Aaarrrggg

All my inverts eat whatever they can, but they go bananas for shrimp pellets... which is kind of gross when you think about it!

My pom pom crab even risked life and limb to grab one right out of the pistol shrimps burrow enterance!

It's best to wait 6mths before getting a nem. Tank params really settle down after that time and the nem will be a lot happier. (Unhappy nem = wandering around and stinging everything... Dead nem = poisoned tank!)

Clowns will happily choose other things as hosts in the meantime. Soft/LPS corals are great natural choices. I actually bought my clowns a fake rubber nem from eBay so they can practice while I wait for 6mths to be up!

Im counting the days down till May when I can get them the real thing!

Excellent info on BTAs here:

www.karensroseanemoes.net

Ooo that's clever!

That's awesome, congrats on the beautiful jawfish! I have to ask, though, is Guybrush's last name Threepwood, by chance??

Guybrush Threepwood... mighty pirate! And his beautiful Onyx wife is Marley; short for Elaine Marley. (My middle name is Elaine so it seemed weird calling her tha!)

I loooove all the old Lucas Arts point & click games.... Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Sam & Max, Indiana Jones... Mmmm good times.

My watchman goby acts like a jawfish and will leave me mounds of dirts in different spots of my tank. If you plan on trying your hand on some SPS let me know I have a couple small frags you can have.

Awww that's so sweet of you thanks! I might try my hand at them one day. I'm too into my softies for the time being though. I like em wiggly!

Someone else made the comment before but I think it is worth repeating. The placement of your tank is awesome. It looks like it was made for your location. The curve of the tank matches the curves above the windows. Very balanced, fits perfectly.

Thanks! I couldn't believe it when I measured between the windows and it was the perfect fit! There's also a semi circle detail on the ceiling opposite that you can't see in the pics. It was fate!

I've read every post in your thread. Cannot get enough! Congrats on winning the blog contest, BTW!

^ +1

One of my favorite threads in a long time, I was just able to finish reading through the whole thing. Completely amazing!

Wow been a while since I last read this thread, the tank is coming along quite nicely. Congrats on the jawfish addition, he is an absolutely gorgeous fish, and glad that he settled in so quickly!!!

Awww thanks guys!

Good job! I really like the idea of algae scrubbers!

Great thread! I'm trying to figure out what fish to get next and this has been very helpful! (Leaning towards a flame hawk now!)

The current star in my tank is my new blue-spotted jawfish:

He's so fascinating to watch dig his little burrows and arrange his rock rubble "furniture." Amazing eyesight too, when he sees something moving he'll turn to stare it down.,, even if it's my dogs wondering around across the room.

Awww poor turtle! Funny that the kids found it more interesting than horrifying though!

My evil crab was put in a tank with a bunch of hermits at RCA, so it's possible he nicked a shell from one of them and went undercover (he's sneaky!) Good plan on keeping him seperated. It will be really interesting to see if it is the same crab and if he does grow into a monster.

Oh correction! I meant a "starry EYED hermit" ..they get 3-5"

http://www.thatpetplace.com/pet/prod/249678/i/1/product.web

Is this the little sod?

That was an early pic, he got a bit larger and darker after it was taken. The distingishing features are the pretty blue eyes and dots on his claws.

This was his first stint in the joint...

Oh and this is what a full grown starry hermit looks like...!

Oh crap I think that might be him!!! The timing would be about right and they did put him in with the scarlet hermits; despite me stressing that he was a starry hermit and NOT reefsafe.

Did he come in an awesome looking shell by any chance? Hang on I'll find a pic...

What sort of hermit is he? I leaned first hand that you need to be v careful with unidentifed crab bullies. I had a hitchhiker one in an order from reefcleaners (li'l bugger was pretending to be a snail.). He was really pretty and energetic so I kept him around.

He grew fast and I'd occasionally catch him bullying some other hermits (blue leg and scarlet) but I'd just tut at him and separate them with a chopstick. The final straw came when he pounced on my new barnacle blenny. Again I kicked him off with the chopstick, but the damage must have been done because I never saw the blenny again.

I ended up putting him in a glass tumbler prison while i identified him. Turned our he was a starry hermit which get HUGE and mean!! Great crab for a FOWLR, but certainly not reefsafe. I traded him in at RCA, I hope whoever bought him was warned what a little monster he is! Crikey... come to think about it... I hope he isn't the crab you have now!

I'm really sad to hear about this. I'm probably going to have some pieces of spare LR soon and I was thinking of giving it away. I'm not so sure now, which really bites.

If I do I might put it in the premium only forum instead.

I really like Hydro's idea about having buyer/seller feedback. That would be really useful.

Oh blast, I thought this was a new thread! I was already mentally putting together my wish list!

