are you worried that the DIY rock will contaminate the heater?
i wouldnt worry about, just soak the heater in agitated vinegar for a few hours afterwards and you will be fine.
Yes exactly! Sweet I think I’m going to do it because I like the DIY rock I made… I worked hard to make those two corner caves 
Ok Jon I looked at those yellow-headed jawfish. I know them as pearly jawfish and yes I do like them but I heard they eat so much and produce a lot of bioload? Is this true? I think I have a preliminary idea of what I want: 1 clown goby (we know this), 1 fairy/flasher wrasse (looking like either McCoskers, Carpenters, Lubbocks, or Blue flasher still really looking into them I’m just naming names that I remember), and one of the four here: Pearly jawfish, clownfish (I like the perculas or occellaris, but these are kinda on the bottom of my list because it seems like everyone has one and I like having a unique tank in a way) chalk bass, or firefish. I hear chalk bass are jumpers, which is not good because I’m running open tank now but I will go out and buy a mesh screen for him if he is in. I also heard that firefish are prone to hiding a lot. But the ones I saw at DPA seem pretty docile and I never have seen one up close like I did at DPA and they changed my mind on what I thought of them.
So still I’ve got PLENTY of time to debate but any ideas from you guys or suggestions or words of wisdom are greatly appreciated!
If I may jump in to this conversation regaridng the “rules” that have been passed down over many years in this hobby:
I personally think many things are said to make people more aware of them, to prevent disasters. Will an 8 degree temp swing kill everything in our tanks? Probably not, but years ago someone was teaching someone about this hobby and said to themselves “I know this moron will not pay attention to the water temp in summer and will cook his corals if I don’t say “A consistent temperature is essential to the tank, there can never be more then a 2 degree fluctuation””. This person then went on to repeat it, and that person repeated it, then we end up hijacking a thread 20 years later debating it.
It’s like telling our kids “you can’t swim for a 1/2 hour after eating or you’ll get a cramp and drown”. It won’t really happen, someone told it to their kid 75 years ago that just finished off a Thanksgiving size turkey and they didn’t want him bouncing on the diving board and blowing chunks in the pool. And it juust got passed down generation to generation.
Same goes for PH and salinity swings. The “rule” is that salinity MUST be adjusted slowly or fish/corals will go in to shock and die, how many people in this hobby don’t have ATO units and just pur 3 gallons of water in the tank when the return pump starts bubbling? I have yet to hear of a major disaster, and just think about how much the SG changes when you add 3 gallons of FW to the system.
Again, it’s just MY opinion, and is all good advice, but I don’t think it’s something we need to lose sleep over, which I think a lot of new hobbyists do. Because we have taught them the rules we were taught.
actually firefish and every wrasse you listed are MAJOR jumpers.
you cant go wrong with any fairy wrasser, and i love flashers. sounds like your off to a good start but take your time when adding the fish. i would also play it on the safe side when it comes to your bioload and keep the fish to a minimum at first. another great fish you can look into is a royal gramma. a very hardy, beginner fish and beautiful. mine is a little shy but stays out in the open for the most part.
craig, while i agree that most “rules” are blanket statements and that they are not absolute, i still think consistent parameters are something to strive for.
the reality is most people dont keep sucessfull, thriving, healthy tanks(i really dont even consider myself there yet) and a lot of the reasons are because they dont adhere to basics. its one thing
to keep things alive for a few months and another to establish a long term thriving ecosystem. i would love to see a “healthy” tank where the salinity, temperature, and ph are all over the place.
i agree that some people can be very anal about parameters, and i may even come off as one of those people ;D but ive seen a lot worse. a lot of mistakes i made as a newbie was directly a result of me not staying on top of my parameters.
i guess what it all comes down to is what an individuals idea of success is and what they are happy with. ;D
Yes I do plan on going very slow with the fish adding. I believe I will be waiting 2 weeks to about a month between fish, adding the most likely to be territorial last.
Well if a good group of them are jumpers then I suppose I will be going to get that screening after all 
I want a screen and not the glass top so that I can still have an exchange of heat so that the temp doesn’t boil.
I do like the royal grammas too but I have heard mixed opinions about them. Some people I have heard about having them say they can get territorial fast and harrass their fish. I don’t know the one at DPA I saw the other day was pretty cute. He was following me around and watching me the entire time.
