dragonette52
New Member
Hi all! For a little background, my boyfriend has been planning his reef tank for about eight years (he even chose his apartment in the city he lived in before we met so it could sustain a 400 gallon reef tank). After a 29 gallon gift, 100 gallon tank COVID project, we now have a 100gal tank that is stable and has been up and running for 10 months. We have quite a few fish, inverts, a shrimp, and tons of inverts.
We ordered a Red Mandarin, expecting to receive an adult or at least a juvenile. Instead, the fish we received was about the size of my pinky nail - based upon his physical characteristis, likely ~3 weeks old when we received him, still in the settlement stage. He didn't have any tail or spinal fins (get to the sex later) at the time, with colorless face and dark orange-brown body, and could barely do more than hover for a few seconds or "jump" a maximum of 2cm at a time. Despite the multitude of live rock with caves, caverns, and holes that would protect him well, at night he kept getting pulled up in the flow and dumped into the overflow. Luckily, he was small enough and slow enough at the time that he received enough oxygen until we found him there AND that it was easy to catch him. Fast forward a month, and he has put on weight, started developing his tail fins, and developed his TINY spinal fins enough that we can tell he's male. However, now that he has grown (please don't misunderstand, by "grown", I mean he's almost 1.5cm in length) when he gets sucked into the overflow, its very difficult to catch him because his "burst" swims are getting faster, as is his ability to cling to the glass or pipes in the overflow. He finally developed his adult pattern about two weeks ago.
Our tank is a Coast2Coast rimless, custom tank (48” x 20” x 24”) w/ 3 panels of starfire and black bottom/rear. Rear ~20” external overflow set up for bean animal. Can please anyone advise on what we can do or use to prevent him from getting sucked into the overflow while he's growing, but won't harm him if he gets pulled up into the tank flow? We've tried adjusting the flow as much as possible, but a number of our corals are thriving so we don't want to reduce the flow. However, if you have suggestions of a way to do this without harming the corals, those suggestions would be much appreciated! Just really want the little guy to thrive, but also not sure we'll be able to catch him in the overflow for much longer as he continues to grow in size, speed, and strength.
We ordered a Red Mandarin, expecting to receive an adult or at least a juvenile. Instead, the fish we received was about the size of my pinky nail - based upon his physical characteristis, likely ~3 weeks old when we received him, still in the settlement stage. He didn't have any tail or spinal fins (get to the sex later) at the time, with colorless face and dark orange-brown body, and could barely do more than hover for a few seconds or "jump" a maximum of 2cm at a time. Despite the multitude of live rock with caves, caverns, and holes that would protect him well, at night he kept getting pulled up in the flow and dumped into the overflow. Luckily, he was small enough and slow enough at the time that he received enough oxygen until we found him there AND that it was easy to catch him. Fast forward a month, and he has put on weight, started developing his tail fins, and developed his TINY spinal fins enough that we can tell he's male. However, now that he has grown (please don't misunderstand, by "grown", I mean he's almost 1.5cm in length) when he gets sucked into the overflow, its very difficult to catch him because his "burst" swims are getting faster, as is his ability to cling to the glass or pipes in the overflow. He finally developed his adult pattern about two weeks ago.
Our tank is a Coast2Coast rimless, custom tank (48” x 20” x 24”) w/ 3 panels of starfire and black bottom/rear. Rear ~20” external overflow set up for bean animal. Can please anyone advise on what we can do or use to prevent him from getting sucked into the overflow while he's growing, but won't harm him if he gets pulled up into the tank flow? We've tried adjusting the flow as much as possible, but a number of our corals are thriving so we don't want to reduce the flow. However, if you have suggestions of a way to do this without harming the corals, those suggestions would be much appreciated! Just really want the little guy to thrive, but also not sure we'll be able to catch him in the overflow for much longer as he continues to grow in size, speed, and strength.
