AboveTopSecret Saltwater Reefer Community

Oh, not *that* kind of reefer community. :/

Photos look amazing. I've been tossing around getting an aquarium for several years (had one as a kid, and loved it), but a coral tank looks amazing.


a reply to: rukia

Fish are peaceful and watching them is beneficial for one's health.

Sometimes I'll light some candles and put on one of the aquariums Netflix has just to listen and to watch the fish.

Hi rukia

Mostly a lurker here but logged in because I’m curious about the dragonets. I’ve been having a 75 reef tank for about two years now. 12 small fish ,various invertebrates, and a mix of mostly soft and LPS coral. I’ve always wanted to get dragonets but I know that they require lots of micro fauna or they will starve to death. I have however heard that you can buy dragonets that have been trained to eat Brine shrimp or other foods. Other than that I know they require a well-established tank full of copepods and other various small prey items. A healthy mandarin feeds like a hummingbird constantly eating all day long if yours aren’t doing that keep an eye on them and look for signs of distress or ill health.

Like I said I’d love to get one but I don’t feel like raising copepods and Brine shrimp to keep them healthy. Other than that good luck with everything.

If you live In any kind of city with a decent fish store they often stock live pods of numerous kinds. I also tried out hatching my own baby brine shrimp and I have to go say this is the way to go if your raising baby fish or have any finicky eaters. The trick I found to make it as easy as possible is to get 3-4 vessels going all started one day apart. So start one batch one day then another then another. So if you use one each day you always have fresh babies on hand. There are kits to convert pop bottles using air lines and valves. Brien shrimp eggs go a very long way. You can buy small packets for 10$ this is least cost effective but still gives you an insane amount of baby brines like months worth. Using this technique you can have live food at home always available for multiple live feeds a day of need be all contained in 3-4 1L pop bottles.

You can also buy a giant tin can of eggs for like 30$ and I imagine that would last years of not a decade.

You can also sometime train dragonettes who are fussy by giving brine watch them feed then introduce small dead mysis via pippet in their area. Once they are in feeding mode they will hit the odd dead Mysis and will eventually learn it’s good food.

a reply to: NAVO66

originally posted by: Butterfinger
Oh, REEFer Community not "Reefer" Community.

Due to fire, they are mutually exclusive...


Carry on!

My first thought was pot growing in the middle of the ocean. Lol

a reply to: Athetos

That’s just it. All that you laid out is not the direction I want to go at this point. Maybe a year ago i would have been all about it, but now between work and life I just can’t devote the extra time to such side projects. I do work very hard on my aquarium though i keep it clean, maintained, and parameters in check but it’s also very automated. auto top off for water. lights on timer automatic fish feeder etc. I have it to where I can go for days if need be without my attention. I’ve been thinking of introducing copepods into my sump and maybe they’ll work their way into the main tank and in the live rock. If I start seeing A sustainable population then maybe I’ll get a dragonet.

But for the sake of the conversation thanks for all the info about the Brine shrimp

a reply to: nugget1

My pleasure! I'm happy to share pretty pictures I take--and as for sucking you back in, even as a relatively new person in the hobby, I have to say it's addictive, especially since I've seen corals while snorkeling in Costa Rica. There was one tower of coral near the coast of Tortuga Island, but I wonder if that's still there. I went for Spanish class in high school many moons ago.

a reply to: NAVO66

for pods, you should get that chaeto reactor/refugium pod-growing set. Or hook up your own small sump/refugium where the pods will have time to breed, safe from predators.

I can help you get the info you need if you start again. LEDs are nice, and my energy bill isn't high. I do live in an apartment, currently, so the energy cost is split by everyone who lives here, etc.

[a reply to: NAVO66

Absolutely!

So, I had a mandarin successfully at the start of the tank--they let me touch them and stuff. I also got two that were paired or who rapidly paired within the first day. They're quite content. You just need to make sure to feed them high quality nutrition.

I just put way too many small soft-frozen roe in the tank, but it's okay since I have the huge fluval external filter and am doing a water change. Having this all in a ten gallon is both the challenge (for the reef) and a benefit for dragonets (the small size). The relative smallness of the tank helps them get the food and in larger tanks it's , rly a day, even though they immediately ate the Arctipods I put inside the feeder. Mandarin gobies are my favorite ocean fish. They're little water hummingbirds. They do retain nutrients, though.

