As with most of our Burrfish, he developed a few Crypt spots almost immediately (day 2). These guys are often found in riverine brackish water with SG as low as 1.006, so by the middle of his third day he was spot free at SG 1.010 with a sodium carbonate drip maintaining pH 8.0 where he'll be for the next month. The filtration will need to be upgraded, but we'll have to make a sump to fit into the stand. He'll also need a protein skimmer. I hate the CoralLife 125 we have installed on Oblio's sump as it overflows when the water level rises. We can't do anything in the tank without turning off the protein skimmer. We do water changes often enough that it doesn't produce much skimmate but It does do a great job of aerating.
The-New-Guy is living alone in his private quarantine 42 gallon hex tank with about 40 Lb of fully cured but unpopulated Fiji Pukani live rock. The rock is comprised entirely of honeycombed coral skeletons offering lots of bio filter surface area. The tank has no substrate.
He has an AquaClear 110 we dug out of storage. When we bought it, it was 1.5 inches too wide for the tank and had to be "customized" to fit. He also has a large sponge filter driven by an AquaClear 70 power head. The tank was set up the day before we got him. We had mentioned the previous week that we were looking for this specific fish (vs. the more common C. antillarum) and the store surprised us by ordering one in. Friday they called, Saturday we set up the tank (with the aged live rock, a seeded sponge filter, Dr Tim's, and Biospira), and Sunday he was acclimated. There wasn't a lot of acclimation needed because we set up the tank with SG and pH matched to the store's parameters. Still, we acclimated for an hour.
Between the seeded sponge filter, Dr Tim's, Bio-Spira, and the live rock, his water nitrogen parameters have remained perfect from day one at 0-0-low even as the salinity was dropped over 36 hours. We dosed his tank with Praziquantel for prophylactic IP treatment on day one. Because of the fresh water dilution we'll have to repeat the Praziquantel next month (don't want to dose praziquantel during hyposalinity though it would probably be ok).
OK, so that's The-New-Guy's story.
The new guy vs the night crawler.
Although victorious, he can't fit anymore in, and has to leave some for later (we netted it out). No more concave belly!
