Artificial Jawfish homes. Anyone tried?

[Darby]

Welp, despite my sandbed preperations before geting this 150 going, it seems that they were not enough. I had trouble finding sand with large enough particle siz, without being crushed coral, so the Jawfish I want would be able to dig without collapses. So, I mixed in a couple of bags of "pooka shells", which is really just mixed small shells, hoping they'd provide enough reinforcement.

No such luck.

I had ordered 4 Jawfish before Ike came along, 2 mated pairs, but the package was delayed over that weekend. When it arrived, 3 were loses. They're being raplaced, to arrive this Wed... The one that survived took a week or so to come out from the rocks, but now it's trying really hard to dig a tube, but the shells aren't large enough to hold the sides in. I had put some extra rubble in the mix, but not enough. So, now it's making a bunch of 3"-4" deep craters trying to dig a home. Not exactly good for the DSB overall. I expected disturbances, but not the whole tank!

Has anyone tried to sink PVC tubes into the sand a couple of inches? I'm hoping that I could make them 3" or 4" long, and make sure that they're full of sand so that Jawfish could find them and scoop them out, making their home. Think it would work?

 

[CookieJar]

I bought an acrylic box around 4" x 4" x 2", glued a tube in the lid and buried the box in the sand next to the front panel, hoping I'd be able to see the jawfish in his 'den'. After I put him in the den I thought all was well, he had a tube going to the top of the sand and adequate space, however after 1 day he decided to make his own home. OH well.
Mine use the rock rubble to make their hole, the white rock pieces that are kind of round/ smooth. You can often buy a lb. of it for relatively cheap and 1 lb. will last a long time. I semi-buried a rock that helped them make a cave, if your sand is too fine, see if you have a rock that you can partially bury that they'll use to dig their cave.
Good luck!

 

[basser1]

First of all, this isn't my idea or pic. But I saw this and thought it would be a great idea for a jawfish home, as I happen to own a bluespot jawfish. The person used pvc connected and drilled a hole and used a barnacle shell.

HTH!! .......... And Welcome!!

 

[CoralCaps]

Interesting post there basser1, thanks for finding that.

I'm still figuring out a jawfish idea for my tank. I want a Pearly Jawfish pretty bad!

 

[Darby]

Thanks for the welcome!

Well, I sunk 3 PVC tunnels into the sand lastnight, 2 filled, one empty. He didn't check them out until this morning at "dawn", but I wasn't able to stick around to see if he'd settled on one, or if he went back to the rocks or a crater. We'll see this evening.