Harlequin shrimp molt

My harlequin shrimp had withdrawn itself (along with as much of the starfish as it could carry) to the bank of the tank beneath some coral rubble. This went on for about two days... then yesterday, while I was watching, I actually saw him break through his skin. The exoskeleton was a perfect, translucent replica. If only I had filmed it in time...

Anyway, the shrimp's back to slowly eating away on the starfish.

joshday.com

A+ rating for Aquaclear filter

A letter I sent to Hagen co. in regards to their Aquaclear filter line...

Dear Hagen and everyone in the repair department:

A week ago my Aquaclear 110, after a routine cleaning, took on a motor problem I couldn't fix. I shipped the unit back to your company and in less than a week (amazingly prompt) the filter was returned, fixed, with a shiny new motor.

You're a great, professional company and I can't thank you enough. I actually purchased a second Aquaclear for my 180 gallon tank I was so impressed.

Your Aquaclear filters are the best HOB units on the market. Period. Other than the motor going out on me, I've never had a problem. The rate of flow is incredible, the motor's quiet, and the filtration and media for bacterial colonization is bar none.

I'll be sure to let everyone I know about how good your filters are and how professional your company is. When our dishwasher broke, it took six weeks for the incompentent local repair company to get the parts from the manufacturer to fix a broken seal.

With Hagen, mine was fixed in four days.

Josh Day

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Note that I didn't have my receipt of purchase and that was no problem.

Success and failures in fish keeping

The above mpeg is a little taste of my new instructional video on setting up a nano. It's only a 3 gallon but everything I'm doing also applies to tanks up to 29 gallons. I'm going to be packaging the video with my nano guide, so if you haven't bought the guide while it's cheap at $12, now's the time!

Onto today's topic...

I've been keeping fish since 2004. Freshwater, a brief foray into brackish, marine, and full reef (soft corals, LPS, and SPS). I began with a ten gallon tetra mixed community with red and white gravel and plastic plants. This tank became a second tank until I bought a 180 gallon at the beginning of 2007.

Keeping multiple tanks, with multiple biotopes that cross saltwater and fresh, I've had my share of disasters, tragedies, and mishaps. Some were just poor fortune; others were caused by stupidity or negligence. Let's break em down and see what's what.

1. I kept a green mandarin successfully in a ten gallon tank for two years. He was fat and healthy until the end when he leaped from my uncovered tank. I tried dozens of different frozen foods before discovering my mandarin would eat fish roe, the little eggs atop sushi rolls. In the beginning I attempted to harvest copepods in mason jars and this endeavor was indeed a failure. My first mandarin starved, although I believe he wasn't eating as the pod population in my tank at the time never dwindled.

This was both a success and a failure. A success for getting the mandarin to eat roe (and Cyclops micro shrimp) and keeping him well-rounded and healthy for two years, but also a failure in his constant feedings cause nitrate swings and a hair algae epidemic. Also, it was a failure as I learned an open tank is never safe -- I've come to learn all fish jump!

2. My stingray. You can read more about this in the archives of this blog. This was a failure on many fronts... one, I used playsand which clogged the filters and chiseled away at impellors as the ray was constantly stirring up the substrate. Two, I jumped the gun and bought the ray before the tank had cycled through artifical fishless cycling of household ammonia. Three, I relied heavily on a crap product, Toxivec, which I'd hoped would have the effects of Biospira.

3. Keeping an oscar in a 29 gallon tank. Though this was temporary, and it was my wife's tank, I got lazy and didn't change the water as often as it needed (twice a week, 20% changes). The fish stopped eating, his scales and fins began to rote, and he succumbed to consumption.

4. Attempting to cure clown loaches of internal parasites with metronidazole. Never worked. Not once. Even in a dedicated tank, every clown slowly withered away. I've had clowns come down with the skinny disease two, three months after purchase. In my experience, once they start to take on that sharp knife look along their backs, they're a dead fish swimming.

5. Moving. This is probably my biggest success story. I moved every thing I had, from a 55 gallon tank down to two nano systems, two hours away and didn't have a single casualty. I planned the move down to the finest detail and dedicated two days strictly to moving fish (this includes renting another moving van and going back to the old place).

6. Puffer dentistry. My red eye puffer had stopped eating and could not longer get food into her jaws. I knocked her out with clove oil and carefully peeled back her mouth so my wife could trim off her beak with nail clippers. I actually had to perform this operation twice. I thought she was a goner as she was still unable to eat, but I used some of my lucky roe and this sustained her as her beak healed and began to grow back. Now she's able to draw blood from my fingers again!

