A log of everything that happens to my fish tanks

A lot has happened in the two days since I updated last, and I have pictures of most of it.

First, the Royal Gramma and Diamond Watchman Goby have been doing well since Monday. The gramma has found his hiding place, has become less shy, and knows when it’s feeding time. I’m fairly confident that he’ll do just fine in the tank. Still no name yet, but here are some pictures

The Diamond Watchman has found his hiding place too, but is much more shy. This makes sense because Dusty looks similar to him and gobies can be aggressive toward each other, so Dusty harasses him whenever he sees him. I don’t think it will last very long, though, because the Diamond Watchman is bigger than Dusty and already is standing his ground for a while. We saw a confrontation last night when the Diamond Watchman came out to graze on the sand (I actually got a decent picture); Dusty nervously came up and kicked up a little sand, and the Diamond Watchman eventually scampered back into his hole, but I think it’s only a matter of time before he puts Dusty in his place and comes out a lot more often. Here are the pictures I have of that:

It’s good to know at this point that both new additions are doing fine. There should be plenty of space in this tank for the both of them, and the sand bed certainly needs to be moved around more.

The next update: I’ve been tweaking the plumbing a bit for a couple of reasons. I decided that the sponges that used to be in the overflow cups are causing more harm than good, so I removed them. I want to turn the overflow that’s on the display tank into a mini-refugium (since it’s right next to the light). It would be a great place for some chaeto, so I put some down in there. I had to make a couple of adjustments, though, since the sponges were the only thing keeping Sunny from going down through the plumbing when he made his way into the overflow. I added some mesh screen onto the overflow cup and in a couple of other places so now Sunny can’t get into the overflow. I planned to take a video of the new setup, but I’ve been having more issues with the pump so I’ll probably hold off on that until those issues are taken care of.

One more thing, yesterday during the day, it looks like the cardinals were doing their thing again, because when I came home, someone had a mouthful of eggs:

It’s good to know that there’s at least one mated pair in the tank, so hopefully we’ll eventually have some babies, but I’m not holding my breath this time. The behavior is different this time, though. Two of the other cardinals (I suspect they’re both females) have been chasing the male instead of protecting him. Maybe he was messing around a little too much and now there’s some Jerry Springer action going on in the fish tank; who knows…

Hello.

On Saturday, we went to the fish store. I’d been hoping for some time to stop by and see if there was any livestock in, and also we were running low on food. I bought a few different types of food for both tanks that I won’t bore you with, but suffice it to say that everybody now has a lot more variety in their diets, which can only be a good thing. Nobody is a picky eater anymore, so everybody seems to be OK with each new type of food.

I’ll start with the saltwater tank updates: I bought an algae scraping blade since there was some algae on the sides of the tank that was getting pretty tough to look at. The magnet cleaner just didn’t have enough zazz to get this stuff off, but the blade worked very well. The only downside is that I have to stick my whole arm into the tank to clean it, but the tank looks great. You’ll probably be able to notice a big difference the next time I post pictures of that tank, but that day isn’t today. Sorry, no new pictures today

Next, I picked up a Diamond Watchman Goby that I thought was large enough to handle the fish already in the tank. These guys are sand-sifting machines (they are the same type of fish that Flip was) so as long as he can get along with Dusty, we should be OK here. Also, they had a good looking Royal Gramma which is a lot like the pseudochromis I had before (Scooter) only not as aggressive and territorial. These are both fish I had originally considered for stocking the tank, and as long as they can get accustomed to the tank’s high activity level, they will make a great addition.

That being said, they have been hiding very well since Saturday when I put them in the tank, which is why I don’t have pictures of them yet. I’ve seen them both, but not for long enough to actually take a picture of either one. Neither one of them has a name yet, but once we know they’re going to live and develop a personality, they will get names and I’ll post them here.

Also, for the second time, I found Sunny in the overflow and I had to get him out of there. I’m going to have to remodel that overflow for a couple of reasons. I’ll try to prevent any smaller fish from getting sucked up into the overflow cup, but I also want to remove the sponge filters and replace it with some live rock rubble and maybe some of the macroalgae in the refugium. I hope to get that done early this week so hopefully there will be an update soon with some pictures of what I’ve done here. If all goes well, this will be sort of a mini-refugium hanging on the back of the tank.

Next, an update on the freshwater tank: I got one more piece of driftwood and I plan to get more stem plants. Herbert enjoys the driftwood, and hopefully I’ll have some pictures of that soon. Nothing significant has changed here, so that’s why there are no new pictures yet.

With all of the depressing stuff last post, I actually have some good news today:

I mentioned last time about the fact that I haven’t been able to find Sunny. He had been missing for at least 4 days, maybe more, and 99.9% of the time in a fish tank that means they’re dead. However, fortunately for Sunny, he was alive, and hiding very well. Where was he hiding? I found him in the back of the overflow cup, underneath one of the sponges. It was an adventure getting him out, but we finally got him out safely and put him back in the main tank, and he’s doing just fine. Hopefully he won’t get adventurous again, but if he does, I may need to take some measure to make sure he doesn’t get back there again. If the pump fails (from the power going out or something like that), the water level in the part where he is gets very low, so it’s important that he doesn’t hang out back there.

Next, I have some pictures. Some are just general pictures I’ve taken recently of stuff in both tanks.

Herbert got it into his head that he wanted to dig underneath the pink coral and hide there from now on. This is not allowed because he needs to come out to eat, and when he digs, he stirs up a whole bunch of dust from the gravel and the water gets cloudy, everything gets dirty, and that’s not good for everyone else in the tank. After a small battle of wits between me and a fish, I decided it was best to just take the pink coral out, so I’ll be looking for another piece of driftwood to put there in its place.

It’s about time I updated about the breeding situation — at least now I’m able to confirm something: that batch of eggs won’t make it.

The cardinals still behave the same — the two still act like a mated pair, but a couple of days after I got the pictures with the male’s mouth full of eggs, he didn’t have them anymore and he started eating again. I was a little surprised to begin with because I thought these cardinals were a little young to be mating, so I’m sure there will be many more chances for a successful batch of eggs in the future.

A couple more things: Jetson died, I’m not quite sure why, but he was pretty well eaten up by the time I found out. This leaves an issue, since he was the only sand-sifting fish in the tank. I’ll have to get something else that stirs up the sand bed, but I’m not sure what would be compatible with Dusty and would make it very long in this tank, since Jetson isn’t aggressive at all and was one of the first fish put in the tank.

Also, I haven’t been able to find Sunny in a couple of days, which means he’s probably dead too.

Sorry for the depressing update, I guess it just balances out all of the recent happiness.