Project 58!! (Image intense)

[Spooda420]

maybe the sudden movements from the dogs surprised it, and it swam into the rocks w/ the high flow you have in there scraped him up a bit and got infected? ...dunno. its good that LA is on it.

no chance of a killer shrimp or another preditor?

[Maxx]

nope...not unless it came in on the Chaeto I got from you

This was not a self inflicted kinda thing...I dont know if the blenny bite was a serious factor in this, especially since the scrape healed up so quickly. If it was contributing, my only thought could be the bite on the abdomen might have damaged something internally??? And I'll never really know for sure on that one.....

Nick

[Gina]

So sorry to hear that! I know how happy you were to get him. The blenny may have just felt threatend since he was so new and hadn't gotten used to his surroundings yet? Dunno!

[Craig Manoukian]

The problem with tangs and territorial fish is that tangs swim constatntly and will encroach just because oftheir swimming patterns. If your Bleeny is territoral it could lead to the kind of attacks you suspect. Good luck with the new addition.

[mps9506]

Originally Posted by Maxx

yeah, but it doesnt suck as bad when the mail order company replaces it free of charge.
I am kinda concerned though. This guy showed none of the signs I usually associate with cyanide poisoning in fish. Usually the digestive system is damaged when the fish is hit with cyanide, so it cannot metabolize the food it eats and get any nutrients...causing it slowly starve to death. No such issues here. In dact the fish was full bellied and the fat pad above and behind the eyes on the head was still fleshy.
If this one doesnt make it I will no longer order fish from the indo pacific from Live aquaria unless they can guarrantee they are net caught.....not that I would know if they were lying or not....but still.
Mike, do you have any thoughts?
Nick

Well,
This is why I don't like liveaquaria...
They don't house their own fish really. They are in LA, you order the fish, they go to the warehouse next door, and scoop the fish and send it on it way. They don't know if it's been eating, twitching scratching farting anything. This is why I always recomend ordering from the smaller guys, or from your LFS.
Very FEW people can tell you if they have net caught or not. Some places will tell you they don't have cyanide captured fish, and I say BS! There were only two wholesalers I could get net captured fish, that was MSI and one other place (I mention MSI because of our new sponser SeaCrop).
We gave her a try but found 95% of the locals just started going to the other store in town because our prices went up and selection went down when we tried to do net caught. Our DOA's were nill and we stopped having sick fish.
We now try a different approach were I log what fish I get from what wholesalers and how they do. EG, I only order my tangs from one wholesaler because they always come in helathy from them, order angels from another, etc.
It's a PITA for me, but it keeps me from having dead and sick fish in my store.

Anyways, if Liveaquaria tells you they will garuntee it is net caught I will call BS on them. However there is a chance they might tell you where the tomini's came from, in which case you can make your decision from that and the liklihood that it is a healthy specimen or not. But the salesperson on the line doesn't know how the fish was caught.

[Maxx]

Thats pretty much my thinking Mike. I really wouldnt mind paying more for net caught or captive bred fish....but not many places are offering them for sale.
RCT Hawaii breeds angels, and has bred Royal Gramma's and Black Cap basslets in the past. I sent them an email asking if they had any gramma's or bassets for sale, since they are only showing interrruptus angels and resplendant angles for sale, (Currently around $600-$900 each with the resplendants being more expensive), which are gorgeous, but hideously expensive. They said all they are currently offering is those two angels....even though they've bred all the other angels they show on their site also.
I think that if you were interested and asking on behalf of your store, they might breed some more of the less expensive angels Mike. Just a guess on my part and I dont know if you have a demand for them at the price they would be....just thinking out loud here.


Nick

[mps9506]

I checked them out. Didn't contact them though. I need to get the local university working on it I think it would be cheaper
If I sold online I probably would make the investment to sell those tank bred angels, but not yet I probably only sell 2 or 3 centropyge angels a month as it is, can't imagine how many I would sell if the price was double or triple or more...

