've had some personal things going on (nothing serious, but all annoying), and I've had a couple of incidents happen that just made me not want to go anywhere near aquarium stuff for awhile, let alone this thread. Put me into bare minimum "feed and top off the water so nothing dies" mode. I am, hopefully, back now.

 

This tank leaked on April 1st. Guess that's what happens when you buy a used tank. I took everything out and went shopping for a new tank, this time in acrylic, which does not leak when it gets old. For those unfamiliar, glass tanks are glued together with silicone, which fails eventually, whereas acrylic tanks are made by chemically welding the panes together into one single piece. If made properly, they don't leak- ever.

Due to cost, and also to ease of scratching, acrylic tanks are less popular than glass. If you want an acrylic tank outside of a certain few sizes and shapes, you have to get it custom-made. I went through Tenecor for that, and I do recommend them, with one caveat: they don't do anything fast.

I get the sense from the responses I got and the reviews I've seen that they're a relatively small company which has rapidly expanded and maybe hasn't yet figured out exactly how many orders they can take on and get everything ready in time. But they were the company that got consistently the best reviews in terms of product, so I went for them over the other options.

Took awhile. My corals did not like being in temporary setups for as long as they were, and I did not like having assorted temporary bins of living creatures scattered around my room.

 

But!

Out with the old (with "leaks" scribbled on it so nobody tries using it for water),

 

And in with the first thing I've ever gotten delivered by freight! 120-lb total crate for a 45-lb tank, which is another benefit of acrylic; it's so much lighter than glass. I could have picked this up myself if it was slightly smaller in volume, and lemme tell ya, my core strength is not good.

 

Got the water in, got the rocks out of being ~40lbs of rock in a 10-gallon tank (with at most 6 gallons of water) and into a pretty decent aquascape, and in goes nearly everything. A few corals I got last month are in a separate tank for QT purposes, in case they have any ich encrusted onto them.

 

Difficult to photograph nicely under these lights. The phone camera sees everything as far more blue than it is. The actual color at the moment is somewhere between these two, though I'll be slowly increasing and tweaking it as the corals adjust. I had the light cranked down low so I could put it over the shallow temporary tank without frying anything.

The corals on the sandbed are the ones from my pico, which I've broken down due to the light going out. They're not happy- between some increased fatigue issues this year interfering with the deep cleaning that the pico needed, and me accidentally doing about a 70% water change on that tank with 1.008 salinity water meant for my guppies and not realizing overnight, basically nothing I had in there is pleased. Except the urchins, oddly enough, and a hermit crab.

 

I mostly like this scape. The piece of branch rock on the top right probably needs to move, it tips things too far to that side, but overall it looks nice enough in person. I'm going for a look like one of those hunks of rock you see sticking up out of a sandbed, with some shells and things lying around the base where the waves have shoved them. That's why I've left some of the sand on the rocks- I kinda like the natural look to it. I'm working on bastering the sand off the upper areas, but the sand in big heaps on the lower 3-4" is going to stay unless it comes off on its own.

Arranging live rock is hard. Everything has a this-side-up, and it's all funky irregular shapes. I think I've arrived at something decent, though it... does not photograph well, turns out. I also then immediately got sand all over it trying to add that in.

 

I've deliberately put very little sand in this tank, so it can't build up gunk. This is the deepest area, behind the rocks on the right. It's for the tiger pistol shrimp that's made itself at home under the rock, and for the cerith snails that form the bulk of this tank's cleanup crew. I'm hoping the shrimp will build a burrow right up against the side where I can watch it. I may also add a watchman goby for my cat- she sleeps at the head of my bed sometimes, staring right at this spot.

 

The pencil urchin you see there, and the tuxedo urchin elsewhere, are on probation. Urchins can scratch acrylic with their teeth, but I really do like them, and I want to give them a chance.. From what I understand, urchins mainly scratch acrylic while trying to eat coraline off it, and scratches in acrylic are fixable, so I'm going to try to keep coraline off the walls for the most part and give the urchins a chance. Hopefully they behave.

