Our Tbs

[krajacich]

Originally posted by phil519
I think you and Danielle need to join some kind of support group - you know the ones where they teach you a 10 step program of not reaching for the wallet when you see that beautiful coral on line. LOL

I'll have you know that this time I ordered fish not coral Actually I ordered my flame angel last week from Vivid Aquariums. It was supposed to be shipped out on Friday for Saturday delivery. But it wasn't eating well so Vivid Aquarium suggested waiting until this week to make sure the fish was healthy enough for shipment.

The good news is it will be here tomorrow

[bobt2]

ok, i,m looking for a good book on keeping corals. hows the one by borneman? or is there a better one?

[patsan]

Bob, Landon can let you know the good book to get on corals.

Danielle...is the flame angel reef safe? You always different stories on what is and what isn't.


What about a foxface rabbit.....would it get along with the yellow tang?

[krajacich]

Originally posted by patsan
Danielle...is the flame angel reef safe? You always different stories on what is and what isn't.

Basically the flame is hit-or-miss. I've decided to take a chance on it because it's such a pretty fish. If it causes problems then I'll figure out what to do with it. Hopefully it will be a model citizen

[bobt2]

pat, last nite i got a nice finger leather @ pw for $29

[patsan]

Originally posted by bobt2
pat, last nite i got a nice finger leather @ pw for $29

That's great! Did they have any nice colorful corals?
Do you have a picture of it by any chance?

I am going to clean out the QT today. I have a batch of water mixing up right now. I will check the pH on it and see if it's different than the other tanks.

I put an order in at Pet Solutions yesteday for a couple of fish and a couple of skunk clowns. Initially I figured Bob would get the japanese swallow, but last night I was reading the compatibility chart from live aquaria, and saw caution with the tangs and foxface rabbits, so now I'm wondering if I should keep the swallowtail and give Bob the foxface. Again, this is one where most people say no problem, yet others say it is. I guess I'll have time to figure it all out. But I would like to hear others experiences.

[krajacich]

Originally posted by patsan
I put an order in at Pet Solutions yesteday for a couple of fish and a couple of skunk clowns. Initially I figured Bob would get the japanese swallow, but last night I was reading the compatibility chart from live aquaria, and saw caution with the tangs and foxface rabbits, so now I'm wondering if I should keep the swallowtail and give Bob the foxface. Again, this is one where most people say no problem, yet others say it is. I guess I'll have time to figure it all out. But I would like to hear others experiences.

I asked this question before too Pat...here's the link

http://archive.reefcentral.com/forum...hreadid=496113

[patsan]

Originally posted by krajacich
I asked this question before too Pat...here's the link
http://archive.reefcentral.com/forum...hreadid=496113

Cool! Thanks!
So you decided not to get the foxface? I think they are so neat looking.

[bobt2]

you know i hate taking pictures. maybe tonite. they had a lot of soft corals. colors? they had a large rock with all different kinds of polyps on it. best piece i ever saw, but it was sold already.

[krajacich]

Originally posted by patsan
Cool! Thanks!
So you decided not to get the foxface? I think they are so neat looking.

Since I decided to get a yellow tang I wanted to have a different colored fish instead of the mainly yellow foxface. They are really neat fish and apparently have a ton of personality.

[BrianPlankis]

Originally posted by phil519
sure...large enough tanks may have the ability to support certain species of linkia. All tanks have the ability to support brittle/serpent stars. I believe those hitcher asterina stars as also supposedly reef safe.

It depends really on what kind of star. A lot of folks keep sand sifting stars regardless of their detriment to the sand bed. In fact, one could argue that a large enough sandbed could easily support one (again depends).

The only star I can think of that is clearly not reef safe is the crown o thorns. I've heard non-reef safe things about the choc chip star but folks like them for keeping their harlequin shrimp happy. I thought though that scuba oz had a choc star and had no problems.

I don't like to disagree with people, but this seems to be a common topic with a lot of misinformation. I am probably about to add to it But anyway, from what I have read online and in a few hobbyist books there are very few suitable starfish for reef aquariums.

Probably the best choice are Asterina species starfish. They are small, graze algae and readily reproduce in most aquaria. The only downside to these is that some species appear to chew on SPS corals. The majority do not, so you only need to worry if you actually see them munching and the flesh is gone when they move.

