Some new fish...

[Recty]

Just an update with some pictures.

The flames are doing real well, there is still a little squabbling between the two biggest ones which I think are males, but it's pretty minimal. Everyone of them have good fins with no tears, so that is nice.

Look at these teeth... they are each like a little saw blade with 5 mini teeth on each tooth.

The queen is doing great.

The blueface still hides a lot, I'm thinking that will probably never end.

The emperor is doing great, he still has HLLE but it's receding so I'm hoping it's going to totally heal.

 

[sean A.]

Those are some beautiful fish man.

 

[AquaKnight]

Wow what a read. I've only had intermittent internet for the last couple of weeks, thoroughly enjoyed catching up with this thread.

Also, a bored late night project, but I should be setting up a big new tank soon, and to get a basis for a stocklist, using yours as a model, I've sort of made a 'points' systems (1-10), sort of factoring bioload of that fish(food/poop), overall aggressiveness, and 'room' of tank that fish consumes. Just wondering based on those 3, what you'd think of rating them? I did them without figuring much into 'future growth." (why the Queen may seem low).

Here's how I scored them;

Duss -9
Queen -6
emp-8
x4 flame-10
majestic-5
blueface-6
lemonpeel-4
convict-5

I grouped the flames, figure the little ones are like a 1 or 2, the bigger 3 or so... Think any are high or low?

 

[LukFox]

Man you fish are crazy beautiful. Keep posting your photos; I love seeing them. I really like the first shot of the dus, and his teeth are nuts. The first photo of the queen is also very nice.

 

[yukonblizzard]

Your Duss really looks good, I love the coloration. Do you still have the Majestic angel?

 

[Recty]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15577670#post15577670 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by sean A.
Those are some beautiful fish man.

Thanks Sean.

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15578178#post15578178 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by yukonblizzard
Your Duss really looks good, I love the coloration. Do you still have the Majestic angel?

Thanks, I really like the way the dussu has turned out as well. I saw them in Hawaii swimming in schools, they are just a gorgeous fish when they get bigger. Mine is just starting to come into it's adult coloration, imo, and will only be getting prettier as time goes on.

Yes, I have the majestic still. He just hides a lot, he really only comes out to feed. He is the small angel in the tank so I cant say I really blame him. He has gotten fatter though since I bought him and he comes out with no fear when the food hits the water

Here is a picture I took 10 days ago.

And then here is one I just took now. Keep in mind it's 9:30AM here in Alaska and it's dark, so I had to manually focus my camera, so he isnt in very good focus It's very hard to focus on a fast moving fish with manual focus.

He was a little beat up when I first put him into my display, my achilles really hated him. Once I removed the achilles, he has been healing and within a month or so after the achilles was gone, all his fins were back to being perfect and he looks great. You can see in the pictures he has no rips or tears in his fins at all.

In fact, I was really giving my fish some scrutiny last night, really looking close at the pictures and in person to see if they had any damage and even my little flames no longer have any nipped fins. It seems like the tank has worked out it's pecking order and everyone knows who is the boss of who.

 

[Recty]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15577872#post15577872 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by LukFox
Man you fish are crazy beautiful. Keep posting your photos; I love seeing them. I really like the first shot of the dus, and his teeth are nuts. The first photo of the queen is also very nice.

Thanks, I will continue to post photos I like to take the pictures because if nothing else, I can see things in the pictures that I cant see with my own eyes. I started noticing ich on a fish because of a picture about 3 days before I could see anything by just looking in the tank. Although hopefully now I have eradicated ich from my display so I wont have to do that again.

I agree, the dussu has some crazy teeth on him. They are each like a little saw, which is not what I was expecting from an algae eater.

 

[Recty]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15577867#post15577867 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by AquaKnight407
Wow what a read. I've only had intermittent internet for the last couple of weeks, thoroughly enjoyed catching up with this thread.

Glad to give you something to read

Also, a bored late night project, but I should be setting up a big new tank soon, and to get a basis for a stocklist, using yours as a model, I've sort of made a 'points' systems (1-10), sort of factoring bioload of that fish(food/poop), overall aggressiveness, and 'room' of tank that fish consumes. Just wondering based on those 3, what you'd think of rating them? I did them without figuring much into 'future growth." (why the Queen may seem low).

