Orchid Dottyback / Blenny Compatibility

[phinatic]

I am looking at blennies to add to a 13G tank with an orchid dottyback. Due to the tank size, I was thinking of the tail spot blenny. I think the lawnmower will be too big over time, but their personality may be more tolerant of the dottyback. Any experience mixing these two? My main concern is them wanting to occupy the same burrows or caves.

[jambon]

In my experience.. Dottybacks can be very aggresive and  It may have claimed your 13gal.   as its territory. Normally the less aggresive fish are added before anything aggresive. It may work ... but it could also stress out the new addition. If you have a lot of rock work to hide out in, that would help, but I would be cautious mixing the 2 in a small tank.

[phinatic]

That's what I was thinking as well. He is a little bit of a punk with my hermit crabs and snails. I have hair algae growing around his cave because he won't let anything near it to graze. I was hoping to get an algae eater of some sort that could keep it at bay everywhere else. Sounds like I may just need to up my Magnesium and get an army of hermits.

[Band Hunter]

Thats probably his tank.  I couldn’t get a springeri dottyback to work in my 40 breeder.  He was added later.  Fought with possum wrasse everyday over territory they both claimed.  There was plenty of room.  He didn’t care about my blennys though.  Possum wrasse finally did away with him.

[mcarroll]

On 7/24/2023 at 1:37 PM, phinatic said:

That's what I was thinking as well. He is a little bit of a punk with my hermit crabs and snails. I have hair algae growing around his cave because he won't let anything near it to graze. I was hoping to get an algae eater of some sort that could keep it at bay everywhere else. Sounds like I may just need to up my Magnesium and get an army of hermits.

If the algae is already grown out you'll have to get it by hand....snails won't (can't) get it when it's long.  Hermits won't either.

 

Magnesium doesn't have anything to do with it, if that part of the comment was related to the algae.

 

Unless you've *actually seen* the Dottyback picking on snails around his cave, my guess is just that you don't have enough CUC to maintain the whole tank.  

 

IMO, remove the algae by hand and add some more herbivore snails.  👍

 

How is everything else in the tank doing?

[phinatic]

5 hours ago, mcarroll said:

grown out you'll have to get it by hand

That's the game plan today. Rip it out and increase the CUC to get it while it is shorter.

 

5 hours ago, mcarroll said:

you've *actually seen* the Dottyback picking on snails

I've seen this. If any snails or crabs get near his cave, he knocks them off the rocks into the sand.

 

5 hours ago, mcarroll said:

How is everything else in the tank doing?

Tank is looking good. The frags are growing out and the water params have been great using All-For-Reef in the ATO.

[Murphs_Reef]

1 hour ago, phinatic said:

That's the game plan today. Rip it out and increase the CUC to get it while it is shorter.

 

I've seen this. If any snails or crabs get near his cave, he knocks them off the rocks into the sand.

 

Tank is looking good. The frags are growing out and the water params have been great using All-For-Reef in the ATO.

I would suggest not to have all for reef or any other macro / trace in your ATO. Uptake with increase / decrease depending on light, temp, variations as well.as feeding and available nutrients in the water.. at the very least you need to be testing very regularly and adjusting your RO reservoir accordingly.. 

 

I would go manual dosing if you can't add a dosing pump ... I dose 1 drop (0.05ml) of 8 different trace elements every other day it's not a lot of effort ..  

[phinatic]

4 hours ago, Murphs_Reef said:

I would suggest not to have all for reef or any other macro / trace in your ATO.

I've played around with this and the AFR in particular doesn't spike the measurements like a normal additive would. Even when my evaporation rate changes day to day, the Alk and Ca have a pretty consistent band. AFR has to be metabolized by bacteria, so even if you "overdose" it, it still takes time for the Alk and Ca to move. So if you overfill/underfill day to day, its been pretty consistent. My tank uses about 5ml of AFR per day and takes about 500ml of water per day. If it goes 400-600 on any given day, the resulting AFR difference is pretty small.

 

My tank is setup as a no water change tank. I wanted to see if I could get a no-WC SPS tank, so I'm playing with things like this. The only water changing that occurs is via the skimmer. I'll occasionally top off with salt water depending on how wet the skim is. The last water change was 5/8 (20%) but that was only because I was redoing some plumbing and needed to lower the level anyway. The last legit change was 4/24 which was 95% after my tank cycled.

[Murphs_Reef]

4 hours ago, phinatic said:

I've played around with this and the AFR in particular doesn't spike the measurements like a normal additive would. Even when my evaporation rate changes day to day, the Alk and Ca have a pretty consistent band. AFR has to be metabolized by bacteria, so even if you "overdose" it, it still takes time for the Alk and Ca to move. So if you overfill/underfill day to day, its been pretty consistent. My tank uses about 5ml of AFR per day and takes about 500ml of water per day. If it goes 400-600 on any given day, the resulting AFR difference is pretty small.

