Jestersix

Felicia's 40B Predator Reef

This is so cool - not what you went through with your fish going psycho - but the direction you're taking it. I had an "aggressive" salt water tank years ago (lion, niger trigger, and a snowflake moray) and they were so much fun. The one thing I didn't expect, one night the eel found an opening in the lid of my tank and spent a couple of hours on the carpet. Found him in the morning covered with lint and ants - rinsed him off, tossed him back the tank, and he was eating again that night. Not sure if it was a fluke, but I figure it's worth mentioning. Looking forward to following!
 
Corallus said:
This is so cool - not what you went through with your fish going psycho - but the direction you're taking it. I had an "aggressive" salt water tank years ago (lion, niger trigger, and a snowflake moray) and they were so much fun. The one thing I didn't expect, one night the eel found an opening in the lid of my tank and spent a couple of hours on the carpet. Found him in the morning covered with lint and ants - rinsed him off, tossed him back the tank, and he was eating again that night. Not sure if it was a fluke, but I figure it's worth mentioning. Looking forward to following!
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I think the aggressive, predator fish are super fascinating, so I could see why you enjoyed your FOWLR tank. I know the eels are supposed to be escape artists. Luckily my lid fits snuggly and is 1/4" mesh, so its pretty secure. There's no equipment over the rim of the tank, so there are no gaps anywhere. I also have the lid taped down to the rim of the tank so the eel can't lift it up (the screen lid is really light weight). I actually read that eels secrete some mucus covering when they're out of water and can survive for quite a long time, so you're always supposed to put them back in the tank if you find them on the floor. Glad you rescued yours!
 
Coral reefer said:
I don't think silver sides are wry good nutritionally. A fine first food, but I'd usually train lions to eat ocean nutrition formula one or vhp.
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Yeah, I figure that I need to give him some good variety long terms. I just wanted to get him all settled and eating well before I mess with anything. Silversides is what Aquatic Collection was feeding him, so he knows they're food. I bought some jumbo mysis that I will start mixing in next because Fu Manchu's are supposed to eat mostly crustaceans in the wild. I also read that getting a bit of fresh seafood from the grocery store and chopping it up is good. I think bits of shrimp, clams, calamari, etc would all work. So you get them trained to eat Ocean Nutrition? You mean the frozen blend right? I assume lions wouldn't go for flake or pellets. What's VHP? My only issue with the ocean nutrition is that its not very big chunks so it would need to be more broadcast fed. I'd like to limit the amount of uneaten food that ends up in my system by feeding the lions and eels individual chunks of food with tongs. Since I can't have much of a CUC with predators, I don't want uneaten food that will just decay.
 
It does really sound like fun to have something different for a while!
I was going to do that with my extra-large Fuge, essentially having two tanks, but it never really worked out.

With big predator fish, I also worried about keeping the water quality good enough for corals.
 
rygh said:
It does really sound like fun to have something different for a while!
I was going to do that with my extra-large Fuge, essentially having two tanks, but it never really worked out.

With big predator fish, I also worried about keeping the water quality good enough for corals.
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Yeah I'm not sure how they will effect water quality. Luckily I don't have a bunch of SPS or anything right now, so it may just determine which corals are ok in the system. My clams, anemones, and LPS seem to love a bit more nutrients in the water and of course I think softies will do just fine. I was planning to add some more SPS, but I may have to change that plan a bit and stick to more softies and gorgonians. I can probably do a couple of the easier SPS to get the mixed reef feel I'm going for now.
 
Ocean nutrition comes in cube as well as flat packs. Cubes are what I use for this. It has a bunch of different seafood stuff in it already. Vhp is very high protein. Formula one works well, but I think the vhp is better for your use.
 
Coral reefer said:
Ocean nutrition comes in cube as well as flat packs. Cubes are what I use for this. It has a bunch of different seafood stuff in it already. Vhp is very high protein. Formula one works well, but I think the vhp is better for your use.
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I'll have to try to find some of the VHP. Do you know if its in good sized chunks or is it really blended up like a lot of cube food? I really don't want to broadcast feed a ton of it. I'd like to give the food directly to the lion and eel with tweezers.
 