Good news is: They can be healthy without constantly getting lots of pods. Pods have few calories and don't hang on in their digestive tract, whereas heartier food makes them grow. Supplementing with reef roids, etc. Apparently right before I got in the hobby they had nutrimar ova.

I want Nutrimar Ova. I've heard rumors of it showing up at reefing conventions.

As long as they eat, then you're good to go. They are gentle and shy, but very smart. They are kind to a fault and the corals like them. I've seen corals get happy just because it was by a mandy. It's odd, but pretty cool.

I'm experienced with implementing both Applied Behavioral Analysis therapy and CBT. God bless me it has worked thus far. Simply being nice goes a long way. Giving them names, etc. The clownfish are nice and don't bother anything but my hands if I'm ever dilly-dallying while cleaning lol

Have a good night, all, and I'm so happy we get to have a conversation about reefing. It's really cool

a reply to: Butterfinger

You win the funniest comment award

a reply to: NAVO66

Honestly, PM me do you have a facebook? I don't mind answering questions, but it would be easier to invite you to the reefing groups that I'm in, which can be very supportive (including Waterbox Aquarium's official group. They have really good customer service). With mandarins, I haven't needed to do much besides pray a lot and have faith in God and make sure my tank is clean and the fish, healthy. When the first mandarin died from the anenome sting, as she struggled, I seriously asked her aloud what happened did she get hurt somewhere? Where?

And she throws herself emphatically over the RTBA. I'm not saying it means the fish understands English, but I think animals understand language. That said, my parrot cichlids, Honey and Nectar, respond to verbal command. Honey follows my finger wherever I point to.

I interacted a lot with each animal. It's next to impossible to pair with an axolotl, though. Since they're likely to be mostly blind and since they only hear low frequency sound, Haku, my axolotl (had to get one since I'm half-Mexican), probably doesn't know me from Adam!

I admittedly have a lot of time on my hands currently, as I work to find a position in the place I'm moving to. I also should say that I wasted so many bottles of live pods on my other mandarin (who unfortunately got killed by a rainbow bubble tip anemone that I introduced. The anenome perished, and the Chinese fellow who has been in the hobby for 25 years kept sending me new ones because I love rainbows (as you can probably tell--I know mandarins are beloved in the hobby, but I have had a love for rainbows since Lisa Frank back in the 90's when I grew up )

The truth is: I took a calculated risk and I know it. I'm prepared to handle it, if it suddenly takes a turn south. I don't think it is, though. The male betta follows the female around and it's really quite sweet to watch, when compared with the goofy and sometimes overly violent clownfish bullying.

In fact, for everyone in this thread, there are several good groups on Facebook, full of helpful people. One is a group for women, but they might allow men since they like to help people. The owners have around 35 years of experience and got into the hobby early, kind of like one of my more trusted coral sellers in California

Goodnight, guys!

So, now on to petition the MODs to make pet threads in the science section a thing.

Goodness knows, I have a feeling people here would provide better answers than those dodgy reefing forum websites. My one recommendation is that if you buy coral, make sure that the seller is honest and actually loves the hobby and will reimburse you if something weird or unexpected happens. Sellers who enjoy the hobby want the buyers to enjoy it and have fun, too. They don't like it when things don't make it, either. The fellow who owns Lucky Corals is a good example of someone who has a lot invested in saltwater. He has a business selling coral both online and in-store. His packing methods are fastidious and he is very smart. Even still, the first wellsophyllia/trachy that I ever got didn't last a day (compared to the one pictured above that thrived for three weeks and then began ailing due to a currently still a mystery culprit of disease or pest--or likely a combination of the two. My parameters, which I recorded, are stable and good. I keep phosphates a little high at 0.4 but the zoa's love it)!

Coral are like weird photosynthetic plant-animals that can think and have unique and quirky (usually morbidly violent and sadistic lol) personalities

ATS helped me gather information for college essays, so that really moved me and I think this site should try to be geared toward using the gifts it has to help others. ATS does do that, but all forums have their fare share of banter and nonsense.