 

My tank is setup as a no water change tank. I wanted to see if I could get a no-WC SPS tank, so I'm playing with things like this. The only water changing that occurs is via the skimmer. I'll occasionally top off with salt water depending on how wet the skim is. The last water change was 5/8 (20%) but that was only because I was redoing some plumbing and needed to lower the level anyway. The last legit change was 4/24 which was 95% after my tank cycled.

If your going into SPS, you will definitely see a big uptake in kH and Ca. And if your not going to water change you will find that you will have to dose trace.

It would be interesting to know what does consistent kH look like to you over 24hrs. 

[phinatic]

13 hours ago, Murphs_Reef said:

kH look like to you over 24hrs

Measurement moves between 10.0-10.5 dKh over the last couple months. Testing using the cheap API tests, so there may be a little wiggle room in there.

 

13 hours ago, Murphs_Reef said:

will have to dose trace.

This is why I went with All-For-Reef since it has the trace elements in the typical proportions with Alk and Ca

[Murphs_Reef]

50 minutes ago, phinatic said:

Measurement moves between 10.0-10.5 dKh over the last couple months. Testing using the cheap API tests, so there may be a little wiggle room in there.

 

This is why I went with All-For-Reef since it has the trace elements in the typical proportions with Alk and Ca

That's a pretty high reading for kH. Any reason you keep it that high? Also it would be good to see what the daily swing looks like as if it's 0.5 per day, that's quite unstable.. if it's 0.5 over a couple days then it's not too bad.. but still not ideal. 

 

My swing over the day is pretty much undetectable at less than 0.05 dkh typically and I'm adding 57ml of alk via a part dosing system. And I consider my tank to be lightly stocked down SPS / LPS:

 

 

Today's Alk dosing so far:

 

 

All for reef can keep macro numbers in place but only enough trace for a very lightly stocked SPS tank.. of your going with a no water change solution you will need to consider a 2 part and additional trace ... The main reason people water change is to export nutrients and to top up depleted trace.. though many find they are dosing trace on top of that.. 

 

In addition to a highly concentrated 2 part I am dosing Macro and Trace elements every other day:

Strontium, Bromine, Iodine, Iron, Vanadium, Cobalt, Barium and Molybdenum

 

All guided of course with monthly ICP tests. 

I guess the point I'm trying to make is to try to demonstrate that you'll find it really difficult to maintain SPS or LPS with good colour and growth with no water changes and only dosing all for reef into your RO Reservoir. 

[phinatic]

This turned out to be a bad idea. Go figure.  I tried the Dotty out with a Lawnmower Blenny. I figured I'd go with the Lawnmower in case my Dotty was a bully. Went the complete other direction. During the very first night, he raked the heck out of my dotty and ripped one of his pectoral fins. Has big rasp marks on both sides and his top. Now I'm stuck trying to get the blenny into a trap so he can go back to his own tank.

 

Any experience with fish healing up fins and rasp marks? He's still getting around the tank, but clearly had a rough time. So much for blennys always being peaceful.

[phinatic]

On 7/31/2023 at 12:27 PM, Murphs_Reef said:

That's a pretty high reading for kH. Any reason you keep it that high?

Just trying to encourage the frags and coraline algae to grow out. 10 dkh has been the magic number I have seen most places. Accepted range is generally 8-12, so I stuck it in the middle.

[Murphs_Reef]

2 hours ago, phinatic said:

Just trying to encourage the frags and coraline algae to grow out. 10 dkh has been the magic number I have seen most places. Accepted range is generally 8-12, so I stuck it in the middle.

Understood. Yeah it is acceptable just that you need to dose more generally to maintain that level. 

Conversely stability is the key to more agressive growth that the number. I like you have opted for a hight level kH in the past and some might say that I still maintain a high level targeting around 8.2dkh. 

[Murphs_Reef]

2 hours ago, phinatic said:

This turned out to be a bad idea. Go figure.  I tried the Dotty out with a Lawnmower Blenny. I figured I'd go with the Lawnmower in case my Dotty was a bully. Went the complete other direction. During the very first night, he raked the heck out of my dotty and ripped one of his pectoral fins. Has big rasp marks on both sides and his top. Now I'm stuck trying to get the blenny into a trap so he can go back to his own tank.

 

Any experience with fish healing up fins and rasp marks? He's still getting around the tank, but clearly had a rough time. So much for blennys always being peaceful.

I'm sorry to hear this. I don't have much experience with this type of injury but as long as he is eating and swimming, he may well be ok. 