7. Bringing a doomed discus back to health. I thought this guy was a fish sandwich for sure. His fins were ragged, his scales were withered and there were white holes in him everywhere. I cut off flake food for his tank and fed him only frozen blood worms. The discus came around in three weeks -- looked no worse for the wear.

8. Keeping a ten gallon reef tank, without protein skimming, for 3+ years. My green star polyps, open brain coral, and various mushrooms continue to thrive. The hair algae will not go away but I accepted that a year ago. As long as I keep it manicured it's not a problem -- it actually adds to the tank! People compliment me about the lush green "lawn" look I have on my rocks. Some even ask me what it is and how I grow it! LOL

I've had my share of failures with this tank too. The first mandarin, losing a clown and then my prized second mandarin through jumps, starving my clam of light by not upgrading lighting properly, losing an SPS frag thanks to invasive pink zoanthids, losing a hairy brittle star I'd had for two years, two large Hawaiian featherdusters vacating their tubes and dying within a week of purchase, etc.

Being in the fish hobby -- and business! -- has its ups and downs. As a famous scientologist once put, it's rough and tumble. It's wild and woolly. But it's a blast. It's a blast.

Josh
http://joshday.com

Harlequin shrimp 3 gallon nano

I've been up to a lot of things, once again.

First and foremost, if you haven't snagged a copy of my detailed and engrossingly controversial book on starting your first nano tank, now's the time! I'm going to be affiliated with Clickbank soon and will be raising the price to 24 dollars. (I'm also making a DVD so you'll get video along with the book!)

Grab a copy now while it's on the cheap -- $12! That's right, only twelve! It's a digital book with full color, high res pictures. As it's downloadable, you'll get it instantly.

Click here to check it out, along with a sample movie of my ten gallon nano.

Remember my 3 gallon Eclipse system? I originally set it up for guppies and a fiddler crab -- it was brackish. Then it briefly was a quarantine tank, and for more than two years it housed my African clawed frog. (You can read all of these stories in the articles section of my site, joshday.com)

Anyway, I moved my big frog girl to a ten gallon dedicated strictly to her and let the Eclipse air out for a couple months. A couple weeks ago I had an idea to make a how-to video on starting a nano tank so I cleaned out the Eclipse and soon it was filled with saltwater, coral rubble, and a couple pounds of premium live rock.

I filmed every step of the way -- from mixing the saltwater, checking salinity, employing a powerhead, running water tests, acclimating inverts, etc.


As you can see, it's a work in progress. Still need to put up a backdrop, which will be a cut-out rectangle of a black plastic garbage bag. I'm also going to add a couple more pounds of live rock and go all out there as this tank will never have a fish in it and shrimp don't exactly swim around for fun in the water column.

Rather than reinventing the wheel and posting about the care of a harlequin shrimp, I'll just point you to this link that contains a wealth of info:

http://home2.pacific.net.ph/~sweetyummy42/harlequinshrimp.html

In other news, I completely dismantled my desktop pico vase. The hair algae was in the process of a massive die-off and there was about a half inch of detritus collected on the bottom. Scrubbed the live rock pretty well, removed as much hair algae as I could.

Unfortunately, I'm worried about my emerald star, which I've had for three years. If you recall, I picked it up at a store when all of its tentacles had been mauled off. Emerald stars grow to be huge and I don't recommend doing what I have done and keeping one in such a little tank -- though I have seen one with a disc almost as large as a human head that lived strictly in an algae scrubbing fuge! It's really all about the water quality, diversity of food, as opposed to space with this variety of starfish.

Anyway, his limbs have been stiffening up lately and he's not eating. Good news is his color is right on and the central disc is fully intact. Doesn't look TOO emaciated but it doesn't look good either.

Several things could have brought about the star's decline:

1. Poor water quality over an extended time
2. Treated tap water (I should listen to my own advice and strict only to R/O, right?)
3. The introduction of a reef hermit and/or an emerald crab.
4. The massive water change and cleaning out of the vase may have been the final nail on the coffin.
5. A diet of mostly freeze dried baby shrimp and krill with a very rare treat of frozen scallop or other meaty fare.
6. Cramped conditions and stunted growth.

I've taken the crabs out of the vase and am giving the star some time. What concerns me most is the fact it's not taking foods at all, and its tentacles are stiff and serrated at the ends. These are both bad signs.

I'll wrap up. You know, talking about this star I've had for a pretty long time has made me think of all the diseases and problems I've had with my aquatic livestock. Ich with freshwater, internal parasites with clown loaches, the two years of keeping a green mandarin in a ten gallon, the loss of my ray, dentistry on my puffer. I'll have to dedicate a whole entry to the successes and failures I've had over the years.