Neat! Seems like it should be called an "executioners saw plate coral" with that blood around the edge!

Thanks!

Just a pity I'm not really into SPS. I like my corals wiggly!

The next day I came down to find that Kululu had toppled one of my arches. I had cemented down most of the rocks, but evidently not the ones he had decided to start digging under <sigh.> The one circled is supposed to go up here...

He looked really smug in his new epic rock fort.

A little later that day he'd moved again; this time to the similarly shallow sand on the opposite side of the tank...

He spent all day fighting the current and unsuccessfully trying to keep the sand from blowing back into his burrow. Poor little chap.

The next morning... SUCCESS!!

He'd found the perfect spot and arranged the rock rubble around the hole, but in doing so he'd also pushed away all the sand I'd carefully piled up.

If he could just figure out how to stack the rock rubble into a tube then the sand could come back in and he'd have the perfect burrow. I tried in vain to explain this to him but he seemed to think he knew best and today he was back trying his luck again on the left hand side of the tank.

On the plus side he's a lot braver now and is greedily eating anything that floats by. He also seems happier to spend time outside the burrow, which gave me the opportunity to snap this shot:

I'm going to give him another week of trying and then I might have to intercede with some sort of Jawfish Condo.

I didn't want to put a Jawfish through the rigors of failed burrow making in a QT; so I decided to order one from Divers Den where they at least have been though some QT already.

When my 5pm DD alarm went off I was out having a nice meal in a restaurant with my husband. I apologized and began the customary frantic page refreshing; expecting it to be updated within a few mins as it usually is. A LOT of refreshing later and finally the selection changed at around 5.30pm... Whoops. Sorry patient husband...! It paid off though as this chap was amongst the days treasures!

Meet Kululu!

Roll on a couple of days and my new little pal arrived safe and sound. Here he is in the bag...

I added him to the tank and he almost immediatly began to build his first burrow... at probably THE most shallow part of the sandbed...

He seemed happy enough though and it was fascinating to watch him go about the business of digging...

I am really impressed how quickly he settled in. I'd read that BSJ can be quite difficult at first, but mine only took about 5mins shake off the trip and get digging. When I fed the tank that evening he even sampled a few bites... although he did end up spitting out most of it out in favor of continuing the excavation instead.

I've been mulling over what fish to get next. I was getting close to pulling the trigger on a Midas Blenny, but then I realized it was just because I was pining for a Blue Spotted Jawfish...

I'd previously ruled out a jawfish because I'd assumed my sandbed wasn't deep enough. Well while I was "diving" in the tank, sticking down some frags, I decided to find out once and for all. It turns out that in the center it is actually 3" deep! So close!! Just 1" off jawfish happiness!!!

I immediately went out and grabbed another bag of pink fiji live sand. I did my best to empty it carefully near the sandbed at the center of the tank, but the resulting sand storm was terrifying! Even worse, when I put the lights back on it happened to be at "sunset" time and the tank lit up blood red! ARGH!

As the water began to clear it revealed that all the upheaval might have brought 2 fish hearts closer together...!

The 2 lovebirds (lovefish?) decided to spend that night sleeping at Guybrush's bachelor pad on the left side of the tank. The next night Marley was back in the nem, but Guybrush was allowed to sleep next to it near the right overflow. He still hasn't swam as deep into the tentacles as Marley does, but he now skirts the tips without being chased away. Progress!!

When the water finally cleared I was left with this:

I smoothed it out a little and added a few pieces of LR rubble for burrow making.

The next step was the jump proofing.

I tried putting some of the netting between the lights and the water, but unfortunately they're too close and it cast an ugly checkered shadow down on the tank.

Instead I picked up some eggcrate (light diffuser) from Home Depot and cut it to fit the gap at the back of the canopy.

After attaching it I suddenly released that the holes in the eggcrate would probably be big enough for a jawfish to jump though... D'oh. Off it came again and I zip-tied some netting to it:

I'm hoping that I can get away with the top being left open. It's about 11" from the water to the top of the canopy and that would require a pretty lucky (unlucky) jump to navigate the 2 sets of holes. There's still a chance a fish could jump up onto the plastic edging on the inside of the canopy, but I'm hoping that if they managed to get up there they'd also be strong enough to wiggle their way back into the water.

As soon as I find some large enough, I also plan to buy some filter foam to close off the tops of the overflows so nobody can jump down them.

With the preparations complete, it was time to claim my Blue-Spotted Jawfish!

...and they're IN!

There was a bit of a scuffle when Guybrush (♂ Clown) and Miria (♀ Cardi) went for the same piece of food ...score 1 Cardis... but other than that, things went smoothly. In the last few days Guybrush has even taken to swimming alongside the Cardis and Marley has been letting them surprisingly close to her nem. Yay!

