Wartskin Frogfish Tank

[duberii]

Alright. Here's a nice little update. Starting off with a FTS:

Clearly I'm still working on getting rid of the sand- If anybody has any advice for how to get that last bit out that would be great. I siphoned off all the lighter particles, but now I'm left with some chunkier sand that I don't know how to get rid of. You can see that I'm starting to get some algae, so I added 2 snails (trochus?). I also did 2 water changes to try and lower nitrates- I haven't tested the water, but since I'm doing like 50% water changes, I should be fine. I also have a bunch of new corals to show off, so here we go:

On top, we have a nice orange/red Monti frag (it was red at the store but has faded to orange because I'm using the Fluval stock lighting. It came with a Monti-eating nudi, which I picked out, but I haven't seen anything else and it already seems to be growing a bit, so hopefully, I won't have any more issues. Below that, I found a red xenia for like $25 so I had to buy it. It seems to be already developing new polyps around the edge. It doesn't pulse a ton except when I turn the pump off, but It does add some movement when it sways.

I also got this nice red blasto with like 5 heads for $30. It is pretty transparent (which I hope isn't bleaching!), but is still pretty cool. In the back, you can kinda see a green lithophyllon as well, which I wanted to put in my main tank, but I'm getting some more corals on Friday and would like to keep as much room as possible for those.

I also got this red and white Acan and this two-headed trumpet. As you can see, this rock doesn't have holes big enough to stick the frag plugs, so I'm probably going to have to pop all of them off the frag plugs and glue them down sometime soon.

As of right now, the angler eats between 6-8 Amphipods every 2-3 days depending on if they're full-grown or a little smaller. I can't really gut load them so I'm adding VitaChem directly to the water column until it gets big enough to eat some other food source. As it was up against the glass for feeding time, I got to measure it- it's about 3 cm right now.

In the month I've had it, it has learned to swim to the front of the tank when I stick my face in front of the tank to look for it, and it will use its lure for me. Also, just today I found that it recognizes the tongs I use to grab the amphipods, and will swim towards them when I put them in the water.

 

[UnderwaterGamer]

Looking good! Any particular reason you're taking the sand out or is it personal preference? You could use a air hose as a syphon and that's powerful enough to take the sand up! Also is your angler able to catch live amphipods? Thats pretty impressive for a small angler with all that open space!

 

[duberii]

Looking good! Any particular reason you're taking the sand out or is it personal preference? You could use a air hose as a syphon and that's powerful enough to take the sand up! Also is your angler able to catch live amphipods? Thats pretty impressive for a small angler with all that open space!

I removed the sand because I bought the whole system (angler, rock, sand) from my LFS, and when taking the sand out, they definitely knocked up all the junk in the sand. I didn't want to risk a nutrient issue so I just decided to keep the sand out. I ended up washing the sand in RODI water and adding it to make a DSB for my main tank. I realized I hate the look, and I'm getting algae growing on the bottom, so I'm probably going to be adding more sand soon. Thanks for the air hose tip though- I'm sure that will come in handy one day, if I figure out how to make a barebottom tank not look as weird as I think this one looks.

It is able to catch them if they're out in the open or if it sneaks up on them. If I'm just dumping the amphipods into the tank, I'll put the angler and the amphipods in a mesh breeder box to make sure the amphipods can't get away and hide in the rock. I'm trying to train it to roam around the tank though, so what I've been doing is picking up the amphipods in tongs (effectively crushing the back half of their body) and feeding them one at a time. They can still scoot around the tank, but they don't move nearly as fast so the angler can still catch them. it also makes it a bit easier to track how many pods the angler eats, so I usually use the second method.

 

[jdiefenbaugh]

Kept a lot of frogs and scorpionfish, just used similar looking stuff (mostly garbage corals), and/or macro algae.

 

[UnderwaterGamer]

I removed the sand because I bought the whole system (angler, rock, sand) from my LFS, and when taking the sand out, they definitely knocked up all the junk in the sand. I didn't want to risk a nutrient issue so I just decided to keep the sand out. I ended up washing the sand in RODI water and adding it to make a DSB for my main tank. I realized I hate the look, and I'm getting algae growing on the bottom, so I'm probably going to be adding more sand soon. Thanks for the air hose tip though- I'm sure that will come in handy one day, if I figure out how to make a barebottom tank not look as weird as I think this one looks.

It is able to catch them if they're out in the open or if it sneaks up on them. If I'm just dumping the amphipods into the tank, I'll put the angler and the amphipods in a mesh breeder box to make sure the amphipods can't get away and hide in the rock. I'm trying to train it to roam around the tank though, so what I've been doing is picking up the amphipods in tongs (effectively crushing the back half of their body) and feeding them one at a time. They can still scoot around the tank, but they don't move nearly as fast so the angler can still catch them. it also makes it a bit easier to track how many pods the angler eats, so I usually use the second method.

Ahh makes sense yeah transporting sand without making a mess is almost impossible, You could find a coral (like GSP or something that spreads fast) on the bottom if you didn't want to do sand. If you look at Inappropriate Reefer on YouTube he had a 17 gallon frogfish tank and did this and it looked pretty cool imo

Thats pretty cool though, have you thought about feeding small ghost shrimp or is it still too early for that?

