Reef Discussion

[Wrangy]

Let me start out with a big WHOOOOPPPPSSS :P

Everyone has that little thing in the hobby that caused the wonderful snowball addiction that is reef keeping and well for me that always has been and always will lionfish! I remember the very first time I walked into an aquarium that was selling marine animals and in one of the tanks was one of the most gorgeous p. volitans, I was so mesmerised I spent 20 minutes just watching this wonderful fish do it's thing.
Enough blabbering though, on the occasion my lfs gets in fuzzies which I adore but I went in the other day and much to my absolute joy and delight, he has in one of the nicest d. biocellatus I've seen in a very long time! Now I can't possibly keep one in my reef as I have lots of expensive meals in there for even a small mouthed lion, I thought I might be able to get away with housing the little guy in my sump tank but alas that's a little too small for their needs.

Fast forward a few hours till when my partner got home and I was able to bombard the poor woman with my excitement and joy of seeing this gorgeous little fish, I think I must have been a little over the top about it all and also in my disappointment about not being able to get the little guy because to my great surprise she said "let's look at getting another tank".... needless to say I nearly exploded lol. So this brings me to the point of my post haha.
It's some questions to deal with some plans I have for setting this tank up for my potential lovelies! I've been looking at some small options to house a couple of species and would have loved to do a Nuvo drop off tank for it but even then I think it's too small and my buddy at the lfs reckons it would be a little uncomfortable too.

So after all that nonsense, my plans are sitting at getting a Mini Reef 120 (2x1.5x1.5') (30g + sump) and upgrading it to a properly capable tank for such beasty little critters. Now I'm comfortable with housing the single d. biocellatus in there but I have some others I would love to add and have a couple of buddies in there with him. So a few things I'm looking at as friends are the following:
- P. radiata I would ADORE having one of these guys in there as well but I'm a little iffy on this given the size of the tank but someone please tell me I can get away with it lol
- Caracanthus sp. for something different and I don't think he'll be consumed
- Antennarius maculatus we get these occasionally as well and would make another nice addition.
- Any other mixed preds like leaf's or scorpion's or even wasp's but I don't think we can get wasp's here in Aus.

Pretty much the stocking on the tank will be "light" (lol) and only have 2 or 3 fish at very most with a combination of any of the above. As this is a dedicated setup to these guys any requirement can really be met without much worry, it'll hardly be more work than my sps tank lol. The plan is live marine feeder shrimp and hopefully eventually transition to gut stuffed frozen silverside :) I'm not getting my hopes up on the d. biocellatus transitioning though but we'll see :)

Man I can ramble, thanks those that have read the whole thing haha @ReeferRob @suta42 experience from either of you? lol

 

[Sam Parker]

Just one piece of advice - do it.....

actually two;

test more often than every 6 months LOL

 

[Wrangy]

Just one piece of advice - do it.....

actually two;

test more often than every 6 months LOL

I definitely want to lol I've already started pestering Dave!

They will definitely be happening haha on both the tanks! :P

 

[slin1977]

To cut one long story short, great minds think alike...coolest fish ever.
If I could ramble on, the nicest thing to have would extremely large tank with a stud pair of 30 cm volitans just waiting to be fed.

 

[Wrangy]

To cut one long story short, great minds think alike...coolest fish ever.
If I could ramble on, the nicest thing to have would extremely large tank with a stud pair of 30 cm volitans just waiting to be fed.

Boy would I love a big tank with some big lions cruising around along with some other large fish too :) I think the dwarf's steal my heart though! Radiata is my all time favourite with the fu's being very very close in second! lol

 

[Mattres]

First of all, you crazy :p

They are a beautiful fish and it will be a kool tank to look at!
What will you do for a scape?

 

[Andrew B]

Knew you would fall into this the second i saw the message ;)
will be awesome!

 

[Savage Henry]

If anyone does want a larger lion fish species come snorkeling with me in Sydney and you might catch yourself a baby to start with. They are the easiest things in the world to catch. Just difficult finding them in Sydney, but far from impossible.

 

[ReeferRob]

Here in the US they're called Fu Man Chu lions and I love them too. There's a steady but small demand here for them here. They are fairly easy to get switched to dead foods. You're on the right track with the feeder shrimp, I'd also try some feeder guppies if they're available there at a decent price. if you're close to the beach you should be able to collect some sort of small fish there since they're mainly fish eaters. as long as the food is moving it will trigger a strike from them. If you get stung, remember, soak the puncture wound in the hottest water you can stand without burning yourself for 15-20 minutes. It will denature the toxin in short order. any swelling past a day or any swelling of tongue, eyes or throat should be dealt with in the hospital ASAP!