 

This little guy is one of the very few crustacean survivors of the pico situation, aside from a few amphipods and a little porcelain crab. Flash on so you can see his colors under the shade of his shell. I dumped a bunch of empty shells behind the rocks on the left, where the sand is shallow enough that the pistol will hopefully not burrow over there and bury them all, and this guy promptly took the largest and heaviest shell from the heap. The better to upend all my frags, I suppose.

 

 

Most of the pest crabs are gone. I euthanized the vast majority, and kept something called a "spine-backed hairy crab", because it's interesting-looking and makes a cool little monster. I stuck it in its own little setup with the cirolanid-infested live rock to see if i can make a nearly-0-maintenance critter tank. Not a reef, just the crab and the stuff on the rock.

Some of the stuff; a filter-feeding sea cucumber. Don't mind the cup.

THAT rock has been through a lot. I all but decided to throw it out (couldn't trap the cirolanids), and stuck it in a bin with nothing but water and some indirect sunlight. No flow, no heat, no light, nothing. Just occasional top-offs. Then I looked in there after probably a month and noticed how much stuff was still thriving, stuck a planted tank light over it, and kept basically ignoring it.

It's still covered in life, including multiple tiny filter-feeding sea cucumbers and tunicates that have not just lived, but grown, since I got this rock in January.

Here's the little monster when I first caught it. It's about doubled in size since this photo, I think? The spines are actually sharp- I picked it up in my hand to move it, expecting those to be hairs, and got poked. No damage, but boy, if I was a fish I don't think I'd want that in my mouth.

This little thing is impressively strong- its carapace is half an inch across, and it can move a rock the size of my fist if it tries. I've taught it to eat food out of rubber-tipped tongs, and it'll grab onto the tongs and shift a whole little rock yanking on them. Once it gets to full size, at about an inch of carapace width, I'm gonna attach some food to a fish weighing scale and see how hard it pulls.

 

Most of the decorators are also gone. Some gorillas got into that half of the box, and, although decorator crabs live together OK and same-sized gorillas live together OK, gorilla crabs + decorators = no decorators. I still have one decorator, which I think is the same species as the micro decorators I've kept before. It's in that little box attached to the side, along with a couple of hitchhiker hermits that are mostly turning out to be blue legged hermits. I'll be giving them away- I don't want them harassing my scarlet reef hermits, which are wimps.

 

I don't remember if I posted it here, and I have no idea where it's gone, but there's a red sponge decorator crab in there somewhere. It's impressively large, but has trouble catching dead krill held in tweezers, so I don't think it's any concern for other livestock. I'll just put zoas on frag racks until they're a mini-colony that can handle losing a polyp or two. Hopefully it can find itself a sponge it likes, as it hasn't taken to the ulva I put in with it. I might offer it a piece of black artificial sponge- I wonder if it would like that?

 

 

Next up: everything sits for a few days, to make sure nothing goes awry, then my fish go in. I'm excited for this- it's going to be clownfish and guppies, which should make for some funny pictures. I'll admit I'm out of touch with what the layperson knows about fish, but I'm pretty sure most folks know clownfish are ocean animals and guppies are not. And yet!

 

I also have an order in with KP Aquatics for some critters. They'll be going in the critter-only tank to sit until any potential clinging ich is gone, then they'll go in here. I'm taking the "QT literally everything" approach.

 

From here, I'm mostly just going to see how things swing out. Find good spots for the corals, try to let the unhappy things from my pico recover. I am not looking at any coral livesales. Or any corals for sale, period.

I'm going to see what grows well in here, and then, and ONLY then, will I potentially get something new.

(Watch me not hold myself to this.)

 

Eventually, I want a Starcki damselfish. I had one for a bit, in QT, but it got a minor scuff that was fine for a few days and then turned into a horrible skull-eating infection, so I euthanized it to save it the trouble of dying itself. It lived long enough to thoroughly charm me, though- lots of personality, gorgeous colors, grows to a good showy size without being too big for this tank. Like a dwarf angelfish, except it won't pick at corals! Does have a pricetag to match, but worth paying.

