CaptainBob

sorry man, I left town for 2 weeks after I wrote you, but my financial situation isn't quite where I thought it was, sorry about that.

oo... I've been looking for a new place to live, you've got an email.

the bluespotted variety are a morph only found on a few reefs in the Indian Ocean, as such they command a higher price. I can ask bruce if he's seen them on our lists, we've had them in before.

looks like a real sweety, but I literally just took in a stray last month and she has made it very clear to me that she doesn't like other 4 legged critters. Maybe ask one of the local rescue groups if they could put her picture and story up on one of their websites? You'd have the best shot finding her a good home through an organization that screens adopting families before turning animals over to them, I know shadowcats does a very thurough job in that respect, but they work primarily with freshly rescued ferals, so I'm not sure they're the best people to talk to for this cat, but they may have some good advice to point you in the right direction.

I think I know which store you're talking about with the purple tang... He was just put up for sale yesterday having completely recovered his dorsal. He is marked at $100, but remember your 10% discount, he's still available. for the record though, the tank isn't a hospital tank so much as a maintenance tank, we house damaged fish in it that have a chance at recovery so that they can be sold to good homes, but it's primary purpose is housing fish and corals en route to one of our maintenance clients. The blue tang in that tank is recovering from HLLE and the wounds on her face aren't contagious or dangerous to its tankmates, in fact her condition has improved substantially since we've been treating her, in another month or two she'll be back up to 100% also. I also want to point out that we can't make deals on our "repaired" fish, reason being they don't come to us any cheaper, and we have to put a lot of effort into getting them healthy again, look at that purple tang today, you'd have no idea he didn't have a dorsal fin 6 months ago.

if you don't mind using glass lowes can cut you a piece to size, I think a 16"x16" cut is like 6 bucks they can do acrylic also but it's a little more expensive

we do. I have to suggest you come in and pick up CBB horses while they're still in the bags from our suppliers though, you know how fragile they are, what with them lacking immune systems and all, I'd hate to sell you a horse that picked up some kind of bug that'd wipe your herd out.

That is a cool wrasse isn't it? Not to hijack but you're actually one of 3 people on our list for another male Paracheilinus carpenteri, I feel I should mention that any male can change into an "alpha" if it is the only male in a group of females, the trick to mitigating aggression is adding them all simultaneously so they can establish a pecking order for the available territory, and one fish doesn't claim the whole tank as its own, helps a lot if they're the first fish to enter a system as well. It's only rare to find such a nice male in a store or through a wholesaler because there's only one at a time in any given locality, alpha male isn't even really a good term for this condition because of it's close association with canine social structure, males are territorial no matter what which is why they're harder to come by, but when they get into breeding mode, that is to say when they are comfortable and don't feel threatened by any conspecifics, they get that intensified coloration and flash their fins much more, which has led to the trade nickname "alpha" for fish that already display this behavior on arrival. The best way to induce this change is to keep a single male in a large tank with at least 2 females. Make sure each fish has the opportinity to stake out it's own territory, and your male should come into it's own before too long. The females are not necessary to induce the change, but there's nothing that convinces me they wouldn't help the process along, and it opens up a slim possibility for them to spawn in your tank with an appropriate diet. My real point here is you are liable to be waiting a very long time if you want another male that looks like the one we just got in, but if you would rather work with a fish to allow it turn into a displaying male, you can get your fish much faster.

if you need to get it out of your place right away bring it up to the tek and we'll sell it for you, that'd be an easy sale for us.

we sell it, 10 bucks a fistfull.

sorry, you wouldn't be the first to ask us to part out that package, it is being sold on consignment and the seller has very clearly told us they want it all sold at once. If you want a full setup, the system is a steal at 3700, halfcircle tank, cherry stand and canopy, 250W halide with PC actinics, chiller, skimmer, sump, I can't recall what models or brands any of it is off the top of my head, but it's all nice stuff I wouldn't mind owning myself if I had the space and cash.

agreed, the latin name is Cryptocentrus pavoninoides if you want to do some more research

no, but I know the game. the concept is a lot like poker, you're aiming to get pairs, 2 pair, three of a kind, a straight, or 4 of a kind, you roll 4 dice, and can reroll as many as you like trying to roll for one of the conditions I already mentioned

I'm in... the exploration and gambing features hate me though, for every good thing I find I wind up smashing my boat up on at least 3 different reefs... and the generala game doesn't like giving me anything but paired 4's... so I don't do very well in that either *edit* LOL I just plundered Jesus I'm easily amused at 7 in the morning.