Here's a cool little fella I got in a few months ago. Yellow spot scorpionfish.

 

[shaidas]

Wrangy what do you feed the Mrs mate. Maybe I can train mine to be so co operative if you share your secret :p. That will look sick . Cant wait to see it.

 

[Wrangy]

First of all, you crazy :p

They are a beautiful fish and it will be a kool tank to look at!
What will you do for a scape?

Yep, entirely insane :p

Yeah my absolute goal is a fu manchu and either a radiata or a wartskin angler :D Scape will be caves and overhangs, probably just reef rock and load it up with gorgs and such :)

Knew you would fall into this the second i saw the message ;)
will be awesome!

I thought about messaging you first but I then thought this might amuse you a little more haha

If anyone does want a larger lion fish species come snorkeling with me in Sydney and you might catch yourself a baby to start with. They are the easiest things in the world to catch. Just difficult finding them in Sydney, but far from impossible.

It would be cool to just go and see them even :)

Here in the US they're called Fu Man Chu lions and I love them too. There's a steady but small demand here for them here. They are fairly easy to get switched to dead foods. You're on the right track with the feeder shrimp, I'd also try some feeder guppies if they're available there at a decent price. if you're close to the beach you should be able to collect some sort of small fish there since they're mainly fish eaters. as long as the food is moving it will trigger a strike from them. If you get stung, remember, soak the puncture wound in the hottest water you can stand without burning yourself for 15-20 minutes. It will denature the toxin in short order. any swelling past a day or any swelling of tongue, eyes or throat should be dealt with in the hospital ASAP!

Here's a cool little fella I got in a few months ago. Yellow spot scorpionfish.

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I thought you might have liked this plan Rob lol. I'm hoping this little guy won't be too hard but I'm willing to put the work in even if he is :) lol I want to tr and avoid FW feeders as much as possible and it helps that Dave gets in SW feeders fairly regularly :) so we'll see how things go and what we can achieve!

I would adore something like that or a little waspfish but they're not on the allowed import list :( lol

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Wrangy what do you feed the Mrs mate. Maybe I can train mine to be so co operative if you share your secret :p. That will look sick . Cant wait to see it.

hahahaha I was as surprised as anyone else! I didn't even hint at another tank or anything lol she just brought it up out of the blue haha I must be doing something right :p

 

[ReeferRob]

Anglers are also very cool critters. The Striated ones have just become available out of Sri Lanka again in the last 2 weeks. They can be problematic to get eating, but patience pays. Small bait shrimp work very well. There are quite a few predators out there that adapt well to aquarium life. I just got M a 20cm long Tesselata moray out of Sri Lanka a few weeks ago. Now if I could figure out how to keep the little shit out of the filtre on her RSM250 I'd be in high cotton, lol. I also have a Leafmouth and Soapy grouper in the shop, they're like puppies and would make good tank mates for the lions. Once the lions get to know who feeds them, they'll beg for food too. When we had the 240 back in the late 80s M bough a tiny Volitans lion, he was about 5cm long and she'd hand feed "Shorty" the lionfish guppies.

 

[somethingfishy76]

That looks like a nice bunch of fish... Congrats on the go-ahead mate! Seldom do we get the "second tank" approval.

 

[Wrangy]

That looks like a nice bunch of fish... Congrats on the go-ahead mate! Seldom do we get the "second tank" approval.

Haha that's very true! But she was super up for the idea so I'm not going to say anything :P
I'm contemplating housing the little guy in the sump tank so I can at least get him while I set the second tank up, he should be fine down there for two or three months :)

 

[Wrangy]

I did it, the path of predators has begun lol I'm going to pick up the little d. biocellatus this week :D and new tank in the next month or two :)

 

[macca_75]

View attachment 56527

View attachment 56528

Thats the only tank I've seen with more Bubble algae than mine :rofl

Man - I would LOVE a predator tank,but alas if we did get a second marine tank I'm pretty sure SWITBO would fill it with Seahorses.

 

[Wrangy]

Thats the only tank I've seen with more Bubble algae than mine :rofl

Man - I would LOVE a predator tank,but alas if we did get a second marine tank I'm pretty sure SWITBO would fill it with Seahorses.

Hmmm, do I organise a Vibrant group buy to rid everyone of BA? lol

 

[ReeferRob]

It's actually just about gone now. The damn RO unit broke and was letting raw water past the membrane so I got bubbles for miles, lol. The Siporax and new ATS are doing it dirty.

 

[Wrangy]

Sump was given a scrub-a-dub-dub in preparations for a new visitor :)

 

[Mattres]

I think your scoly needs a haircut :rofl