You may be best to just buying whole U35 gulf shrimp at Monterrey Fish and feeding him that. Even if he eats a lot it would still be a relatively cheap food source and it's probably as close to his natural diet as you can manage. I fed my reef lobster a huge variety of seafood out of concern that he would get a proper diet but in truth he seemed to eat just about anything.
 
bondolo said:
You may be best to just buying whole U35 gulf shrimp at Monterrey Fish and feeding him that. Even if he eats a lot it would still be a relatively cheap food source and it's probably as close to his natural diet as you can manage. I fed my reef lobster a huge variety of seafood out of concern that he would get a proper diet but in truth he seemed to eat just about anything.
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Yeah, I was thinking just getting fresh human grade seafood might be the easiest route and not that expensive. I think the lions will eat quite a few different things, but I want to give him at least a bit of variety to make sure he stays healthy. I think some combo of silversides and shrimp would probably be enough most of the time.
 
Ok its photo time! Let's start by showing off Mushu! He's such a gorgeous fish and he was being very sociable tonight.










And some photos of the eel! He's pretty photogenic
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The eel was being a little overly friendly with the lionfish tonight. Luckily he didn't get stung!


The blenny was also being really photogenic tonight.






How about some coral shots?

Micromussa


Bowerbanki




Fox Coral


Purple sponge


Duncan


Frogspawn


Clams


 
Alright so now for an update on the tiny coris wrasse. I spent hours trying to catch him before I added the lionfish, but I just couldn't get him without completely tearing up my tank and sandbed. I've been worried he's going to end up as a snack because he is way too small to be in with lionfish and the eel. The breeder net I ordered on Amazon came today, so I was ready to try to trap the coris wrasse tonight because I'd have somewhere to put him until I can rehome him. I decided to try the water bottle trap (I'll give credit to Eddie for this idea
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), so I cut the top portion off a water bottle and flipped it upside down inside the bottle. Then I placed some mysis at the bottom of the bottle and set it in the tank.



About an hour after putting the trap into the tank....I caught a fish!

Unfortunately, it wasn't the fish I wanted to catch.
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So I released the blenny and re-deployed the trap. Less than half an hour later and I caught the coris! He's now safe and sound in the breeder net until I can take him to the store. So no need to worry about him becoming a snack now
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Just buy it. It's like a gel consistency.
FeliciaLynn said:
I'll have to try to find some of the VHP. Do you know if its in good sized chunks or is it really blended up like a lot of cube food? I really don't want to broadcast feed a ton of it. I'd like to give the food directly to the lion and eel with tweezers.
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its a very solid cube. Doesn't fall apart.
 
FeliciaLynn said:
Less than half an hour later and I caught the coris! He's now safe and sound in the breeder net until I can take him to the store. So no need to worry about him becoming a snack now
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Good for you. I was worried about that wrasse!

Years ago I had a Volitan LF. He managed to swallow a red Coris (Coris gaimard) that was larger than him. Unfortunately it killed both of them. Expensive meal!

Your new additions are beautiful. Great pics too!
 
aqua-nut said:
Good for you. I was worried about that wrasse!

Years ago I had a Volitan LF. He managed to swallow a red Coris (Coris gaimard) that was larger than him. Unfortunately it killed both of them. Expensive meal!

Your new additions are beautiful. Great pics too!
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Yeah I can definitely sleep better knowing the wrasse is safe now. He's just too cute of a little baby fish to watch him get eaten.

That makes me nervous about lions! Hopefully mine won't get eyes bigger than their stomachs and go after any of the larger fish. I'm hoping to keep them fed well enough to be able to keep my clowns and the starry blenny.

Thank you! Glad you liked the photos!
 
bondolo said:
I really like the fox coral. I don't get a sense of the scale in the macro shot though. How big is it?
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I really like it too. I got it from Aquatic Collection's ebay auctions a while back. Its skeleton is pretty tiny, like 1.5" long and like 0.5" wide but then the polyps expand quite a bit bigger than that. When its all puffed up its probably 2" x 3". The polyps honestly look like a medium-ish sized mushroom. I've seen bigger pieces at Aquatic Collection before but this is a smaller frag.
 
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