The lump on Miria's lip went back down, but now she has a similar white blemish on her left pectoral fin:

Not really sure what's going on there, but she's swimming fine and eating like a pig, so hopefully it will just go away on it's own.

Since the cardis left the nano, the pod population has EXPLODED! The glass is crawling with big fat isopods! (Pardon the dirty glass, I've been leaving it unscrubbed so I don't disturb them.)

I've started periodically harvesting them with a small net (not easy!) and transferring what I can catch into the sump of the 144g. I hope my one-day mandarin will appreciate the effort!!

Speaking of mini-critters; time for a "Where are they now...?" IPSF critter update!

Bristle worms - I'm sure they're being creepy in there somewhere...

Pods - Spotted this large Amphipod last week hitching a ride from a dwarf cerith.

If I move the shower poufs around in the sump I notice a definite increase in pods in the DT about a minute later, so I *think* the fake chaeto is working.

Spaghetti Worms - These guys will squirm out of the sand in various places. Here's one (some?) that breached next to a dwarf cerith:

Sandbed clams - MIA but presumably they're still munching their way around the sandbed.

Nerite Snails - There's still a few of these guys around but I've noticed quite a few empty shells too. It's possible they starved due to the tank being quite new.

Strombus Grazers - These guys are GREAT! I haven't noticed any dead ones and they are always cleaning. From the way they look I'd assumed they would be mainly in the sand with the nassicais snails, but they love cleaning the glass. They never get stuck upside down and apparently there's a good chance they'll breed in the tank! The perfect snail! Highly recommended!

Image from http://home.comcast....fxe/inverts.htm

Micro/Zebra Hermits - Still love these little guys! They're really fast and get all over the place.

Comet/Asterina Stars - I see them from time to time.

Mini Brittle Stars - I haven't seen any of these guys but I guess they'd be pretty well camouflaged against the rocks. I hope they're doing OK.

Large Bristle Star - Stayed by the first rock it crawled under for weeks, but I just realized while writing this that it's not there anymore.

Thanks bige! I do feel funny at times stopping to take a photo of everything, but I hate writing about anything without a picture to go with it. In fact I'm so predictable with it now that when we came downstairs to water everywhere my hsuabnd turned to me and said "Before we clean this up do you want to take a picture...?"

Hahaha! You guys crack me up

I haven't actually received my winnings yet and I'm still not entirely sure if I might use it myself or not. If not then I'll be sure to keep you in mind...

I'd like to change my order to 3 buckets of Corallife plz.

Guess I could order a couple more if we needed to boost the total, but I'll wait and see what happens 1st.

Thx!!

I still can't believe I won! I was certain more people would enter and I wouldn't have to worry about what the heck to do with a calcium reactor!

I guess that means I'm the best at rabbiting on about my tank now... I'm not sure if that's a good or a bad thing!

My 2c: it depends on the size of your tank. I have a small tanks with only a few fish, none of whom are expensive, so for me it doesn't make sense to set up a $50 QT for a $10-$20 fish, and I only have 5 fish and don't plan on adding more. I'd be upset if my tank got wiped out but it would cost maybe $50-70 to replace all my little guys. If I had a 150 or a 200 it would make more sense to have a QT. I've lost way more fish to jumping than to starvation or diseases - my Yasha Haze managed to go through the one little hole in the pico lid just last week...

Amazing what great aim some of these fish have, almost a death wish. I lost my mystery wrasse through the screens that sit on top of my 90g. Wouldn't have thought that was possible.

My Yasha managed to jump through the 1/4" mesh screen and fry himself under the lights. The annoying thing was I added the screen specifically so he wouldn't be able to jump out. If it hadn't been there he might have been ok. Stupid fish.

Wow those are so scary stories Hydro! Thx I must admit I kinda needed them after the revelation that so many people here don't QT!

Definitely has a lot to do with tank size. Small tank = less fish = less risk... plus there's a good chance you could catch everything if the worst happened and you had to set up a hospital tank.

I only recently started QTing. I've been lucky before and never had a problem putting fish straight into the DT (55g for 3yrs and 20g for less than a yr.) But now I have a 144g with a large immovable aquascape so I don't want to take the chance anymore.

So far I've only added 5 fish. 4 were QTed in my nano (4+ weeks, observation only) and the latest was from DD and went straight in the DT. I'm setting up a 20g QT tank atm that I plan to start taking a more proactive approach with hypo and whatnot. Scary, but I doubt I could have stayed lucky forever!

Yay gratz! Does she know what she'd like stock wise yet? Us girlies usually like the big bright softies.