Pictures of Ninong's tank in progress.

**Minh Nguyen** · 12-20-2003, 07:40 AM

Great pair of fish. I hope they will do well and will be the star of your tank.
good luck with your algae.
Minh

**Ninong** · 12-20-2003, 09:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Minh Nguyen

Great pair of fish. I hope they will do well and will be the star of your tank.
good luck with your algae.
Minh

Thanks, Minh.

**Ninong** · 12-20-2003, 10:45 PM

I decided that if I wanted to keep a pair of Scott's Fairy Wrasses I needed to make my tank more wrasse-resistant. I figured that I may as well raise the bottom black acrylic shield at the same time to cover more of the sand bed.

As you can see in the above picture, I have increased the height of the black acrylic shields both at the top of the tank and at the bottom. Previously the bottom shield was 5" tall and it is now 6.75" tall. The top shield was previously 7" tall and it is now 10" tall. I purchased some cut-to-size pieces of 1/8" thick black acrylic to glue inside the existing 1/4" thick acrylic shields. It cost me only $22 (including tax) for those cut-to-order pieces of 1/8" acrylic at the same plastics shop in Baton Rouge. I glued them to the existing shields using Weld-On #16.

Only the top 1" of the 7" DSB is visible now.

I used white eggcrate to close off the space at the rear sides of the tank and a piece of 1/2" PVC to block the 3/4" gap between the rear of the tank and the wall of the "stand." You can see how high the black acrylic shields are now. Any fish that jumps over these must be on steroids.

Left side of the tank. Notice that I also covered the top of the corner overflow compartment. Here's another little trick I learned: I run my water level in the corner overflow compartment fairly high, usually within an inch or so of the top grate, and this has a tendency to cause salt creep to partially block the air hole at the top of the Stockman standpipe. I used to stick an ice pick in the hole every other day or so to clear it of salt creep but now I'm simply squirting tankwater over the top of the standpipe with the turkey baster every day and that seems to do the trick. Now I don't have to worry about accidentally dropping the ice pick in the tank. If you neglect keeping the salt creep out of that air hole you will be sorry in the middle of the night when the overflow gets noisy at 3 a.m. and wakes you up.

My pair of Australian variant Scott's Fairy Wrasses (Cirrhilabrus scottorum) that I ordered from The Marine Center arrived at 12:35 p.m. Friday. They were in a huge styrofoam box (28"L x 14"W x 12"H) that was shrink wrapped a couple of times. And the styrofoam box was inside a cardboard box. Each fish was in at least two gallons of water, quadruple bagged. These were very large bags. There was a heat pack and lots of newspaper stuffing between the bags. The temperature of the shipping water was 63 degrees Fahrenheit upon arrival and the salinity was 40 ppt (a bit on the high side).

I removed half the shipping water from each bag and placed each bag in a separate bucket. This still left a good three inches of water in the bag for the fish to move around in. I began adding a cup of 81 degree F tankwater every five or six minutes for about an hour. It took that long to get the water to the point where it was approximately half tank water and half original shipping water. The female was alert and moving around as soon as I unpacked the bags but the male was resting on his side inside the bag and breathing heavily. After about an hour of adding tankwater to the shipping bags I decided to float the bags in the tank to equalize the temperature. Actually I had been gradually raising the temperature the whole time I was adding tankwater to the bags while they were in the buckets.

I added a cup of tankwater to each floating bag two or three times for about 20 minutes but I began to get concerned about both fish, especially the male since he was still on his side and decided that perhaps it would be better to get them into the tank. I added the female to the tank first and she immediately swam into the rock structure to hide. When I added the male he immediately sank to the sand bed on his side and remained in the same spot at the left side of the tank. The only lights that I had on at this time were the two 55w PC actinics. I could see the female inside the central cave resting on the sand bed. She was resting normally on her belly. The male on the other hand was still on his side and inactive except for the heavy breathing. After about an hour of that I decided that there was nothing I could do at that point, so I turned off the actinics and left just the 25w blue incandescent moonlight on. This was around 5 p.m. I figured I would wait until morning and hope for the best.

I checked the tank at 7 a.m. this morning with a flashlight and found the female in the same spot. She moved as soon as the flashlight hit her. The male was in the same spot on the sand bed but he was completely dead. I removed him and knocked off a couple of Nassarius snails. This was an extremely depressing experience. I have been upset about this all day. I don't know if it would have made any difference if I had done a long and drawn out three hour acclimation or not. The female was in much better shape upon arrival and she seems to have made the transition to my tank without any problems. Both fish were acclimated exactly the same. This is the first time I have mail-ordered fish. I am not saying that the vendor did anything wrong. The packaging was excellent. I don't know if the below freezing overnight temperatures caused any of the problems but the shipping water was 63 degrees, which seems like it should have been tolerable.

I sent a couple of emails to the vendor, one at the time of arrival and one this morning, and I hope to hear from him Monday. I definitely want to get another supermale to go with my female.

This is the male in the shipping bag floating in the tank.

This is the female in the shipping bag floating in the tank.

This is the male where he landed on the sand bed. He never did move from that spot.

This is an extremely sad picture. The male was much more gorgeous than this picture shows. Even dead he is 5.25" long. He was probably 5.5" long alive.

This is the female around 10:30 a.m. this morning. She is about 4" long and is the most beautiful female Scott's Fairy Wrasse I have ever seen.

Another picture of the female taken this morning.

Shot of the female turning.

OK, I know she's half hidden in this picture but it's more in focus than some of the others and you can get a good idea of the coloration.

Shot of the female at the right side of the tank with Primus. This shot was taken around 5 p.m. today.

Don't get the idea that the female has been swimming around the tank all day, she hasn't. I fed the tank four different times with Cyclop-Eeze, brine shrimp and mysis shrimp to get her to move out from inside the rock structure. Most of the time it didn't work. In fact, I believe all of the pictures I got today were taken when I was not feeding the tank. I would say that she ventured out of the rock structure perhaps half a dozen times all day for no more than a total of about five minutes. None of these pictures captures what she looks like with all of her fins extended. Every time she did that I wasn't ready with the camera. That picture of her turning around a frag at the back of the tank was the closest I got to catching her swimming in open water. If the shutter had gone off a fraction of a second earlier I would have had a full on profile with fins extended, but she was moving too fast for me.