Here's how I scored them;

Duss -9
Queen -6
emp-8
x4 flame-10
majestic-5
blueface-6
lemonpeel-4
convict-5

I grouped the flames, figure the little ones are like a 1 or 2, the bigger 3 or so... Think any are high or low?

Well, I'd probably do it like this...

Dussu - 10 - He is just a big fish and rapidly getting bigger. He owns the tank, he eats the most food and he poops the most too.
Queen - 5 - For right now, she is only one of the medium eaters and is only 5" without streamers. But based on future size I'd give her an 8 or a 9.
Emperor - 8
Flame x4 - I'd say a 5 , maybe a 6. They really dont eat a lot and they dont take up much room. They each eat a 5-10 of the 1mm sinking NLS pellets each feeding and some of the nori that floats through the water, but their bioload is very minimal. I'd say the queen eats and poops more than the flames do combined.
Majestic - 4 - Slow growing and doesnt eat a whole ton. Probably 5-6 of the 3mm pellets 3 or so times a day, plus some nori. He doesnt swim around a whole lot and take up a lot of tank space like the tang or the emperor, so I rate him pretty low.
Blueface - 5 - Same reason I rated the queen a 5, just not eating tons and the blueface also doesnt swim around tons, he is more of a rock fish.
Lemonpeel - 2 - Great fish, swims around constantly and isnt afraid of anyone, but same as the flames he really just doesnt add much to the bioload and he wont ever get big.
Convict - 4 - Pig pig pig. He is still small, around 3-4" and just cant eat as much food as the other bigger fish, but in a year or so when he has grown to 6-7", I expect him to really go through the nori. If I still had the 4 convicts then I would definitely rate the group as a 10, they were crazy hungry all the time and very aggressive feeders.

The dussu and the emperor eat more than all the other fish combined. Just the dussu alone will eat 50-60 pellets per feeding and half a sheet of nori. I'll put in 20-30 pellets and all the fish will go nuts eatings, then I put in some more and the smaller fish are already full so it's just the angels and the tang eating, then I'll drop in more and it's pretty much just the emperor and the dussu interested in food, then I'll drop in food again and it's just the dussu who wants to eat. He will just feed and feed and feed if I keep dropping it in. I just ration him a little because I dont want him to grow insanely fast and if I fed him what he thought he needed, he would be a fat unhealthy fish

 

[sean A.]

Wow that's a lot of food Recty. What is your fish feeding bill a
Month if you don't mind me asking.

 

[yukonblizzard]

Thats too bad that the Majestic doesnt come out to often, being that he is such a beautiful fish.

 

[Recty]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15579654#post15579654 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by sean A.
Wow that's a lot of food Recty. What is your fish feeding bill a
Month if you don't mind me asking.

It's not high at all. I buy a 100 pack of nori which lasts about 2 months for $10, so about $5 a month for the seaweed.

I mainly just feed NLS pellets now which are pretty cheap, I suspect my monthly bill for those is under $5.

I mix in selcon, vitamin C, Zoe and some garlic extreme once a week or so with the pellets and also thaw a cube of mysis and a cube of angel formula in with the mix, that stuff isnt real expensive either and the fact that I only do it weekly makes it cheap to do.

If I spend $10 a month of food that's probably the high end, I'd suspect it's more like $8.

 

[Recty]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15579783#post15579783 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by yukonblizzard
Thats too bad that the Majestic doesnt come out to often, being that he is such a beautiful fish.

I know, it's too bad. He is growing slowly but surely, which is good because I feel he is healthy and not starving, but he is definitely the small angel which means he gets picked on and chased around from time to time. Since he is the smallest angel and probably the slowest growing, he is always going to fill the role of being lowest in the pecking order, so I feel a little bad for the guy.

I've actually debated catching him and selling him to someone, but then I just think that a new fish would be relegated to the low man on the totem pole, so I might as well just keep him.

He is a pretty fish for sure and he comes out at feeding time and I see him then a lot, but otherwise he just hangs out in the back of the tank. I still see him, he just doesnt swim openly.

 

[sean A.]

Ok that's real cheap. I'm tryin to get all of my fish to eat pellets now.
My lil queen won't yet but the rest do. I also just got a 4 -4.5 inch
Emperor Angel too. He's in the process of changing from Juv to Adult
colors now.

 

[Recty]

Cool. I really recommend the pellets, they are easy to feed and if you go on vacation, you can use an automatic feeder to keep your fish fed.

