Walt's Official A. thiellei Page

[WDLV]

Right now I'm putting a marble sized piece of cyclopeeze in first thing in the morning and a quarter sized piece (pre-thaw/rinse) of Rod's fish only blend in the evening sometimes substituting rods with a similar sized piece of bloodworms. There's only two fish in the system and it's a 40 Breeder connected to a 100 gallon Rubbermaid trough.

I'm thinking hard about cutting 50 or so pieces of 1.5" PVC at about 2" and lining the bottom of the tank with them for the BTAs to anchor in.

 

[trueblackpercula]

Have you always had them in that tank with apts? I can't see why they would keep running into them if its hurting them. Can you see them at all during the day trying to host the apts or are there that many they can't help but run into them? I really doubt they would kewp getting burned

 

[trueblackpercula]

Can you please post a full tank shot so we can see what the clowns are up against.

 

[WDLV]

tbp, the aptasia were near their nesting site where they would have been difficult to avoid.

I have removed all but one rock (still has a nem dug in well) and put a few flower pors in the system with the anemones in them. I'm hoping to remove the last rock tonight and do a thorough cleaning in that tank. I'm thinking flower pots of various sizes might be a cool way to keep the anemones happy as well as providing a nice repeatable surface for spawning.

They slept in a 6" flower pot full of nems last night. No marks today.

 

[DeathWish302]

My BTAs are doing very poorly now I think water quality (very heavy feeding) is the problem. So, I may just do a sterile-style breeder tank if they continue to digress... and yes, I am taking steps to improve the water quality.

Still following Walt!:wavehand:

Not certain of the 'complexity' you want for a system, but after I started a lagoon with all the nasty caulerpa species and mangroves my water quality jumped ten levels. I am feeding two pairs of clowns (Tomato & GSM) to saturation every day to continue egg production. The BIG change i noticed when I stopped broadcast feeding to saturation and started spot feeding the clowns. I use an acrylic tube with a pipette bulb. Once that goes near the clowns they are hitting the end for food, so viciously that I added a piece of silicone tubing at the end.

Just my $0.02.....

 

[WDLV]

Thanks. I've done the caulerpa and was somewhat happy with it 'till the caulerpa melted. Which subsequently was when my water quality took a dump and despite my mediocre efforts has continued to decline. I feed very heavily for the benefit of my fish and think if I had less (no) LR in the display that the anemones would do a good job in cleaning up the uneaten food. So, about an hour ago, I decided to start a BTA farm. I've seen some much larger setups with no substrate and I'm thinking I might try it for at least a little while.

Most of my systems have had more fish to help clean up the uneaten food but with just one pair the LR turns into a trap and it just rots in the system.

 

[DeathWish302]

I agree that the caulerpa can be a pain to keep in check, but I prune enough of the vegetation weekly that I haven't had a problem......Yet.

I understand the thinking behind 'the trap' theory. I've seen it in my sump with the detritus build-up and then the snow storm that occurs after a WC or the bi-weekly turkey basting to dislodge the junk. I went BB in the DT for this reason.

The way I have fought this trend in the sps DT is a 50-60X turnover with no steady-eddies (he-he, that's funny:fun5 anywhere to be found. I figure I'll torment the Tomato female with excessive flow since she's so disgruntled with the world.

The BTA tank and lagoon have a fair amount of flow, but the key tipping point is the copiuous amounts of nassarius snails and worms that are voracious eaters.

Then again...you could just send me all those anemones and that will cure the whole problem.

 

[WDLV]

Ha!

Yeah, my old 210 gallon had ~49x per hour turnover and was also BB. That is to say, you'll get no arguement from me.

As for the algae, my caulerpa ball was the size of an average bean bag. The entire 100 gallon sump was full of it. There wasn't much caulerpa. Maybe as much as a grapefruit if you balled it all up and my halameda patch was probably no more than cantelope size. It is pretty stuff though. I may give it another go if I ever do a carpet anemone tank.

The worms, well there's plenty of those. I HATE bristleworms. I know they're beneficial but grab one rock the wrong way and my fingers are sore, itchy and swolen for days.

 

[DeathWish302]

The worms, well there's plenty of those. I HATE bristleworms. I know they're beneficial but grab one rock the wrong way and my fingers are sore, itchy and swolen for days.

I use to never mind 'bristle'worms until i bought some LR from a local getting out of SW. He had 2-3 fireworms in a basketball-sized piece of LR. I was moving it from the lagoon to the BTA tank one day and WHAM........Son of a....:headwally::headwalls::blown::headwallblue::headwally::uzi::hammer:

Needless to say, my two fingers swelled up to about 1.5x their size. The swelling was nothing compared to the burning and itching that would have made blowing insulation in an attic in August a breeze!
I love those psychodelic colors, but don't like the sting!

 

[WDLV]

Hahahaha! Yeah. That about sums it up. I've got to the point where I feel something squishy and immediately dry my hand off and go get the duct tape out and pull the spines before sticking the affected area under the hottest water I can stand. If I have foresight I throw on the vynil gloves and circumvent the problem all together!

 

[WDLV]

I did figure out the spots and it wasn't aptasia. It was the fire worms. I got home last night and started cleaning the tank walls and syphoning detritus when the spots popped up again on my female. her whole belly was white. Beneath her was a large bristle worm. On closer inspection there were bristleworm spines in her belly where it was white. I made quick work of the bristle worm and any smaller ones I could find in the display (there are still a couple small corals to hide under.)

 

[Winwood]

You might try an arrow crab or coral banded shrimp. Both love to munch on bristleworms.

 

[WDLV]

You might try an arrow crab or coral banded shrimp. Both love to munch on bristleworms.

Ill have to keep that in mind for future reference.

 

[WDLV]

Can you please post a full tank shot so we can see what the clowns are up against.

Well this is post rock removal but this is where I am now.

 

[Enyo]

Hi Walt, just briefly read your posts and your hypothesis on the origins of A. thiellei and it has me thinking too (dangerous, I know).

Sorry if I missed this, but have you looked into the anatomical differences (such as dorsal fin spines, eye hue) between the various skunk species and how they would correlate with already known hybridized clownfish species?

The more I look at your pictures, the more I see my female ocellaris...

 

[WDLV]

I honestly don't know how to count the dorsal spines. Not sure where spines end and veins begin. I have given a great deal of thought to body plan, locations of markings in relation to other species found in the region, eye iris shape size and hues, eyeball size, density and prevalence of black coloration, base color hue and body plan in relation to other species found in the region.

 

[Overboard]

Very interesting thread Walt. Following along.

Mark

 

[dalilgriffith]

There Mouths and Eyes remind me a lot of a WSM or GSM.

 

[WDLV]

I think they look skunky.

 

[trueblackpercula]

Maybe there was A + B =C AND THEN C SPAWNED WITH D and that's were we are now. The only way to see where they came from would be DNA testing.But no matter what they are amazing fish. I can't wait to see the fry.....