Blog Comments

Mits, at a recent reefers meeting I met some people who did clown reproduction. It is quite difficult to feed them, I don't recall the details, but you need to produce a steady amount of pod-like creatures to feed them, enriched with vitamins or something similar, etc. If you google around you'll find more details.

I don't know anything about it at all. Notta... but I do know this. If I could raise baby clown fish my wife would immediately triple our tank money. I'd say go for it! lol

That's great Slappy. I've watched a few fish get overly thin over time only to perish and agree that it has to be an internal parasite since all the other fish were fat, healthy and getting plenty of food. One of my friends used medicated food in his reef which helped cure a starved-looking fish, which made a full recovery. It took time, but he didn't have to catch it nor put it in a QT / hospital tank.

I just read an article about internal, bacterial parasites that prompted me to write. If that's the fish's affliction, it might be easy enought to treat. If you could catch and quarantine the fish and treat with Seachem Paraguard, you might save him. It's a pain, I know, but any effort is better than watching him waste away and die. I thought it was impossible to cure fish until last year. I received a Desjardini Sailfin Tang that was near death after a shipping accident who then contracted a massive case of fungus. I put it in a bare ten-gallon tank with nothing more than a 4" PVC pipe about six inches in length which he hid in. I dosed Seachem's Paraguard daily. Paraguard is amazing IMHO, as is Polyguard. I used an old hang-on-back box filter for mechanical filtration (but no chemical filtration media such as charcoal). I did 50% water changes every other day and changed the filter pad once a week. Fed him lightly but regularly (luckily he ate). In a little over 30 days, he was completely healed and went back into my display tank. He's healthy to this day. The hardest part was catching him, which took almost all day. The water changes were annoying, but it was worth it to save a beautiful specimen.

Our Rainfordi Goby died like that... and at the time I had a lot of algae for him to eat in the tank so it wasn't lack of food that was making him get thinner ... good luck, I hope your fish recovers and doesn't die now.

i dont want to steer you in the wrong direction as we all know ick can be deadly but, IME the hippo tangs do not take well to tretment with copper. and hypo sounds easy but if your not on top of it, you will kill the fish with ammonia posion. if the fish has been seriving thus far than leave him be and feed him well to keep him healthy. keep the tank water at its best and siphon the gravel often. do what you can to keep stress low in the tank with high oxygin. drop the salinity to at least .022 if you have coral. if there are no coral in the tank than drop the salinity to .019 this only helps the fish breath and slows down the cycle of ick. if a hypo in a seperate tank is your choice of treatment, remember donot go lower than .009 and if you are keeping a filter or a piece of live rock in this tank, the bacteria will dye off once you lower salinity to around .015 good luck

Id try running a diatom filter in the tank for awhile it will take out the free floating ick parasites. It has been my understanding that the life cycle is around a month. Also ive read that hippos are more substitutable to ick then other fish. You would have to do this over a month to make sure you are picking it up as it becomes free floating.

Ich has 4 life stages when it falls off it is in a the larva stages then moves to the free swimmer stage. by the time you see it on the fiish it is in the last stage. the parasite can live for 4 to 6 weeks with out a host in the right settings

In my opinion, yes. The ich does not really go away as long as there are hosts in your tank on which to feed. The stage of ich when the spots can be seen only lasts several days. When the spots are not visible, the ich is in a different stage of its lifecycle, normally in the rockwork somewhere when it dropped off the fish at night. After a period of time, those hatch and look for new hosts, which they must find in 24 hours or so or they die. Then the spots reappear. You can easily have multiple "waves" of ich in your tank that make it seem like the fish is always infected.

Many folks believe a strong fish can fight off ich. This is probably true. But since the ich is not really gone, another wave of the "spots" will eventually come and prey on the fish again. Over time, this will take it's toll on the fish. It should be mentioned that many folks have ich outbreaks in their reef tanks for long periods of time and they don't seem to lose fish. But I feel those people are in the minority... kind of like people that can grow SPS without protein skimmers... they exist, but you don't see it often.

I'm a big proponent of treatment... but you need to treat the tank, not necessarily the fish. You need to make sure the little buggers not currently on a fish are killed, so they don't reinfect other fish.

Other thoughts?

Yeah, I think I will go with the Lumenbrights but it'll have to wait until I sell some frags. I walked into premium aquatics today and walked out with 2 mandarins (one for each tank), 2 firefish to add to the 1 in there, 24 nerite snails, 2 sand sifting cucs, a coco worm and a flame scallop. I really needed to bolster the cleanup crew and I wanted to add some diversity to the livestock. It's a large tank that can easily handle that and plenty more. I also have some money earmarked for the Hanna calcium checker when that comes out. Maybe it's time to list these frags. As far as the LED goes, I keep seeing new products every time I logon to reefbuilders along with reading posts debating different color combinations. I just have a feeling that if I hold out a couple years there will be more of a consensus, parts will be less expensive, and some awesome new products will have come out.

Definitely go with the Lumenbrights, Mits. Your tank will get far more light than previously. With my tank, I measured the spot in the Toadstool leather coral before and after. With the spider reflector, it measured 144 PAR at 9" off the water. With the Lumenbright at 18" off the water, the PAR was 444.

You will finally stop wasting light, and your tank will not run as warm because of the elevated lights. I bought pendants with the glass shield to avoid all the salt spatter that would otherwise erode the reflective surfaces over time. Mine are now over 3 years old and still look like new.

I loved my lumen bright and because of the design I was able to raise up the reflector and actually saw a temperature drop. I have since changed to led for to help with energy and bulb costs. LEDs def cost more up front but pay off in the long run

I just changed from 4 vho 165watts to 3 250w hqi lummax 3 pendents from sun light supply and there hasn't been any heat difference between the two. Personally im loving the 14k phoenix bulbs and getting great coverage over the 6 ft tank

Hey i have a mandarin that was tank raised and i was concerned aboutb it starving... but it greedily snaps up most food (not flakes) and bloodworm/shrimp. It will even take it from my long tweezers as a target feed. It spends its day poking around the tank kind of foraging. It pays no attention to any other fish, nor them to it. I have caught it being cleaned by my shrimp. It is one of my favs. Very peaceful.

I would think a Mandarin would be fine in a 120g tank, but you are wise to consider other pod-eating fish in the system like your Six Line. Keep that in mind with future fish purchases to avoid adding too much competition for the mandarin.

And you might try the Mandarin Diner idea I posted about years ago, as a way to supplement its diet.

That's great news.

There is probably more that you dont see than the ones swarming. Any rock close to the glass check with a magnifying glass in the dt if you see any your probably ok plus you can always net some from the fug once a week to put in the dt.

I traded for another pump that runs 1500 gph as well as switching out maxijet mods to add another 600. Everything seems happier now, my blue millie is showing polyp extension for the first time since I've owned it.

what about a closed loop with a reef flow dart. You could even run the return around the top if you dont want more equipment in the tank. I have a 100 gallon tank with a snapper and an MP40 and it is plenty of flow with out much equipment in the tank.

I've never really worked with powerheads on the sides, but I was thinking about that too. I take it that it works just as well?