Chesapeake Bay Oyster Reef Biotope Tank

[Daniel@R2R]

Btw, any chance we could get an updated FTS?

 

[Chasmodes]

This video is AWESOME!! Love it! Such a cool tank!

Thank you!

 

[Chasmodes]

Btw, any chance we could get an updated FTS?

Sure! I'll have to clean the front glass and take a pic tonight

 

[Chasmodes]

Tank update: I noticed that the fish in the 20g long were breathing heavily, mostly due to constantly defending their territories, but after a couple water changes to clean up detritus, I decided to also add an airstone. I also cleaned the HOB filter and powerhead and now there is much more flow. As a result, the fish are out much more and much more photogenic. While cleaning the filter, I discovered several tunicates in there, and also some inside some of the oyster shells. My original ones all died, so I assume that these are progeny. The three small anemones disappeared since I added the fish. I don't know if the fish killed and ate them, or if they simply moved or are hiding. In fact, all of the invertebrates except for the shrimp rarely come out (crabs, worms, etc.). Their vacation is over! Time for some pics...

Full Tank Shot

Male striped blennies battle over oysters and the lone female. The blenny that I dubbed "King" is on the left. He pretty much rules the roost but the one on the right holds his own and sometimes wins these battles

The next couple pictures show King sporting his spawning colors: the bright blue dorsal fin spot, the dark anal fins trimmed in black and white, the yellow/orange dorsal fin stripe, peach colored gills and mouth, and orange trimmed pectoral and tail fins. Notice how dark King gets in the above picture during the standoff.

The object of their affection, the lone female in the tank. Notice the drab coloration. She is quite a bit smaller too. The males chase her constantly, nipping at her, and sometimes shaking their bodies. I suggested to them that they take a nicer approach to courting, but it's hard for them to break bad habits.

King peeking out of his oyster shell that he defends constantly.

I have a couple more cool videos and will post them as soon as I can.

 

[Chasmodes]

My blennies spawned, probably on Friday. I didn't see the spawning activity, but was wondering why I wasn't seeing one of the largest males. The reason he wasn't out and about was because he was guarding eggs. He does make quick trips to come out to eat during feeding time, but goes back and forth between the oyster shell and the food.

Here's a pic of him guarding the eggs. You can see the eggs and also the female to the right hanging out. He is tolerant of her, but still chases her off if she hangs out too long.

Here is a pic of the shell and eggs that he left to chase off another fish:

Here is a cool video of him guarding the eggs. There is another male that challenges him, not for his eggs, but rather to defend another oyster shell that he is claiming as territory. This is interesting, because he is somewhat smaller and not even a week ago, the two larger males were picking on him pretty bad. Now he fights back and stands up for himself. My guess is that he's claiming his own spawning location:

 

[Chasmodes]

Here's another video of a striped blenny power struggle:

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Nice, I have pacific oysters 60-65. Great water filtration. Consume the extra food.

Most oysters in refugium outside home

 

[Chasmodes]

Thank you Jomama! That's cool. I think given that my tank always seems to have plenty of suspended "snow", and that both tanks have kept mussels alive, I may start keeping an oyster or two, if anything, to make this biotope more of an ecosystem.

 

[Chasmodes]

So the female striped blenny is very brave, despite being smaller than all of the males. She struts about the tank and gets chased and harassed by all of the males. But, she keeps doing her thing. However, sometimes the chasing is more like corralling. Normally, a male will chase and bite her to scare her away, as he does rival males. However, when he wants to breed, he chase, nip, or sometimes push her to get her into his oyster shell, while at the same time positioning his body between her and the escape routes away from his shell, while shaking (flashing), with fins erect and displaying his colors to her. This is an attempt to push her into his oyster shell. I saw this happen a couple nights ago, and ran upstairs to get my phone. But, by the time I had it set on my tripod, another male blenny chased her off. He actually kept her from going near the other male, although probably not on purpose, rather, just to chase her away.

Meanwhile, another male on the other side of the tank had a different approach. He would just come out of his oyster shell and position himself higher on the reef above her, and kept doing that until she got close to his shell and eventually she would enter. He would follow her in and then she’d shoot out and swim away until this started all over again. He was so close! It was so fun to watch that I was down there from 10 PM until well after 1 AM watching this, trying to get a good video and/or pics. They never seem to behave the way you want when the camera is pointed at them.

Also, the territorial battles between the males and their shells is fun to watch in itself. Most of the time, the skirmishes are just all show. Sometimes, albeit rarely, they trade bites and even take chunks out of each other’s fins!

However, last night, I was able to capture some of this drama on film. Instead of one male doing this, three of them were competing for her! One of the males actually pushed her half way across the tank toward his shell, but she got away. I'm not sure if I got that on film or not. It's not in this video, but maybe I caught it in another one. I have to go through those videos to see if I can find if I caught it or not. Anyway, this is the best video of the action so far, especially the first third of the video. I can watch them for hours!

 

[Chasmodes]

I have some exciting news! After I got home from work, I went down to my tank to feed the fish and noticed that one of my skilletfish wouldn't leave his clam shell to come up and stick to the glass and beg for food. So, I shined a flashlight inside the shell, and when he moved away, I saw eggs on the upper shell half! He was guarding eggs and only feeding on food drifting by his shell. I made a point to plunge my hand into the tank in front of him with a pinch of frozen food, and he ate after a little bit of coaxing. It was weird because the other day, I only could find three skilletfish coming out for food, and I searched the tank high and low with a flashlight and couldn't find the fourth one. At that time, there were no eggs in any of the shells. So, apparently, the female skilletfish was the one that I couldn't find, and she was probably somewhere near the clam shell out of my view the entire time. I took a video of him guarding and fanning the eggs. I found it entertaining. Hope you all do as well.


