Damsel habit I'd forgotten...

[Sk8r]

...Lol.
I have a 'loose' frag...poor thing. Usually I can just stick a branching coral into a hole in my rock and have it perfectly secure.

This one frag has been through the wars. It fell. I put it up more securely. It fell again. I put it up again. This morning---it's down again.

And a fat, attitudinal dascyllus damsel is swaggering about right over the vacant spot....

Oh, yesssssss.

Clowns do this a lot. Regular damsels (clowns are damsels, if you don't know) don't as a rule, but dascyllus have the body type of tomato clowns: where they fit on the descended-from tree, I don't know, but I can tell you they have the same habit. This head of rock is right dead center of the tank. I think I'm going to have to cede that area to Mr. Damsel or he'll go on working to dump it, which won't give the coral any security.

That's why, even stuck, it wouldn't stay put. The fishy technique is to grab it in the teeth and work it out and dump it.

I run a damsel tank. They are quirky little beggars. He's pretty (b&w stripe) but he is setting himself up as tank boss, fat as a tuna and mannered like a tomato clown.

 

[Sk8r]

Mr Stripey Dascyllus is still patrolling his new claim. I have news for him. He and the golden one-spot dascyllus are going to have to be a number, because I will NOT supply this 3-stripe romeo with another of his own kind. I'm wondering now if the fairly recent addition of the golden, to which he reacted by squiring the golden about, instead of fighting, has put this fellow in a 'family' sort of mind. Right now he's a real good advertisement for going one-of-a-kind in setting up with certain damsel types. He's pretty, but two of him would claim, oh, about 100 gallons of tank. Right now he's taking his half out of the middle.

Last fish I had this so-far-amusingly pushy was the clarkii clown pair that got themselves banished as total tank terrors back when. [They were aided and abetted by a carpet anemone that grew pizza-sized and began to take the middle of the tank.]

 

[Sk8r]

Round 4---I put the frag up.
In one hour, Mr Stripes has taken it down.

THIS time I use the worlds worst reef putty (avoid the pink stuff, get the green) to shape a new socket for the frag and GLUE it into place. While I'm recovering the frag, Mr. Stripes bumps my hand. Nope, Mr. Stripss, it's mine. And I'm-a gonna fix it so your little self can't move it.

Stay tuned.

I love these fish. They're smart, they're fearless, absolutely fearless once they know you're a food source, not a shark, and they plot. I'm quite sure they plot.

We will see which species several million years of evolution has given the smarts to put that poor frag where it wants it.

 

[Indymann99]

My money is on the damsel, what else does he have to do all day but torment you.

 

[Sk8r]

Heh. It's been nearly two hours and so far so good. I usually don't have to glue my frags: I can see with Mr. Stripes in the tank, I'm going to have to do differently. It's amazing how strong a fish can be when he wants to move something. He's less than two inches long. The frag is bigger than he is.

But so far so good.

 

[Nina51]

sk8r, you crack me up! this reminds me of how i'm always fighting with my urchin...i put the frag where i want it, he carts it around on his back. if he had a nose, he'd be thumbing it at me. if he had a thumb.

do you feel a little like ralphie's dad, fighting the furnace? hehe

 

[Sk8r]

WEll, it's stayed put through lights-out. We'll see in the morning. The smooth-skinned ape may have won.

 

[Sk8r]

And I rejoice to say...as the sun rises in the east, the frag is still up there, and coming out.

Sometimes the answer to a problem is to understand the fish, figure how to work around that problem, and figure a way to make it work. There are a lot of reasons to putty a frag--sloping rock, need to stabilize it (corals hate-hate-hate to move and wobble in the current) and --- a fish with a program. There are four good coral fixers: a really good snug hole for a frag stem; a rock that can be set to pin the frag stem; Ic-Gel aka superglue, which sets underwater, but which has to be applied out of the water; and for rocks too critical to move---a well-kneaded ball of stinky reef putty, which comes in a stick, either green or pink: I recommend the green. The pink tends to dry a bit and develop hard bits before use. Smells awful, but it sets underwater very quickly. Stick the frag stem into it, and shove it into a hole that doesn't fit well.