LbulletM's Foray into Fish

Daniel@R2R · Jan 30, 2017

Looking great! Excited to follow along.

LbulletM · Jan 30, 2017

mdbannister said:
Looking great! Excited to follow along.

Thanks! Hopefully I can keep it interesting!

LbulletM · Feb 7, 2017

Well, a few more additions!

First was last Monday. I went to the LFS by work (still like an hour and fifteen minutes from home, but only ~20-25 from work) to look for a female guppy for my living QT. Turns out they were out of female guppies, but they did have some Sunny D zoas! $10 for 2 huge polyps!

Well, that didn't solve my guppy issue, so I happened to be in Nashville again this weekend because my wife had a hair appointment. Picked up this little "guy" (probably still a juvy).

My wife really liked the Wyoming Whites, but didn't notice a difference when I picked up a Blacker Ice. (I'm doing really poorly with my "I would never spend that much on a fish!" delusion that I had while reading up on reefs before setting up.) I really wanted a regular black and white ocellaris or phantom, but happy wife, happy life (and stocked tank!), right? I think it was a good compromise. Hopefully she doesn't find this thread!

I had to make sure I got a juvenile since my longtail had been alone for weeks in a tank and I was worried that she might have already turned into a she. I got the smallest of the 4 clowns in the tank. The REALLY pretty one (had more defined black) was the obvious biggest and most aggressive, so no go there. Hopefully this one gets a little more black with time.

Oh, I did get a guppy. Beautiful for a female. Black and yellow tail mimicking the black and orange of the males from the previous post. I didn't grab a picture yet, but honestly, it's just a guppy

Here are the future mister and misses!

That's it for additions and real updates for now except for the purchase of a Copepod mix that should be here tomorrow. I'm still waiting on my order from Rare Reef. I know they moved, and I know they say there might be 14-21 day delays when ordering RFAs, but it's 7 weeks today. If they don't ship on Thursday for Friday delivery, I'm probably doing a charge back on my card. I really wanted the nems and hammers I ordered, but I can get some really nice corals for $200. Hopefully they come through.

Aaaaaand just some eye candy. Can't get over these Utter Chaos!

Or these Rastas.

Or these Orange Rainbows and PPEs.

Nice start to the garden.

Orrrrr the green mouth on this Torch.

And look how big this guy has gotten!

And last, but not least. Look at the babies on my Rainbow Acan!!

Hope everyone is having great success with their tanks! I'm pretty much stuck on euphyllia and zoas right now. Any input on what direction I should go from here? Or advice on my next corals? My wife likes the brain corals, and I think I want a nice dragon soul Favia, but I'm worried about fighting. The top right rock is going to be for SPS once I'm a little more mature and I still really want a BTA. If I do get the RFAs, they'll hopefully stay put near the glass on the sandbed near the front of the tank, so I have a good bit of sandbed and the whole right pile to work with. What could go on the rock with the rose corals? Also, what's my next fish?!?! I looked at a Diamond Goby, but I'm worried about it flipping anything I put on the bed.

Maritimer · Feb 7, 2017

What about a shrimp-goby pair? Blackray (Stonogobiops nematodes) or yellow watchman or aurora . . . They don't spend nearly as much time sifting sand and dumping it on your corals - and some of them stay quite small.

~Bruce

LbulletM · Feb 7, 2017

Maritimer said:
What about a shrimp-goby pair? Blackray (Stonogobiops nematodes) or yellow watchman or aurora . . . They don't spend nearly as much time sifting sand and dumping it on your corals - and some of them stay quite small.

~Bruce

Thanks! I'll have to look into these! The only one I'm familiar with is the yellow watchman.

LbulletM · Feb 7, 2017

I need a bigger tank! It's so hard to choose only 4-5 fish!

LbulletM · Feb 8, 2017

Disaster has struck!

Sad day. Came home from a long day at work, excited to add my Copepods that came in the mail today, to find this.

Rip [insert name here]. He was with me 4 days before I was too insufferable to live with ;-)

Ironically, I was looking at getting a mesh lid for the tank today because he tended to stay towards the surface. I think he couldn't handle the female clown picking on him.

I think the worst part is losing an $80 fish! But, if this is the worst thing that's going to happen to my tank for a while, I can live with that. Gonna go order that lid now!

Maritimer · Feb 8, 2017

Sorry to see that you lost that fellow, LbulletM. Lids are important - and if you think they're important for clownfish, try a firefish or a wrasse! I have seen firefish clear almost a foot of air above the surface, with a six-inch run-up.