Also on the list of eventually: an elongate dottyback. Again, had one in QT, until the pump went out and it died of lack of oxygen. That one's not just for me, it's for my cat- she was really invested in watching it dip in and out of hiding places. Much more interesting than the guppies and their brainless wiggling around in open space, I suppose.

I also quite like white-spotted pygmy filefish. They're on the back burner, for if this tank can handle them and stay nice and low-maintenance. Maybe when the guppies die of old age- I expect to only get a couple years out of these guys, at most, since they're already adults. 

Probably gonna impulse-buy a pygmy goby or two at some point. I love them. Maybe a clown goby if I can find one that's eating at the LFS. I'd have to QT, but they have so little bio-load, they're so cute, and I have a limited amount of self-control.

Definitely going to get myself another plume shrimp if/when I find one. Potentially a couple. They're fascinating, and I'm not sure what they eat, but it's apparently something they can find loose in the tank- the one in my pico got fed really infrequently because I could only rarely find it, there wasn't really any feeding going on for it to swipe from, and it still did quite well. Detritus, algae, bristleworms... no clue. My micro brittle star population went down a bit, but that may have been coincidence.

 

 

 

To finish off, here's the clowns! The blue is from a methylene blue treatment; the male has a congenital gill deformity that meant he didn't cope nearly as well with the pump shutoff as his larger mate, and when I went looking for advice on Reef2Reef (because much as I prefer the vibe on here there's faster emergency answers over there), I was told that methylene blue was my best bet. Evidently it helps oxygen get to the cells better. Certainly seemed to work. This is actually after about a 90% water change- that stuff stains like mad. When they were in the full-strength treatment, you couldn't see them, except as vague white patches, unless they came right up to the surface.

They don't have names yet. I'll officially name them once they go into the main tank.

I don't really have any guppy photos. Except things like:

This.

I'm excited to see how they look under the reef lights! But I don't expect to be able to photograph them well at all. They're currently at about half-strength salinity, being acclimated higher a stage at a time.

 

[banasophia]

That was a big update… not able to read the whole thing right now, but I love the new tank and that spiny crab is so cool looking!

[Woodini]

Man that’s the longest post I’ve ever seen on a forum.  Will come back and read more

[Tired]

The crab's out! Here it is with some dried krill. You can see its claws are small for its size, delicate little tweezer-points made for scraping and plucking rather than cutting. No crab is 100% reef safe, but ones with claws like that are pretty close, provided you keep any small zoa frags up out of reach. It's about an inch and a half across, and to my knowledge won't get much larger, if any.

 

This photo also has a money cowrie, and in the back right is some sort of astrea, likely a ninja star snail. It came in on the live rock as a tiny baby, and is now at least 5 times the mass it was in November. I wasn't planning on any astreas in this tank, I stuck with ceriths, money cowries, and a tuxedo urchin, but apparently I have an astrea now.

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https://imgur.com/krNGjbO

https://imgur.com/xLDOlNn

 

Let's see if this works. Trying to attach a couple videos of the clowns.

 

It's been a long time since I've had interactive fish, rather than little perching fish like gobies and blennies. I do love those, and I'm adding a couple (in the form of two female sailfin blennies from KP Aquatics), but there's something fun about fish that come up to the front of the tank and show interest in your existence. Even if that interest is really in the food.

[A.m.P]

Clowns are definitely little dingbats, always fun to watch and tend to develop their own odd little individual habits and routines.
Love them to death

[Tired]

https://i.imgur.com/OujLhd2.mp4

The guppies are in! Link is a short video of them and the clowns feeding.

 

Some of the guppies I'd tried to acclimate started looking unhappy at higher salinities. I've moved them back to brackish, and will return them to full freshwater before finding them another home. Five got to full salinity, and I wound up removing one to brackish, so I now have four; two fancy guppies, and two guppy/endler hybrids.

The fancy guppies look a little out of place, visually, though I do think it's funny to have probably the most recognizable freshwater fish in my reef tank. The two endler hybrids fit in better, and I actually really like the aesthetics of the scarlet one; something about its color tone reads 'marine' to me. If I didn't already know about these, you could show me that scarlet one and tell me it was a saltwater livebearer species, and I'd 100% believe it.

