Sharkbait’s 40 Breeder Upgrade

[Sharkbait19]

For the first time in months, the pistol finally decided to go out in the open for a stroll:

Of course, Luxo wasn’t very happy with the extra activity so she sent him back quickly…
He’s starting to pop back out of his hole as I write this though.

 

[N1tew0lf1212]

For the first time in months, the pistol finally decided to go out in the open for a stroll:
View attachment 2691788
View attachment 2691789
Of course, Luxo wasn’t very happy with the extra activity so she sent him back quickly…
He’s starting to pop back out of his hole as I write this though.

Gorgeous man love the markings/coloring.

 

[rmorris_14]

That

Update: Only slightly over a week later, the algae grew back and smothered everything, likely due to the crazy high phosphates in my tank. I bought phosphate remover for my filter, and will monitor the parameters. Hopefully they go down and I can get algae under control.
Luxo is back to being a bully, but hasn’t done anything awful yet. She defends her torch coral with her life, and bites my hand a lot! During today’s water change, I actually had to remove her because she was preventing me from cleaning anything!
I may have to put a divider up in the QT tank. The orange spot blenny has become rather territorial towards the tankmates, and is really going after the kamohara blenny.
Some photos:
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love the photos! The orange spot is so cool!

For the first time in months, the pistol finally decided to go out in the open for a stroll:
View attachment 2691788
View attachment 2691789
Of course, Luxo wasn’t very happy with the extra activity so she sent him back quickly…
He’s starting to pop back out of his hole as I write this though.

mine has never done this!!! This is so cool and provides some awesome photos!!!!

 

[Sharkbait19]

That

love the photos! The orange spot is so cool!

mine has never done this!!! This is so cool and provides some awesome photos!!!!

I’m surprised - he usually runs once the camera comes out.

Gorgeous man love the markings/coloring.

Thanks - I’m definitely happy with how he turned out. Most seem to be more brown/orange so it’s cool to see some maroon on it.

The way the stand is, I can see the bottom of the tank and the sandbed. A small section has been dug out by the shrimp, so if I look at the right time I can actually see him sitting there in his burrow.

 

[Sharkbait19]

He isn’t there in this pic, but this is his cave:

 

[i cant think]

He isn’t there in this pic, but this is his cave:
View attachment 2691805

Oh man, it’s so simple yet so complex! Is that from under the tank?

 

[Sharkbait19]

Oh man, it’s so simple yet so complex! Is that from under the tank?

Yup! It’s very interesting because it changes around every day!
I remember the shrimp had an even more complex cave system in my Fluval 13.5. It would crawl underneath a rock on one side of the tank and pop up on the complete opposite end!

 

[i cant think]

Yup! It’s very interesting because it changes around every day!
I remember the shrimp had an even more complex cave system in my Fluval 13.5. It would crawl underneath a rock on one side of the tank and pop up on the complete opposite end!

Oh man, I had an Engineering “Goby” that was the exact same! I love watching how fish and inverts create their little burrows and how some make it easier to travel through (Much like my Discordipinna griessingeri which managed to get the sand in rows lining his cave system in the rockwork).

 

[rmorris_14]

Yup! It’s very interesting because it changes around every day!
I remember the shrimp had an even more complex cave system in my Fluval 13.5. It would crawl underneath a rock on one side of the tank and pop up on the complete opposite end!

Mine has a complex tunnel system between my two base rocks and pops up periodically on one side or the other. He has his preferred entrance but I’d love to see what it looks like underneath. Recently I put a bunch of shells in there for my scarlet hermit. The pistol ended up pulling all but two into his tunnels, assuming for bracing. It’s really neat.

 

[Sharkbait19]

I placed an order from reef cleaners on Tuesday to expand the CUC, and it arrived today! I got some pretty cool stuff, including some limpets, snails, periwinkles, a mermaid’s fan macro, a peppermint shrimp (to attempt a lysmata shrimp again), and an emerald crab. Unfortunately, I couldn’t expect USPS shipping to be extremely reliable, and wound up with my tiger conch and pincushion urchin arriving DOA. I’ll try again, though, but maybe from my lfs just so I don’t have to deal with online ordering again…

My original emerald crab, who’s from petco, doesn’t seem to follow the herbivorous lifestyle, and decided to steal a couple periwinkles so far. His slacking in algae-eating abilities is why I needed a second one.

