29G Brackish

[wodesorel]

I wanted to go with a goby but there was the whole needing live food thing. (The crickets and the roaches are bad enough, hubby would draw the line at live worms, I think! ) I've also read that a full-grown goby can kill and eat an adult fiddler, so there's that as well.

I'm down to three guppies. Both of the ones pictured above are still alive, as is the really pretty long-tailed one that looks like fish bait. (I dunno what they're called, but it looks like shiny turquoise with an orange snakeskin tail, and I've bought fake bait colored the same way.) The others.... disappeared... one at a time over night. I'm still not sure if it was something wrong with the guppies and they would have died anyway or if the fids were catching them, but the three that are left are doing excellent so I'm at a loss to explain it. If I can find some more of those short-tailed males I might try one or two more, but otherwise I'm going to stop with the fish. (Which is a bummer, and which I'm making up for with more bettas. >< )

[aussieJJDude]

seriously try mollies, they are super fast, can get in many colours, love and need brackish water and are easy to feed. and they wont harm your crabs (except your crablets but so will guppies)

[wodesorel]

seriously try mollies, they are super fast, can get in many colours, love and need brackish water and are easy to feed. and they wont harm your crabs (except your crablets but so will guppies)

Totally forgot I had read this. Sorry.

I looked into mollies originally but the aquarium gurus I trust (like the HCA for fish ) all said that a 29 gallon is way too small for full-grown mollies. They need a 40 or 55 gallon to be healthy since they do get so large. Guppies and gobies and small puffers were as large as I could go, and only the first one wouldn't eat the crabs!


I lucked out with the stuff that came along with the used tanks I bought at the garage sale. I got a 130GPH fish-safe fountain pump! I'm going to rig it up to work with the Whisper 60 filter that the 29G original came with since that pump is shot. Just need to get some 1/2 inch tubing from the hardware store and silicone in a small strip of plexiglass to make the filter output a little smaller so it doesn't splash onto the land part.

Still trying to find more coral hunks to decorate with though. :/ Might have to take a road trip to Alliance where I found the last stuff.

[aussieJJDude]

dont worry, your probably have kids and/or partners, crabs, cats (wow you have 30, how do you know all by name? i struggle with 1), fish and more.
i understand how you feel about your pets needing there space, but for some reason i got the feeling that you were going to up grade (crabs are like chips you can't stop at one )
i dont know what you called the fish but it may work in you setup * researching on computer*...
and a great find on finding that filter!

[wodesorel]

No, the fids are staying put! It's the largest sized tank I can get into that corner of the dining room and we both love having it there. Gotta put a cutoff point somewhere. The Es need a larger tank still, the community tank in the bedroom will be upgraded someday, I'm still dreaming of a larger PP tank, and I have to find a 55 or larger for the scorpions this summer, but with all of that our house will be stuffed. Fids are just like hermits in that it's hard to stop at one. (Oh... and maybe three more fishtanks this summer- two tens for bettas and a 20 for whatever.)

Some people scrapbook, people like my mother collect pineapple themed things, but I have critters. (And anime. Lots of anime.)

(And no kids for me but Hubby has two from a previous marriage that visit in the evenings. And 30 cats is nothing! When I was managing the shelter we had 150 cats in the building and a roster of 400 fosters at any given time waiting to come in. There is probably something wrong with me but I could remember every cat's name and where it came from and it's history without ever having to look, and I was able to do that for the full four years I was there. Granted, I was the kid who at four years old lisped every person's name and couldn't pronounce Bruce and Carolyn (our neighbors at the time - it came out Boo and Kerwyn) but I could say Alex perfectly - which was the name of their cat. )

[aussieJJDude]

LOL you got a good memory about cats!
i thought if you have like 100+ crab you where bound to get 40 more
i know whqt you mean about collecting, i also collect critters too (i could start my own business as a farm, and yo could start a zoo )
any way how is your fids?
anything new?
i think i might of found the fish you are looking for, Celebes rainbow-fish (telmatherina ladigesi), they are found on the indo island of sulawesi and they grow 7.5cm (3 inch). they will except live, frozen, freeze dried and flake. there swimming level is around about the middle and are a brackish water fish. and they are pretty easy to breed!

[wodesorel]

I looked into those little fish when I was planning the tank! There were actually quite a few species that could have been used, but I wasn't able to find a local source for getting them. My pet shop lady went through my list with her supplier even to see if she could special order them, but they had never heard of them. Guppies were the best option, which is okay because I ended up really liking them. (It was probably a guilt thing since I had them in a fish bowl when I was younger when I didn't know a thing about fish keeping.)

So the filter box has been modified and the silicone is dry on it. And we bout 20 pounds of coral rock to decorate a couple of fake plants. (I'll get more later as I find ones I like.) The filter pump works, and I found tubing and made a protective cage to keep the fish and the crabs out of it. I just have to find time this week to tear the current tank apart and put in all the new stuff.