What can I say? I'm extremely depressed that I lost the male but thrilled that the female seems to have made it OK. I just hope that I can get another supermale to go with my female.

**Minh Nguyen** · 12-20-2003, 11:12 PM

She is very beautiful. I hope that you get the male soon and he will be A OK this time around.
Minh

***Reefland*** · 12-20-2003, 11:18 PM

The female sure is beautiful Ninong! Hopefully the vendor will give you credit that you can use towards another male and get the pair that you wanted.

It's always hard/impossible to determine "what" went wrong and it is definitely depressing but I guess at times it is to be expected.

Keep that female healthy and happy though, she is a beatiful fish!
Scott Z.

***zhenya*** · 12-21-2003, 12:16 AM

George,

I'm so sorry that the male had died

The female has incredible colors and I just can imagine what the male looked like...he must've been truly amaizing.
I wish you better luck next time,my friend. I think the temperature with 40ppt salinity combined had something to do with the males demise.Although it is not clear as to why he was in that sad shape upon arival but I don't think this fish are used to low temperatures like this.
Now you got me all exited and I'm thinking of getting a pair like this for myself in the future.If I ever upgrade to a bigger tank I'll make sure to keep my design with them in mind.

**Ninong** · 12-21-2003, 03:17 PM

My female Scott's Fairy Wrasse is much more active today. I think she will be OK. She is really a beautiful fish. It is hard to describe the color of her body because it changes depending on your line of sight. She can look blue, green or purplish-blue-green depending on your angle.

Check out these pictures I just took and you will see what I mean.

From this angle she looks blue. Check out the dark blue anal fin.

Here she looks bluish-green.

Her dorsal fin is three different colors -- golden yellow on the edge, orange against the body and a deep blue streak between those two colors at the posterior half of the fin.

In this picture she is more greenish.

Here she looks purplish-bluish-greenish from this angle.

***Reefland*** · 12-21-2003, 06:05 PM

The 4th picture looks great!

Have you observed any "jumping" behavior yet or any territory problems from the Rabbitfish?

**Minh Nguyen** · 12-21-2003, 06:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Reefland

The 4th picture looks great!

Have you observed any "jumping" behavior yet or any territory problems from the Rabbitfish?

I disagree.

All the pictures look great.
That fish is difficult to photograph.
Minh

**Ninong** · 12-21-2003, 07:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Minh Nguyen

I disagree.

All the pictures look great.
That fish is difficult to photograph.
Minh

I agree with Minh 100%. You have no idea how long I sat in front of the tank waiting to take those pictures.

What would happen is that the wrasse would come slowly out of the entrance to the central cave and look both ways before proceeding. The only problem with trying to photograph her there is that it's in the shade. So even though she's relatively still, it's not a good spot. Then once she comes out she moves too fast for the digital camera By the time I click the shutter she's 10" away from the original spot that I focused on. What I had to do was focus on the location that I expected her to go and then click the shutter just before she entered that space. The funny thing is that she always leaves the central cave through the front door but she always returns through the roof; so I have half a dozen pictures of just her tail going through the roof of the cave because the camera is too slow.

I'll post a couple of them in this reply in a few minutes just to prove my point.

There have been absolutely no problems with aggression by any of the three fish in the tank. In fact, Primus is possibly making a pest of himself by following her around everywhere she goes. When I had the Flame Angel, Primus and the Flame went everywhere together but it was usually Primus doing the leading and Bacchus following.

As far as Comus is concerned, he isn't.

He just wants to know what's up with the new dinner schedule. As far as he's concerned, four times a day sounds about right. Comus and Primus get along great and it looks like their new roommate is fine by them. And of course she doesn't bother either one of them at all.

So far I have not observed any jumping by anybody. I believe the jumping problem is more likely to happen with males and more likely as a result of spawning behavior. I have taken steps to make my tank more secure and pictures will be posted in a few minutes showing the newest modifications.

P.S. -- Here are the pictures I promised:

That's the tail end of the female wrasse going through the roof of the central cave. I clicked the shutter when she was at least 8" higher up.

Close but no cigar. I finally gave up on trying to catch her in open water above the rock structure and focused my efforts on capturing her in front of the rocks closer to the sand bed. Once she gets above the rocks she moves too fast -- just a blur of brilliant colors.

**Ninong** · 12-21-2003, 07:29 PM

Someone on Reef Central warned me today that in his experience male Scott's Fairy Wrasses will jump quite high. Therefore, after consultations with Tom Ridge, I have decided to upgrade the jumping threat level in my tank from yellow to orange.

This is my temporary solution:

At least it gets the job done without blocking the light from the fixture. The top of the tank is now fully enclosed unless a fish decides to jump from the back of the tank towards the front through the 1"-2" gap (it sags in the middle) and land on top of the eggcrate.

I think this means that I really need a larger tank with a fully enclosed top sooner rather than later.

So what happens if a wrasse hits the extremely hot tempered glass UV shield on the bottom of the Aquastarlight Future fixture? Anyone have any experience along those lines? Fortunately my light fixtures are a full 11" above the surface. There is only 1/2" space between the halide fixture and the PC fluorescent fixture so it is not likely that anything could jump through that gap and land on top of the halide fixture. The top is curved anyway and even though it gets too hot to touch, it is nowhere near as hot as the glass UV shield on the bottom of the fixture.

**Ninong** · 12-21-2003, 08:04 PM

OK, the pictures I promised have just been added to that previous reply -- the shots of the female wrasse entering the central cave through the roof.

**Ninong** · 12-22-2003, 03:41 PM

I just spoke with Randy Walker of The Marine Center and they will replace my deceased supermale Australian Scott's Fairy Wrasse. Their next shipping date is not until January 8th. due to the holidays. I had to mail them the body of the deceased wrasse via priority mail. I put the frozen specimen in a ziplock baggy and covered it with a lot of table salt. Then I wrapped it with aluminum foil and mailed it to them in a small cardboard box. I figured I would have to do that because that seems to be standard policy with most online livestock vendors.

I'm not sure if they have another one as large as the first one that didn't make it. They picked out the largest pair that they had when they filled my order. I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed that they find something nice.

Randy told me that I might have been able to save it if I had done an extremely lengthy slow acclimation over several hours. I will keep that in mind if such a situation ever comes up again. At the time I couldn't decide whether to speed up the process or drag it out.