which is exactly why I ended my post suggesting she go with a wrasse

A lot of this post is going to sound angry, that's because I am, as I rightly should be. The cow that was slaughtered so I could have topnotch for lunch today wasn't killed as a novelty for wannabe socialites, and the domestic cattle population isn't what I'd call threatened, they're born to eat, eat to grow, grow to die, and die to be grilled and delicious, I have no delusions about that . The strips of farm raised salmon and mysis shrimp my predators ate today were purchased after being raised and killed in captivity in a sustainable manner. I don't have a bleeding heart for the hundreds of copepods my pipefish eats every day because I know they're reproducing here, not being taken from the sea. My wildcaught fish are the closest thing I have to Qua's sharks, and even then I don't feel bad because my tank at home is set up to accomodate them, not to passively amuse people with more money to burn than they have firing neurons in their brains, want to know what's wrong with their system? Ask them about cooling equipment and elecrical grounding, you'll get a spiel about how they get fresh fish from wholefoods every day. If they genuinely had a marvel of modern aquaria, they'd be talking about it to no end in gratuitous detail, rather than repeatedly droning on about captive origins and shrimp from wholefoods. That's the kind of thing people are proud of and like to talk about, Qua has something to hide, and that should set off all kinds of red flags in everybody's heads right away. You may think we sound like liberal, commie, pinko, tree hugging, vegetarians, but I've got a sneaking suspicion that you haven't thought too hard on this subject and haven't even considered the reasons why a lot of us here are upset about this whole debacle. Unless you honestly buy into his claim that the adult leopard and blacktip sharks he was were "of captive origin" which is a halfheartedly masked lie unless you happen to be living in the same happy fantasy world where 1000 dollar bottles of booze grow on magic trees where these club entrepeneurs seem to hail from, but back here on planet earth no one has bred sharks in captivity much less these species... Just for kicks google "captive bred shark", you won't find anything that has to do with sharks completing a lifecycle in an even vaugely captive environment. You're not making any points here other than making it abundantly clear that you don't know what you're talking about. Now here's the fun part, looking at the big picture. Just because neither of the species Qua have are on CITES redlists yet doesn't mean we as humans have any right or reason to help them get there, and it's a pretty well known fact that all sharks are well on their way to endangered status from commercial and sportfishing along with flat out human ignorance. Watch sharkweek next time it comes around and try listening to what the narrator is saying rather than just gawking at the gore, I know it's a hard concept to wrap your head around, but you might learn something. I know, LEARN?! From TV? SCARY! I'd even go so far as to suggest you pick up one of those archaic devices known in some circles as "books" on the subject. But first and foremost I'm a hobbiest, not a conservationist. We in the hobby of aquaculture don't need a stain like this on our collective record. There's already a million and one people trying to keep us from having our hobby because of sketchy practices like stripmining liverock and cyanide collecting, if you're too shortsighted to see where this is headed, you need a pretty serious reality check. Is this going to be the straw that breaks the camels back? Probably not, but there's some kind of adage about the best cure having to do with prevention or somesuch thing. I don't know much about adages, but I do know that if everyone stayed apathetic and this were to be accepted as a common practice then we'd be handing our opponents in PETA and other sociopathic organizations a whole truckload of ammunition on a silver platter to sling back at all of us not just the bleeding hearts. Consider Scleropages formosus, Asian arowanas, they hit the CITES redlists and now we can't even import certified farm raised microchipped specimens, and people getting busted importing them are getting 15,000 dollar fines up to 15 years in prison. Do you feel like having explain to your grandkids that you can't have wildcaught marine fish or else they'll lose their college money and you'll be sent to jail? If enough of the wrong people get their way we're not going to be too terribly far away from that. If you like your hobby, think actively for a fraction of a second and try to see why this is such a bad thing, get mad and discourage other people from following Qua's suit, unfortunately short of something that'd be construed as terrorism that's all we as citizens can do, and I'm not ready to suggest we start blowing up nightclubs. I'm done on this subject, it's bad for my blood pressure to care this much. But if apathy's your thing, keep on keeping on, this'll all be illegal soon.

4' is a little on the short end, but you definitely could keep a 12" adult blue tang in there provided it was given a good open area to swim in. In a perfect world a 6' tank would definitely be better, no questions there, but you definitely could keep a blue tang healthy in a 48"x24" tank, especially if the rockwork was set up in such a way that the entire perimeter of the tank was open like a sort of raceway where the fish could circle. By no means am I saying the setup would be ideal, or that a typically constructed 120G reef would facilitate this fish, but I'd be misleading you if I said it couldn't be done. The tang police generally mean well, but they're often people who don't consider all the factors of a setup, the most important one being aquascape, as I already suggested with a sort of raceway layout, this effectively negates tank length as a swimming space factor provided there is enough room on either end of the tank for the fish to turn around comfortably and there is enough room above the rockwork for the tang to swim up and over the reef. I'm not going to lie it'd be a tight fit, but it can be done with proper planning and accomodations made for such a large fish in your tank. That all being said I'm going to restate my first suggestion on the matter and recommend wrasses over tangs

if you've got any big open swimming areas in your tank you could probably keep a blue/regal/hippo tang for life in a 120, just make sure it's getting an appropriate algae based diet and you should do fine with it. I've never actually met anyone who's had a well fed foxface or rabbitfish eat any of their corals, but in tanks where they aren't provided any meaty foods, it's common for them to go after zoos and fleshy LPS if they're starving to death, but take care of them and they'll leave your corals alone. a dwarf lion would be very cool and the only at risk fish would be the neon goby, the rest of your selections would be safe with any of the dwarf lion species. I'd definitely look into wrasses before tangs though, I'm a big fan of the reef safe "coris" in the genus Halichoeres, they are generally inexpensive, peaceful, easy to care for provided a deep sand bed, and as a rule eat bristleworms and flatworms like there's no tomorrow.

