23 Gallon Mixed reef Nano

NotASpammerDude

NotASpammerDude

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23 gallon display (fluval vista 23)
15 gallon diy sump

2 orphek or3s
2 t5ho (coral vue housing)

2 fish, (d. nigroviridis)
1 peppermint shrimp


corals...
montipora spongodes
sinularia
platygyra
euphyllia (hammer)
cyphastrea
leptastrea
psammocora
chalices (oxypora and maybe mycedium)
favias
pagoda cup
pavona
goniastrea
3 acros
acan echinata
micromussa lord
fungia
mushrooms
gsp
nuclear and teal caulastreas
 
ejr said:
That is an awesome nano, aren’t those puffers normally brackish water though? Never seen them in a reef tank before. Great looking tank!
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Thanks, hopefully I can upload a better photo

The puffers are euryhaline and can survive well in fully marine salinity. They are similar to sailfin mollies in that regard. Many reefers keep freshwater sailfin mollies as algae eaters in marine tanks because they are also euryhaline.
 
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ejr said:
That’s cool! Love that kind of puffer. How reef safe are they?
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Well I have 2 at very different life stages; if I was getting one again or for someone else I'd get them one as large as they can find because the larger one is much more playful and interesting.
Reef safe... once or twice a year they may take a bite out of a sponge to see if its tasty (it's not) or a coral's tentacle (again not tasty), but they really prefer hunting for amphipods (not copepods) and snails which makes it really hard to find a good clean up crew for them.

They don't eat shrimp live, including ghost shrimp or peppermint shrimp.

But they will chomp on any piece of snail flesh possible and clam flesh.

Basically their diet in nature is things they can crush (not very hard snail shells) like crabs, or take a small sharp bite out of with their "beak" like exposed snail flesh.

It makes it hard to have snails I basically only have cowries in the tank and they hold up pretty well except they get flipped upside down sometimes and then become a snack for the peppermint shrimp or hermit crabs (zebra from HI).

They would eat hermit crabs if they could but hermit crabs are evolved to avoid predators with lightning fast retraction. The puffers basically ignore them because they've learned that they can't eat them.
 
That’s really cool! I’ll have to set up a tank for them some day. They are the cutest puffer that doesn’t get giant in my opinion. I never even thought of keeping one in a reef before I saw your tank. Where did you get the idea?
 
ejr said:
That’s really cool! I’ll have to set up a tank for them some day. They are the cutest puffer that doesn’t get giant in my opinion. I never even thought of keeping one in a reef before I saw your tank. Where did you get the idea?
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Well it is cool but guess what's even cooler?? I just got an ORA Target/Spotted Mandarin about 1" long. I'll try to get some photos.

For the puffer, basically I tried brackish... for probably a year or so, but the worst part about brackish tanks is that you cant have freshwater plants and you can't have marine plants so you are stuck with a very narrow subset of biotopes from which to build the tank (plants/algaes/livestock). I did a lot of research about GSPs and eventually got one after finding a super healthy specimen at a local discount fish store. What happened though was that I didn't buy it at first, I decided against it. But then regretted the decision. The fish disappeared so I assumed someone bought it. A few days later I saw it back in the tanks so I assume someone bought it and then brought it back as a return after finding out the care requirements. So I got it at the second chance I had and dedicated a tank to keeping it happy.
 
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that’s awesome, hope you have enough pods, or are you going to try and condition him to frozen foods? I find a lot of brackish water fish very interesting, such as the archer fish, mud skippers, but had the same reason as you not to keep them.
 
Archer fish are pretty cool. My favorite brackish is monodactylus specifically kottelati because they grow smallest of the moon fishes.

For the pods, I have a few things going in the dragonettes favor; I have a refugium, reverse flow deep sand bed and 20+ lbs of rock and it's a 2 year old aquarium. So I figure if I have as much rock and copepod habitat as a 30 gallon tank (which is the minimum recommendation) then a 7 gallon difference isn't going to kill or save the dragonette. It's a high bio load tank so I can easily maintain or increase pod population by increasing micro algae population (by over feeding intentionally); but right now I am just feeding at normal levels to keep the puffers happy and the microfauna population going.
 
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Been having some struggles with dinos and salinity with my ATO. A few SPS died and are struggling now, the Candy cane is struggling while being beaten on by the nearby platygyra.
 
Salinity is back at 35ppt and return chamber water level is holding steady, so I believe the ATO problem is fixed. Corals are looking better, specifically the Montis' polyp extension.
 
Installed a 7" x 23" undergravel plenum on the Freshwater/snail tank last night; removed and cleaned the substrate then reused it on top of the plenum. The snail population never took off like I wanted possibly because of nitrate levels. I am hoping this plenum will get the nitrates lower in the next several months. Previous filtration was 2 air-driven sponge filters; now I have the undergravel lift tube and one sponge filter instead. Half of the Amanos released their fry in response to the water change. I am considering raising amano fry again... They are a wonderful freshwater species, and those that I do not keep are easily sold.
 
Salinity tested at 33 ppt last night; from a slight ATO overdose that was expected.

I'm going to do a coral feeding tonight with a lot of brine shrimp target-fed and mussels for the puffer.
 
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