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Jimroth's Big Ol' Tank
- Thread starter jimroth
- Start date
Candy Pistols came in larger than expected, bigger then the tiger pistol in fact. Bumblebee shrimp were smaller, one was embarrassingly small for $10, almost invisible. I thought the would "bee" like the ones I got last time, sort of jelly bean sized. Orange spot goby is fine, evrybody arrived strong.
Yeah.. there's a weird thing going on; almost Shakespearian...I'm probably not as smart as I think. More later.
So almost before I could stop it, the existing goby (orange striped) beat the new goby (orange spotted) half to death. I removed it to a floating container but it died later. $14 shot to hell, good thing I didn't buy a dracula goby. The bigger candy pistol started building a burrow right against the front glass very cool to watch. He's actually red, yellow and white. The goby temporarily left the tiger pistol and tried to hook up with the new shrimp. He was hanging around, saying stuff, etc. This morning he was back with the tiger pistol and that shrimp had built him a huge new burrow. There's a lesson there somewhere. The other candy pistol chose a hole in the liverock over a burrow, at least for now.
I have another shrimp goby coming, I wonder if I can make this work at all, maybe I need to get one that's BIGGER then the guy who's in there, or maybe the same species.
I have another shrimp goby coming, I wonder if I can make this work at all, maybe I need to get one that's BIGGER then the guy who's in there, or maybe the same species.
The goby must be female and the shrimps males. I can't think of any other explanantion.
They are really nice fish, they get right in with the crowd, do not hide. They swim together, they split up, then together, very good display critters. Still haven't eaten dry food but they do like the mysis!
More craziness in the Biocube shrimp display. I ordered two new shrimp gobies and one "assorted" pistol shrimp.
The shrimp that arrived actually shed I the bag, a bad sign I think. It was completely colorless, I don't know what it's going to look like. It went into the tank and I haven't seen it today, although it was doing fine the last time I saw it.
The other gobies were a Yellow Prawn Goby and a Wheeler's Shrimp Goby. The yellow is a more agressive fish, which was good as it turns out. The wheelers is more quiet but found the candy pistol right away and tried to get its attention.
It was going pretty well until about an hour, when the Orange Stripe Shrimp Goby started beating the heck out of them. By the time I saw this, the Wheeler's was lying on his side. I removed him to the big reef, where he seemed to be recovering when I last saw him. Nice looking goby.
In the morning the yellow goby had clearly been picked on but was holding up. By the time I came home he had moved into a burrow and teamed up with the tiger pistol. That slut! Boy was the other pissed, swimming back and forth in front of the burrow. I'm hoping one of the candy pistols will team up.
I also bought a couple of the world's cheapest saltwater fish for the big tank, green clown gobies. I once got one as a hitchhiker in a coral head, so I have a soft spot for the little guys.
The shrimp that arrived actually shed I the bag, a bad sign I think. It was completely colorless, I don't know what it's going to look like. It went into the tank and I haven't seen it today, although it was doing fine the last time I saw it.
The other gobies were a Yellow Prawn Goby and a Wheeler's Shrimp Goby. The yellow is a more agressive fish, which was good as it turns out. The wheelers is more quiet but found the candy pistol right away and tried to get its attention.
It was going pretty well until about an hour, when the Orange Stripe Shrimp Goby started beating the heck out of them. By the time I saw this, the Wheeler's was lying on his side. I removed him to the big reef, where he seemed to be recovering when I last saw him. Nice looking goby.
In the morning the yellow goby had clearly been picked on but was holding up. By the time I came home he had moved into a burrow and teamed up with the tiger pistol. That slut! Boy was the other pissed, swimming back and forth in front of the burrow. I'm hoping one of the candy pistols will team up.
I also bought a couple of the world's cheapest saltwater fish for the big tank, green clown gobies. I once got one as a hitchhiker in a coral head, so I have a soft spot for the little guys.