The surviving wrasse is doing great. She is very active and I am now certain that she is eating. It was difficult for me to tell if she was eating or not the past couple of days because she was staying inside the cave structure when I fed the tank but this morning she was very much into the feeding process. I fed the tank with mysis shrimp and bloodworms and she definitely ate all the bloodworms she could find.

Believe it or not it's 73 degrees outside right now. I guess that means this is another Christmas without snow.

Current Conditions

73°F Partly Cloudy Feels Like 73°F
UV Index:3 Low Dew Point:55°F Humidity:53% Visibility: Unlimited Pressure:30.16 inches and falling Wind: From the South Southeast at 15 gusting to 20 mph

**Ninong** · 12-22-2003, 04:30 PM

The three amigos.

Solo shot.

Another shot in the right front corner of the tank.

**Minh Nguyen** · 12-22-2003, 04:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ninong

........
Randy told me that I might have been able to save it if I had done an extremely lengthy slow acclimation over several hours. I will keep that in mind if such a situation ever comes up again. At the time I couldn't decide whether to speed up the process or drag it out......

Ninong,
For acclimation of fish or invertebrates, I use a drip system. Get some rigid air tubing and heat it up with a match or something so you can bend it. Make it into a hook so you can hook it to the side of the tank. Connect this with flexible air tubing of the desired length. Use a plastic air valve to regulate the rate of flow. I use this to drip acclimation of new animals and also to drip kalk as needed.
By adjust this rate of flow, you can easily optimally acclimate you fish. None of this cup every 5-15 minutes.
Minh

**Ninong** · 12-22-2003, 04:48 PM

Minh,

I usually clean out my 2.5-gal Kent Aquadoser and use it. I just fill it with tankwater and adjust the drip as slow as I want. I could adjust it as slow as one gallon every four or five hours if I wanted to. I have used it for acclimating clams and snails but I didn't use it for any of my previous fish. I will definitely use it on the next fish I get shipped from an online vendor. My other fish were all purchased locally and the water was approximately the same salinity as mine and the journey home was only an hour long. I should have taken longer considering the huge difference in salinity between the shipping water (40 ppt) and my tankwater (35 ppt).

Thanks for the advice.

**Poseidon** · 12-23-2003, 11:44 PM

HOLY SUPER COOL FISH NINONG!!!

If that was the Female I can't wait to see the MALE!!! those are Incredible and are very worthy of the title Showcase Fish!!!

I'm sorry you lost the male, it is heartbreaking I'm sure. And FWIW from the pictures and description of the male you give I think he was DOA and nothing you could have done would have mattered... Aside from a shot of Adrenaline!!!

The problem with your digital camera is the shutter lag time and is my biggest complaint about the D point and Shoots!!! Thats the one thing I LOVE about my 10D... Push the shutter and get a picture!!!

Good Luck on the next Super Male, I'm sure you'll do everything you can to make it go right!!!

Mike

**Ninong** · 01-08-2004, 03:59 PM

The tank is exactly 6 months old today.

Today is also the day that The Marine Center was supposed to be shipping me a replacement supermale Australian Scott's Fairy Wrasse to replace the one that died. Unfortunately they didn't have a suitable replacement available at this time. They offered to credit my bank card now or they would pick out a suitable supermale from their next shipment which may or may not happen within the next three or four weeks. I asked them to just wait until they received some more Australian Scott's and select a nice male for me then. So that's the situation on that front. Hopefully they can find a male larger than my present female. She doesn't have a name yet because I have to wait until I see the size and coloration of the new fish in order to determine which one is going to be the male. As it is now my female is starting to show more dark blue in her dorsal fine and more dark blue on the anterior edges of her pectorals. Her coloration is holding up reasonably well but there might be slight fading in the area just forward of the caudal peduncle. Intensity of coloration in Cirrhilabrus wrasses is a function of social interaction with conspecifics. For best coloration you should keep at least three of a species -- one male and two females. I am hoping that the coloration will hold up reasonably well with just a pair.

I am extremely pleased with my female Australian Scott's and with my dealings with the vendor. I am just keeping my fingers crossed that they can find a nice supermale a little larger than my female. My problem is that she is a fully mature female and I worry that in the absence of a male she may begin changing into a male herself. I don't believe I will have any problems if TMC can get me a supermale larger than 4.5" within the next three to six weeks but if it takes much longer than that I may have to consider getting one or two additional females a little smaller than my present one and letting her become the male.

All three fish in the tank get along famously. The Foxface Rabbitfish hangs with the Scott's Fairy Wrasse and the Orchid Dottyback ignores them both and stays out of the way. At feeding time the wrasse and the rabbitfish compete to see who can eat the most before it's all gone. The dottyback keeps out of their way and eats whatever comes his way. There is no aggression between any of them but the wrasse will take food right out of the mouth of the rabbitfish if it is a large enough piece of shrimp or squid that part of it is sticking out of his mouth. At feeding time the two larger fish get a little rambunctious and the wrasse swam into my expensive blue tort frag the other day clipping about 1/2" off the secondary branch. I mounted the tiny frag on a small piece of rock but I don't know if it will make it or not. I also moved the blue tort main frag to a new spot more in the center of the tank and a few inches farther back. In the previous spot it wasn't as blue on the front facing side as it was on the backside so I moved it to a spot where it is more inline with the halides.

I don't know what happened to my Ricordea yuma polyps. They were doing great for months and then started going downhill at the same time that I lost the Bali aquacultered SPS colony that was only about 3" away from them. They finally decided to go to Ricordea heaven last week. My two R. florida pieces are doing just fine.

I have these two different Fungia corals in my tank. I am pretty sure the larger one is Fungia fungides. Anyway the larger one is much larger now than it was when I got it and I may have to move it to a different spot. I'll probably have it trade places with the smaller one at the left end of the tank. These guys are phototaxic and will move towards the light if they feel that the light is better in another spot. The little one hasn't moved at all since I put it in the tank but the larger one moves constantly. I deliberately placed it in a slightly shaded spot at first to let it acclimate first and to see if it would indeed move when it was good and ready. It started moving about two weeks after I put it in the tank. It moved just a couple of inches to the right so that it wasn't shaded anymore. The only problem now is that it has grown much larger and part of it is in the shade, so it has a tendency to move all the way up against the front glass. I have a tendency to move it back about an inch and a half so that I won't bump into it cleaning the glass. Then the next morning it is back up against the front glass again. It seems to wait until I am asleep before sneaking back up against the glass.