In other news, my Hawkfish decided to stop eating for some unknown reason. I’m starting to formulate some theories, and hopefully I can get it to eat some more…

 

[i cant think]

I placed an order from reef cleaners on Tuesday to expand the CUC, and it arrived today! I got some pretty cool stuff, including some limpets, snails, periwinkles, a mermaid’s fan macro, a peppermint shrimp (to attempt a lysmata shrimp again), and an emerald crab. Unfortunately, I couldn’t expect USPS shipping to be extremely reliable, and wound up with my tiger conch and pincushion urchin arriving DOA. I’ll try again, though, but maybe from my lfs just so I don’t have to deal with online ordering again…
View attachment 2696544View attachment 2696545View attachment 2696546View attachment 2696547
My original emerald crab, who’s from petco, doesn’t seem to follow the herbivorous lifestyle, and decided to steal a couple periwinkles so far. His slacking in algae-eating abilities is why I needed a second one.

In other news, my Hawkfish decided to stop eating for some unknown reason. I’m starting to formulate some theories, and hopefully I can get it to eat some more…

Hopefully it all turns around for you.
On another hand, that mermaids fan is a beauty, what’s the plan for it? Grow it out and see what it shapes into?

 

[blaxsun]

Neat! I can get my "shrimp fix" from your build thread! I only have a single solitary teeny tiny shrimp living in a Christmas coral.

 

[i cant think]

Neat! I can get my "shrimp fix" from your build thread! I only have a single solitary teeny tiny shrimp living in a Christmas coral.

Do you know what shrimp it is?

 

[blaxsun]

Do you know what shrimp it is?

I don't. It never leaves it's hole, but it has two blue metallic claws.

 

[Sharkbait19]

Hopefully it all turns around for you.
On another hand, that mermaids fan is a beauty, what’s the plan for it? Grow it out and see what it shapes into?

Assuming none of my herbivores choose to eat it, I’d definitely like to grow it out and see what happens! I thought it looked really cool on the website, so was definitely willing to try it out in spite of my crabs and angelfish!

 

[Sharkbait19]

Well today was certainly a busy day in the reef. It started out with a simple 15% water change, but resulted in so much more. First, I tried to move a mushroom coral that was being smothered by Xenia. I wound up needing to destroy the rock around it just to keep the foot from being sliced during transport. I wound up cutting the mushroom anyway by mistake. The result of this small change was me deciding to rescape the right side on impulse, in which I shifted all of the leather corals and zoas around to be more in the open. The leathers got really ticked off, however, and must have released chemicals into the water (wouldn’t be the first time), which caused my lps to close up and even melt. So finally, I did a large (and time consuming) 50% water change, which will hopefully set things back on track.

All this from a quick Saturday morning water change….

 

[blaxsun]

Well today was certainly a busy day in the reef. It started out with a simple 15% water change, but resulted in so much more. First, I tried to move a mushroom coral that was being smothered by Xenia. I wound up needing to destroy the rock around it just to keep the foot from being sliced during transport. I wound up cutting the mushroom anyway by mistake. The result of this small change was me deciding to rescape the right side on impulse, in which I shifted all of the leather corals and zoas around to be more in the open. The leathers got really ticked off, however, and must have released chemicals into the water (wouldn’t be the first time), which caused my lps to close up and even melt. So finally, I did a large (and time consuming) 50% water change, which will hopefully set things back on track.

All this from a quick Saturday morning water change….

Oh yes, I can definitely relate (been there - done that many times!)

 

[EricR]

Oh yes, I can definitely relate (been there - done that many times!)

Yep -- water change + alcohol + scrub a couple of rocks out of tank = total annihilation of original aquascape

 

[i cant think]

I don’t want to know how often I change my rock scape just to have room for as many coral as possible and keep the room for all 9 fish in my nano… It’s not an easy thing to do.

 

[Sharkbait19]

Morning update: it looks as though I have restarted a problem that took months to fix in the Fluval, and the frogspawns are once more in critical condition. Looks like the long and stressful battle to prevent them from melting away begins once more.
Additionally, the mushroom that I had for over a year is looking like it won’t make it at all, which I’m certainly unhappy about.
It feels like the reef can’t be kept thriving for even five minutes.

It seems that every decision I made during yesterday’s water change was a huge mistake, but, certainly not something that can’t be corrected.