Mandarin Questions

[zeke92]

I'm baaaaaacckkkk

And i got a few questions. My fish tanks havent really progressed since i dissapeared, but i have gotten a new fish the other day. It's a mandarin goby. My tank is about 2 years old now and very established, so i figured he would do great. He ate the second i put him in and was exploring all night in one little area (he avoided the other side of the tank). Well for a few hours tonight he had dissapeared, so i did what i hate doing (moving rocks) and tried to find him.
I saw him sitting in a small cave with bad coloring, so i kinda urged him to try swimming and he moved into more caves, so i dug more to make sure he was ok. I found him and he darted into the eelgrass. I've let the grass grow so much it's like a jungle now and i couldn't see where he went from there.
So i put all the rocks back in a position worse then they were originally in.
My question is, is the coloring any big deal? From what i saw when he darted off the paleness near his head dissapeared. Do they hide in caves, sit in one spot, and get a pale color when there sleeping or resting? I'm a bit worried.

[hr]
Second question:
I'm going to focus on my 55g and possibly the pony tank i've had to put off. So i have a 18 gallon tank that already has sand and an expensive light i bought for it. So i figure i'm gonna make this into a refugium for the 55g
I want to re-scape my 55g and i was wondering if any design is better then another?
I want to have things like:
Maybe try a scopas tang again (he died of a reason i'd rather not talk about / not my fault

)
I thought a few fish that school, like maybe a few small damsels of some sort.
So is there any special way to aqua-scape the rocks that would best fit tunnelers (goby and dragonet) and free swimmers like my toby puffer?

 

[novahobbies]

Originally Posted by zeke92
http:///forum/post/2805684
My question is, is the coloring any big deal? From what i saw when he darted off the paleness near his head dissapeared. Do they hide in caves, sit in one spot, and get a pale color when there sleeping or resting?
In a word? Yes.
My female likes to hide in her cave at night. In the early AM she comes out podhunting, and I've noticed she's sometimes paler. Also, when the lights come on from the timer, and the first light hits her, she pales for about 30 seconds, then her coloration comes back full bloom. She's a well-fed pod+mysis eater, and I'm not worried about her health at all -- that coloration isjust the way she reacts to surprises, I think.

 

[zeke92]

OK, good to hear, there sorta like seahorses when it comes to coloring. I finally found her after i completely remade the tank (hundreds of leaves of eelgrass still need to be put back in tomorrow..

)
She looks fine, so i'm just gonna let her be next time if i see her hiding anywhere. I think it's a she, cause the fin on top isn't always spread upwards and when it is it doesn't look like anything fancy.

 

[forsfed50]

Let him or her acclimate to new surroundings and
you should have at least 30 lbs of live rock to
sustain. Copepods are their staple.

 

[cranberry]

Mine would sleep HARD. He would have his pale PJs on when the lights came on and sometimes he LOOKED dead to the point I had to tap him with a stick to see if he would move.... he did *whew*
Did you say yours was eating frozen?

 

[m0nk]

Don't move your rocks around again if you can avoid it, you want to stress the fish out as little as possible while it gets used to the new surroundings. Yes, all fish loose color when they sleep (or the lights are off), and if you've seen it move around and eat during the day it'll be ok.
As far as the 55g, I recommend against trying a tang in there, it's too small imo, even for a Scopas. As far as the rock work for tunneling fish, just make sure it's nicely secured in the sandbed. Maybe you should start first by laying eggcrate down on the glass, put the rock on top of that, and then add your sand it. If you get a tunneling fish and your rockwork is just layered on top of the sandbed, the fish could potentially cause a landslide, or at least make the rockwork unstable.
HTH.

 

[zeke92]

Thanks for the help guys, i needed to rearrange the rock and stuff anyway, and i always panic when a fish disappears.
I don't have the money for egg crate, and when i've looked in the past i can never find any around here. It's not a new tank so i don't want to mess with the sand, the bottom rocks are always dug into the sandbed for more stablility. I think of rocks as puzzle pieces, there not supposed to go there unless they fit in the other rock around them perfectly.
So i designed one side of the tank for the mandarin, it has lots of caves and a little 'skylight' type thing. The other side is mostly for the shrimp (which he thinks so too) because it's bigger rock with tons of holes for the watchmen too. So, if everyone stays where they chose right now, it's gonna work out great.
The mandarin looks GREAT and he is gainin weight. When we first got him (at *****, don't yell at me =/ ) the guy actually KNEW stuff about fish, and he was trying to say, without getting fired, that it looked quite skinny. I read that that can happen in pet stores cause they don't usually fit the needs for the mandarin.
So she is doing great, loving the new rockwork, and is gaining weight.

I'm going to put most of the eel grass in the 18 gallon with high lighting for now until i can get rid of most of it. It's very hard to look for something when your aquarium's floor looks like this:

Any suggestions for small (somewhat cheap) schooling fish that may look good and get along with the current fish? I saw some scizortail gobies or something at my LFS and they looked cool.

 

[calaxa]

Cheap schooling? The always bargain bin blue-green chromis. Usually $3 and under at your LFS. Anthias are nice but are not cheap and get pretty big. Can't think of many others that don't cost an arm and a leg.