Crown of thorns is definitely a bad idea, but rarely offered in the hobby. Then there are the knobby sea stars which include the chocolate chip stars and the red knobby sea stars. The chocolate chip star has been widely reported to eat soft corals and is definitely not considered reef safe. There are two commonly found "red knobby sea stars":

Echinaster:
http://www.meerwasser-lexikon.de/eng...hinophorus.htm

Protoreaster:
http://www.peteducation.com/article....articleid=2175

The second is related to the chocolate chip star and eats corals, not reef safe. The first is consider reef safe as it grazes algae, but needs a very large tank (150+) gallons to have a chance at surviving. Little is know about it and hard to find.

"Linkias" should be completely avoided with the one exception of possibly Linckia multiflora. They are extremely sensitive to salinity changes and unfortunately it takes months for them to slowly succumb to damage that is usually done during collection or during transport. There have been some reports of multifloras dropping arms and forming new starfish, so maybe some will become available in the future as tankraised. Minimum size for any linkia is 150, preferably 200+ gallons with lots of live rock.

Sand stirring starfish are fabulous for cleaning up the sandbed...too much so in fact. They are voracious predators and will wipe a sandbed clean in a very short amount of time. I'll admit the sand stirring starfish was my first mistake in reefing. I was told it would help keep my 55 gallon sandbed clean, and it sure did! Within a couple of months my sandbed was dead and my pods in the sand were gone. I rarely saw the starfish in the first couple of months. Then it started coming out all the time, even a lot during the day. I thought that was cool! Until a couple months later it was obviously dead and I later found out it was out so much because it was starving and desperately searching for food. Dr Ron and Anthony Calfo both recommend against this starfish as reef tanks are just too small, even the 200+ gallon size ones. Larger tanks just makes their starvation slower.

That basically leaves the brittlestars as the last commonly available starfish group. There is some good news here, they can easily be supported by scavenging plus supplemental feeding with silversides or other meaty foods. The one to completely avoid is the green brittlestars, they WILL hunt down your fish.

Whew! Sorry for the long rant, but so many starfish die in our tanks that don't need to, pass this along! It bothers me that I contributed to this when I first started the hobby

B.

[lossman]

Oh my goodness!! We have never target fed our serpent stars that came with our cleanup crew!! We were told they would scavange for themselves and if we fed them, they would not be doing their job of keeping the tank clean!! Guess I'm going to break out some silversides tonight and feed those poor things!!!!

[BrianPlankis]

Originally posted by lossman
Oh my goodness!! We have never target fed our serpent stars that came with our cleanup crew!! We were told they would scavange for themselves and if we fed them, they would not be doing their job of keeping the tank clean!! Guess I'm going to break out some silversides tonight and feed those poor things!!!!

Well, how big is your tank? They might be getting enough through scavenging depending on how many you have and how much meaty food you feed your other stuff. It is true you don't want to feed your cleanup crew.

B.

[greenbean36191]

Brian, I agree with you except about Echinaster. No one really knows what they eat, so IMO they should be avoided too.

Usually brittle and serpent stars are ignored in the discussion since they aren't true starfish. Most are reef safe, and much easier than the true starfish though.

[BrianPlankis]

Hey all,

I tested my ammonia this morning and it is ZERO! I still see one sponge slowly dying, but the bacteria must be able to handle it, everything else on the rock looks nice and healthy.

Water parms:
Salinity: 1.026
Temp: 81
pH: 8.0 (morning reading)
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: < 2ppm
Nitrate: 0
PO4: zero
Ca: 420
Alk: 7.0

So all my corals were removed from my QT and acclimated this morning and put on the sandbed of the main tank. Pictures to follow over the next couple of days under the actinics and 10Ks

I saw a scary scary looking worm last night I could not get a picture and it definitely was not a bristle worm. It was about 3 inches long and mostly dark brown except where the segmented sections joined, in the joints it was yellow. I saw the head and it did have some antennae, but I couldn't count them as it was too far into the tank. Each body segment appeared to have one leg on each side, very short. Man I hope I can catch that guy, it is NASTY looking. Ugh.