It's actually illegal for any retail business in Texas to refuse to sell anything on a shelf because they don't feel the customer is able to handle the product, product in this case unfortunately includes fish. It's also illegal to argue with any degree of persistence that someone might not be able to keep a certain species in a tank the way they want to, that apparently constitutes consumer profiling. To be brutally honest I'd rather shoot some of our customers than sell them fish they're inevitably going kill as a result of their own stupidity, but the law not only says I can't shoot them, but also states that I have to sell them whatever fish they're willing and able to pay for, wether I like it or not. For that same reason, if somebody demands something out of one of our tanks marked not for sale because of an illness being treated, we technically still have to sell them the sick fish, and then spend an hour the next day explaining that their fish died because they were dumb and bought the sick ones. Totally sucks, but there's really jack anybody can do about it. Turbo- we're not saying you're being mean, but you were arguing for the sake of ruffling feathers, it really shouldn't surprise you that people on this board feel the way we do, and while you're entitled to your own opinion, I'm going to hazard a guess that 90% of us here are still vehemently opposed to this whole operation just on principle. What they're doing isn't sustainable long term, if I buy a coral and it dies, I might try another of the same species, but if I lose that one, I'm going to learn a lesson from it and stop buying that species, as I hope any hobbiest would. Qua is different in the sense that their sharks are being treated as decor, and there's no way you'll convince me they'll be replaced without the bat of an eye whenever they drop off, that's exploitation of the highest magnitude, imagine doing the same thing with kittens, kept too cramped, and too hot, with disorienting amounts of stimuli at all times. This wouldn't fly after they cooked their first batch of stressed out kitties, but with sharks it's cool for whatever reason. Just so everyone has Aquatek's stance on the issue, we were consulted and told the proprietors and their "professionals" that their idea was flawed and needed a lot more thought before we'd greenlight the system for sharks, they responded by calling us amateurs and storming off. Now they're hiding everything they can about the whole system from everyone who asks, except that folks with more money than sense can go dance on a bigass fishtank, and that they've got "professionals" making sure everything's ok. We told them the idea was screwed before they started, and we're sticking to our guns and holding these rejects in the same light of contempt as the white trash pricks who come in yammering about how his cousin said he had an oscar in a 10 gallon tank and it did fine, because fish only grow to the size of the tank you put them in. *edit* we don't have a good enough rage smiley here...

now now, lets remember that this is the internet we're on and stop feeding the troll. that being said, kudos for invoking pen and teller on PETA, and Yassine deserves to get put through a treechipper and served to his sharks... Love his implication that his sharks were captive bred, or rather "not removed from the wild" and this weeks award for dumbest rich prick in Austin goes to...

I don't care what kind of watchman goby you've got, it'd rapidly become bait in my predator tank.. cohabitation with the lions and grouper is not an option If you've got a fish you can't handle you know Aquatek offers credit for any healthy stock you bring in, but generally if there's any concern about wether or not a relatively aggressive fish will harass a placid largely defenseless fish like a mandarin, it's a pretty safe bet that the wimpy fish will get chased and tormented to death. That being said, dropping him in your sump probably wouldn't be an awful idea.. being a watchman he'd likely wind up down there anyway

Morrison has long been a hero of mine... I was just impressed with Reznor being smart in a way that didn't involve slit-your-wrists-style lyrics.

video link- Not work safe I'm not a terribly big NIN fan, but I love his speech he opens up with. Reznor is agruably one of the coolest humans alive.

I had one customer who said she was a science teacher, but told me I didn't know what I was talking about when I explained that to use liverock as a biological filter current needed to move through it.... She's convinced we keep selling her bad fish because she refuses to invest in a powerhead. Thusly I'd feel morally remiss directing you to her.

unfortunately the only legal requirement to obtain and keep the sharks they're killing is a big pile of money, and the tank only would need to have passed structure code inspections, both which they seem to have... So even with the moral highground this isn't a fight you can win. They're not doing anything illegal with the sharks they've got, it's just grossly amoral and a horrifically stupid idea. The only thing protesting might get you is a night in a holding cell, not worth it in my mind. Instead I'd rather fight them the only way I can by going to the old bars and keeping that spirit as alive as we can and let all the wannabe celebutards have their dead sharks and 1000 dollar bottles of booze... I'll still be at Riley's if anyone wants to join me for a 5 dollar whiskey to mourn the loss of Austin as it was... Too much outrage before I even go to work, today's not going to be a good day.