Aaarrrggg
New member
I was just reefing along, minding my own nano-business when a local reefing couple put their gorgeous 144g Oceanic Half Circle tank up for sale. Well, what could a gal possibly do but buy it and start her dream tank?!
Here is "The Beast" (excuse the missing doors and canopy, they'll be on there soon)
My previous tanks have been a standard 55g and a 20g Elos Mini... so this bad boy is a BIG step up for me!
My goal
To have a set up like morbert with a family of clowns living together in a large colony of BTAs: http://reefcentral.org/forums/showthread.php?t=1259398
Rules
For this to happen I have set myself some rules:
My original plan was to get a pair of Onyx Percs to be the parents, (because I loooove Onyx! :inlove
... but I kept coming across threads from people complaining that their Onyxs had lost their black coloration in BTA hosts. I know I could choose another anemone, (esp as BTAs aren't natural hosts for percs,) but I love RBTAs as much as Onyxs!
Then I found out about Sanjay's Photon Clownfish. These guys are hybrids from a Onyx Perc female x B&W Occy male (story here: http://blog.aquanerd...ton-clowns.html)
They look like Onyx... but I'm thinking the B&W genes *might* let them hold their black coloration better in BTA hosts (I had a completely B&W occy in a RBTA in my first tank.) It's a long-shot... but for my dream of a shoal of black-white-orange clowns in a sea of Flame BTAs... I'm willing to give it a try!
Now, black photons are pretty hard to come by, plus I didn't really like the notion of breeding siblings; so I decided to have a go at pairing up a perc and occy myself. I have a 20g Elos Mini running already, so I thought I'd get things rolling on that front.
I bought the female Onyx from Alpha Corals. She's a C-Quest lineage one from SA and she's beeeeautiful!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiC-vIC05Lg
After all the years of drooling over Onyx clowns online, I'd never actually seen one in person until I cracked the box open. Wow. They don't disappoint! She's actually gone even more black since I received her on Sept 13th -her dorsal fin is now completely black, so she's "officially" an Onyx.
The male was the smallest of 4 ORA Domino Occys at my LFS. They had B&Ws too, but I'd been admiring their Dominoes for sometime and thought it would be neat to try something a little different from Sanjay. I added the male to my tank a couple of days before the female arrived. This seemed to work out well because since then they've rarely left each others side.
Introducing Guybrush & Marley...!
Occasionally the female will turn and snap at the male, but he'll just scamper away before being allowed to return to her side. I *think* I've seen him do some submissive wiggles, but he's generally so wigglesome, it's hard to tell. I've noticed a few nips taken out of this fins, but he's always allowed to eat and he seems completely besotted with her. Chances are he was a juvi when I got him, so I'm still bracing myself for things to get worse... but so far so good.
Here's a quick mockup of what their offspring "could" look like:
TBH they probably won't look like this, (Sanjay has just bred an Onyx x Midnight and the young all have their white bars) but it's fun to imagine.
Here is "The Beast" (excuse the missing doors and canopy, they'll be on there soon)
My previous tanks have been a standard 55g and a 20g Elos Mini... so this bad boy is a BIG step up for me!
My goal
To have a set up like morbert with a family of clowns living together in a large colony of BTAs: http://reefcentral.org/forums/showthread.php?t=1259398
Rules
For this to happen I have set myself some rules:
- Must raise the clowns myself
- Must have large number of BTAs before attempting to introduce more than 2 clowns
- Must aquascape in a way that the dominant pair can claim a semi-secluded spot for themselves
- Must be able to feed heavily to lessen clown in-fighting (and promote BTA propagation)
My original plan was to get a pair of Onyx Percs to be the parents, (because I loooove Onyx! :inlove
... but I kept coming across threads from people complaining that their Onyxs had lost their black coloration in BTA hosts. I know I could choose another anemone, (esp as BTAs aren't natural hosts for percs,) but I love RBTAs as much as Onyxs!Then I found out about Sanjay's Photon Clownfish. These guys are hybrids from a Onyx Perc female x B&W Occy male (story here: http://blog.aquanerd...ton-clowns.html)
They look like Onyx... but I'm thinking the B&W genes *might* let them hold their black coloration better in BTA hosts (I had a completely B&W occy in a RBTA in my first tank.) It's a long-shot... but for my dream of a shoal of black-white-orange clowns in a sea of Flame BTAs... I'm willing to give it a try!
Now, black photons are pretty hard to come by, plus I didn't really like the notion of breeding siblings; so I decided to have a go at pairing up a perc and occy myself. I have a 20g Elos Mini running already, so I thought I'd get things rolling on that front.
I bought the female Onyx from Alpha Corals. She's a C-Quest lineage one from SA and she's beeeeautiful!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiC-vIC05Lg
After all the years of drooling over Onyx clowns online, I'd never actually seen one in person until I cracked the box open. Wow. They don't disappoint! She's actually gone even more black since I received her on Sept 13th -her dorsal fin is now completely black, so she's "officially" an Onyx.
The male was the smallest of 4 ORA Domino Occys at my LFS. They had B&Ws too, but I'd been admiring their Dominoes for sometime and thought it would be neat to try something a little different from Sanjay. I added the male to my tank a couple of days before the female arrived. This seemed to work out well because since then they've rarely left each others side.
Introducing Guybrush & Marley...!
Occasionally the female will turn and snap at the male, but he'll just scamper away before being allowed to return to her side. I *think* I've seen him do some submissive wiggles, but he's generally so wigglesome, it's hard to tell. I've noticed a few nips taken out of this fins, but he's always allowed to eat and he seems completely besotted with her. Chances are he was a juvi when I got him, so I'm still bracing myself for things to get worse... but so far so good.
Here's a quick mockup of what their offspring "could" look like:
TBH they probably won't look like this, (Sanjay has just bred an Onyx x Midnight and the young all have their white bars) but it's fun to imagine.
