Help with Jawfish

[moonroomstudios]

I am having some trouble with jawfish. I have been in the hobby for 10 years. I am on my 3rd build. My last build and the current build are SPS dominated reefs. I have had great success with jawfish in the past. My tank is 200 gallons and was started 10 months ago. All levels have been stable for 5 or more months. I maintain very good water quality. I designed this new build with Jawfish as the centerpiece second to the SPS. I have an egg crate base with 3 main cave structures cut out of the egg crate. I have 3 large rock structures that have been secured to the egg crate creating an intricate labrynth of caves for burrowing that are all connected. I backfilled all of the caves with sand so as to give the Jaws the illusion that they are building their own burrows. There are lots of different sizes of rubble and sand to assist in building. There is a 4 inch sand base above the egg crate base. I have stocked the tank very slow an only have very peaceful species thus far. The actual bioload for a 200 gallon tank is on the very low side. Here is a list of all fish. (10 chromis, 2 picasso clowns, 1 lawnmower blenny, 2 cleaner shrimp, clean up crew). My plan was to have about 6 pearly jawfish and a mated pair of bluespots. From experience I have found that the pearly jawfish are more communal and will share a large burrow with others. I had 3 in my last build and they were happy for 4 years together before I tore down and moved. In this build so far, I have introduced 6 pearly jaw fish and all have perished. At the beginning, I put a mated pair. One of them went to the overflow box repeatedly. I will describe him later. The other one was found dead the next day on the sand. I then ordered a pair from a well respected online vendor. They came in very stressed and I acclimated slowly by the drip method. I placed them in a clear tupperware and turned it upside down over one of the cave entrances filled with sand. They immediatly started digging and after 1 day they had a nice burrow built. I removed the tupperware. For 3 days, they burrowed but did not eat. I turn off all flow and slowly pipet food out of view that drifts across the hole. They looked interested but no eating. After 3 days, they were nowhere to be found. The hole eventually backfilled in. I tried 2 more singles at different times with almost the same result. I can help them find a burrow, they start digging and then dissapear after a day or 2. The first one that went to the overflowbox, lived durring this entire time. He would eat well when in the box. I would pipet food to him and he would eat a ton. I would periodicly catch him and place him back in the tank. He would build a new den everytime between the sand and the glass and it would usually be fairly shallow. Every morning, he would be in a new place or back in the overflow. He had a great feeding responce and ate like a pig. I found him thismorning dead and sucked up to the drain of my closed loop. The suction is not that vigourous to have sucked him in as an inoccent passerby. I have no idea what did him in.

I have no idea as to why I am having so much trouble. Again, I have built the system around this one species and nothing I do seams to work. Any advice?

 

[Sigmund]

I have had lots of jawfish over the last few years and have found Pearly jawfish to be harder to keep than all others with the exception of Blue Spots. I have had most success with them with really deep sand/gravel around 6 to 8 inches. Dusky jaws are also from the Caribbean and are very hardy. You do mostly just get to see the top of their heads, but still very interesting. Tiger jaws also are attractive, more active than the Dusky and have the nice stripes. Had decent luck with yellow head pearly jaws years ago, but the last 2 I had would never de-stress and eventually would either get sick or slowly die.

 

[alton]

KP Aquatics now sells juvenile yellow head jawfish. I would try those. My feeling on jawfish is they are no different than any other fish, the younger they are the better they adapt. Keeping pairs can be stressful on the fish, I do much better having singles, according to Kara from KP juveniles may not be sexed yet so keeping multiples may be easier?