It doesn't like being moved one bit. Every time I do that it retracts it's tentacles completely for the next hour or so.

My two purple rimmed green Montipora capricornis frags at the front of the tank have grown together now. The one at the back of the tank is encrusting the miserable Buna Spiney rock that I mounted it on. I did a particularly lousy job mounting that one and it's now in the process of overgrowning the spiney rock. They seem industructible.

Speaking of M. capricornis, here is a picture of my two orange cap frags that are in the process of growing together. They are about twice as large as they were when I got them.

All of my frags are doing well. I haven't lost any since that episode with the aquacultured Bali colony that claimed three frags at the same time. Could have been just a coincidence but the three frags all bleached at the same time. Could have been something that affected them and the Bali colony and it might have been the Bali colony that caused the problems for the other three. Thankfully all of the surviving frags seem to be doing well.

As you can see, I still have a problem with that mysterious red turf algae. It's still spreading in spite of the fact that Primus keeps it mowed down to about 1/8" tall. You can see in the above picture that there is one aqua R. florida polyp that points straight up and is totally shaded and therefore no doing so well. I was hoping that maybe it would be able to move itself. Not sure if I could remove it without damaging it. That piece is a bit too shaded but only that one small polyp at the top seems to be in trouble.

There are a few hair worms (aka spaghetti worms) visible on the sandbed in that shot and it looks like some of their buccal tentacles have grown some in the past couple of weeks. I am pretty sure that Comus, my dottyback, had been nibbling on them because they were all sporting crewcuts a few weeks ago. When I first got them they had more hair than a Donald Trump combover. Speaking of Comus, I believe that little rascal has actually eaten my giant bristleworms (Eurythoe complanata). It is hard to imagine considering the fact that two or three of them were longer than 6" but I have only seen one small 2" bristleworm in the past two months. There were three huge birstleworms that used to live under the rock at the far left side of the tank -- actually two really huge and one just almost huge -- and they would always come out onto the sandbed to steal food from the Nassarius snails when I feed the tank with just the actinics on. That was before I got Comus. I have read that the Red Sea species of Pseudochromis will eat bristleworms but I really didn't think they meant they would eat the monster-sized ones!

My experience with bristleworms has been that they are good scavengers. In my limited experience they didn't bother anything other than detritus and food that landed on the sandbed. My experience with my Pseudochromis fridmani is that he probably eats bristleworms, of any size, and possibly nibbles on the exposed tentacles of hair worms. The reason I bring this up is because Fossa & Nielsen claim in Volume One of their series that Eurythoe complanata will eat coral polyps and Fenner states on his website that bristleworms will eat coral polyps and clams. Shimek claims that the evidence does not support those claims. My own experience is that my two clams were never bothered by my bristleworms, two of which were 7" long. What few corals I have were not bothered by my bristleworms either. I'm not saying it can't happen, I'm just saying it hasn't happened in my tank. And I don't mean for this to come off as critical of any of those authors, all of whom I admire greatly; I just wanted to point out there are differences of opinions out there and sometimes I wonder whether some of the opinions are based on observation or merely on repetition of what "everybody knows." Reminds me of the time I suggested to the kid at the LFS that he might try putting his new Copperband Butterfly that they couldn't get to eat into the coral tank so that the Copperband could get rid of their flourishing Aiptasia population for them and get some nourishment at the same time. The LFS kid told me that it was "well known" that Copperband Butterflyfish will eat coral polyps. I told him that it couldn't be that well known because I had never heard of it. I was thinking of buying that particular Copperband but they couldn't get it to eat anything on two different visits. They told me it ate live brine. I don't know how they knew that because they don't have any live brine. They tried feeding it frozen brine and frozen bloodworms but it would just swim right up to them and reject them. A week later I noticed that they had sold it to someone. Probably someone who didn't ask to see it eat first.

I think that's one of the pics I took without flash. The pictures with flash are too washed out and the ones without flash are too dark. And all of them are blurry because I don't use a tripod. I never know for sure where the fish will show up in the picture because there is about a one second shutter delay from the time I push the button until the time it actually takes the picture. It's a cheapy 2 megapixel Kodak and I still haven't opened the manual. One of these days I have to do that so that I can figure out how to focus closeups.

Comus is hiding under the rock ledge, as usual, and photographs blue instead of purple (orchid). In this shot you can notice the dark blue line that is starting to form on the anterior dorsal fin of my wrasse. Originally she just showed dark blue at the posterior dorsal and all of the anal fin. She is also starting to show dark blue on the leading edges of the pectorals. The supermale that died had pectorals twice as long as the female with noticeable dark blue on them and both his anal fin and his dorsal fin were almost entirely dark blue.

This is a picture of my sole surviving Strombus alatus. I say sole surviving because I haven't seen the other fighting conch in about two weeks now. It might be hidden somewhere or it might have decided to take a really long nap under the sandbed at the back of the tank but I fear the worst. The only thing promising is that I can't find the shell. That doesn't mean much because there are a lot of things I can't find, like the suspension cables for my light fixture for instance. Also, I am almost certain now that my little Holothurian sand cuke has bit the dust. OK, I admit that was an unfortunate choice of words but I couldn't help myself. What happened is that about two weeks ago I noticed that both fighting conchs and the sand cuke were out of sight for about two or three days. That's really unusual. Usually the longest that the sand cuke will stay at the back of the tank is about 48 hours. The conchs come and go and the one in the picture above is the one that is usually at the back of the tank. He's also the one who likes to take long naps under the sand. But as of right now things don't look good. The cuke has been missing without a trace for about two weeks now and the only fighting conch that I have seen off and on during that period is the greenish one.

I have a bad feeling that the sandbed in this 120-gal tank is inadequate to support a cuke and two fighting conchs. I always worried that I might have to give away one of the conchs once they started growing but I thought that the cuke would be OK. In all honesty I can't really say that any of them were actually growing all that much in the five months or so that I have had them. The cuke may have grown 1/2" and the conchs may have grown 1/4" but that's about it. And to make matters worse, a few weeks ago I covered up a lot of the sandbed at the rear of the tank with some of that miserable Buna Spiney live rock in a futile attempt to stop the sand bed from shifting when I was unsuccessfully attempting to reintroduce my Tunze Stream 6060. That didn't work out. Again. I will have to be content with the two 3/4" Sea-Swirls. My tank is too small for any more circulation than that with my fine particle deep sand bed.

