icenine's nano

[icenine]

A couple of bummers to report.

 

 

The feather duster has bitten the dust. It dropped it’s crown. While a new crown started to appear it bailed out of its tube all together.

 

While I’ve had it in the tank since about June of last year and it survived more than a few trials and tribulations I don’t know that I’ll be replacing it with another duster. I’m not sure what the lifespan of these particular worms was expected to be in captivity.

 

Here is a pic of the duster with the “second” crown before it bailed.

 

 

 

 

The other big loss has been the midas blenny. It just plain disappeared a few weeks ago. It was there in the morning when I left for work and gone when I returned home that evening. The prevailing theory is that the lid was left open and the fish went carpet surfing which would have culminated with the cat snacking on it. I tore the tank up looking for a carcass with not a trace found in the display or overflow. I saw no rise in ammonia afterwards either. Other possibilities might be the orange serpent star or the hitchhiker xanthid crab…. But I would have expected to find some trace of it still. It was a constant swimmer during the daylight hours, so the chances of one of those two catching it during the day would have been really slim.

 

I had thought of not replacing it, with another midas or any other fish for that matter… however I came across one specimen (not another midas blenny) that was just too hard to pass up. I first saw one of these fish just a few weeks ago at IMAC. They are pretty unusual right now, only a handful have been offered in the trade so far.. …..I do think they will be much more common in the future though. Pics to come on that soon.

 

[schaadrak]

Sorry, man, that really sux.

[Schwazreef]

… however I came across one specimen (not another midas blenny) that was just too hard to pass up. I first saw one of these fish just a few weeks ago at IMAC. They are pretty unusual right now, only a handful have been offered in the trade so far.. …..I do think they will be much more common in the future though. Pics to come on that soon.

 

 

On the cutting edge, hm, ice. Very nice. If you feel like spilling to someone, PM me, id love to know.

[icenine]

Here is the new guy:

“Indigo” Dottyback

 

I first saw this fish a few weeks ago at IMAC. It’s a new hybrid from the ORA breeding program. ORA have been producing tank bred dottybacks for some time but this is the first “hybrid” dottyback I have seen from them.

 

The fish is a cross between Pseudochromis fridmani and Pseudochromis sankeyi. What you wind up with is a distinctive, striking blue fish that has the black eye markings of the “orchid” fridmani and some of the body striping of the “striped dottyback” sankeyi. The stripes are not overly pronounced and are darker/lighter gradient shades of blue.

 

I would say the jury is still out on temperament of the fish. Pseudochromis have the potential of being tank terrors, but so far the specimen I have shows no sign of becoming that. I’ve read often that tank raised dottys are far less likely to become overly aggressive with other fish and inverts in a tank. In addition this hybrid is a cross of two of the “more peaceful” dottys, with the sankeyi known as the least territorial sp. …so on paper they should not be overly aggressive. While only having the fish for a week, it has blended well into our system. This was the last fish into this system with the current denizens being a Centropyge argi (pygmy angel) and perc.

 

At this point only a handful of these fish have been released to the trade. They were on display at IMAC in April 06. It just so happened that a dealer local to me, darklordcoral.com acquired a few and I managed to snag one of those. I’ve not seen them anywhere else yet, but that should change in the coming weeks and months.

 

Here is a stock photo from ORA, followed by some pics of the fish in my tank.

 

 

My pics are awful... I can never get a good shot of a constantly swimming fish, but these will at least give an idea of what it looks like.

 

 

 

Flash:

 

No Flash:

 

 

It’s a stunning fish. The pictures really don’t do it justice. I’ve seen “bluish”

Orchids and I know they look blue at lower depths in the red sea or under some lighting in aquaria but trust me, this guy is true blue under 10ks.

 

More new stuff, a blasto rock. There are actually four differnent morphs on this rock.. I'm sure I'll have better pictures over time.

