Project 58!! (Image intense)

[Maxx]

2-1-05
Update

Live Aquaria has called me (left a message) and sent me an e-mail. Both of them basically stating that they dont have the fish, they dont know when they will have the fish, but when they do get the fish, they'll cheerfully ship it out to me and send me an email and another phone call notifying me of the fishes arrival.
Yay, for my side.

I also cleaned my skimmer again today. Its the third time I've needed to clean it since its been running, and I'm guessing its all sorts of broken in by now. The skimmate was NASTY. I'm not going to post a pic since I think its kinda lame and disgusting. I dont photgraph it when I take a crap, I'm not about to post up a pic of my fishes crap in a condensed form. It stunk. I love my Euro-Reef CS6-2. Thats it. You'll just have to accept that.

I went back down to the LFS today and eyeballed the female Bellus angel. She's gorgeous, eating like a starving monkey, and well acclimated to tank life. no indications of decompression problems or swim bladder issues. She had arrived at the LFS on Jan 20th.
I also picked up a pair of chalk basslets. I had never really thought that much about them, until I saw one in the display reef at the LFS. Pretty little reef safe fish. They had two. They were both eating, and looked to be in pretty good shape. So I got them too. The basslets arrived at the LFS on the Jan 27th.
Everybone is acclimating right now. Brought them home and started acclimation around 550 PM. Its now 750 PM and I'm still drip acclimating them.
The LFS uses copper in their FO systems...so I have to remove water from the drip bucket and make sure that none of it ends up in my tank. Kind of a PITA, but I understand why they do it. When I worked at a LFS they did it too.

I will attempt to post pics of my new fish tomorrow, (lights will be off tonight) but on the off chance that I dont, or someone reading this has no idea what a Bellus angel or Chalk Bass look like....

Here is a washed pic of a female Bellus. Mine has a real pretty blue surrounding the black lines and running in a sort upside down nike swoosh pattern (Fat part of swoosh starts at pectoral fins/behind gill plate, and runs downward to anal fin) hope that makes sense...Genicanthus bellus

Here is a pic of how the male differs in coloration...again washed out since preserved.

Here are a couple of images of the Chalk Bass (Serranus tortugarum)

They color up really pretty and only get to be about 3 inches in length. The only thing they are listed as being potentially aggressive towards is the anemone shrimps of the Periclimenes species.

Here is a link to a short thread about them at Reefs.org. Scott Michael's first book on reef fishes has a great shot of them on pg 526.

Nick

 

[NaH2O]

Long time lurker....first time poster.

Awesome, Nick! I'm glad the angel is doing well. Can't wait to see pics.

 

[Maxx]

Thanks Nikki...I wanna see pics of your new Magnificent Foxface!!

Nick

 

[Maxx]

02-02-2005

I turned lights off on the left side of the tank last night when I released the Chalk Bass and the Bellus angel at 9 pm. I also turned off the OM unit, but left the Iwaki on so that the water flow was blowing from top left to right, which gave the left side of the tank the least amount of flow. I did this in order to encourage the fish to hang out in the left side of the tank as the Lawn Mower blenny hangs out on the right.
Everybody dissappeared almost immediately towards the left side of the tank, with the angel hiding by the overflow in the darkest part of the tank. The right side light was on for about another hour (until 10 pm) and then shut off. The chalk bass were starting to check out their surrounding area's when the lights went out. The angel had been playing peekaboo every time it saw me.

This morning at 10 am the lights came on. I started thawing out some brine shrimp plus, and mysis shrimp in RO water. The fish were still kinda shy at that point. I turned off the closed loop entirely so I could feed them. Once the food was thawed, I poured it through a brine shrimp net, and discarded the water it thawed out in....dont want to introduce any phosphates to the tank. Even though I have a Phosban reactor running, I dont want to add to what I'm already dealing with.
I rinsed the net out with some tank water and put the food back into a container to be sucked into a turkey baster. I put a little in the tank...and everyone started eating!
The chalk bass were a little unsure at first...they dont strike me as the smartest fish in the world...but the angel jumped after everything she could find. She's currently cruising around the tank, and examining everything.

I turned the closed loop back on and restarted the OM unit. The angel is still cruising, but the chalk bass have moved back into their chosen safe havens...
Once they closed loop was back on, alot of food that was missed got thrown back into the water column. The angel again went nuts and starting going after everything that looked edible, the chalk bass would look at something...think about it for awhile...then venture out and eat it.

All in all....a good start to the day. Pics will follow later. Nobody is really adjusted well enough to get clear pics, yet so maybe tomorrow.

Nick

 

[Maxx]

02-02-05

Okay, I lied.
I took a couple of quick pics today. The Bellus is kinda tough to photograph. It doesnt help that I cant adjust the focus on this camera, nor the F-stops/shutter speed.....so I'm kinda at the mercy of the Gods of Crappy Digi-Cams for getting a decent shot of whats in my tank....
Really need to buy a better camera. The Canon G-6 is looking pretty good right now. I'd really prefer a 20D...but those are a little out of my price range right now.

Any way...here are some pics of the new guys...

First are the Chalk Bass (Serranus tortugarum). First pic is with the on camera flash on...forgot to turn it off.