**scubadude** · 01-08-2004, 04:35 PM

Hey Ninong

Ive been in here lurking periodically, just wanted to pop in and tell you that I think your tank is gonna be marvelous once it grows out, even though you are so meticulous

(sp?) about everything. I love the Scotts wrasse! Have you tried putting your conchs ontop of problem patches or do they seem to get around good enough w/out you doing that? I noticed some cyano on the rocks....Your coming along quite nicely though....The question is are you enjoying your tank?

Rocky

12-20-2003, 07:40 AM	#621
Minh Nguyen Contributing Member/Moderator Join Date: Feb 2001 Location: Corpus Christi, TX Posts: 675	Great pair of fish. I hope they will do well and will be the star of your tank. good luck with your algae. Minh __________________ Minh Visit my tank at: http://berlinmethod.com/minhn/ http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issu...2/aquarium.htm

12-20-2003, 10:45 PM	#623
Ninong Moderator Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Louisiana Posts: 20,692	Update 8 p.m., Dec. 20th. I decided that if I wanted to keep a pair of Scott's Fairy Wrasses I needed to make my tank more wrasse-resistant. I figured that I may as well raise the bottom black acrylic shield at the same time to cover more of the sand bed. As you can see in the above picture, I have increased the height of the black acrylic shields both at the top of the tank and at the bottom. Previously the bottom shield was 5" tall and it is now 6.75" tall. The top shield was previously 7" tall and it is now 10" tall. I purchased some cut-to-size pieces of 1/8" thick black acrylic to glue inside the existing 1/4" thick acrylic shields. It cost me only $22 (including tax) for those cut-to-order pieces of 1/8" acrylic at the same plastics shop in Baton Rouge. I glued them to the existing shields using Weld-On #16. Only the top 1" of the 7" DSB is visible now. I used white eggcrate to close off the space at the rear sides of the tank and a piece of 1/2" PVC to block the 3/4" gap between the rear of the tank and the wall of the "stand." You can see how high the black acrylic shields are now. Any fish that jumps over these must be on steroids. Left side of the tank. Notice that I also covered the top of the corner overflow compartment. Here's another little trick I learned: I run my water level in the corner overflow compartment fairly high, usually within an inch or so of the top grate, and this has a tendency to cause salt creep to partially block the air hole at the top of the Stockman standpipe. I used to stick an ice pick in the hole every other day or so to clear it of salt creep but now I'm simply squirting tankwater over the top of the standpipe with the turkey baster every day and that seems to do the trick. Now I don't have to worry about accidentally dropping the ice pick in the tank. If you neglect keeping the salt creep out of that air hole you will be sorry in the middle of the night when the overflow gets noisy at 3 a.m. and wakes you up. My pair of Australian variant Scott's Fairy Wrasses (Cirrhilabrus scottorum) that I ordered from The Marine Center arrived at 12:35 p.m. Friday. They were in a huge styrofoam box (28"L x 14"W x 12"H) that was shrink wrapped a couple of times. And the styrofoam box was inside a cardboard box. Each fish was in at least two gallons of water, quadruple bagged. These were very large bags. There was a heat pack and lots of newspaper stuffing between the bags. The temperature of the shipping water was 63 degrees Fahrenheit upon arrival and the salinity was 40 ppt (a bit on the high side). I removed half the shipping water from each bag and placed each bag in a separate bucket. This still left a good three inches of water in the bag for the fish to move around in. I began adding a cup of 81 degree F tankwater every five or six minutes for about an hour. It took that long to get the water to the point where it was approximately half tank water and half original shipping water. The female was alert and moving around as soon as I unpacked the bags but the male was resting on his side inside the bag and breathing heavily. After about an hour of adding tankwater to the shipping bags I decided to float the bags in the tank to equalize the temperature. Actually I had been gradually raising the temperature the whole time I was adding tankwater to the bags while they were in the buckets. I added a cup of tankwater to each floating bag two or three times for about 20 minutes but I began to get concerned about both fish, especially the male since he was still on his side and decided that perhaps it would be better to get them into the tank. I added the female to the tank first and she immediately swam into the rock structure to hide. When I added the male he immediately sank to the sand bed on his side and remained in the same spot at the left side of the tank. The only lights that I had on at this time were the two 55w PC actinics. I could see the female inside the central cave resting on the sand bed. She was resting normally on her belly. The male on the other hand was still on his side and inactive except for the heavy breathing. After about an hour of that I decided that there was nothing I could do at that point, so I turned off the actinics and left just the 25w blue incandescent moonlight on. This was around 5 p.m. I figured I would wait until morning and hope for the best. I checked the tank at 7 a.m. this morning with a flashlight and found the female in the same spot. She moved as soon as the flashlight hit her. The male was in the same spot on the sand bed but he was completely dead. I removed him and knocked off a couple of Nassarius snails. This was an extremely depressing experience. I have been upset about this all day. I don't know if it would have made any difference if I had done a long and drawn out three hour acclimation or not. The female was in much better shape upon arrival and she seems to have made the transition to my tank without any problems. Both fish were acclimated exactly the same. This is the first time I have mail-ordered fish. I am not saying that the vendor did anything wrong. The packaging was excellent. I don't know if the below freezing overnight temperatures caused any of the problems but the shipping water was 63 degrees, which seems like it should have been tolerable. I sent a couple of emails to the vendor, one at the time of arrival and one this morning, and I hope to hear from him Monday. I definitely want to get another supermale to go with my female. This is the male in the shipping bag floating in the tank. This is the female in the shipping bag floating in the tank. This is the male where he landed on the sand bed. He never did move from that spot. This is an extremely sad picture. The male was much more gorgeous than this picture shows. Even dead he is 5.25" long. He was probably 5.5" long alive. This is the female around 10:30 a.m. this morning. She is about 4" long and is the most beautiful female Scott's Fairy Wrasse I have ever seen. Another picture of the female taken this morning. Shot of the female turning. OK, I know she's half hidden in this picture but it's more in focus than some of the others and you can get a good idea of the coloration. Shot of the female at the right side of the tank with Primus. This shot was taken around 5 p.m. today. Don't get the idea that the female has been swimming around the tank all day, she hasn't. I fed the tank four different times with Cyclop-Eeze, brine shrimp and mysis shrimp to get her to move out from inside the rock structure. Most of the time it didn't work. In fact, I believe all of the pictures I got today were taken when I was not feeding the tank. I would say that she ventured out of the rock structure perhaps half a dozen times all day for no more than a total of about five minutes. None of these pictures captures what she looks like with all of her fins extended. Every time she did that I wasn't ready with the camera. That picture of her turning around a frag at the back of the tank was the closest I got to catching her swimming in open water. If the shutter had gone off a fraction of a second earlier I would have had a full on profile with fins extended, but she was moving too fast for me. What can I say? I'm extremely depressed that I lost the male but thrilled that the female seems to have made it OK. I just hope that I can get another supermale to go with my female. __________________ Ninong