[mcarroll]

9 hours ago, phinatic said:

This turned out to be a bad idea. Go figure.  I tried the Dotty out with a Lawnmower Blenny. I figured I'd go with the Lawnmower in case my Dotty was a bully. Went the complete other direction. During the very first night, he raked the heck out of my dotty and ripped one of his pectoral fins. Has big rasp marks on both sides and his top. Now I'm stuck trying to get the blenny into a trap so he can go back to his own tank.

 

Any experience with fish healing up fins and rasp marks? He's still getting around the tank, but clearly had a rough time. So much for blennys always being peaceful.

More than likely the Dottyback was going in for an aggressive d***-move and it just turned out that the Blenny can (more than) defend itself.

 

I'm sorry you got the idea that Bennies are peaceful.  The tiny ones tend to be a little more passive, but in general Blennies can absolutely be full-fledged d***s in their own right.  Up there with the Dottybacks.  (Makes sense when you think about their lifestyle where they are exposed on the reef, browsing for algae.  Gonna have to be at least defensively tough!)

 

I've had a red-lipped blenny draw blood on me when I was cleaning a tank, for example.

 

BTW, a Lawnmower is quite a lot of fish for 10 gallons.  Is he eating frozen or prepared foods?

[mcarroll]

9 hours ago, phinatic said:

Just trying to encourage the frags and coraline algae to grow out. 10 dkh has been the magic number I have seen most places. Accepted range is generally 8-12, so I stuck it in the middle.

FYI...

 

When I was manually dosing during the first few years of my tank, I was using Reef Crystals for occasional water changes and targeting 4.0 meq/L (11.2 dKH) for alkalinity when dosing.

 

SPS, which were mostly monti (plating and branching) and birdsnests....but a few others too, grew like weeds.  (Literally out the top of the tank.)  

 

The tank was fishless (so probably relatively low-nutrient, though untested) and I was running metal halide lights during most of that time.

 

The switchover to LED was devastating to my big colonies (my fault...no lux/light meter), but some time after things recovered I moved my target alkalinity to 3.0 meq/L (about 8+ dKH).  I had a 4-channel doser by this time, so no longer saw the need for quite as big a "margin of safety".

 

It's hard to compare since alk is not all that changed along the way, but IMO the difference between 4.0 and 3.0 meq/L alk wasn't that noticeable.  Stability seems to be more important than the number being "high" or "low".

[phinatic]

6 hours ago, mcarroll said:

More than likely the Dottyback was going in for an aggressive d***-move and it just turned out that the Blenny can (more than) defend itself.

I believe this was the case as well. I saw the Dotty take a couple cheap shots after the fact and then run back to his cave. He was definitely afraid though. He wouldn't come out as long as the Blenny was out. I trapped him last night, and the Dotty is back to cruising around the rocks. Hope his scars heal up, he was a beautiful fish.

 

6 hours ago, mcarroll said:

Blennies can absolutely be full-fledged d***s in their own right.

In addition to the Dotty, he also went after some of my large hermits. I was pretty shocked since he was the new guy in the tank. First day and he already owned the place.

 

6 hours ago, mcarroll said:

BTW, a Lawnmower is quite a lot of fish for 10 gallons.  Is he eating frozen or prepared foods?

Yeah, he was going to be on the bigger side for sure. He does eat flake in addition to grazing.

[phinatic]

@armebos You can read my thread above, but my attempt didn't go well with the orchid/lawnmower combo. The orchid antagonized him and then he used that rasp mouth to shred the orchid. I had to return the lawnmower. The orchid is kind of a jerk, although not very effective with that small mouth. He rams other fish (clownfish) and inverts (hermits, nudibranchs) but they mostly ignore him.

[natalia_la_loca]

On 10/23/2023 at 2:38 PM, armebos said:

I am considering blackflies to add to a 13gm dottyback orchid aquarium. Because of the size of the aquarium, I was thinking about a tailed blenny. I think the lawn orchid will eventually get too big, but their character may be more tolerant of the dottyback. And in their spare time, you can also relax in the online world. And I was given some info recently about [shitty spam link redacted] onine casinos with [wack ass scam casino name redacted] and realized I've been missing a lot. Here's going to catch up on all this next week. Any experience with mixing the two? My biggest concern is that they will want to occupy the same burrows or caves.

lmao @ this paragraph. sup bot?

 

 

[phinatic]

Something is off about that. I'm almost certain that wasn't there when I replied to that. It doesn't show that it was edited though. What the heck?!

[natalia_la_loca]

7 hours ago, phinatic said:

Something is off about that. I'm almost certain that wasn't there when I replied to that. It doesn't show that it was edited though. What the heck?!

In my reply to them, i edited the link and the casino name just for lulz. It looks like a bot account that is randomly recycling text from earlier in this thread and inserting the spam link in the middle. Pretty ridiculous.