I might get a few more scarlet endler hybrids, or similar-looking ones. The trouble there is that guppies and endlers heavily selected for a specific look tend to be inbred enough to hinder their ability to adapt- better to look in the feeder bin, or to get something from a tank started with 12 different strains. I'm definitely keeping an eye out for wild guppies, since those are found in up to 150% of marine salinity and should therefore adapt just fine.

[A.m.P]

That scarlet one really is gorgeous and congrats on getting so many over to full marine conditions, that's really awesome. 

[Tired]

Well, correction- I have three.

See that uncomfortable posture compared to the yellow one? Fins clamped, tail lowered? it was also breathing faster, though that doesn't show in the photo, so it's been removed back to brackish. Shame- this one was the first to stop acting scared, and the white is an interesting look, but I'm not going to keep it in there when it's clearly not feeling well. It's going into a freshwater tank to help build the tank's maturity for some shrimp, then it'll probably live in a hornwort bin with the other dropouts, unless I happen to find someone who has a nice tank it can go into. Either way, I'm going to find it a nice home- I took responsibility for these when I bought them, and I'm keeping responsibility for them.

 

I'm not going to declare a definitive success on the others for probably a couple weeks. If they're still happy next month, I'll say those three are probably fully adapted. The problem is that these are either fancy guppies or have a lot of fancy guppy genes, and fancy guppies just do not have the hardiness and adaptability of their wild ancestors.

 

I'm going to try another batch at some point, maybe in a couple months. For that one, I'll be looking for wild guppies, feeder guppy mutts, and endler hybrids (also preferably mutts). Those should hopefully have more adaptability than the pretty fancy guppies that are all bred to be colorful, long-finned, and identical. They'll be from a smaller gene pool than the truly wild guppies swimming around in rivers right now, but the lack of intense selective breeding can only help.

[Tired]

A note for anyone who tries this; you can take any guppies that show distress in saltwater and put them straight back into brackish. No acclimation whatsoever, just scoop them up and dump them in. Moving from high to low salinity is much easier on fish than vice versa.

[Tired]

It's been years since I've kept fish that interfere with your viewing. Every time I lean in to get a close look at something, tada! Clownfish in my face. It's cute, at least.

 

In other news:

One of two female sailfin blennies, not to be confused with a sailfin algae blenny. This is right after she was tipped out of the bag- she's gone much more pale to match the environment. Love that she has little 'feet'. She's about 2" long, and shouldn't grow much larger.

They're in the bare tank for QT and prophylactic medication, which will be done on the 21st. They're eating very well even with the CP, they pop out and stare at me whenever I come near, and they squabble a little now and then. Like barnacle blennies with flags attached, essentially.

 

Edit: found an article on sailfin blennies (linked here) that says the males may display up to 1100 times per day. My cat is going to love that thing if I get one- she's fascinated with little creatures that pop briefly out of hiding and then vanish again. The current fish don't interest her too much, since they're mostly out in the open and don't vanish intriguingly.

[Tired]

The guppies started acting a little displeased, so I've removed them to freshwater. I'll be trying again, this time with wild guppies (i.e. feeders), which should be minimally inbred and therefore hardier.

Some sort of pretty little chiton. It lives on the lower edge of the flat purple rock at the left of the aquascape, and I do not expect it to ever be anywhere other than about a palm-sized area there. Particularly not if this is a small species. Chitons don't roam.

 

The decorator crab, which appears to have located some cyanobacteria somewhere. This is the only patch of cyano in the tank- I think it's getting eaten everywhere else. Currently it's small enough to fit on a dime without reaching any of the edges, and it should stay small enough to never spill over a quarter. No crab is truly reef-safe, but these come pretty close, with the only harm they'll cause being that they may snip and wear extremely tiny zoanthid polyps or bits of zoa frill.

 

One of the two sailfin ladies. I was a little concerned about whether these bottom-dwelling blennies would get enough food from the auto-feeder, without being target-fed. That does not appear to be something I have to worry about, judging by this one's stomach.

(Don't mind the wonky eyes, these little critters move their eyes like chameleons and she was in the middle of arguing with the other blenny. The females are evidently territorial- it's not just the males.)