Clownfish

just FYI

Makin’ some little changes - layout on the posts and what not will be a bit off kilter, if not completely unbearable ;), ... haven’t done any browser testing … sorry if it’s your first time here! Working on it though...!

Into the Wild…

I let the new Solomon Island clowns out of the holding area just a few minutes ago, here’s a quick shot! I think they’re gorgeous, a very nice deeper orange**. Will get some better pics once they decide to venture out away from the glass…

** I emailed LiveAquaria.com last night and got a response this morning - they’re wild caught clowns….

I didn’t see it mentioned when I bought them, and probably overlooked it, seeing as there are captive bred A. percula clowns from Solomon Islands as well. As I understand it, the percs from that area tend to have more black, so I might have assumed that was implied by the title on the LiveAquaria.

Had I noticed that, I may not have purchased them, since I now tend to avoid buying wild caught livestock. I do have a couple WC peppermint shrimp (Lysmata wurdemanni) in the tank, and I do have Solomon Island live rock as well, but I really try and keep that at a minimum. With the availability of tank raised livestock (for great A. percula, check out Rod’s Reef), it isn’t necessary to take much from the reefs. So I emailed liveaquaria to make sure I at least know what I have in the tank, and, indeed, they’re WC clowns.

I may also have hesitated, had I noticed, because WC clowns are known to come in with brooknella and / or nasty internal parasites. That would usually worry me. One thing the Drs. Foster & Smith definitely have going for them (aside from a very nice selection of livestock (much of it aqua cultured) and a 14 day guarantee) is their quarantine facility and attention to livestock that they import - it is pretty impressive, to say the least.

Here’s are some excerpts from an article, written by their director, about their Aquaculture Coral and Marine Life Facility.

…We have three dedicated fish systems here at our facility, and none of them are run with antibiotics in the water. Two of the three fish systems are run with copper sulfate, and Copper sulfate with formalin in the water to treat fish that have Amyloodinium or Cryptocaryon. We do not house fish in this medication for months. Any experienced person who has handled fish for many years in this industry will tell you that this combination of medications is the best way to kill Cryptocaryon in a closed system, when it is administered in the proper amounts and dosages…

…As far as medication with antibiotics for bacterial infections, we do NOT create some antibiotic soup to treat these fish, nor do we run antibiotics in ANY of our systems. Your interpretation of what we have written again is far from the truth. I have listed some of the more common medications that we use in our facility to treat fish that have Vibrio or other bacterial infections. We prefer to medicate fish properly rather than watching them perish in our hands. Antibiotic baths means just that, the fish is placed in an individual isolation tank/container with an air stone and is bathed in the antibiotic we have chosen to administer. We do not dump these antibiotics into our fish systems as it would create major problems on many fronts from destroying the nitrifying bacteria to creating resistant strains of bacteria that would be detrimental to our fish. We employ ozone and UV sterilization to limit bacterial pathogens from spreading to other fish….

Here are a couple more pics…

© 2008 StonyReef.com.