~Bruce

LbulletM · Feb 9, 2017

Maritimer said:
Sorry to see that you lost that fellow, LbulletM. Lids are important - and if you think they're important for clownfish, try a firefish or a wrasse! I have seen firefish clear almost a foot of air above the surface, with a six-inch run-up.

~Bruce

Haha I had actually been avoiding firefish and wrasse just for this reason! Guess that opens up two more possibilities for my tank!

LbulletM · Feb 11, 2017

Made a lid over the last couple of nights. Picked up aluminum screening for it, but it's so rigid that it's near impossible to get flush in my crazy lid with a cutout for my AC110. I have saran wrap on it until I order some clear 1/4" plastic netting.

But, I couldn't let my long fin clown be all alone after her soon to be hubby took a carpet surfing vacation without her. Let's try this again. Here's her new beau.

Went with a SA black snowflake (phantom) this time. The snowflake came from a tank with just two clowns, so he seems to want to bond with the long fin (looking ticked off in the top right corner) immediately.

In other news, my beautiful, wonderful, amazing wife went a little overboard on my Valentine's Day present during Aqua SD's live sale (to the tune of $380 according to my calculations). I cancelled my order with RareReef after 7.5+ weeks of waiting. Not impressed. Sad that I won't be getting my RFAs, but I'll grab some from VIP someday. Without further ado.

Rainbow Mille

Grape bubble coral

Peachy Cream Zoas

This one was just listed as Double Dragon. Blasto?

Listed as Dragon Eye. I think they're Dragon Soul Favias? Been wanting this one for a while.

Jack 'O Lantern Lepto

Listed as "Super Ric". Pretty good looking mushroom.

Super Red Trachy

Just listed as "Sweet Chalice Colony". Not sure if it's named.

Listed as Time Splitter. Acan? Favia?

Just listed as Toxic Space Jam. Another chalice?

"Toxic Tenius". So I'm guessing Acro Tenius.

Yellow Hammer. I got a single head.

Did I mention my wife is amazing?

LbulletM · Feb 15, 2017

Got my Euphyllia, too! Courtesy of WWC.

Lime Hammer

Peach Frogspawn

Splatter Hammer

Neon Hammer

Blondie Zoa ($15.50 because they accidentally listed the auction as GSP!)

And Kryptonite Candy Cane (Candy Cane was on my list from when I first wanted to start a tank)

Way too many corals, way too fast, I'm sure, but when life hands you lemons, buy corals. My tank should be overly full after tomorrow. Sounds like I'll have to upgrade soon ;-)

LbulletM · Feb 16, 2017

Leaving work early today because both packages should be here this afternoon!

revhtree · Feb 16, 2017

Looking good!

LbulletM · Feb 17, 2017

revhtree said:
Looking good!

Thanks, Rev! All the new purchases are in and acclimating, including my 3 freebies from AquaSD that will be going over to the ID forum. Unfortunately, most of the AquaSD corals were pretty bleached... they didn't get delivered until ~3:30. I think they'll all make a recovery with some TLC though. Pictures coming in a couple of days!

LbulletM · Feb 18, 2017

Corals arrived yesterday (Thursday)! My wife was able to get home to grab them and put them in the tank. Well, apparently, WWC fills their bags completely with water. So when I told her to just throw the bags in the tank until I got home.... she did just that. Put the first bag in, it immediately sunk and crushed my zoa garden. Fortunately she's smart enough that she stopped at that point. She's still squeamish about putting her hands in the tank after I told her about palytoxin, so she grabbed some kitchen tongs (after I made her promise they were clean and had no soap residue on them either) and pulled out the bag. In the end, I had her throw all of the bags in the low salinity guppy QT. I just needed temperature acclimation at this point.

WWC frags arrived around noon via FedEx. I kind of live in the sticks haha. They all looked great!

Hermits have been harassing my zoas removing any trace of algae, so I don't have a picture of the Blondie. The only frag that doesn't look like it's doing great is the splatter hammer. I really hope it pulls through since it's the one I really really wanted. If not, I hope it at least dies within the 10 day guarantee period. I don't think it's a tank issue considering I have 5 other Euphyllia loving life and it's placed right in front of these. You can see the skeleton on the left side of the picture. Polyps look to have good color, they're just super retracted wayyyyy down into the head.