Without flash

The Chaetomorphia algae is only temporary. I got it from Spooda420 to seed my liverock with Pods and other critters. In a couple of days, its going as it traps a lot of detritus.


here are two pics of the female Bellus Angel (Genicanthus bellus)

Here is a pic of her picking at stuff under the lava rock on the left side of the tank.

Nick

 

[Maxx]

I noticed that my Chalk Bass have already picked out territories in the tank. They only seem to squabble with each other over hidey holes. One is a little skimmier than the other, and he's the one I'm a little concerned about. I just fed everyone again (Both Chalk Bass and Genicanthus angels are planktivores and require regular feeding).
One thing I did notice however is the Bellus angel appears to be in the early stages of Pop-eye.
This is basically caused by a bacterial infection from a scrape or small wound to the fish. It causes the affected eye to swell out and turn cloudy for about a week or two. I'm not too worried since she's still eating fine, and Ive dealt with this before in my previous tank. I had a Black Cap Basslet that developed Pop-Eye. It was ugly for a little bit, but pulled through just fine. I expect this will be the same. I didnt do anything special other than ensure it was well fed.

Nick

 

[mojoreef]

Chalk bass are neat fish, I think you will like them. Watch out for that angel it produces a strong oxy-toxin that can nuke your tank, make sure it doesnt get picked on.

Mike

 

[Maxx]

Really????
I hadnt heard that before. Is it a Genicanthus thing, or a Bellus thing? Can you tell me more about it?
Its in no danger of being picked on, its the largest thing in the tank...at 2 1/2 inches.
Ive noticed her eye has already cleared up...doesnt look like the popeye problem will show up.

Rocio fed the fish this morning after I left for work. I'm thawing out more food right now for the secodn feeding of the day. I'd really feel better if the fish were getting fed 3 times a day though.

Nick

 

[mojoreef]

I hadnt heard that before. Is it a Genicanthus thing, or a Bellus thing? Can you tell me more about it?

I dont have to much info on it Nick, I have heard of sucess that breeders have had with circular motion rubbing acclimation. You might want to do a search on that.





Mike











Blues suck!!!!!!!

 

[Maxx]

I dont have to much info on it Nick, I have heard of sucess that breeders have had with circular motion rubbing acclimation. You might want to do a search on that.
Mike

Uh....are we still talking about fish here, or something that will make you blind?

Blues suck!!!!!!!

Jealousy is an ugly thing Mike......
Nick

 

[NaH2O]

Nick - the acclimation trick is one, which I believe Mike practiced on snails.....I think you have to build up some caluses first. I tried it when acclimating the large turbos I put in....but I wound up with a blister . Also, in the first pic you posted of your angel - either it's the photo, or she has some teeth she could whistle through.
I couldn't find any info about the angels' toxin. If you can find more info that would be awesome.

 

[Maxx]

Nikki, LOL....I hadnt seen waht you meant about the angels teeth....
Its a small dark colored spot above the angel's upper lip. If you look closely at the photo of the preserved specimen I first posted, you can sorta see it there too.

Nikki, please dont tell me you fell for Mike's Smail rubbing theory. He's still fighting the court case on that one, (Lewd act with an invertebrate...I dont think we're sposed to talk about it until the sentencing phase of the trial is over though.)

Oxytoxin...hmmmmmm sounds supiciously close to Oxycotin.......whatchoo sniffin Mike???

Ya threw me for a minute there...I hafta admit. And the only reason I was thinking it might actually be true was because when I was really learning this stuff, we didnt know Foxfaces had poisonous spines, or that Zoo's manufactured Palytoxin...cause when I worked at a LFS in HAwaii as a kid, I handled Zoo's all day long, and messed with Foxfaces all the time...no gloves for either. And the Genicanthus angels werent really avaible in the hobby enough to really study up on....sorta figured this might be same sort of thing.

Nick

 

[Scooterman]

Nick, is Mike messing with ya?

 

[Maxx]

S'okay...I know how to mess back.....
BTW, these arent fur lined Mike!!!






Nick

 

[NaH2O]

Nikki, please dont tell me you fell for Mike's Snail rubbing theory

Hmmm.....I did have a massive Trochus spawning event. The hardest part was scraping together enough money to pay for those miniature cigarettes. LOL

 

[Scooterman]

Snake oil humm!!

 

[Maxx]

Hmmm.....I did have a massive Trochus spawning event. The hardest part was scraping together enough money to pay for those miniature cigarettes. LOL

ewwww........
thats all I'm gonna say about that.


Nick

 

[Nautilus]

Sorry about the fish.. your tank looks great.

 

[mojoreef]

Ya threw me for a minute there...I hafta admit.

Yea yea I could see the smoke coming off the search engine from here :evil:

S'okay...I know how to mess back.....

ROFL you dont have enough friends to put those on me brother



Mike

 

[Maxx]

Nautilus, thank you for the kind words...its tough to remember that now, with all the algae thats going on, but I can already see a huge difference in its growth, I think I'm slowing down on the algae bloom.

Mike.....
That musta been Nikki's search engine doing the smoke up....I was too busy to search...sides, I thought you'd tell me more about it later.
As far as the needing friends to put the cuffs on.....Say Hello to my Little Friend!!!