My queen took to eating pellets real quickly, I was glad to see that.

I used to feed a mixture of fresh seafood and nori all minced up and soaked in garlic/selcon/zoe/vitamin c with some pellets mixed in as well, and I slowly removed the fresh seafood from the equation until all my fish were just eating pellets. It really wasnt hard, most of the fish liked the pellets more than the seafood anyway.

 

[AquaKnight]

Thanks for the detailed reply.

What the method to the madness was, is basically tallying the points, then dividing by the tank size, and gets a points per gallon ratio. That way I could sort of compare different tanks.

Of course the same fish would affect different sized tanks differently. I'd imagine that Dussu in a 125gal would probably be like a 20 out of 10, and those flames in a 75gal, like 8. So basically the tanks have to be similar in size. Work the opposite way I'd imagine too, a Dussu would be like an 8 in a 1000gal :lol:


Sort of a different question, but do you think your overall bioload would be higher or lower if you didn't have so many fish with 'similar' diets, i.e. you had a trigger and wrasse instead of some of the angels?

 

[Recty]

Hmmmm, angels actually seem pretty low on the eating scale compared to the triggers I had.

The triggers liked to eat meat, I never fed much pellets. My angels and tangs prefer pellets to meat, which just seems less messy and it feels like overall I'm feeding less food.

Anyway, I guess to answer the question, I feel like having fish with similar diets is by far the best way to go. I dont have to do any type of special feeding and this is cheap/easy food. I'd really hate to have to go back to buying seafood, slicing it up, bagging it and freezing it, then thawing it out later, feeding... you get the idea. Pellets are just so simple.

I dont have an autofeeder yet, but I plan on setting one up next time I go on vacation. When I went to Hawaii in February, I had to have a friend of mine come over and feed my fish the whole time. Next time I go, I'll just set up the autofeeder and have peace of mind.

 

[Recty]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15578178#post15578178 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by yukonblizzard
Your Duss really looks good, I love the coloration. Do you still have the Majestic angel?

Here is a good picture of him showing his size relative to the rest of the fish. He isnt much smaller than the blueface and the queen, but he is still smaller which is fish world means a lot

You also get to see a lot of my crap reflecting in the background And even me.

Every single fish is in there, 4 angels, 2 tangs and 5 dwarf angels, I so rarely ever get them all in the same shot, that is always cool. I wasnt even trying with this one.

 

[yukonblizzard]

I love your fish choices, so much color! The most colorfull fish I have is my Blue Hippo Tang, which isnt saying much. And I really like your rock-scape! Did you get the coral branches online, or at a LFS?

I also just noticed that you have a bare-bottom. Does it make cleaning easier? I have been thinking about going bare-bottom to try and keep my nitrates down.

 

[FishyMel]

Looks good. I have high hopes the emp will heal well.

 

[Recty]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15581351#post15581351 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by yukonblizzard
I love your fish choices, so much color! The most colorfull fish I have is my Blue Hippo Tang, which isnt saying much. And I really like your rock-scape! Did you get the coral branches online, or at a LFS?

I also just noticed that you have a bare-bottom. Does it make cleaning easier? I have been thinking about going bare-bottom to try and keep my nitrates down.

I got the coral brances from a guy at my work who has a 75 gallon tank completely crammed full of lots of rock and coral branches. He hasnt had water in the tank for 3 or 4 years now, but he wouldnt part with his rock for a long time. I finally convinced him to about 3-4 months ago and bought all those branches off him.

I really like the bare bottom, and I dont just mean my wife's It makes it soooooo much easier to keep the tank clean. I really dont have a nitrate "problem" like most people with FOWLRs seem to. I dont do anything too special either, I just have a skimmer running and I do weekly water changes.

I dont even have algae problems anymore, I clean my glass probably every 3-4 weeks just because I'll start seeing small brown spots building up, but I'm only seeing them because I'm being picky.

So I dont know really what caused my tank to be so maintenance free. I used to have to clean my glass all the time and had lots of green algae problems, like a green cyano. I ended up removing all my sand from my sump and my tank, got some new rocks and some new fish and my algae problems went away. I think a lot of it has to do with feeding pellets which basically leave no waste food to flow around and rot, everything gets eaten and processed. And yes, it does come out as poop but that is better imo than meat just floating around.