- Josh

Frothing at the Mouth over Flowerhorns and Other Cichlid Hybrids

I recently saw a fantastic stock of flowerhorns at an Asheville fish store. Small at two and a half inches, their coloring was already much more remarkable and defined than their natural blue acara, firemouth, and severum counterparts. I'd only seen flowerhorns full grown and in magazines so it was nice seeing them in person.

So what is this cool sounding fish called a flowerhorn?

It's a hybrid consisting of genes from two or more central and south American cichlids. I'm sure you've seen or heard of the infamous blood parrots, those pink and orange fish that look like a goldfish crossed with a parrot (actually a severum and midas or red devil cichlid, possibly with some convict parentage too). Flowerhorns were bred by the same means, a man-made fish. All this goes on over in southeast Asia at the big fish farms. They do all kinds of profitable, wacky, and gene-altering stuff over there -- splicing jellyfish genetic material into zebra danios to make them glow, breeding clown loaches, etc.

And a lot of fish hobbyists and self-proclaimed experts are freaking out about it.

Google a search on flowerhorns and you'll see what I'm talking about. They're being called "demonic" and "nightmare fish" and "abominations" made by greedy madmen "playing God" that must be destroyed. The basic argument is that by hybridizing the cichlid eventually the pure strains will get muddled, or it will be impossible to clearly identify the various species anymore. And of course another argument is the fact these hybrids can have devastating impacts on local ecosystems.

Both arguments are flawed and irrational, revealing an opinion founded on emotion more than reason.

First, you would not recognize the wild guppy from the selectively bred, colorful guppy we have today. They don't even appear to be the same species! The same goes for wild discus when compared to their neon, flashy, farm-bred and raised cousins, oscars, and a score of other popular fish that have been being selectively bred for generations now.

Why not a war on albino oscars, or fancy-tail guppies? After all, they're a freak of nature too and wouldn't survive. So why don't we cleanse the hobby of these "abominations" like so many hobbyists want to do with blood parrots and flowerhorns?

Hybridization can occur in your own home tank with the right cichlids under the right conditions (especially among convicts). There's no reason to flip out over this and start an extermination committee over the Internet. Yes, it probably wouldn't occur in nature because one fish is from central America and the other from the rivers of Brazil, but what are you doing mixing biotopes anyway... playing God over your rectangular, aquatic world?

Now onto the hybrid's impact on local ecosystems.

Of course these fish can wreak havoc in local streams and lakes, given the temperature is in their range. But how are they any different from snakeheads, African clawed frogs, and all the others people release into the wild? A few African clawed frogs can breed and fill up a lake just as fast as a school of blood parrots, and just look what cane toads have done to Australia.

Hybrids are no more at fault for harming native species than the hideous pet snakeheads people release into ponds.

Finally, look at the domestic dog. How many breeds are in the species? Is crossing a greyhound and say a lab such a disgusting, demonic abomination?

I would love to have a flowerhorn in my 180 tank but it just wouldn't work. They are incredibly aggressive fish, and although I'd have a shot at it if I had purchased one of those small ones and added him to my established tank with much larger fish, chances are as the flowerhorn matured he'd wipe everyone out one night. Of course, each fish has its own personality, and people have successfully kept flowerhorns with oscars and other large fish, given the tank is large enough, but that's just the luck of the draw.

Josh

PS Have you ever wanted a saltwater tank? Learn how you can keep a beautiful, thriving, ten gallon saltwater tank with corals here.

2/6/08 EDIT:

Commentator Lisa made some excellent points and a clarification on breeding and hybrid crossing:

Lisa wrote:

I just wanted to clarify something. The thing with those fish are they are
NOT hybrids, they are line bred. Also, you commented on crossing dog
breeds. Again, they are all DOGS (Canis familiaris), not crossbreeds. You
can't compare something like a flowerhorn to a line bred fish. They are not
the same thing. One is a hybrid, and one is still it's own species.

Thank you, Lisa, for clarifying for me. The point I was trying to make was the wild guppy is a drab minnow-looking fish while the showcase ones we see in stores are colorful with exaggerated, selectively bred fins and tails.

Cichlids are a family, not a species, so a much more appropriate example of a non-aquatic hybrid would be the mule, a cross between a donkey and horse. The mule is what's known as an F1 hybrid. Because mules are almost universally sterile (though there are rare cases of breeding!), the mule hybrid is not seen as such a threat as flowerhorns and blood parrots.