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The 280 is finally going to get set up.. (1 Viewer)

I thought I would share some photos of the newest addition. I have not posted all of the fish I've added they're pretty much your basic fish. I have been running them through the coral QT tank since the main fish QT is a hospital tank while I try to cure a sick fish.

Jason over at Petco got this for me by request. I asked for a small Blue Caribbean Tang (Acanthurus coeruleus) lol I need to be careful what I say around that guy, he absolutely delivers. Here is the new guy: Smallest tang I have ever seen :)





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He is eating fine and looks pretty healthy, but I am going to wait until I have maybe a few chromis to put in the tank with him before I add him to the main. I have added a couple of fish now and this dude is so small I don't want him to get picked on. Here is a LA photo of what he'll grow up to look like:

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Well feeding the seahorses has been a scary thing to say the least. first they did not want to eat because they were more interested in eating the pods in the tank than the food I was adding. And now just making sure I get enough in there that they'll all eat. I did some google searching on feeder stations. I came across this

ATB-Seahorse-Feeder.jpg


But no amount of searching actually shows where you could buy one :( It looks like a great idea it just does not seem as though it ever made it to the market. so I drew this up:



Here is how it actually came out. The glue is still drying we'll see how it works this weekend and how long it takes to train them to use it. The idea is I will use the tube to get the food in the feeder hopefully the clear tube they will see the mysis dropping down and figure out it is time to eat. once the food is in place I can take the tube back out.





 
Now you can make them and sell them! Looks really nice, I'm interested in seeing it in action. Are you going to have it floating or resting on the bottom?
 
Seahorses are so smart lol. I had to give it a go and the glass tube works awesome. I only got two of them to use it tonight but I think with a little refinement to my feeding routine I can get more to start using it.







 
NorthSide Reef said:
Well feeding the seahorses has been a scary thing to say the least. first they did not want to eat because they were more interested in eating the pods in the tank than the food I was adding. And now just making sure I get enough in there that they'll all eat. I did some google searching on feeder stations. I came across this

ATB-Seahorse-Feeder.jpg


But no amount of searching actually shows where you could buy one :( It looks like a great idea it just does not seem as though it ever made it to the market. so I drew this up:



Here is how it actually came out. The glue is still drying we'll see how it works this weekend and how long it takes to train them to use it. The idea is I will use the tube to get the food in the feeder hopefully the clear tube they will see the mysis dropping down and figure out it is time to eat. once the food is in place I can take the tube back out.





Click to expand...

I found the website where this contraption was originally built and posted and emailed the UK distributor only to get a message back with a link to the US distributors. After I emailed them I found out the price for one of those feeding stations was $150....
 
So after a couple days with the feeder. The glass tube worked a little too good. the seahorses see the food but they cannot figure out that it is in a tube and they can't get to it until it's in the dish, so they try to nab the mysis on the way down only to smack their faces into the tube. The tube is no more. The tube attachment at the bottom was removed since it really is not needed if there is no tube.

So basically my feeder station is a bowl with hitching posts that the seahorses do use sometimes or they just go inside the dish and eat. So far I have had as many as four horses in it so I have some work to do in getting them all trained. But this contraption is not needed a regular bowl would have worked just as well.

I now guide (round the horses up) with a pipette and squirt the food into the dish.
 
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Probably, but since I am still in training mode with them, and need to lead them to the dish so they start using the dish I need to use something that gets their attention. The pipette works well for this since I can get them to chase a piece of mysis and then squirt it into the dish. Once they're at the dish I just use the pipette to fill it. So the tube is obsolete.

It's a learning process for me. the contraption seemed like a good idea, but in practice it was not. I have a lot of ideas that end up like that :)
 
Any plans to add a catalina goby to the seahorse tank, since you keep the water in there cooler? Maybe it still isn't cool enough? I'd love one of these, but our tanks are all too warm.

I probably missed it, what type of fish do you have in with the seahorses, if at all.
 
LowersMyBP said:
Any plans to add a catalina goby to the seahorse tank, since you keep the water in there cooler? Maybe it still isn't cool enough? I'd love one of these, but our tanks are all too warm.

I probably missed it, what type of fish do you have in with the seahorses, if at all.
Click to expand...

Sorry about not seeing this any sooner I have just been so busy I skim the forum from time to time but ignore my own thread I guess. to answer your question yes but the Zebra Catalina goby

It has a little better tolerance to temps and is right in line with where I keep the seahorse tank. For fish in the seahorse tank there is a mandarin goby that I never see because he is always in the back where there are a ton of pods and a lot of rock rubble for the pods to hide in. A Pink streaked wrasse I never see and had high hopes he would help me with my red planaria problem. I think he eats them I have no idea but the few times I do see him he looks fat, I just think he is overwhelmed. But he prefers to hang in the weeds (I mean macroalgae). and lastly I have been trying to wean an Orange Spotted filefish, which I am cautiously optimistic is coming around although it is a lot of work making sure enough food is going in that tank that what little he eats per feeding is enough with many multiple feeding per day. He lost a lot of weight the first week or so I had him and added him to the seahorse tank although I did not see him eating much in QT with the hope if he saw others eating the food going in the tank he would figure out what he was supposed to be doing. He is eating brine shrimp and I have made a large homemade concoction that fortifies the brine I have been feeding him. I am hoping that he can sustain himself on that. the chunks of digitata I have put in there to help him acclimate he does not seem to care for too much.

I am not going to add the gobies until I know the verdict on the orange spotted.
 
Sorry for the lack of updates, We have had some things going on with the family and the hobby is sort of taking a backseat atm. I will get some new tank shots up this weekend the tanks are looking pretty good. Seahorses are settled in real well. I do still use the feeder dish but for the most part if I see a horse hanging in the back I just squirt some food in his general direction sometimes they head to the dish and eat sometimes they just hang around where they want.

I tried getting the old MR-4 skimmer up and running but I did not have enough power to drive it off my reservoir recirc pump.

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So I have been running skimmerless since I set the system up. Even though I have about 300 gallons of water dedicated to growing macro in the shed and the seahorse tank growing a ton in the 92 I know I can't keep filtering the entire system just using macroalgae. It's been fine so far but I finally upgraded the skimmer to a Super Reef Octopus SRO-6000EXT





I got a pretty nice deal on this one used and it is pulling a ton of gunk out already. I think that is one of the benefits to getting it used it was already broke in and within 20 minutes of it running I snapped those pics. Probably 10 minutes to dial it in and one slight modification on the drain line to let me adjust the water level in the unit better and it was off and running.

I am real happy with the skimmer. As mentioned above I will snap some pics of the tank this weekend. The main is looking pretty good with 0 algae problems, but with as much junk as the skimmer is pulling out I think I would have been in for trouble not too far down the road if I would have put off adding one any longer. 6 months no skimmer was probably pushing it. But it does prove the benefits of macroalgae.
 
I want to thank Ben Nicholls for taking these shots and letting me post them here on my build thread. He put a link up in the meeting thread but I wanted to post some of them here as well:





















 
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