 

[duberii]

Ahh makes sense yeah transporting sand without making a mess is almost impossible, You could find a coral (like GSP or something that spreads fast) on the bottom if you didn't want to do sand. If you look at Inappropriate Reefer on YouTube he had a 17 gallon frogfish tank and did this and it looked pretty cool imo

Thats pretty cool though, have you thought about feeding small ghost shrimp or is it still too early for that?

I think I'd be too scared of it taking over my rock... beyond that, I heard that a GSP carpet (if you will) needs high flow since GSP tends to be a baby about detritus settling on it. As much as I love the fish, it probably wouldn't;t do well in any more flow than I have right now. I do think it would look pretty cool and would be fun to see my angler crawling through a field of GSP, but I don't think it would be ideal for this tank.

I really want to get onto small ghost shrimp ASAP- my current feeding routine has me taking a clump of chaeto out of my refugium and searching strand by strand for an amphipod, then putting it into a container of water. Needless to say, it's tedious and time-consuming. I have a 10-gallon freshwater tank with a few ghost shrimp that I was hoping would start breeding, but so far nothing has come of it. I'd need baby ghost shrimp, which I don't think my LFS carries, since the adults are way too big. Until I can find somewhere that sells baby ghost shrimp or can get my own to breed, or my angler grows big enough to eat the adults, I'm stuck feeding amphipods.

 

[duberii]

Here's another FTS! You can see the frogfish in the bottom right (The piece of the plate coral is pretty much pointing right at it). The corals (and sponge!!). You can see the monti is already growing a bit and has some nice coloration (surprising because I'm using the stock lighting of the fluval evo). I got that weeping willow leather that my hermit crab kept knocking over, hence why it's not very open (no worries, it's glued down now). I got that plate coral, that turbinaria in the middle, and that pavona all from Capital Corals in NY, and I got all those baby devils hands and that photosynthetic sponge from @kgstei and I'm particularly excited to see how that grows out- it already attached itself to the rock in that position, and I didn't want to rip up the nice piece I had to move it, so hopefully it'll do find there.

The frogfish itself is still eating about every two days. I'm feeding mostly amphipods, though I did get some breeding mollies and will sometimes feed some molly fry to it. I fed a few small ghost shrimp, but it seem there is a bit of a shortage of ghost shrimp (at least in my area), so I ran out fairly quickly.

 

[kgstei]

That's cool Ricky!

 

[gobybryant]

Bump! How's your tank and frogfish doing?

 

[UnderwaterGamer]

Bump! How's your tank and frogfish doing?

Doing great thanks for asking! Bowser is loving all the new corals and is constantly hunting/ asking for more food when I walk into the room

 

[Max The New reefer]

Bump! How's everything goin!

 

[Mr_Knightley]

Bump! How's the little nugget doing?

 

[duberii]

Ok so here we go:

First off, my frogfish, which I have named Mondo, has grown quite a bit! He's around 6-7 cm now, which is huge- I remember when I had to feed him 3-4 amphipods and now he eats 2-3 ghost shrimp!

His tank has changed a bit as well. My red xenia seemingly wanted to spawn, so I had to cut it back to prevent a xenia takeover. I got some cool pics of it with all its babies inside:

Here is a pic of his updated tank:

(and of course he had to be facing the other way when I took this)

This side of the tanks has pretty much stayed the same- the monti has grown a bit, but I think I let my nitrates get a bit too high, so it's not looking amazing right now. In the past, it has sprung back pretty quickly, so hopefully, it'll bounce back soon. The xenia has grown back already (shocking, I know).

At ffm, I got this cool orange acan that seems to be doing pretty good under the shade of this big toadstool coral I have. The toadstool itself has chosen to slump over a bit and grow the side of its stalk onto the rocks, but I don't want to rip it off for some reason.

The fox coral in the back and this green lithophyllon in the front seemingly haven't changed much since I got it, but I now realize I never took a "before" pic so you'll have to take my word for it.

unfortunately, that acan and the red blasto didn't make it (bubble algae just overtook them- luckily it didn't spread at all). I decided to put in a lobo, another blasto, and a micro goni that I got for super cheap because it was being stung and receded a lot. It's been doing pretty good in my tank, but hasn't grown a lot since I got it. That other coral there I really have no clue what it is, but it has some cool sweeper tentacles that come out at night.

Now for my favorite part of the tank- the plates! I have a nice fungia now (the other one didn't make it- I have some gha problems in this tank and in my experience, once you get some GHA on a plate skeleton it's a slippery slope). I also got my hands on some diaseris corals- I have this one here, and 2 more are on the way . I also got this coral marketed as an "orange plate" which I was delighted to find out is an orange herpolitha, which I've had my eye on for a while. Hopefully I'll pop that off the plug soon.

I haven't had many issues with this tank, other than some GHA that's pretty manageable if I keep up with water changes and take a toothbrush to the rocks every once in a while. I am considering adding a sandbed to this tank though- I realized I really don't like the barebottom look, so I might add some sand soon. But that's about it for this tank! I think the most impressive part is how fast Mondo grew- it's only been like a year and he's grown from probably around 2 cm to 6-7cm, which is crazy. I can't wait to see him when he's fully grown