Some other fish I like are a lot of the Pseudochromis, with the springeri being my favorite, but I have heard they can be grouchy too.
I also looooove angelfish, the first fish I was planning on was a lemonpeel but I found out they wouldn’t do well in my tank even by himself (and I bought the MH so I can get nice corals and a clam in the future and well, he wouldn’t be a good idea after all) I was thinking for awhile about a pacific pygmy angel (white-tailed pygmy) but I didn’t want to have to worry about him getting all the necessary algae into his diet and just keep the feeding to meaty-type feeders.
But I was thinking if I had the jawfish, the wrasse, and the goby I would cover the entire tank with one fish that burrows, one that lives throughout the rock work and one free swimmer. I figured then no one can get too territorial, but I could be wrong.
I have been so indecisive that I actually went on the internet and started searching for fish that will possibily fit, I printed out a small picture of each and pasting them in a notebook and writing about them so that I can easily find what I’m thinking about and get a better idea of what I like. I know I’m obsessed but at least I’m doing my homework. lol
I have a coral beauty and she does sometimes like to pick at my zoas, she’s never hurt anything, it mostly picks at the algae…and the royal gramma is a nice fish, mine is surprisingly very shy as well…didn’t see her for the first week she was in my tank, I thought she was dead, but she eventually got hungry enough to come out and eat, so now she stays out about 50% of the time, as long as you’re not looking at her…
ive never heard of a royal gramma being territorial or aggressive. mine is definitely the tamest fish in my tank. a lot of people mix up the bicolor psudeochromis and royal gramma. VERY easy to mistake for one another and teh psudeochromis can be nasty.
I was just looking at pictures and I think what this person really has is the brazilian gramma which I am reading is more territorial. They kind of look a like and now that I think about it, I believe it looks like it in the picture I saw. Def. not a bicolor pseudo though, had the gradation between the purple and yellow. Maybe that is what is up with hers. lol well I will have to get my clown goby first since that is the fish that I’m certain I want, then I’ll try and decide
[quote=“Cdangel0, post:63, topic:596”]
“I know this moron will not pay attention to the water temp in summer and will cook his corals if I don’t say “A consistent temperature is essential to the tank, there can never be more then a 2 degree fluctuation””.
It’s like telling our kids “you can’t swim for a 1/2 hour after eating or you’ll get a cramp and drown”. It won’t really happen, someone told it to their kid 75 years ago that just finished off a Thanksgiving size turkey and they didn’t want him bouncing on the diving board and blowing chunks in the pool.
Same goes for PH and salinity swings. The “rule” is that salinity MUST be adjusted slowly or fish/corals will go in to shock and die, how many people in this hobby don’t have ATO units and just pur 3 gallons of water in the tank when the return pump starts bubbling? I have yet to hear of a major disaster, and just think about how much the SG changes when you add 3 gallons of FW to the system.[/quote]
Funny… You said turkey chunks
Actually I wanted to address the 3 gallons bit. When I was looking into hyposalinity for a cure to ick it was described that fish and corals react less severe to a drop in salinity then to a raising of the salinity. The recommended almost double the time to raise the salinity the to lower. Think of the rain on a shallow reef it would drop the salinity a bit. Or sat a tide pool cut off while the tide is out.
Agreed on the dwarf angles… if you get a good one they wont bother anything at all. Mine nips a little at my LPS but I have never seen him do any real damage and thats with a mostly lps/softie tank that also houses a dersa clam that is over 10".
I wouldnt get a pseudochromis and a wrasse at the same time. I think mine have close enough body shape and food prefrence that they dont get along that well, but theyre in a large enough tank that they dont bother eachother much, however in a nano that woudlnt go so great.
Some fish to consider are the flameball angel (similar to the pygmy angel just different colors), yellow coris wrasse (mine has a great personality), bicolor blenny, banngi cardinal (aquacultured), Neon goby, and a yellow or blue assessor. All stay in the size range that would be good for the tank and tend to be pretty good tank mates with other fish.
Well when I look at dwarf angels I feel though that I would just want one and that is it. They just seem to be big. Really I only like four here they are in order that I like them: lemonpeel, bicolor, coral beauty, flame angel. I also liked that Black angelfish that DPA has. He follows me all the time. Would a dwarf angel really be ok?