 

 

Here is yet another crappy top down shot:

 

 

The tank is still kind of a mess. I have frags scattered all over the bottom. My father is setting up a 12gal nano cube, so I have fragged a bunch of zoas, xenia and gorgs for his set up. I'm still proping a few other things in here too. What I really need to do is set up the pico again as a prop tank.

[tinyreef]

very cool bluefish!

 

although i still prefer the orchid as it's one of my favorites that does look awesome! is it solitary like most dottys? it'd be cool to have that in the same tank with a true orchid, purple and blue.

[Fishfreak218]

DAMN! how big is that anemone.. how often do you feed? I have a green one (kinda like yours except without the awesome purple mouth)... and would love to have it grow bigger b.c. right now its only about 4" in diameter.. also nice blasto's

[icenine]

DAMN! how big is that anemone.. how often do you feed? I have a green one (kinda like yours except without the awesome purple mouth)... and would love to have it grow bigger b.c. right now its only about 4" in diameter.. also nice blasto's

 

Yep...it's a monster ain't it? It was around about 3 to 3.5" and bleached a bit to the yellow side when I got it back in october.

Here was a pic of it when I first put in in the pico tank after arrival:

 

 

 

It is pushing 7.5 to 8" now when fully extended. Very big, bigger than I ever expected it to get. I am wondering why it has yet to split or reproduce. I spot feed it once a week, but it will grab food when the rest of the tank gets fed three times a week as well. (yes, I only feed my fish three times a week) Spot feeding is with krill, scallops. silversides or some other raw fish.

A couple times a month it shrivels to a quarter of it's normal size and takes a big 'ole disgusting poop. This event lasts a day or sometimes two. I'll take some pictures and enter an anemone pooping post to the thread the next time it happens.

[Fishfreak218]

thanks.. i guess i beter start spot feeding.. he only gets a tiny bit of food when i feed the other fish..

[aaronz]

Wow very nice, that is what I hope to get to some day. Can you go over your filtering process and water change cycle agian. I know you said 50% awhile back has it changed, modified....i woud like to pick up on your routine

[Fishfreak218]

srry for all the requests lol.. whenever you get around to it.. FTS please

[hannahs]

I just read your whole thread....I really like your tank and have a couple of questions.

 

Did that Blue Xenia you got stay that blue? I can't seem to find anything like that online. I love the color of it.

 

Where did you get your dwarf blue brittle stars? I also can't find anyplace that sells these.

 

You mentioned that you went away for a week without anyone watching the tank and it went fine. How was the water level when you got home? I'm planning on getting this same tank and am wondering if the water would evaporate too much if I went away for a week's vacation? And the fish were fine after a week with no food? I am going to get the 70W MH system though so evaporation would probably be different.

 

I love your tank setup!

[Sea_Of_Treachery]

what exactly are the requirements of those flower anemones?lighting?food?ive had 2 in the past and they died within a month.

[icenine]

Thanks for the compliments!

 

The "blue" xenia... turned out not to really be xenia but a blue anthelia. It was that blue... really deep. Untill I managed to kill it. I attempted to frag it and did so by splitting the rock it was growing on. While I'm not sure what I did wrong it developed some sort of infection and melted away short after the fragging. The person I gave the frag to managed to save a bit. It may be back in my tank at some point as the colony grows out again... for anthelia it is kinda slow growing.

That is if I have room for it. The frag came from seacrop... I think it was 12 bucks.

 

I left the pod unattended for a week and it was no problem. Feeding is not an issue for that kind of duration, I would not worry about it... in general we feed our tanks too much anyway. If you have a topless system evap is going to be your concern... but you should have an idea of what your weekly evap is right? If not, I might watch it go without topping off for a few days or the whole week to try to get a gauge on the impact. Ifthe salinity does not spike too much and you are not indanger of an overflow drying out evap may not be a problem either. ...you can always look into a auto top off.

There is next to no evaporation in the pod, so that was not an issue for me.