[aussieJJDude]

good luck, please post us pics

[wodesorel]

Okay, two hours and a flooded (kidding!..mostly ) dining room later and I think it's done. The water is still too cloudy to take photos so I'll wait until we get home tonight and see how it looks. I'm hoping to be able to find a freshwater dish tonight so I can retire the plastic container that I've been using, and I still need a big fluffy floating plant.

Tank is stuffed full. Definitely have to come up with some sort of alternate lighting scheme as it's too dark under the land section now. :/

[aussieJJDude]

Pics, pics PICS i want them

[wodesorel]

Oh god I killed one of the females! The land section was flooded and rotting, so I went slowly and carefully when I emptied it into a bucket, but it was an utter smelly mess. I never even thought about there being a crab in there. We left the bucket on the front porch while we decided what to do with it, and while it dried out a bit. I went out there this evening to get some of the new plants in the ground, looked in the bucket, and saw one of the females right on top. :crybaby: If I had checked the day after I'm sure she would have been fine since it has been warmer out, but I think all weekend in there was to much. I feel absolutely sick right now. I never even thought!

[CrabbyMom33]

Don't be so hard on yourself, Wode. We get busy and things sometimes happen.

[aussieJJDude]

Don't worry, it is not like you meant to do it.
Good luck with your other fids, I love fids.

(Can you get them in Aussie?)

[wodesorel]

Sorry this has taken a few days. Hubby decided to update my loner computer with Windows 7 and forgot to get Office so I haven't been able to edit any photos until tonight. (My new laptop gets here in two weeks or so and I am so freaking happy!)

So, the redo! The new stuff is 20 pounds of coral, 5 fake plants, a really cool freshwater dish, and a hunk of live rock to seed the new coral.



If you're wondering, that's not dirt or dust on the rim of the stand.



No, no, it's claw marks. Lola, Timmy, and Sumo will all do pull-ups using their claws to see into the tank, getting their backlegs completely off the ground. Sigh. I'm going to have to sand, fill, and repaint it. Again. Sigh. :roll:

How it looks with just the tank lights:

I have to work out some way to light under the land section as it is way too dark. Maybe submersible LEDS or something.

The new filter is really really really loud. That black tube you see runs from an internal powerhead in the left back corner to the inside of a normal hang-on-the-back filter that is not plugged in. (The distance between the water and the filter is too great to use a normal one.) I covered the powerhead in needlepoint canvas to keep anything from being sucked in. The plan was to use the HOB filter basket from the broken 60G filter, but since I can't find any floating plants for sale I had to use my spare for a 20 gallon for now. The water falling is so incredibly loud otherwise we can't watch TV! Even this way it still keeps me up like a dripping faucet sometimes though a closed door.

I love the new bowl from Zoo-med. It looks so cool!


And this is the big hunk of coral - 10 pounder! It's become the big guy's territory, you can see him up on top.



And what everyone has been waiting for - the Marine Hermit Crabs.

Blue-legged:





The other two are Mexican red-legged, maybe?


And the other one who yes, was pinching the heck outta me.





Random MHC shots!

(They are really tiny)















I know that the blue-legged are known to be brackish safe in 1.010 and stonger. (I keep my tank at 1.010 to 1.012, full sea water is 1.024) The other species I can't find anything on though. I forgot to ask her to check the species when I got them, and I talked it over with my hubby and we felt that it would be worth taking the chance on the two unknowns since I can't find anything out there one way or the other on them. They are NOT wild caught - these guys are tank bred! (And they can breed like bunnies.) I won't be getting any more for at least a month, maybe two, until I see how all three do. If I do get anymore, they will be the blue-legged.

There was about a 20 minute rough patch when the medium fid male met one of the MHCs for the first time. I sat and watched the tank the whole time, making sure I could break it up if I had to. Mainly the fiddler was just checking him out, and then would loose interest but would start eating from the sand around the MHC or from its shell. And then the MHC would get upset because the fid wasn't going away and would come out and pinch it, making the fiddler try in vain to grab it. And then the fid would loose interest again and start eating, the MHC got mad... This went on and on and on. The MHC was in no danger as there was no way that fid was reaching it inside that shell! Sorry for the bad pictures of it, they were at the back of the tank in the very middle.











Random Fid shots!





Nummy Molt!


Heeeeeeyyyyyy Ladies!!! (All three are doing it non-stop now!)




And the guppies.

How most of my shots came out. They're like cats on caffeine.


One of the two new females (one has blue on her tail, the other yellow)


The prettiest male, Fishbait. (I literally have fake bait in my tacklebox that looks like him!)


The original blue male:


And all three of the boys:



For whatever reason, this shot makes me chuckle every time.

[kuza]

so cute!