Blue Spot Jawfish - 3rd time the charm?

[alton]

THRoewer glad yours are doing well. Mine is the most laid back BSJ I have ever owned, after he/she built their home last year , they have never moved. Just watches me work at my desk all day long. KOA Tyrants on substrates I like Carbsea Seafor Super Reef mixed with Small Aruba Puka Shell. If you decide to go with Pearly/Yellow heads order a pair from KP Aquatics https://www.kpaquatics.com/product-category/marine-fish/jawfish/
Do not order the imported ones. If you go with BSJF get the small to medium.

 

[ThRoewer]

The most interesting thing with my two is that the male is now constantly in mating coloration.

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[alton]

Yea I miss my flashing male

 

[ThRoewer]

Mine looks like a plucked chicken with a seemingly permanent split in his dorsal fin after the female gave him a beating. Now that he has caught up in size they seem to get along. The one lesson learned from this is to make sure that the male is larger than the female(s).

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[KingOfAll_Tyrants]

KOA Tyrants on substrates I like Carbsea Seafor Super Reef mixed with Small Aruba Puka Shell. If you decide to go with Pearly/Yellow heads order a pair from KP Aquatics https://www.kpaquatics.com/product-category/marine-fish/jawfish/
Do not order the imported ones. If you go with BSJF get the small to medium.

The jawfish tank is my most neglected tank - and the cleanest. The fish, pods and bacteria do all the work. The tank has a skimmer, but it hardly skims anything.

As for the sand bed, you want to place a few rocks (Real Reef Live Rock is pretty good for this but regular live rock or even halved ceramic flowerpots are fine) on the ground to give the fish some caves to dig out. Then you fill in the gravel and sand.

1/4 to 1/3 should be extra coarse coral gravel (basically broken and rounded off coral sticks). This is what they need to build their burrow walls.
The rest should be to roughly equal parts coarse, medium and fairly fine (don't use very fine) coral/aragonite sand.
Mix the coral gravel, coarse and medium sand and fill it between the rocks. Add the fine sand on top. The fish will remodel the sand anyway and ultimately the fine sand gets to the bottom, but I found it to work well this way.
If you have you can also add some shells or extra large pebbles. The fish like to use those as lids for their burrows.

Thanks, folks. Both of those formulas look good. The Caribsea Small Aruba Puka Shells (AKA Bag O'Shells) looks like a particularly awesome touch. I may use those, or if I get my Live Rock from Tampa Bay Saltwater , KP Aquatics or ARC reefs I may just order an appropriate live sand. (each company is in the Pearly's natural range, and TBS' looks pretty darn coarse, with rubble and shells. Though I'd need to add some cave-y LR, and probably would add some additional rock rubble, a small Bag O'Shells, and maybe a bit of extra really fine sand, depending on the consistency of what I get).

If I put the jawfish in a 20 gallon (or an equivalent 24X12" space in a larger tank), I'll need about 45lbs of sand for a 4" DSB according to the marine depot calculator; 105 if I use a 40 breeder or 36X18" space.

Yes, alton, if I got a pearly KP is definitely the place. Nothing better than getting the fish straight from the collector.... Especially since I live in an Eastern US metropolitan area - all this stuff from Florida could leave the shop at lunch time and I could pick it up by the time work's over.

 

[ThRoewer]

One thing to consider with jawfish tanks is tank heigh. You need at least 4" for the sand bed and then at least a foot of water column on top of that. So a 40B with 16" total height is already cutting it close.

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[KingOfAll_Tyrants]

Thanks, ThRoewer. I did see in an earlier post that you thought the 20L (13" from Aqueon, thus about 9" with a 4" sandbed) was too short and you thought a 55 or 75 (21" from Aqueon; 17" with a 4" bed with the luxury of making the bed taller); but thanks for the reminder. If I get the one of the tanks I'm thinking of (72X16X16 or 48X16X16) they'll be custom acrylic, so I may order a bit taller if I want. (24" is my absolute max, though - that's just about the length of my finger-to-armpit )

Also, thanks again for all the data in this thread; it's very useful. One opinion: I would think the BSJ lives mostly above the thermocline, so the sea surface temps (- maybe a few degrees) would be best for them. Thus, 20-24degrees C might be a good temperature range for them.