12-20-2003, 11:12 PM	#624
Minh Nguyen Contributing Member/Moderator Join Date: Feb 2001 Location: Corpus Christi, TX Posts: 675	She is very beautiful. I hope that you get the male soon and he will be A OK this time around. Minh __________________ Minh Visit my tank at: http://berlinmethod.com/minhn/ http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issu...2/aquarium.htm

12-21-2003, 12:16 AM	#626
*zhenya* Owner Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: new jersey,usa Posts: 7,569	George, I'm so sorry that the male had died The female has incredible colors and I just can imagine what the male looked like...he must've been truly amaizing. I wish you better luck next time,my friend. I think the temperature with 40ppt salinity combined had something to do with the males demise.Although it is not clear as to why he was in that sad shape upon arival but I don't think this fish are used to low temperatures like this. Now you got me all exited and I'm thinking of getting a pair like this for myself in the future.If I ever upgrade to a bigger tank I'll make sure to keep my design with them in mind. __________________ Kind regards, Gene.

12-21-2003, 03:17 PM	#627
Ninong Moderator Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Louisiana Posts: 20,692	Update 1 p.m., Dec. 21st. My female Scott's Fairy Wrasse is much more active today. I think she will be OK. She is really a beautiful fish. It is hard to describe the color of her body because it changes depending on your line of sight. She can look blue, green or purplish-blue-green depending on your angle. Check out these pictures I just took and you will see what I mean. From this angle she looks blue. Check out the dark blue anal fin. Here she looks bluish-green. Her dorsal fin is three different colors -- golden yellow on the edge, orange against the body and a deep blue streak between those two colors at the posterior half of the fin. In this picture she is more greenish. Here she looks purplish-bluish-greenish from this angle. __________________ Ninong

12-20-2003, 11:18 PM	#625
*Reefland* Owner Join Date: Feb 2000 Location: Bardstown, KY Posts: 13,141	The female sure is beautiful Ninong! Hopefully the vendor will give you credit that you can use towards another male and get the pair that you wanted. It's always hard/impossible to determine "what" went wrong and it is definitely depressing but I guess at times it is to be expected. Keep that female healthy and happy though, she is a beatiful fish! Scott Z.

12-21-2003, 06:05 PM	#628
*Reefland* Owner Join Date: Feb 2000 Location: Bardstown, KY Posts: 13,141	The 4th picture looks great! Have you observed any "jumping" behavior yet or any territory problems from the Rabbitfish? __________________ Scott Z. 75 Gallon Reef Log Powered by Reefland's Personal Online Aquarium Log

12-21-2003, 07:29 PM	#631
Ninong Moderator Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Louisiana Posts: 20,692	Someone on Reef Central warned me today that in his experience male Scott's Fairy Wrasses will jump quite high. Therefore, after consultations with Tom Ridge, I have decided to upgrade the jumping threat level in my tank from yellow to orange. This is my temporary solution: At least it gets the job done without blocking the light from the fixture. The top of the tank is now fully enclosed unless a fish decides to jump from the back of the tank towards the front through the 1"-2" gap (it sags in the middle) and land on top of the eggcrate. I think this means that I really need a larger tank with a fully enclosed top sooner rather than later. So what happens if a wrasse hits the extremely hot tempered glass UV shield on the bottom of the Aquastarlight Future fixture? Anyone have any experience along those lines? Fortunately my light fixtures are a full 11" above the surface. There is only 1/2" space between the halide fixture and the PC fluorescent fixture so it is not likely that anything could jump through that gap and land on top of the halide fixture. The top is curved anyway and even though it gets too hot to touch, it is nowhere near as hot as the glass UV shield on the bottom of the fixture. __________________ Ninong

12-21-2003, 08:04 PM	#632
Ninong Moderator Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Louisiana Posts: 20,692	OK, the pictures I promised have just been added to that previous reply -- the shots of the female wrasse entering the central cave through the roof. __________________ Ninong

12-22-2003, 03:41 PM	#633
Ninong Moderator Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Louisiana Posts: 20,692	Update 1:30 p.m., Dec. 22nd. I just spoke with Randy Walker of The Marine Center and they will replace my deceased supermale Australian Scott's Fairy Wrasse. Their next shipping date is not until January 8th. due to the holidays. I had to mail them the body of the deceased wrasse via priority mail. I put the frozen specimen in a ziplock baggy and covered it with a lot of table salt. Then I wrapped it with aluminum foil and mailed it to them in a small cardboard box. I figured I would have to do that because that seems to be standard policy with most online livestock vendors. I'm not sure if they have another one as large as the first one that didn't make it. They picked out the largest pair that they had when they filled my order. I'll just have to keep my fingers crossed that they find something nice. Randy told me that I might have been able to save it if I had done an extremely lengthy slow acclimation over several hours. I will keep that in mind if such a situation ever comes up again. At the time I couldn't decide whether to speed up the process or drag it out. The surviving wrasse is doing great. She is very active and I am now certain that she is eating. It was difficult for me to tell if she was eating or not the past couple of days because she was staying inside the cave structure when I fed the tank but this morning she was very much into the feeding process. I fed the tank with mysis shrimp and bloodworms and she definitely ate all the bloodworms she could find. Believe it or not it's 73 degrees outside right now. I guess that means this is another Christmas without snow. Current Conditions 73°F Partly Cloudy Feels Like 73°F UV Index:3 Low Dew Point:55°F Humidity:53% Visibility: Unlimited Pressure:30.16 inches and falling Wind: From the South Southeast at 15 gusting to 20 mph __________________ Ninong