Couple of thoughts and updates:
The biocube shrimp/goby display continues to entertain. I have to echo what Mike said several pages back about pistol shrimp. The candy cane pistol is a very pretty creature, but the tiger pistol is the best one to get. Dig, dig, dig, all day long. Quite the engineer. He makes a new burrow all the time, creates braced tunnel entrances, moves big rocks. He must have shed in the short time I've had him, because he's much bigger. I am lucky that my bigger candy pistol built his burrow against the glass, or I would barely see what he does. In fact, I've just finally seen the smaller candy pistol, and then only his claws and head. The larger candy pistol works underground, improving his burrow network, carefully placing tiny pieces of gravel according to some instinctual algorithm.
They don't snap constantly, but when the pistol goes off you can hear it several rooms away.
The poor orange striped goby is still shrimpless, serves him right for beating up other shrimp gobies.
The tiny bumblebee shrimp disappeared very quickly.
Nassarius snails are great scavengers for this kind of tank, since no one wants to leave their burrow to pick up extra food. The snails and hermits are on it! I've been limiting pollution by feeding the animals with a squirter. I want to encourage that pistol shrimp not to move his burrow from the front glass.
The big reef is still something of a slog. Coral colors are back but now I've been having a wire or cotton candy algae outbreak. It's overgrowing some corals. I cleaned a quart of the stuff out of the overflow trough. Then there was a sudden outbreak of red cyano. How can my GFO be exhausted so quickly?? I did a big waterchange and threw away rocks and dead coral that were badly coated.
I'm starting to question my whole approach. Maybe the massive two-part dosing I've been doing is the cause of my troubles. Maybe I need to adjust carbon dosing, maybe jack it up a little. I'm reefing more and enjoying it less. If I didn't work from home some of the time, my reef would have gone down the drain months ago.
The biocube shrimp/goby display continues to entertain. I have to echo what Mike said several pages back about pistol shrimp. The candy cane pistol is a very pretty creature, but the tiger pistol is the best one to get. Dig, dig, dig, all day long. Quite the engineer. He makes a new burrow all the time, creates braced tunnel entrances, moves big rocks. He must have shed in the short time I've had him, because he's much bigger. I am lucky that my bigger candy pistol built his burrow against the glass, or I would barely see what he does. In fact, I've just finally seen the smaller candy pistol, and then only his claws and head. The larger candy pistol works underground, improving his burrow network, carefully placing tiny pieces of gravel according to some instinctual algorithm.
They don't snap constantly, but when the pistol goes off you can hear it several rooms away.
The poor orange striped goby is still shrimpless, serves him right for beating up other shrimp gobies.
The tiny bumblebee shrimp disappeared very quickly.
Nassarius snails are great scavengers for this kind of tank, since no one wants to leave their burrow to pick up extra food. The snails and hermits are on it! I've been limiting pollution by feeding the animals with a squirter. I want to encourage that pistol shrimp not to move his burrow from the front glass.
The big reef is still something of a slog. Coral colors are back but now I've been having a wire or cotton candy algae outbreak. It's overgrowing some corals. I cleaned a quart of the stuff out of the overflow trough. Then there was a sudden outbreak of red cyano. How can my GFO be exhausted so quickly?? I did a big waterchange and threw away rocks and dead coral that were badly coated.
I'm starting to question my whole approach. Maybe the massive two-part dosing I've been doing is the cause of my troubles. Maybe I need to adjust carbon dosing, maybe jack it up a little. I'm reefing more and enjoying it less. If I didn't work from home some of the time, my reef would have gone down the drain months ago.
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Skimmer's bioball mixing tower was very clogged--water was backing up out of the air intake! Cleaned the skimmer and bioballs, now trying to get the @#$%ing thing under control, it's skimmed out 10G of pale green water so far...I had to throttle back the pump, only the second time I've had to do that.
Wow I would totally like to give that a shot -- not that I dont get lots of skimmate when it's running good. Would my iwaki md100 be an ok pump?
Once I throttled it back I was able to gradually let the flow out and I am getting good skimming, but it is an ancient design and I would like to give the MRC4 a try.