Nudibranch update:
Well, the red stuff was most likely poop or slime, because I found my first egg mass last night. So they were doing more than snuggling the last few days! Here are the eggs, this is the best picture I could get, they are probably about the size of a pencil eraser:



I added two more anemones and the adults ate them right away and were seen snuggling again this morning. I'll need to remove the adults to another container so I can keep anemones in the bucket for the babies that hatch, the adults are pigs!

B.

[bobt2]

lossman, my serpent will take clam out of my hand or off the feeding stick. he gets feed 3x a week.

[lossman]

Originally posted by garagebrian
Well, how big is your tank? They might be getting enough through scavenging depending on how many you have and how much meaty food you feed your other stuff. It is true you don't want to feed your cleanup crew.

B.

We have a 150g tank with only two fish. We feed only enough meaty foods that those two can eat in a few minutes. Once in a while we will add a little bit extra in for the crabs, hermits, corals etc. Every other day we feed DT's. That's about it. The poor little guys are probably starving!!! Maybe we will just target feed them once every couple of weeks, just to make sure they get enough to eat.

[greenbean36191]

Brian, that's excellent news. I guess I lose my bet about the eggs being spirals eh?

[BrianPlankis]

Originally posted by greenbean36191
Brian, that's excellent news. I guess I lose my bet about the eggs being spirals eh?

Well, you can consider them a loose spiral It is almost U shaped, and it is hard to tell from the picture, but the left side of the U does curve to the right and slightly down. They were snuggling again this morning so hopefully the next egg spiral is in a better place to photograph. I hear they will lay an egg spiral every 1-3 days once they start...I'm beginning to worry about my anemone supply.

I hope they eat aiptasia, I already have offers of 5-10 aiptasia infested rocks and hundreds of loose ones. Just in case an aiptasia can eat these guys I'm waiting until I have decent size babies to send them after the aiptasia.

Lossman,
How many serpents do you have? I would think feeding them once a week or every two weeks would be fine, you don't want them too fat to not do their cleaning duties

B.

[krajacich]

Everything came in this morning and looked great. Vivid Aquariums did a terrific job packaging.

Flame Angel:


Cleaner Shrimp:


Turbo grazer snails (these guys are HUGE and they're doing a great job of cleaning up the tank already):

[patsan]

Wow, she's a beauty. What size is she? I also ordered a couple of skunk shrimp...one for each of our tanks.


Brian, your nudi's are amazing. That's just awesome they're laying eggs. At least this time you got a good hitchhiker!!
I thought the eggs were kind of spiral-ey.

We're going to split again very soon.

[krajacich]

Originally posted by patsan
Wow, she's a beauty. What size is she? I also ordered a couple of skunk shrimp...one for each of our tanks.

About 1 1/2" long. Not nearly as shy as my YT. She's already swimming around the QT even when I'm next to it. I'm hoping that maybe having another larger fish around will encourage the YT to come out of the rockwork a bit more.

The cleaner shrimp is really neat. I'm hoping the peppermints and the skunk get along ok. I did see the cleaner next to one of the really big peppermints early and they didn't seem to be fighting. Although I have to admit I have no idea what a shrimp fight looks like

Brian- neat pictures, it'll be interesting to see if you get a bunch of baby nudibranchs. You could have 2 different species tanks...one cirolanid & one nudibranch

[BrianPlankis]

Originally posted by krajacich
Brian- neat pictures, it'll be interesting to see if you get a bunch of baby nudibranchs. You could have 2 different species tanks...one cirolanid & one nudibranch

Great flame angel! My favorite fish

Two species tanks? You sure are a comedian! What would be REALLY cool is if the nudibranch ate the cirolanids I know that isn't possible and it likely would be the other way around.

Yeah, I hope to have baby nudis, supposedly the eggs will hatch in 10-14 days and then in 3-5 weeks I'll be able to see them. That sure is a long time to wait!

Brian

[lossman]

Originally posted by garagebrian
Lossman,
How many serpents do you have? I would think feeding them once a week or every two weeks would be fine, you don't want them too fat to not do their cleaning duties

B.

We have 4 of them in there. Those are the original 4 that we got in April. They seem to be fairly active so I guess they are ok. I'll feed them today and then see how things go. Thanks for everyone's tip on target feeding these guys! I just never thought about it!!

[gregt]

This thread was automatically split due to performance issues. You can find the rest of the thread here: http://archive.reefcentral.com/forum...hreadid=646481