8gal "prison" - now with a bad pic

D

Darby

Bit upset here. I had to break my old 8gal bow front freshwater tank out of storage to set it up for an evil Yellow-tail Damsel. Normally I would have just caught the little #$^%! and taken him to the LFS, but my daughter is really attached to him, so I can't jsut toss him.

So, I went and bought a bag of sand, new bulb, and some charcoal cartridges. Yep, I'm going to use a little backpack filter, and see how it goes...

The sand ended up about 4" deep, and I put about 9 pounds of rock in there from my 24 gal nano. One of the rocks has a little clump of xenia on it. Don't know if it'll survive the initial cycle, but we'll see....

My plan is to put the evil munchkin in there, as well as a mushroom that needs to be moved, and some zoas. Maybe I'll put a high-fin Goby in there later... who knows. I'd like to have some Catalinas again, but I don't think I can keep the water cool enough for them in the coming summer (the room I had to put it in gets pretty warm...). Perhaps I can plumb it to my fridge....

(bad joke, I know!)
 
How did you catch the little bugger. I have a livestock shipment coming in tommorow and want to get the damsel I have in my Red Sea Max OUTTA THERE!!.

Reef prevents me from doing so :(
 
Actually, I never got him out of the tank. He's a clever devil, and though i actualluy had him in the net twice, he got away. The closest I cam, and this is going to slay you, was using a syphon. One night, he actually bedded down on teh backside of teh rock, rather than in the rock, so I slowly inched a vacuum/syphon up on him, then sucked really hard. He was pulled into the thing face first, and I held my thumb over the end so as not to lose suction (even avoided sucking water into my mouth!), but as I bought it up out of the water, the motion of the water across the open mouth pulled him out just enough to let him get his tail going, and he was free... again.

So, I'm still scheming on how to get him out. I haven't given up yet...
 
Does he not hide in a rock crevice or hole? Easiest way is to just pull that rock out. Of course, they'll pick the rock on the very bottom so that you have tear down your entire aquascape.

How bout a 2 liter bottle cut in half so that you can trick him into feeding inside it... then bam!!! You got him. I don't know... just coming up with ideas. I never let a 2 inch fish defeat me!!
 
Oh yes, I tried the cut bottle thing. He wouldn't go near it, unless I was handling it, then he went after my fingers. I actually had him in there once, but he flicked himself out. I'm telling you, he's crafty.

He used to sleep in a deep crevase, but then my Flame Angel died and he took to just laying up against the back of the rock. You know, my Royal Gramma has started this too. Iwonder if perhaps a crab or brisstle worm has been getting at them recently...

I really don't want to tear the rock down, as there is now a bunch of sponge spread out on teh undersides and between some of the rocks, and I really don't want to damage it all. Perhaps a really tiny hook...? Naw, my little Goby (whom likes to be hand fed) would probably end up on it....
 
Here it is as of yesterday evening:
8gal.jpg
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Got some pretty awesome bright orange zoas last week, and a little frogspawn frag, some more zoas (4 different kinds on 1 rock, we'll see who is victoirous!!!) and a litte neon mushroom last night, as well as the fiji Talbot damsel that you can see as an orange streak, yesterday evening. Once they get all used to the new light, I'll integrate them a little betting into the rock.

There's also a hi-fin/Antenna goby in there, hiding under the orange zoa rock. He's getting btaver, which is good. I hope to see more of him, as he was very active in the store.

The transparant thing you see up near the top is a former-pencil holder, now a poormans overflow for surface skiming.... I works pretty well, actually...
 
Very funny. I also have an evil damsel... blue. I had to tear down the tank to get it. I tried skewering the lil' ba5tard, but I'm too slow. It was picking on my beautiful yellow fungia. Let's see... $80 coral vs. $6 fish..... what's gotta go.... I have released it back into the main tank after 4 months of incarceration in the 2x6x6 fuge. Now the clown picks on it, but it's not scared. I didn't know damsels were so brave. It doesn't seem to pick on the fungia anymore...
 
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