Also, the gobies are acting differently, constantly flaring their fins and chasing each other, so my guess is that they will be next. The female blenny is about due to spawn again as well, as she is getting very plump.

 

[Slacktide781]

Your thread is super interesting. I'm new to this forum, but have been keeping Bay natives for 5+ years. I love the blenny battle videos. Have you every tried periwinkles? They definitely climb out. But that's probably in an attempt to flee from dangerous blenny-infested waters. My blennies DESTROY them if they are active deep in the tank so they are not great clean up crew members. But I like having them since they are native. Periwinkles are much more effective in the more peaceful pipefish tank. Did you ever collect feather blennies?

 

[Chasmodes]

Thank you Slacktide781. I've never tried keeping periwinkles for that very reason. I had some tiny snails in my tank for a while, but I think that the gobies and blennies ate them. Regarding feather blennies, I haven't found any recently, but many years ago, I found one and put him in my fish only saltwater tank. It was a female, and she lived for several years, and was one of my all time favorite fish to keep. I'd like to add one to my system eventually, but I doubt that I'd add one in the 20g tank...maybe in the big tank later though. I wonder how they'd get along with this group of blennies?

 

[sundog101]

Love this tank!

 

[Chasmodes]

Thank you Sundog101!

Update: I just completed a water change, and afterwards sat down to check on everything. I noticed that my skilletfish laid another batch of eggs, the third batch in two weeks. Also, my blennies laid eggs last night or this morning again. I wondered what happened to the older skilletfish eggs as they seemed to disappear...

...well, a few minutes later, I found out...I found fry swimming around my tank, most likely skilletfish but could be blennies, I guess. They're about 3/16 of an inch long right now. I think that a few went down the drain with the water change, I suspect!

 

[Chasmodes]

They're a bit smaller than I thought, maybe 1/8" long at most. It wasn't easy, but I was able to get a short video of them:

 

[Tristren]

They're a bit smaller than I thought, maybe 1/8" long at most. It wasn't easy, but I was able to get a short video of them:

That's amazing

 

[Chasmodes]

Thank you Tristen.

Update:
The skilletfish lay eggs weekly now. The blennies lay them about every three weeks that I can tell. The fish fry from either species hang around for a few days and become fish food, I suspect. All of the fish are really fat these days!

I love this picture, male striped blenny, Chasmodes bosquianus, lookin' right at'cha!:

 

[Chasmodes]

Here's a better video of the fish fry that are in my tank. I'm not sure if they are a mix of skilletfish and blennies, or all of one of a species. There are much more than usual. Right now, there are two blennies guarding eggs (and only one female in the tank) and at least one skilletfish guarding eggs. These guys hatched yesterday morning and by last night, had the calmer surface water in my tank covered. The fry are there for a few days and either die or get eaten. Someday, I'll set up grow out tanks and try to raise them. Right now, I don't have room and it's not in my budget. So, they'll be fish food unless a miracle happens and some live longer. I feed my tank Reef Nutrition Oyster Feast and frozen baby artemia for the filter feeders. I hope the fry will eat these foods and live longer, but I doubt it. They oyster eggs are small enough, less than 50 microns, but from what I've heard, the blenny fry like live rotifers. Anyway, for now, it makes for a fun video:


I also have another project going on, not a marine tank, rather, a freshwater 75g US native stream tank to house minnows, shiners and darters. I'm almost done building a DIY styrofoam faux rock wall as an in-tank background for the aquarium. I constructded it by carving and gluing styrofoam foam board, filled in the gaps with spray foam and stream rocks to reduce buoyancy, and painted it with Drylok. The first coat was plain Drylok gray, and this coat is a mix of Drylok, charcoal cement dye, and a dab of yellow paint that matches the base color of a rock formation found near my local river (where I will collect my fish). My next steps will be to stipple various lighter shade versions of the same color to bring out the realism of the color and reduce the monotone gray look. I will also add some other colors as well (subtle greens, browns, reds) to bring out the stratification of the rock a bit more. I really am having fun with this project. Although, it's not a marine tank, it is a cool project that perhaps might give you all some ideas for something to build in your reef tanks, so I'll post a couple updates on that now and then along with updates of my oyster reef tank. Hope you all like this short video of that project:

 

[Chasmodes]

Not much has changed with the oyster reef tank. I bought a small fine mesh net and will try and move the fish fry to my other tank so that they don't have as many predators, no powerhead to chop them up or a HOB filter to suck them into oblivion. We will see if there is enough food in the tank already to rear them.

I made progress on my 75 gallon stream build DIY 3D sytrofoam rock wall background though. I stippled a lighter shade of Drylok paint mix with a sponge to give it a more realist effect:

 

[Chasmodes]

I tried moving some of the fish fry to my other tank. The lasted a couple days there. I think that they all became chow for my three anemones, and perhaps eaten by shrimp, crabs and worms. Right after adding them, I saw three go into the large anemone. I thought that might happen. I need to have tanks set up to specifically raise them without predators. They also might be starving, so I'd need to start up a live rotifer culture. I don't have the space to do this yet, but perhaps down the road.