My new dwarf fuzzy, any thoughts on setup?

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Hi everybody, I just picked up a beautiful animal that will be living in my 40 reef. It is a wonderful little fuzzy dwarf lionfish (Dendrochirus Brachypterus). Other inhabitants are mushrroms, leathers, open brain, and some inverts (stars, crabs, snails, cleaner shrimp). The tank has 175w of MH to support another beautiful creature, a macrodactyla doreensis. Once the lion gets established and eating well I plan on trying to introduce a pair of clarkii clowns (of larger size than the lions mouth) to the tank.

The system is currently skimmerless with 3-4" dsb, about 30lbs LR mix of fiji & tonga branch, and a small gravity return refugium of about 5 gallons filled with razor caulerpa. However for the sake of water quality with the larger planned fish load I will be installing a larger sump/refugium soon and moving the remora skimmer from my FO (50g w/ undulated trigger and a bruiser of a sergeant major damelfish) to the 40. But I can only do that after I save up for that new Euro-reef skimmer I've been eyeing! Then of course by that point I'll need a LARGER FO tank...and on, and on, and on...:D Does it ever end?


Any thoughts on this setup? feedback or experience? Here is a photo of the whole tank, and the aquascape I created to suit (hopefully) the tastes of the lion:

Before:

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The new aquascape. Minus the colt coral which I traded for the new tonga branch pieces:

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And the new fuzzy in flight:

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One more for scale, this is the cleaner shrimp cleaning his new, if only temporary, friend:

Also, I wanted to say thanks to FMarini for all the lion 411, thanks!:D

[FMarini]

T-T:
Crocodile hunter voice on:
by cracky-shes a bee--u--teeeee.

I love the red/yellow morphs. You got lucky; it’s a female.
A great thing w/ dwarf fuzzys is they breed in small tanks, so over the next few months try and find a male dwarf fuzzy -a beautiful solid red or yellow one, and watch them do the dance of love, its very cool. We can talk about that later.

Now your job is to ween her over to dead prepared marine foods.
I did mention PE mysis right? W/ this small fish that is the secret sauce.
Great success
frank

[skylsdale]

The pics look great! I had one of these along with a Fu-Manchu in a 20g long FOWLR. The fuzzy staked out his own little perch and hung out there most of the time (it seems yours has found one as well...)

They were being fed feeder goldfish at the LFS :mad:. I started them on frozen silversides once they were in my tank and they didn't seem to mind a bit. One tip I would give: don't use your hand when feeding them. I did this, and then every time I had my hand in the tank for maintenance, etc...they would come flying out of the rockwork looking for a snack! There were a couple close calls where I felt a brush along my hand, but never felt any pain. I'm not sure how painful they are compared to their larger cousins, but I'm glad I didn't find out.

[Derek Skillings]

just a general information question,
how can you tell the fuzzy dwarf is a female, it must be something obvious if you could tell with those pictures. just wondering

[FMarini]

DereK;
I can't give away all my secrets =^).
But your right it is obvious.

females have 4, males have 10
Keep this a secret
frank