12-22-2003, 04:30 PM	#634
Ninong Moderator Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Louisiana Posts: 20,692	Today's pics... The three amigos. Solo shot. Another shot in the right front corner of the tank. __________________ Ninong

12-22-2003, 04:48 PM	#636
Ninong Moderator Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Louisiana Posts: 20,692	Minh, I usually clean out my 2.5-gal Kent Aquadoser and use it. I just fill it with tankwater and adjust the drip as slow as I want. I could adjust it as slow as one gallon every four or five hours if I wanted to. I have used it for acclimating clams and snails but I didn't use it for any of my previous fish. I will definitely use it on the next fish I get shipped from an online vendor. My other fish were all purchased locally and the water was approximately the same salinity as mine and the journey home was only an hour long. I should have taken longer considering the huge difference in salinity between the shipping water (40 ppt) and my tankwater (35 ppt). Thanks for the advice. __________________ Ninong

12-23-2003, 11:44 PM	#637
Poseidon Moderator Join Date: Sep 2001 Location: Swartz Creek, MI Posts: 6,464	HOLY SUPER COOL FISH NINONG!!! If that was the Female I can't wait to see the MALE!!! those are Incredible and are very worthy of the title Showcase Fish!!! I'm sorry you lost the male, it is heartbreaking I'm sure. And FWIW from the pictures and description of the male you give I think he was DOA and nothing you could have done would have mattered... Aside from a shot of Adrenaline!!! The problem with your digital camera is the shutter lag time and is my biggest complaint about the D point and Shoots!!! Thats the one thing I LOVE about my 10D... Push the shutter and get a picture!!! Good Luck on the next Super Male, I'm sure you'll do everything you can to make it go right!!! Mike __________________ Need a Photographer? Just say NO to CRABS Mike

