Fishfreak2009's 36 Gallon Bowfront Seahorse Aquarium

[Fishfreak2009]

A couple pics from today. Getting a bit of cyano, need to do a water change. Most of the Acros I moved in here are pretty unhappy, but don't really have any better place to put them so hopefully they adapt.

 

[Slocke]

A couple pics from today. Getting a bit of cyano, need to do a water change. Most of the Acros I moved in here are pretty unhappy, but don't really have any better place to put them so hopefully they adapt.

I saw gold headed jawfish in the wild last week. One of my favorites definitely and yours are beautiful. Any considerations on keeping a pair?

 

[Fishfreak2009]

I saw gold headed jawfish in the wild last week. One of my favorites definitely and yours are beautiful. Any considerations on keeping a pair?

Super easy honestly, just no overly boisterous tankmates, a few inches of sand with some rubble pieces to build a burrow, and get a small group to let them pair themselves. I'm pretty sure I have 2 males and a female. I know I have 1 of each since they bred once already, but not positive on the third.

I got mine from Reeftopia.com for about $15 each on sale, instead of $50-60 each at all my LFS. They came in amazing shape compared to the local ones as well. Nice and fat, not half-starved.

 

[SomeHappyFish]

I have a couple of questions haha! 20 ish fish in a 36G ?

1. Any aggression issue?

2. What are the nitrates like ? You only have a small filter. So I guess you do big % water changd.

3. How have you been able to keep the pipe fish and manderin well feed? Are you adding pods often ?

4. How do you manage to keep these sponge alive for so long?

 

[Fishfreak2009]

I have a couple of questions haha! 20 ish fish in a 36G ?

1. Any aggression issue?

2. What are the nitrates like ? You only have a small filter. So I guess you do big % water changd.

3. How have you been able to keep the pipe fish and manderin well feed? Are you adding pods often ?

4. How do you manage to keep these sponge alive for so long?

1. No major aggression. A little chasing and posturing by the blue flasher towards the royal flasher, but nothing serious, and some open mouthed posturing by the yellow headed jawfish towards anything that comes near their burrows (mostly each other), but no aggression elevation causing hiding, nipped fins, etc.

2. Nitrates hover between 15-20ppm, which is what fuels the Bryopsis and cyano I regularly remove. This system is fed frozen foods (mysis, baby brine, fish eggs, and Apocyclops pods all enriched with selcon and or vitachem) 3-4x daily, along with daily doses of live phyto, and 3x weekly doses of Brightwell Aquatics Reef Snow, 3x weekly doses of Brightwell Aquatics Coral Amino, and occasional dosing of PNS sauce (which I need to order more of). The macroalgae and deep sand bed seem to suck a lot of the nitrates out, and I do weekly 10 gallon water changes as well.

3. I guess my answer to #2 somewhat answers this as well, but honestly there are a TON of pods all over in here. I added a lot to start, plus all the macro and some smaller piles of rubble makes for lots of hiding places for the pods to reproduce. The constant influx of frozen foods of the appropriate size made it very easy to train the mandarins and pipes onto a prepared diet as well.

4. The sponges thrive in here for a few different reasons, although not all of them do. The yellow branching sponge is now in the back behind the rockwork, as it has slowly shrank in branch diameter to be about half as much as it was originally.
A. I use well water, not RODI, which is high in silicates and iron (and lots of other minerals). I assume this is why my red macros grow so well in here also.
B. The constant influx of foods must have something that they like consuming to grow.
C. The large Hermit Crab and Snail population does a decent job of keeping the hair algae and Bryopsis from growing on the sponges.
D. Healthy sponges to start with make a huge difference. Every sponge besides the yellow branching (which came from a LFS), was sourced from live-plants.com (Gulf Coast Ecosystems), and came in relatively large, perfectly packed, and in excellent condition.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

After almost 2 weeks of waiting they finally arrived! Hoping they grow well, and don't get buried by the jawfish or the fighting conchs.

These are turtle grass (Thalassia testudinum) seedlings, not macroalgae but a true vascular plant. Mature plants are almost impossible to find online and usually don't adapt to captive growing as well as seedlings. They should do well in the deep sand substrate of this tank. Added a couple of freshwater plant root tabs under the substrate to hopefully help encourage root production and growth. I'm hoping to eventually get a few different types of sea grass growing in both this setup and my 100 gallon butterfly and wrasse tank.

Here are a couple pics of the seagrass, garden eels, and a resident Halloween Hermit tonight.

Found these available through AddictiveReefKeeping.com

 

[cartery]

Amazing tank. I'm still in the concept building and gear collection phase of my first reef tank, but this is very much the kind of livestock list I'm aspiring to! Soft corals, macros, pipefish, Mandarin, lots of pods... Would you discourage a beginner from trying something like this? I'd plan to build to it extremely slowly, or course.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Amazing tank. I'm still in the concept building and gear collection phase of my first reef tank, but this is very much the kind of livestock list I'm aspiring to! Soft corals, macros, pipefish, Mandarin, lots of pods... Would you discourage a beginner from trying something like this? I'd plan to build to it extremely slowly, or course.

A lot of these fish are a bit more sensitive and have different needs than most other reef fish. Seahorses and pipefish, as well as garden eels all have very specific requirements that need to be met to do well. At the same time, because of how much food is required for a system like this, you need to be prepared to do very large water changes much more often than a normal tank. It's also not a tank where you can easily leave for vacation for a week or even a few days, unless you have someone you trust to feed them frozen/live foods at least 2-3x daily.

Definitely doable with a bit of research, but if this is your first time attempting fish like seahorses, pipes, or garden eels, you'd be much better off keeping them in specialized systems specific to their needs to get used to their care requirements before attempting a mixed tank like this.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Not the best pics, since the tank is due for a large water change tomorrow and is going through a pretty bad cyano bloom right now, but it's almost impossible to get this many of the bottom dwellers in 1 pic.

Also managed to get a picture of the male mandarin before he could shoot to the back to hide from the phone camera.

 

[cartery]

A lot of these fish are a bit more sensitive and have different needs than most other reef fish. Seahorses and pipefish, as well as garden eels all have very specific requirements that need to be met to do well. At the same time, because of how much food is required for a system like this, you need to be prepared to do very large water changes much more often than a normal tank. It's also not a tank where you can easily leave for vacation for a week or even a few days, unless you have someone you trust to feed them frozen/live foods at least 2-3x daily.

Definitely doable with a bit of research, but if this is your first time attempting fish like seahorses, pipes, or garden eels, you'd be much better off keeping them in specialized systems specific to their needs to get used to their care requirements before attempting a mixed tank like this.

Thanks for that! I did some reading after messaging you and basically came to the same conclusion. I don't think this would make sense for me at this point. Super cool, though!

 

[JoJosReef]

You should add the link to this build in your sig line so we don't search through pages of your posts to find it

 

[Fishfreak2009]

You should add the link to this build in your sig line so we don't search through pages of your posts to find it

I'll see what I can do!

I need to update this post as well. I did lose the Acropora, they just didn't do well under freshwater plant lighting and with all the heavy feedings, plus having a bit of a Bryopsis and dinoflagellate outbreak I'm working on repairing.