[Maxx]

Annoying update.
I havent received a an email confirmation about the replacement Tomini tang as of yet. So I called Live Aquaria. They said the order had been delayed, and evidently they no longer had any Tomini Tangs in stock. The person on the phone said that the tangs might not be in condition to ship any more, which leads me to really wonder about the collection issue. He said he wasnt sure, but that he would call the fish facility (I want a fish room...these guys have awhole freakin facility....thats just wrong.) and have them call me back and tell what was going on. The Tang is now scheduled for next Friday...if they have any in stock.
So I went back to the LFS today where I bought the Lawn Mower blenny. They still have that gorgeous little female Bellus angel in stock. I watched her for about 20 minutes and saw no indications that she might be suffering from swim bladder problems. I wasnt entirely sure I saw them in the first place, I was just kinda uneasy about it because I saw her swimming in a slightly head down position twice, and I know they are a deep water angel.
I had the LFS hold the fish for me, the soonest I can pick it up is Tuesday. I will definately be watching her for a while before I buy her. She is definately curious about everything in the tank, and is eating everything they throw in the tank for food.

On a good note, my Phosban Reactor showed up today. I ordered the Phosban Reactor Combo from Long Island Reef Exotics. Theie prices were great, ($90.00 for the reactor combo, the maxi jet 400, and an extra thing of phosban..they included a free thing of iodine by Sprung....I dont know why, but I didnt pay for it and the invoice said it was included...so I've got that going for me..) but their Shopping cart was kinda weird. When I added things to my cart it updated on a seperate PayPal web page since they use Paypal for payment. Not bad, just different than what I was used to. SO if anyone else orders from them, dont freak out at the strange shopping cart dealie. Of course having warned everyone about it, nobody will have those issues and y'all will think I'm an idiot.
Nick

[Craig Manoukian]

Good luck Maxx!

[mps9506]

Good eye Maxx. Always be careful on anything that could have been collected from deepwater as decompression is an issue with these guys.

[Maxx]

2-1-05
Update

Live Aquaria has called me (left a message) and sent me an e-mail. Both of them basically stating that they dont have the fish, they dont know when they will have the fish, but when they do get the fish, they'll cheerfully ship it out to me and send me an email and another phone call notifying me of the fishes arrival.
Yay, for my side.

I also cleaned my skimmer again today. Its the third time I've needed to clean it since its been running, and I'm guessing its all sorts of broken in by now. The skimmate was NASTY. I'm not going to post a pic since I think its kinda lame and disgusting. I dont photgraph it when I take a crap, I'm not about to post up a pic of my fishes crap in a condensed form. It stunk. I love my Euro-Reef CS6-2. Thats it. You'll just have to accept that.

I went back down to the LFS today and eyeballed the female Bellus angel. She's gorgeous, eating like a starving monkey, and well acclimated to tank life. no indications of decompression problems or swim bladder issues. She had arrived at the LFS on Jan 20th.
I also picked up a pair of chalk basslets. I had never really thought that much about them, until I saw one in the display reef at the LFS. Pretty little reef safe fish. They had two. They were both eating, and looked to be in pretty good shape. So I got them too. The basslets arrived at the LFS on the Jan 27th.
Everybone is acclimating right now. Brought them home and started acclimation around 550 PM. Its now 750 PM and I'm still drip acclimating them.
The LFS uses copper in their FO systems...so I have to remove water from the drip bucket and make sure that none of it ends up in my tank. Kind of a PITA, but I understand why they do it. When I worked at a LFS they did it too.

I will attempt to post pics of my new fish tomorrow, (lights will be off tonight) but on the off chance that I dont, or someone reading this has no idea what a Bellus angel or Chalk Bass look like....

Here is a washed pic of a female Bellus. Mine has a real pretty blue surrounding the black lines and running in a sort upside down nike swoosh pattern (Fat part of swoosh starts at pectoral fins/behind gill plate, and runs downward to anal fin) hope that makes sense...Genicanthus bellus



Here is a pic of how the male differs in coloration...again washed out since preserved.



Here are a couple of images of the Chalk Bass (Serranus tortugarum)




They color up really pretty and only get to be about 3 inches in length. The only thing they are listed as being potentially aggressive towards is the anemone shrimps of the Periclimenes species.

Here is a link to a short thread about them at Reefs.org. Scott Michael's first book on reef fishes has a great shot of them on pg 526.

Nick

[Craig Manoukian]

Awesome fish Maxx!

[Gina]

I like the chalk bass! Pretty fish. Still hope you get your tang soon though!

[Maxx]

Yeah, Me too Gina. I might just ask for a refund and spend my money at The Marine Center or Vivid Aquarium....

Nick

[Craig Manoukian]

Good luck with an effort to get a refund. The one time I dealt with LiveAquaria they were very reasonable.