Yeah I would get a wrasse or a pseudo if I had to pick so one or the other. I know they would fight. I like green coris moreso than yellow, but I thought they were too big for my tank in general.
the main consideration with a dwarf angel is going to be his disposition to corals and clams. for every person that says there angel does no damage you can find someoen who will tell you about angels devastating specific corals and clams. its definitely a gamble. the amount of damaged caused by “nipping” is also going to be directly proportional to your tank size. there are some really large tanks that house full size angles with hardcorals and clams.
Exactly… which means if I want to buy one I gotta see if I can do trade backs for store credit or something. However as much as I want a lemonpeel or that midnight angel at the fish store, I think I would feel better about getting something that says it is definitely reef safe. I’m thinking it is going to be Clown goby, Jawfish, and small wrasse, the pool of possibilities is starting to shrink based on my ideas which is good, soon I should have it narrowed down. Although my budget right now is screaming get the gramma! I do like purple a lot. How does that sound? Jawfish, gramma, clown goby?
In the mean time I went to DPA today and got some pellets. I got the betta sized looking ones by New Life Spectrum and I got the marine type. I put about ten of those in and I’m going to test the water tonight to see if anything happened. Then tommorrow or sunday.
The heater in the DIY rock bucket is working wonders… only problem now is my tank gets too cold at night so it looks like I’m going to be doing the switcheroo every night because I’m trying to save my money… my room mate might have a small tank heater… I can’t believe I don’t have one so I’m going to have to look at home.
Maybe it is with my old 2.5 gallon freshwater tank (which I may bring up and use it maybe for fragging or as a pico… but I’m not bringing it until winter when I have a better grasp on the whole reef thing. Maybe a quarantine tank?) Any ways. I’ll let you know how the testing goes.
Well there has been too much to read and not enough time to comment, but here are my thoughts:
You can take out the table shrimp once the Ammonia levels have reached a high point.
There seems to be two things debated and icy you seem to be combining the two in your evidence. A wide range of temperatures is very different then a high level of toxins present during a tank cycle.
Have I ever been to a reef? You know the answer to that and I never once smelt ammonia.(And my ability to smell small amounts of ammonia according to my coworkers at UD and at the LFS is scary good) To force a complete cycle you have to let the ammonia get high so a complete strong cycle can happen and the bacteria are then built up and ready to handle a stronger bio load. Swinging salinity, temp, and nutrients can happen in tide pools, but often not ammonia unless a stagnant pool traps a large sick fish and then the damsels stuck in there with it would be in trouble as well.
What a fish can handle and what is right to put it through are two different things. I am sure a cat can handle a lot of abuse, but I wouldn’t put it in an environment where it would breathe toxic fumes just as I wouldn’t put a damsel or any other fish in a tank with toxic levels of ammonia.
Just curious where you measured these temperatures on the reef. It is difficult to dive to a depth of even 15 feet and get a good reading on temperature unless you are use to doing so. Many of the collectors are experienced skin divers or use scuba gear. Our animals are collected from a wide range of areas and often a couple feet below where most of us Delawareans can skin dive. This depth is a lot more stable then 2 feet from the surface. Many of the stony corals are collected close to the surface, but often softies come from deeper areas.
As I believe you stated earlier it is important that the temperature do not sit high or low, but it can swing high or low on occasion. When it comes to someone who is just starting it is good to recommend a 3-4 degree range to target because the fact is it will swing along with many other parameters. It is good to have a goal and an accepted range. Not only does a range build up a tolerance in the fish, but I believe it can also help prevent old tank syndrome.(to what degree is debatable)
Logans_daddy also brings up a huge point, fish move when they are uncomfortable. The reefs conditions are very dynamic, but so is the presence of animals during different times of day. When we trap them in a little box and raise the temperature we don’t really give them the option to swim a couple feet away to seek cooler temps. A fish may quickly swim into an area to collect some food or get away from a predator, but they won’t hang out there all the time. A fish that grazes on algae will often leave a location with it’s favorite algae to keep on the move and perhaps part of this is to keep in water chemistry its’ body prefers. Almost all cold blooded creatures across the animal kingdom move to moderate there temperature like snakes and turtles.