Finally, not to derail the thread, but since the Pearly Jawfish was mentioned, I did a bit of habitat research on them. Not only are they in most of the Carribean down to Brazil (to include the keys), but they go as far northwest as the Florida Middle Grounds (and thus probably up the Atlantic side until at least cape anaveral - maybe even further?) and are apparently fairly common on the LA, TX parts of the Gulf.

 

[Chasmodes]

ThRoewer, do you have any recent videos of your tank? What livestock do you have in there now?

 

[ThRoewer]

Nothing recent. I plan to upgrade them to a 29 tall, but need to get the back wall done first (actually, first I need to figure out how to make the wall.)
The tank has right now not even light, just ambient light from the window and room.
Need to clean up a bit and take the time to shoot a new video.
The other fish in there are 3 East Pacific blennies, a pair of hancocki and an unidentified single.
Unfortunately the Pipefish and the eyebrow blennies didn't survive the lower winter temperatures.

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[ThRoewer]

Sad news. The last weekend we had a crazy heatwave and of course it was a weekend were I wasn't home until late in the evening. When I came home Saturday night most of my tanks had a temperature of 33 °C (91 °F). While most fish, inverts and corals handled it surprisingly well, the 30 gallon tank with the BSJ went completely belly up and only one of the blennies survived.
I don't think that the temperature was the direct cause of death, but rather a lack of oxygen due to the fully covered tank and the rather low flow.



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[Chasmodes]

Ah man, so sorry to hear that!

We were at Myrtle Beach and spent an afternoon one day at the Ripley's Aquarium there, and they have a couple BSJ's in their reef tank. My family loved to see them so much that they want me to set up a tank and get some. I thought of your tank and how much I'd like to replicate that.

Hopefully, you can start anew.

 

[alton]

My condolences, it is one of my favorite fish.

 

[ThRoewer]

I'm not sure if I get a new BSJ pair any time soon.
I have 3 Tiger jawfish and a pair of percula that need a new home and I'm thinking to remodel the tank for them.

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[ginpang]

Sad news. The last weekend we had a crazy heatwave and of course it was a weekend were I wasn't home until late in the evening. When I came home Saturday night most of my tanks had a temperature of 33 °C (91 °F). While most fish, inverts and corals handled it surprisingly well, the 30 gallon tank with the BSJ went completely belly up and only one of the blennies survived.
I don't think that the temperature was the direct cause of death, but rather a lack of oxygen due to the fully covered tank and the rather low flow.



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So sad. Sorry for your loss.


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[ThRoewer]

Gonna start another round.
Saturday I got two for a good price together with an O. randalli male (finally!) and put them into a 29 gallon tank.
The BSJ went straight into the tank while I kept the randalli in an acclimatization box (he will later go to the tank with my 2 females).

Now I have to hope that I picked the right BSJ and actually got a male and a female...

 

[ThRoewer]

One of them is certainly a male and despite having their burrows close to each other they haven't killed each other yet. So I'm hopeful that I also picked the female right.

These two are not very good eaters. It's not that they are not interested, they just don't really go after food like mysis. They are much better with Tigger Pods - unfortunately the crazy heat today killed off my big culture.
Though, I'm not sure if it's lack of hunger or the fear of getting out of their holes. I kind of feel they are afraid that if they get out the other might steal their hole...

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[ThRoewer]

Seems they needed a few days to settle in.
Today they went quite aggressively after the food.

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The one on the left should be the male (brighter coloration in the front and more pointy head) and the one on the right should be the female (darker in coloration and with a more square head.)
I was a bit concerned about the current heat wave, but the evaporation chilling with a fan worked better than expected and kept their tank below 26°C while the garage was at a smoldering 34°C.

 

[ThRoewer]

BTW, Divers Den has right now what I believe to be a male and a female.

This should be a male:

https://www.liveaquaria.com/divers-den/product/466153/blue-spotted-jawfish

And this should be a female:

https://www.liveaquaria.com/divers-den/product/466155/blue-spotted-jawfish

 

[alton]

$500 for a pair is crazy! Funny BSJF where $60 and Gem tangs $2500. Supply and demand drives our market

 

[ThRoewer]

$500 for a pair is crazy! Funny BSJF where $60 and Gem tangs $2500. Supply and demand drives our market

My two cost me together what LA asks for one.
I kind of wonder why none of the big aqua farms has started breeding these. They can't be more difficult to breed than O. aurifons. Those are not (yet) commercially bred because they are too low in price. But BSJ have definitely hit the price where breeding could be profitable.

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