Fish and Inverts in the RSM - Show us what you have and give us your insight!

[DontXtripNfall]

I'll start with my new Flashing Tilefish, which can be seen here: YouTube - My Flashing Tilefish

They are jumpers and should have a tight lid on the tank.
They change colors when they are nervous.
They are almost never seen available and if so it has a crazy price tag.
No I did not pay a crazy price because the LFS I bought it from believes in the semi-wholesale idea to try to help our wallets.

I think I pretty much covered everything I could think of off the top of my head, but a quick google search can pull up a more detailed list.

[Reefmack]

Thanks for creating the new thread!

[alphasierra]

Good Idea DontXtripNfall

Don't have much in the tank at the moment, but here is our Pacific Cleaner Shrimp.
Woke up one morning to see that he had shed his shell. Seems to be doing well so far. 5 weeks and counting.



AS

[Reefmack]

Great cleaner shrimp picture. My cleaner is always fun to watch, and will eat from my fingers and even try to clean my fingernails LOL!

[Reefmack]

This acro crab came with, and has been living in my Stylophora SPS, since I got it months ago. The coral color is off as this was taken with a flash. I had given up trying to get good picture of this elusive crab till I got this picture while taking an overhead shot with the hood off. I didn't even know I'd finally "captured" the crab till I was reviewing my pictures!



Acro crabs are beneficial to SPS - they help keep them clean and in turn are protected from predators by the coral branches.

[DontXtripNfall]

Nice Inverts! Keep em coming!

[LaurentSeattle]

My inverts :

My Hitch Hiker Emerald Crab ( October picture of the month ! )



Peppermint Shrimp: Did a very good job at cleaning the tank from a couple of Apstasia anemones.

[mrfishy]

don't know what camera you are using but i want one !!!!!!!!
great photos well done
cheers
drew

[Reefmack]

Well, this is fish and inverts, so I'll post a couple of my favorite pics that I had stored in Photobucket and didn't lose in my PC crash a while back.

My Blackfinned (aka Bluespotted) Shrimp Goby in his home in the cavern under the middle of my rock. A very personable fish, about 3-4" long:



My Banded Serpent Star - great CUC and I've had it at least 1.5 years now. You don't see much of these other than their long arms sticking out from under the rock. I got this flash pic one night when he was out for his night time stroll:



The savior of my tank. My Foxface that kept me in this hobby when I had a severe attack of Bryopsis algae several months ago, that threatened to cover all of my corals and had me thinking about calling it quits. Nothing else I tried would stop the Bryopsis - lettuce slugs, elevated magnesium levels, etc. The Foxface will get too big, but it had all the Bryopsis gone in about a week, and continues to keep the tank algae free. It has venomous spines so I have to watch out for it, since it tries to eat from my fingers when I dunk flake food in the tank:



An Electric Blue Hermit that I had to get rid of, as it was killing all of my Turbo snails for theit shells (and dinner). It ended up in a purchased shell almost as big as a golf ball - and was moved to a hang on fuge I had for a while. Very pretty hermit, but I need my snails more:



My Diadema Dottyback, and my two Ocellaris clowns (when young) - my first fish and still going strong:




Lettuce Nudibranch - it wouldn't touch my Bryopsis and starved to death:




Blue Linkia star (picture under actinics only). I've had it about a year, but it's getting progressivley smaller. I once had it eat a krill, but I haven't been able to get it to eat. Not recommended for a tank the size of the RSM as their food source is not definitely known and they rarely last more than 8-12 months.



Another favorite picture of mine. My little red Fromia star. I had it 6-8 months and then never saw it again. As with the Linkia, it's another one not recommended for the RSM - same reason as the Linkia - not enough of whatever they eat in a tank our size.



I better quit here, and pass it on to the next picture poster.

mrfishy - I think Laurent uses a Canon Rebel XT ot XTI. I use the XTI.

[mrfishy]

my horny starfish again
1st it was the clam now one of the turbo's

[sambrinar]

That last one is an interesting picture. very nice, thanks for sharing

[Reefmack]

mrfishy - an old picture of my red Fromia hitchhiking on a turbo, or maybe it was horny like yours?

[mrfishy]

hi reefmack
we all need a hug now and again

[Reefmack]

Hah - good one!

[Reefmack]

I added this update in my tank chronicle, but I'll make a note of it here in the RSM section also. I'm not sure how many RSM owners have had fish breed in their tanks, or if they were successful with any fry reaching an adult stage.

When my son was over for Thanksgiving dinner yesterday he asked what the stuff was that was growing in the back corner where my front & back glass meet. I looked at it and was puzzled. This is the corner that my pair of Ocellaris clowns calls home, and they were taking turns mouthing and fanning this weird "growth" in the corner. My first thought was eggs, but they were a translucent whitish color and didn't look like any of the orange clownfish eggs I had seen. It amost looked like a long strip of single anemone tentacles. I did some searching on clownfish egg development and found a picture that looked like what I had. That convinced me that they wrere indeed eggs, and close to hatching.

Here's one of my pair of Ocellaris tending/guarding the eggs, They both take turns gently mouthing the eggs - most likely to keep them clean and to provide some current:



And a portion of the picture that shows the two eyespots on a few:



Now I know why my clownfish were more aggressive than ever when I was scraping a buildup of coralline off of my overflow gate above them. And I was then very close to scraping the eggs off the glass with a mag scraper when my son spotted the "growth" in the corner.

Based on the eyespots and elongated egg shape they're obviously very close to hatching, but unfortunately I'm not expecting any babies to survive in my tank full of fish. Even if the tiny fry are able to find enough food to get them through the first stages of life, there are too many hungry fish in the tank ready to eat them.