Tank Journal Archive

[Ben Daley]

A few months back I purchased a tiny one spot fox face with the hopes it would clean up bryopsis and valonia.

The fish did do a good job of reducing both algae, but did not eliminate it. This has got me thinking that grazing fish like this will not actually eliminate the algae, just mow/trim it to ensure an ongoing food source.

Anyway, the fish grew quickly, no doubt fuelled by eating trachys and acan lords

Decided that it's got to go, and invested in an aquamedic fish trap. This device works pretty well IMO, but turbo snails love to wedge themselves where they can block the trigger for the door. Of course every other fish was super keen to go in the trap, except for the foxface.

I eventually caught him, and accidentally opened the door while removing the trap, allowing him to escape
Two more weeks go by... a few more failed attempts at trapping him - mechanical errors, coralline growing on the door and preventing it dropping, more snails etc.

Finally caught him to be rehomed this weekend.

All in all, a $40 fish ended up costing over $400, factoring in the price of the trap and lost corals.

Going to try flucanazole again. Current pests are aiptasia, valonia and byopsis - just can't shake em.

 

[Chris Robertson]

Damn. BTW, apparently hydrogen peroxide will knock off the aiptasia. Haven'thad any so don't know from experience.

 

[Ben Daley]

Thanks Chris, I've tried a few things to manually kill them but it's hard to get them all, any easy to not quite kill them sometimes too. An aiptasia eating filefish was added about a month ago that is eating the ones it can reach. I'm considering a rescape to expose more of the rock but it's tricky when the tank is full (perhaps part of the problem).

It's been a week since I've caught the foxface and I can visually see bryopsis and valonia blooming. Still glad to have it go. Dosed the tank with 2600mg flucanazole today.

 

[Chris Robertson]

Good luck. You probably know all this, but here's an article on multiple ways to knockll of the little bastards: https://www.practicalfishkeeping.co.uk/features/articles/enemy-anemone

On viewing more pics of them, I think I actually had four when I started my temperate marie rockpool tank. I was sad when they died, but now am extremely grateful. How did I kill them? Iggerance and sheer dumb luck combined with new tank syndrome : )

 

[ReeferRob]

Thanks Chris, I've tried a few things to manually kill them but it's hard to get them all, any easy to not quite kill them sometimes too. An aiptasia eating filefish was added about a month ago that is eating the ones it can reach. I'm considering a rescape to expose more of the rock but it's tricky when the tank is full (perhaps part of the problem).

It's been a week since I've caught the foxface and I can visually see bryopsis and valonia blooming. Still glad to have it go. Dosed the tank with 2600mg flucanazole today.

The ONLY thing that I have found to dispatch Aiptasia absolutely are Scats, Green or Red Scats. I don't know how available they are there, but they hunt them out from the middle of zoanthid colonies without damaging the surrounding polyps.

As for the Rabbitfish, yea, the Indo area ones will nip corals, ones out of Fiji not at all that I've seen. I have 4 doliatus in one run and 4 Orange Spot in another with no issues. Magnificent ones seem to just nip sporadically at LPS corals from what I've observed.