Hi All,
Made the classic mistake of buying an unresearched species at the LFS this weekend. All of my gracillaria macroalgae disappeared without a trace over the course of 2 weeks and at the same time I had an amphipod explosion so my theory is that they ate it all. I have a 20 gallon AIO and I swear there are thousands of amphipods at this point, they completely cover the back panel at night and clog my filter sock and leave molts everywhere. Explained this to my LFS and the guy sold me a Ruby Red Dragonet saying he'd take care of them. During acclimation I looked the species up online and saw that they're expert only and very finicky eaters. I probably should have returned him but then he flared his dorsal fin at me and I was hooked so now I'm determined to help this buddy thrive!
I think he can eat some of the baby amphipods but the large ones are too big to fit in his mouth. I saw him go for one and the bug got away. I also didn't realize that they prefer copepods and can eat thousands of them per day. I have a population of them as well but certainly not enough to sustain him. I ordered everything I need to turn my center chamber into a fuge and got a pod subscription but feeding pods exclusively is gonna be cost prohibitive. He's already gone through $80 worth of Tigger pods in four days!
I saw an article on reef builders showing how to make a hatchling brine shrimp feeding station out of tubing, a plastic container and pantihose. I built one but wasn't happy with the results. It is very unsightly and there's nowhere I can hide it in my tank that's both out of sight and where he will also have a good chance of stumbling upon it. I wondered if it would be possible to just run some tubing into the center of a porous rock and see if that would have the same the effect. Sure enough I had a rock laying around that had a perfectly sized hole for some black tubing I had laying around from my ATO setup. It even had a crevice that clamped the tubing perfectly so that it can neatly run up the back panel.
Apparently the baby shrimp are attracted to light so the idea is to hatch them and squirt them into the tube with a pipette and they will slowly make their way out around the rock where my Dragonet can have at them! What do you all think the chances are that this will work? Once he's used to grazing there ill try to ween him onto frozen food.
Made the classic mistake of buying an unresearched species at the LFS this weekend. All of my gracillaria macroalgae disappeared without a trace over the course of 2 weeks and at the same time I had an amphipod explosion so my theory is that they ate it all. I have a 20 gallon AIO and I swear there are thousands of amphipods at this point, they completely cover the back panel at night and clog my filter sock and leave molts everywhere. Explained this to my LFS and the guy sold me a Ruby Red Dragonet saying he'd take care of them. During acclimation I looked the species up online and saw that they're expert only and very finicky eaters. I probably should have returned him but then he flared his dorsal fin at me and I was hooked so now I'm determined to help this buddy thrive!
I think he can eat some of the baby amphipods but the large ones are too big to fit in his mouth. I saw him go for one and the bug got away. I also didn't realize that they prefer copepods and can eat thousands of them per day. I have a population of them as well but certainly not enough to sustain him. I ordered everything I need to turn my center chamber into a fuge and got a pod subscription but feeding pods exclusively is gonna be cost prohibitive. He's already gone through $80 worth of Tigger pods in four days!
I saw an article on reef builders showing how to make a hatchling brine shrimp feeding station out of tubing, a plastic container and pantihose. I built one but wasn't happy with the results. It is very unsightly and there's nowhere I can hide it in my tank that's both out of sight and where he will also have a good chance of stumbling upon it. I wondered if it would be possible to just run some tubing into the center of a porous rock and see if that would have the same the effect. Sure enough I had a rock laying around that had a perfectly sized hole for some black tubing I had laying around from my ATO setup. It even had a crevice that clamped the tubing perfectly so that it can neatly run up the back panel.
Apparently the baby shrimp are attracted to light so the idea is to hatch them and squirt them into the tube with a pipette and they will slowly make their way out around the rock where my Dragonet can have at them! What do you all think the chances are that this will work? Once he's used to grazing there ill try to ween him onto frozen food.