I haven't been online in a while, but if everyone is just discussing politics, then y'all are going to get depressed. It's not a good situation, regardless of where you stand, politically.

Edited because I'm tired and didn't finish a sentence before posting.

Anyway, what's everyone's opinion on using Purigen and ChemiPure Blue together in salt and fresh tanks?

Love you guys: Thank you

wow, nice pics.



my biz partner had a 300 gal saltwater tank he put in the shop.

he was in charge of all of it.

lol. he spent a fortune stocking it with all kinds of stuff.

his centerpiece was a lion fish.
they kept dying and the tank kept leaking.

my favs were the ribbon eel and a baby moray,

it was nice for a while until it got too expensive to keep going.

he donated it to the local high school where they set it up in biology .

they did a hell of a job with it.

lots of coral and reef fish.

very pretty.

they are a lot of work.

we were glad it found a good home.

i think he even got to write it off.
lol.

SPAM

AboveTopSecret Saltwater Reefer Community

Dang , folks need to be careful.
I am a child of the 70s.
That I don't remember .

Fellow (reefer) fishkeeper here.
This was the best I could get after 4 attempts at capturing a photo of the mandarinfish. He's more elusive than Sasquatch...

Reefer Madness! An expensive addiction.

I took a couple more.




The red box is highlighting the tuxedo urchin but it's pinched a few pieces of coral and is pretty well camouflaged

a reply to: rukia

I went for Spanish class in high school many moons ago.

So did my granddaughter last summer! The pictures were amazing; I'd love to have been a chaperone!
I look forward to seeing many more pictures!

a reply to: rukia



“Anyway, what's everyone's opinion on using Purigen and ChemiPure Blue together in salt and fresh tanks?”

Perigen and Chemipure blue Are both great products and would work well in your size tank but for me it’s a bit of a struggle for my size.

To give a little background I only got back into this hobby because a work associate was getting out of it and sold me his entire set up plus livestock and RODI filter for water treatment for about $450. I calculate that I easily grabbed about $3500 worth of stuff and couldn’t pass it up. But once I was fully into it I realized I was in a very expensive adventure and had to find ways to lessen the load of ongoing consumables.

For pH buffering I use a DIY concept. I take baking soda which is sodium bicarbonate I’ll put about a cup and a half spread out on a sheet pan and bake it in the oven for about two hours at 100° this turns it into sodium carbonate I then mix it into a gallon of purified water to where it’s super saturated. With this solution I had about 30 mL into my 2 1/2 gallon auto top off reservoir and this keeps my DKH at about 8.4 but don’t take my word for it just came to me through careful trial and error.

For managing high nitrates I use a product called nitro Zorb it’s more cost-effective than purlgen and is easier to “recharge” just put it in very hot super salty water for a few hours and it’s good to go for another cycle.

Four phosphate management I use a product called Kolar GFO in a reactor container. It’s dusty and hard to rinse out but cost-effective.

My side passion in this hobby is finding ways to cut cost across the spectrum so that I can focus on the high dollar items I really want. For example I don’t use $10 filter media bags for filtration purposes I use pantyhose. OK yeah it’s embarrassing to buy pantyhose but save a lot of money and they last just as long. Hobbyist use high priced super glue gel labeled safe for aquariums to mount coral frags. the same stuff can be bought at a discount store for $1.25. It’s the exact same formula believe me. I also use good old fashion activated carbon to clean up and polish my water and I found out that you don’t need to keep it in there all the time just a couple of days and then take it back out make it last longer and it’s better for your aquarium.

I do these and other cost cutting measures so that when I want to get something nice I have the money budgeted for it and won’t get that “look” from the wife. I would guess half of the living things I added to my aquarium I snuck in to the tank when she wasn’t looking hoping she wouldn’t notice it.

“ oh no honey that’s been in there for a long time now that was a tiny little frag a few months ago see how much it grew!!”

Nice pictures. I've dived on coral reefs. Never knew that you could put one in a tank.

In the Navy we called refrigerators "reefers". When I first saw this I thought a refrigerator using saltwater as a coolant. I thought it was one of the "survival" threads.