 

So you lost two Clarkii3? In your pod? Wow. I don't know what to tell you. Where had you gotten yours from? The one in my tank came from sealifeflorida.com. Like you can see in the post above it was a little stressed and bleached when I got it. It was a victim of the caribbean bleaching the end of last summer. ...I spot feed once or twice a week at most. Krill, scallops, silversides etc.... (it's fun to feed too... I think I could probably get the thing to crawl out of the tank chasing a chunk of silverside one of these days). ...and thats it really. I had it in a 2.5 gallon pico tank at first and it's always been under PC lightinig. I see them under MH in other peoples tanks... so I thought they were pretty adaptable to differnent types of lighting.

 

ps... I'll try to get new fts up soon.

[Fishfreak218]

ya.. rock anemones shouldnt be to hard to keep... you may have bought ones that were already on there way out.... lighting is PC's to MH and flow is medium IME.. mine didnt get alot of food for a while but now i started feeding it.. once a week.. krill and silversides..

[icenine]

Ya know I forgot to answer the question on the blue brittle star. It came from a seller that has since gone out of business. I'm not sure where exactly they had gotten them, and I've never seen them anywhere else.

The thing about brittle and serpent stars IMO is that you will never see much of them anyway so I would not put to much effort into searching these blue guys out again if I wanted to replace them (or the one that I still have left anyway). Weeks go by without a sign of them (including the larger orange serpent star) and even then I usually only see the occasional waving arm from inside the rock work. I saw them more when the tank did not have fish and was generally less crowded, now I see them next to never......but maybe that's just my tank and YMMV. Nice addition to the clean up crew but really I think that just about any ole brittle star will do. If you look for a serpent star, just beware that some may turn to eating fish as they get larger.

[icenine]

Still no fts, I just did not get one I was happy with... every shoot wound up with a blurry fish streak going across it.

But here are some coral shots that did turn out:

 

Blastos... there were a couple of polyps that were just plain skeletons...in just about a week they have started to flesh out again. Never give up on a blasto.

 

 

Red sea xenia:

 

 

Dual xenia shot:

 

[travisurfer]

wow, that is one awesome tank. i love the flower nem.

[Sea_Of_Treachery]

i actually had 2 in my old 10g nano from 3 years ago. i got them form an lfs, kinda scared to try one in my pod, they crashed my tank. the sealife florida place is cheap, may pick up some rics in the future. my tank is packed with coral as well, how far do you place you corals from one another? i just got 8 corals for yourreef.com blastos are sweet.BTW watch out for that xenia, my pulsing has been in my pod for 2 weeks and its already trying to take over. its one the back wall and spreading to other rocks.

[Cam barr]

where did you get youre mini carpet's

[icenine]

The mini carpets came from Gary M (last months tank of the month) on RC. I know he took a hiatus from selling them for a few months, but may be starting up again soon. I started with two and they recently split into five. I gave a couple of those away and am currently sporting three in the tank right now.

I've trimmed bunches of Xenia from this tank already, it grows like a weed. Pretty weed though.

[mr.almeida]

This sucks I can only see about 10% of the pictures the rest I get a PFB Image window From the pics I've seen the tank looks great, just wish I could see all the pics.

[icenine]

...problems seeing the pics? Really? that's the first person that told me they had trouble seeing pics in this thread... anyone else have a problem seeing them?

[clifford513]

This sucks I can only see about 10% of the pictures the rest I get a PFB Image window From the pics I've seen the tank looks great, just wish I could see all the pics.

I'm not having any trouble seeing the pics, but I have noticed when loading I too sometimes get an IPB Image text. Just right click on the text and select view image. Works for me. Sometimes this happens with a pic I have viewed already and know should be showing up normally. Just a fyi.

[annamarie421]

Pictures are working fine for me. Love the tank icenine!

 

Anna

[mr.almeida]

It seems that my Web Browser, Opera, is to blame. In IE it works just fine very nice tank indeed. What's the link to your public profile on PhotoBucket?