“The problem with articles on aquariums is that they dont need to be peer reviewed for accuracy, where as scientific publications do.†To call out my old stopping grounds, while working at UD in the College of Marine Studies some of the summer help did a water change on a hypoxic system which fish had been in for months with fresh ocean water mixed with a little tap water from a hose which raised the levels of oxygen significantly. Later that summer data was taken and a report published leaving out the part that the animals that were supposed to be deprived of oxygen where given a day to breath in the middle of the experiment. Peer review does not guarantee that the data was 100% correct. I’ve read many scientific and many hobby articles and often find flaws in both.
Jon
bugbabe623, be very very careful with books you pick up at the library. This hobby has changed leaps and bounds in the last 8 years and significantly even in the last 5. Many animals they say are impossible to keep have been kept by many with more understanding of where the animals came from and what they require. Perhaps the abundance of plankton foods explains part of this. There are also still a lot of authors who are living in the past and may even suggest such things as keeping starter fish. Lol
“I would be willing to be that most of the techonology that allow us to keep the organisms that we can today are a result of hobbyists and LFS owners and not oceanic experts.†It is true a great deal of the instruments they use in a marine biology lab were either developed or modeled after things that came out of the hobby. Things work both ways though.
I agree with logans_daddy on the pH probe all the way. I hate those test kits. I have had 4-5 pH test kits from a ton of different brands in the past that always argued with each other. I currently own two pH meters and three probes.
Bug pick up another heater. Unless you have found another way to heat water for water changes you are going to need a second heater anyways. You also don’t want to find in the middle of this coming winter that the heater in your tank is broken and have no spare.
I have heard that firefish can be hiders to begin with, but as long as you don’t have large or aggressive fish they will come out. I have found several firefish on the floor at work… We had a couple chalk bass for a couple of months and one of them did jump from one tank to another, so they can jump. Pearly jaws I couldn’t see as being a massive bio load. If you heard that on the nano forum keep in mind many of those people are keeping very very small tanks and any bio load is significant.
Jon
Wow Jon!
i think for the first time ever i agree 100% with every word you said ;D j/k
What a fish can handle and what is right to put it through are two different things
well said and i couldnt agree more. it would seem that after our countless discussions/debates our trains of thoughts are on the same track more and more everyday ;D
Phew! ok
Yes I realize that things have changed in the hobby I merely picked up the books to see the pretty pictures and then look on the internet about the fish. There is one book I am looking at and it was published 1963 and there is a picture of a cube that has about 5-7 angelfish and butterfly fish. I do understand things change and what not so I don’t read the books, I just get the pretty pictures for ideas and then look them up on the internet and see what I can find.
As for pH meters, aren’t they sorta expensive? I’m already sitting on a refractometer but if I get it the way I want I may be getting it for next to nothing hopefully. I’ll look into the pH meters. I always trust digital over those silly tubes.
And as for the heater… I believe I have one at home but I’m not positive. I’m going home next week so I think I can wait til then… if I don’t find one I promise I will get one. Because I agree. I don’t want to be stuck without a heater either in the winter up here. Especially because my NJ room mate likes the room freezing 24/7.
EDIT: Ok ebay= my best friend I just realized I had $100 that I didn’t know I had (selling stuff on ebay I forgot to deposit it ) so Refractometer and pH meter here I come. Hopefully will have both by the end of the night.
hey bug
here is the exact meter ive got. ive had it for years. very accurate and very easy to use.
im sure the auction will end a little higher than $29 but its worth watching. i think they retail for $70 or $80
I’ve got one ending in like 5 minutes that is at $15, another is a buy it now for 20 and is I think the same thing you have. I might go with the $20 one if I don’t win the refractometer from this other group.
Edit: I just won a refractometer for $20 and I’m about to get the pH meter for $15 here is the meter http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&item=120291307804
I feel good I never win auctions.
darn it I spoke too soon… I did a boo boo when I was making a bid so I lost it :BB) Oh well I’m going to get this one now:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=220267027092
I just bought it and I had a heart attack because the total said $60 and I was like… uhhhh for the pH meter and calibration fluid? Then I reallized they included the refractometer in that $60… phew! lol It is going to my house I will let you know how they are when I get them.