430gal., L-shaped display

[Covenant]

Just spent the last 4 hrs reading this thread, and I simply can't decide if I like the photos or the ongoing drama over the past year or two the best. Or maybe it's just awe that you're doing this because you want to, not as a business. Wanting to breed clowns and having a background in genetics started me off in the hobby but not only did I get sidetracked by getting a coral (then many... then better lighting and equipment, then different fish or inverts to deal with algae problems, then falling in love with the ecosystem and forgetting to start preparing for hypothetical babies, etc.), but my paired clowns never spawned over the 7 or 8 yrs I had them. Not enough food, possibly, or maybe moving to a new place once a year was a bit too traumatic. Anyhow, I love living vicariously through your adventures! Thank you, and absolute best of luck actually rearing some of the fish spawn.

 

[mistacheese]

Wow, I too just read every word on this thread, all 67 pages of it. Never been sucked into a thread like this before! Very interesting, you have truly inspired me to attempt something similar. (*Similar meaning a tank, not a small chunk of ocean like you!)

 

[Sisterlimonpot]

Wow, I too just read every word on this thread, all 67 pages of it. Never been sucked into a thread like this before! Very interesting, you have truly inspired me to attempt something similar. (*Similar meaning a tank, not a small chunk of ocean like you!)

[welcome]
Yeah, Andy's thread is very educational and not to mention full of pics.

 

[murfman]

So, I wandered into a fish store where I had some credits stored up and found this cool little guy. I guess it's called a "walking dendro" and lives in association with a worm symbiont that'll move the coral around all over the place and dig it into the sand bed. Well, I'm a sucker for interesting symbiosis stories as well as the way it looks like a small brain coral, so I snapped it up.

I'm really interested in these little structures:

Andy is this it?
Hetropsammia Cochlea

 

[MrineLfRlz]

what about some updated pics in your propagation/sump/hatchery room
PLEASEZZ:bigeyes:

 

[melev]

Wow, I really like (and want) that Walking Dendro now. That's way cool. I would have waited for that worm to make an appearance for a picture or two.

 

["Umm fish?"]

Sorry. I honestly got no notice at all. Sorry about the lack of updates. We've had the flu three times in the past five weeks, so I'm behind on everything I'm doing. I _have_ to get the display cleaned this week (Halloween party) and I _have to get the fishroom cleaned next week (club meeting), so I'll have new pictures soon. In the meantime, please enjoy the very, very pregnant blenny:

 

[Western_reefer]

WOW! Shes FAT! lol

 

[ReefPug]

She looks a bit disgruntled. I think that I would be less than pleased if I was that pregnant too! Amazing photo!

 

["Umm fish?"]

Looks like she popped. She's all thin this morning. But, I can't figure out where.

 

["Umm fish?"]

Woohoo! The grammas finally placed eggs where I can see them!

And papa guarding them:

 

[Western_reefer]

Woohoo! The grammas finally placed eggs where I can see them!

And papa guarding them:

Very nice!! Have you raised any of the fish yet?

 

[Kensmith201]

Hi Andy,
Wife and I just getting over H1N1 here in New Jersey.
If you don't mind I would like to post a question here, because many of the major "players" of Reefcentral follow this thread, and your success with spawning is incredible, I can count on a response. I have recently learned of the use of driveway ice melt, baked baking soda and Epsom salts for reef success. Any knowledge or views on this?
Thanks

 

[jnarowe]

check out the reef chemistry calculator.

 

["Umm fish?"]

Moses--Thanks and no. After getting the seahorses to a couple of months and losing them, I started trying to work with the six lines. I got a good disinfection procedure down and really increase the egg hatch rate. Then I decided that I really am going to need copepods to give these a decent shot. To raise the copepods, I need at least live T-Isochrysis. So, I've been on a hiatus working on that. The disk cultures from FAF that I tried didn't take, but a live culture from Phyto2 is working fine. I have about 16 liters running right now. So, I'm just about at the point of ordering copepod cultures. Oh, and we all had the flu a couple of times in there, too.

Ken--I'm not very good at chemistry, but I do use ice melt to raise the magnesium when I need to. This is an article that I refer to: http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-02/rhf/index.php

But I do most of my calcium with kalkwasser because I like to run with a high pH.

There are playas around here?

Jonathan--Thanks!

 

[jnarowe]

Andy's the top playa! :thumbsup:

 

["Umm fish?"]

Oh, yeah. That's me. :spin2:

I did start a new website this week if anyone's interested:

http://www.ummfish.com/classifieds/

It's still new, but I hope it'll help out. I know that there are breeders out there with fish stuck in growout and they are passing up collecting hatches because they have no room for more fish and don't have time to run all over town trying to peddle a cooler full of fish. And I know that there are LFSs (I've talked to the owners) that want to buy captive-bred and want to buy locally, but don't want to sift through every thread in the local forums to find what's available. And I've never found threads in discussion forums a great way to buy or sell. So, I'm hoping to help everyone out (including me, if I ever get any of these beasts grown) in one place.

BTW, Ken, I have actually raised some Banggais and am working on getting another generation out of them but the males aren't yet big enough to hold to term. I just haven't gotten anything raised since the big move. (Which is ... how long? I guess I started the display around March? Eight months or so....) But I don't seem very good at getting any of the easy fish to spawn.

The co-op part of that website is all about a new idea that I picked up from some other local clubs (I think it was Pennsylvania) of distributed breeding. The idea is that a lot of different club members get together to work on breeding fish and everyone takes on a role that they want to or are able to try. For example, some people are really good at culturing rots. Well, they supply rots to different club members who are trying to raise larvae. Some people have spawning fish but no desire to try to raise them. They pass eggs or larvae to someone that wants to do that role. Some people want to help but don't have time or energy to work with small larvae; maybe they have a couple of extra tanks that can serve as growout space for juveniles. At that point, everyone has a stake in the larvae once they go to market. Nobody's going to get rich doing it, but maybe we'll get more captive-bred into the stores.

At any rate, I hope that being part of the co-op will someday give me an opportunity to try to work with some clownfish, since I can't seem to get any to spawn.

 

[jnarowe]

can't get clownfish to spawn?

 

["Umm fish?"]

Yeah, they take forever to pair bond and get ready--for me, at least--and something always happens right about the time they look like they're just about to start building nests. What are you gonna do? I'm down to just a pair of B&W Os right now (I have a single orange O downstairs that lost its mate), that look like they're happy to just stay right on the verge just to tease me.

Maybe they're just intimidated by all the freaking Cerith snails. I completely scraped the glass before a Halloween party and I'm back to at least 20 nests of eggs on the glass in ... what? ... six days. And that's just on the glass of the display tank.

 

[murfman]

Hi Andy,
Wife and I just getting over H1N1 here in New Jersey.
If you don't mind I would like to post a question here, because many of the major "players" of Reefcentral follow this thread, and your success with spawning is incredible, I can count on a response. I have recently learned of the use of driveway ice melt, baked baking soda and Epsom salts for reef success. Any knowledge or views on this?
Thanks

Ken, not to take away from Andy's thread but I used Xcell ice melt and baked baking soda for calcium and alk buffering and epson salts for magnesium, for years. I now use a Ca reactor. read the Randy Holmes-Farley had article Andy posted the link to above. It has all the information you need.