01-08-2004, 03:59 PM	#638
Ninong Moderator Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Louisiana Posts: 20,692	Update 2 p.m., Jan. 8, 2004 The tank is exactly 6 months old today. Today is also the day that The Marine Center was supposed to be shipping me a replacement supermale Australian Scott's Fairy Wrasse to replace the one that died. Unfortunately they didn't have a suitable replacement available at this time. They offered to credit my bank card now or they would pick out a suitable supermale from their next shipment which may or may not happen within the next three or four weeks. I asked them to just wait until they received some more Australian Scott's and select a nice male for me then. So that's the situation on that front. Hopefully they can find a male larger than my present female. She doesn't have a name yet because I have to wait until I see the size and coloration of the new fish in order to determine which one is going to be the male. As it is now my female is starting to show more dark blue in her dorsal fine and more dark blue on the anterior edges of her pectorals. Her coloration is holding up reasonably well but there might be slight fading in the area just forward of the caudal peduncle. Intensity of coloration in Cirrhilabrus wrasses is a function of social interaction with conspecifics. For best coloration you should keep at least three of a species -- one male and two females. I am hoping that the coloration will hold up reasonably well with just a pair. I am extremely pleased with my female Australian Scott's and with my dealings with the vendor. I am just keeping my fingers crossed that they can find a nice supermale a little larger than my female. My problem is that she is a fully mature female and I worry that in the absence of a male she may begin changing into a male herself. I don't believe I will have any problems if TMC can get me a supermale larger than 4.5" within the next three to six weeks but if it takes much longer than that I may have to consider getting one or two additional females a little smaller than my present one and letting her become the male. All three fish in the tank get along famously. The Foxface Rabbitfish hangs with the Scott's Fairy Wrasse and the Orchid Dottyback ignores them both and stays out of the way. At feeding time the wrasse and the rabbitfish compete to see who can eat the most before it's all gone. The dottyback keeps out of their way and eats whatever comes his way. There is no aggression between any of them but the wrasse will take food right out of the mouth of the rabbitfish if it is a large enough piece of shrimp or squid that part of it is sticking out of his mouth. At feeding time the two larger fish get a little rambunctious and the wrasse swam into my expensive blue tort frag the other day clipping about 1/2" off the secondary branch. I mounted the tiny frag on a small piece of rock but I don't know if it will make it or not. I also moved the blue tort main frag to a new spot more in the center of the tank and a few inches farther back. In the previous spot it wasn't as blue on the front facing side as it was on the backside so I moved it to a spot where it is more inline with the halides. I don't know what happened to my Ricordea yuma polyps. They were doing great for months and then started going downhill at the same time that I lost the Bali aquacultered SPS colony that was only about 3" away from them. They finally decided to go to Ricordea heaven last week. My two R. florida pieces are doing just fine. I have these two different Fungia corals in my tank. I am pretty sure the larger one is Fungia fungides. Anyway the larger one is much larger now than it was when I got it and I may have to move it to a different spot. I'll probably have it trade places with the smaller one at the left end of the tank. These guys are phototaxic and will move towards the light if they feel that the light is better in another spot. The little one hasn't moved at all since I put it in the tank but the larger one moves constantly. I deliberately placed it in a slightly shaded spot at first to let it acclimate first and to see if it would indeed move when it was good and ready. It started moving about two weeks after I put it in the tank. It moved just a couple of inches to the right so that it wasn't shaded anymore. The only problem now is that it has grown much larger and part of it is in the shade, so it has a tendency to move all the way up against the front glass. I have a tendency to move it back about an inch and a half so that I won't bump into it cleaning the glass. Then the next morning it is back up against the front glass again. It seems to wait until I am asleep before sneaking back up against the glass. It doesn't like being moved one bit. Every time I do that it retracts it's tentacles completely for the next hour or so. My two purple rimmed green Montipora capricornis frags at the front of the tank have grown together now. The one at the back of the tank is encrusting the miserable Buna Spiney rock that I mounted it on. I did a particularly lousy job mounting that one and it's now in the process of overgrowning the spiney rock. They seem industructible. Speaking of M. capricornis, here is a picture of my two orange cap frags that are in the process of growing together. They are about twice as large as they were when I got them. All of my frags are doing well. I haven't lost any since that episode with the aquacultured Bali colony that claimed three frags at the same time. Could have been just a coincidence but the three frags all bleached at the same time. Could have been something that affected them and the Bali colony and it might have been the Bali colony that caused the problems for the other three. Thankfully all of the surviving frags seem to be doing well. As you can see, I still have a problem with that mysterious red turf algae. It's still spreading in spite of the fact that Primus keeps it mowed down to about 1/8" tall. You can see in the above picture that there is one aqua R. florida polyp that points straight up and is totally shaded and therefore no doing so well. I was hoping that maybe it would be able to move itself. Not sure if I could remove it without damaging it. That piece is a bit too shaded but only that one small polyp at the top seems to be in trouble. There are a few hair worms (aka spaghetti worms) visible on the sandbed in that shot and it looks like some of their buccal tentacles have grown some in the past couple of weeks. I am pretty sure that Comus, my dottyback, had been nibbling on them because they were all sporting crewcuts a few weeks ago. When I first got them they had more hair than a Donald Trump combover. Speaking of Comus, I believe that little rascal has actually eaten my giant bristleworms (Eurythoe complanata). It is hard to imagine considering the fact that two or three of them were longer than 6" but I have only seen one small 2" bristleworm in the past two months. There were three huge birstleworms that used to live under the rock at the far left side of the tank -- actually two really huge and one just almost huge -- and they would always come out onto the sandbed to steal food from the Nassarius snails when I feed the tank with just the actinics on. That was before I got Comus. I have read that the Red Sea species of Pseudochromis will eat bristleworms but I really didn't think they meant they would eat the monster-sized ones! My experience with bristleworms has been that they are good scavengers. In my limited experience they didn't bother anything other than detritus and food that landed on the sandbed. My experience with my Pseudochromis fridmani is that he probably eats bristleworms, of any size, and possibly nibbles on the exposed tentacles of hair worms. The reason I bring this up is because Fossa & Nielsen claim in Volume One of their series that Eurythoe complanata will eat coral polyps and Fenner states on his website that bristleworms will eat coral polyps and clams. Shimek claims that the evidence does not support those claims. My own experience is that my two clams were never bothered by my bristleworms, two of which were 7" long. What few corals I have were not bothered by my bristleworms either. I'm not saying it can't happen, I'm just saying it hasn't happened in my tank. And I don't mean for this to come off as critical of any of those authors, all of whom I admire greatly; I just wanted to point out there are differences of opinions out there and sometimes I wonder whether some of the opinions are based on observation or merely on repetition of what "everybody knows." Reminds me of the time I suggested to the kid at the LFS that he might try putting his new Copperband Butterfly that they couldn't get to eat into the coral tank so that the Copperband could get rid of their flourishing Aiptasia population for them and get some nourishment at the same time. The LFS kid told me that it was "well known" that Copperband Butterflyfish will eat coral polyps. I told him that it couldn't be that well known because I had never heard of it. I was thinking of buying that particular Copperband but they couldn't get it to eat anything on two different visits. They told me it ate live brine. I don't know how they knew that because they don't have any live brine. They tried feeding it frozen brine and frozen bloodworms but it would just swim right up to them and reject them. A week later I noticed that they had sold it to someone. Probably someone who didn't ask to see it eat first. I think that's one of the pics I took without flash. The pictures with flash are too washed out and the ones without flash are too dark. And all of them are blurry because I don't use a tripod. I never know for sure where the fish will show up in the picture because there is about a one second shutter delay from the time I push the button until the time it actually takes the picture. It's a cheapy 2 megapixel Kodak and I still haven't opened the manual. One of these days I have to do that so that I can figure out how to focus closeups. Comus is hiding under the rock ledge, as usual, and photographs blue instead of purple (orchid). In this shot you can notice the dark blue line that is starting to form on the anterior dorsal fin of my wrasse. Originally she just showed dark blue at the posterior dorsal and all of the anal fin. She is also starting to show dark blue on the leading edges of the pectorals. The supermale that died had pectorals twice as long as the female with noticeable dark blue on them and both his anal fin and his dorsal fin were almost entirely dark blue. This is a picture of my sole surviving Strombus alatus. I say sole surviving because I haven't seen the other fighting conch in about two weeks now. It might be hidden somewhere or it might have decided to take a really long nap under the sandbed at the back of the tank but I fear the worst. The only thing promising is that I can't find the shell. That doesn't mean much because there are a lot of things I can't find, like the suspension cables for my light fixture for instance. Also, I am almost certain now that my little Holothurian sand cuke has bit the dust. OK, I admit that was an unfortunate choice of words but I couldn't help myself. What happened is that about two weeks ago I noticed that both fighting conchs and the sand cuke were out of sight for about two or three days. That's really unusual. Usually the longest that the sand cuke will stay at the back of the tank is about 48 hours. The conchs come and go and the one in the picture above is the one that is usually at the back of the tank. He's also the one who likes to take long naps under the sand. But as of right now things don't look good. The cuke has been missing without a trace for about two weeks now and the only fighting conch that I have seen off and on during that period is the greenish one. I have a bad feeling that the sandbed in this 120-gal tank is inadequate to support a cuke and two fighting conchs. I always worried that I might have to give away one of the conchs once they started growing but I thought that the cuke would be OK. In all honesty I can't really say that any of them were actually growing all that much in the five months or so that I have had them. The cuke may have grown 1/2" and the conchs may have grown 1/4" but that's about it. And to make matters worse, a few weeks ago I covered up a lot of the sandbed at the rear of the tank with some of that miserable Buna Spiney live rock in a futile attempt to stop the sand bed from shifting when I was unsuccessfully attempting to reintroduce my Tunze Stream 6060. That didn't work out. Again. I will have to be content with the two 3/4" Sea-Swirls. My tank is too small for any more circulation than that with my fine particle deep sand bed. __________________ Ninong

01-08-2004, 04:35 PM	#639
scubadude Moderator Join Date: Nov 2000 Location: Wichita, Kansas Posts: 5,315	Hey Ninong Ive been in here lurking periodically, just wanted to pop in and tell you that I think your tank is gonna be marvelous once it grows out, even though you are so meticulous (sp?) about everything. I love the Scotts wrasse! Have you tried putting your conchs ontop of problem patches or do they seem to get around good enough w/out you doing that? I noticed some cyano on the rocks....Your coming along quite nicely though....The question is are you enjoying your tank? Rocky Last edited by scubadude; 01-08-2004 at 04:42 PM.

01-08-2004, 05:48 PM	#640