My AquaSD frags didn't arrive until almost 3:30 via UPS. Like I said, kinda in the sticks. Most of them were pretty rough looking, but none of them were technically DOA. Hoping they pull through.

Peachy Blues zoas

Rainbow Mille

Toxic Tenuis

My poor, poor Super Red Trachy

"Sweet Chalice Colony" looking a little bleachy.

Toxic Space Jam Chalice looking bleached.

Time Splitter Favia looking ok.

Jack o Lantern looking great, actually!

Then I got three freebies in my order! No idea what they are.

Some kind of brain? Wasn't even marked "freebie". Just "

"

Cyphastrea?

And absolutely no idea. Maybe a chalice? It has a REALLY cool dot pattern on it.

Don't have a picture of the ricordia because it has an embarrassing amount of hair algae on it. No picture of the Bubble Coral because it's looking pretty rough. No picture of the Double Dragon blasto because it's in the back. Same for the Dragon Soul favia. And yellow hammer was in with the WWC picture on the right side. You can still see the bubble and blasto in a lot of the below pictures and the Dragon Soul and ric in the top down shots. My tank definitely looks like a frag tank right now while they acclimate!

Still better than before!

And just some other random shots from the tank.

Looking better than ever!

LbulletM · Feb 21, 2017

A lot going on tonight!

Did my first water change in 2 weeks and 2 days. My torch looked a lot happier at a week without a water change, so I decided to try going two weeks between changes. Everything looks happy with the change so far.

Most of my corals that arrived last Thursday from World Wide Corals and Aqua SD are looking better. I'm still worried about a Trachy and the Bubble Coral. The Splatter Hammer never opened up and ended up brown jellying. It's being replaced on my next order through WWC's 10 day guarantee.

Picked up FIVE bottles of Loc-Tite gel today during lunch and when I got home, I went to town with two of the bottles. It's a start!

Before:

After:

It's definitely just a start, but I'm getting there! Glued down the Neon Hammer, Double Dragon Blastos, Jack O Lantern Lepto, Radioactive Candy Cane, Ricordia, Dragon Soul Favia, and moved my Rainbow Acan Lord (7 frags). Still need to glue down my Space Jam Chalice, Teal Hammer, Yellow Hammer, Peach Frogspawn, Time Splitter Favia, freebie Cyphastrea, freebie... I don't know what it is, maybe Pachy?, Toxic Tenius, Rainbow Mille, and I need to figure out where to put my Trachy and freebie Lobo. My Bubble Coral and Torch will probably stay in the corners where they are.

Candy Cane and Jack O Lantern Lepto

Blasto on left and Acan Lord on right

Frogspawn moved slightly and Neon Hammer in back

Ricordia

Dragon Soul Favia

This was my first time removing corals from their plugs, and I definitely man handled the first few and ticked them off. They look to be recovering just fine in the 30 minutes I was in the tank after gluing, though.

Here's the current set up:

Thin lines (left to right):
Brown - Purple Torch
Grey - some chalice... It's kinda ugly. My wife liked it during the live sale though...
Orange - Neon Hammer
Yellow - my original Frogspawn frag
Pink - Double Dragon Blasto
Mint green - Rose Corals
Teal - Radioactive Candy Cane
Red - Ricordia
Green - Oculina Robusta
Dark Pink - the Rainbow Mille is hiding back there
White - Toxic Tenius
Black - poor, poor Bubble Coral

Thick lines (left to right):
Pink - Space Jam Chalice
Green - The possibly Pachy freebie
Orange - remaining Euphyllia garden (Teal Hammer, Yellow Hammer, Peach Frogspawn)
Grey - Time Splitter Favia
Brown - Poor, poor Trachy
Red - Cyphatrea freebie
Dark Pink - freebie Lobo
Black - Jack O Lantern Lepto
White - Rainbow Acan
Yellow - Zoa garden (Blondie, Utter Chaos, Purple People Eater, Sunny Ds, Tyree Orange Rainbows, Rastas)
Purple - Dragon Soul Favia

Here's the possible plan. Not sure. Same color codes.

Typing out that list, I realized how many corals I actually already have! 1 per gallon! Probably too much, too fast, but who am I to turn down a Valentine's Day gift ;-)

And I'll sign off with my current "I'M NOT LOSING ANOTHER FISH" lid before I get the frame squared up, glued, and meshed.

LbulletM · Feb 22, 2017

Got eyes on the tank this morning for about 10 seconds with just the room lights turned on and everything looks to have survived. May go for round two of gluing tonight depending on when I get home.