Aphrodite's Personallity
Posted: Fri Aug 12, 2011 8:28 am
My new Saddled Toby, Aphrodite, is starting to "come out of her shell" so to speak. I got her a week ago, and she was quite skittish for the first 5 days or so. She didn't eat much, and explored very slowly, staying away from my baby ocellarus clown ( Detective Collumbo is his name 
) and even the hermit crabs. The first thing I got her to eat was a tiny bite of (dead) baby octopus that I manipulated with a shish-kebab skewer on the second day. After that she went a day or two with nothing. I added some ( gut loaded ) ghost shrimp from my FW showtank where they breed on they're own ( something I'm super proud of, that's hard to accomplish with conventional filtration, BUT NOT TO GET OFF ON A TANGENT heh heh ) and she attacked one after cornering it... She just bit a huge chunk out of it and immediateley spit it out. As the shrimp tried to crawl away she followed it, seeming to be at a loss for what to do. She watched it die, and then "pouted" in a little cranny in the live rock with her tailfin to the display quadrant of the tank for a half hour... So the next day I decided to try her out on worms. I have had success in getting my GSPs to eat those when they were in a funk. I went to my LBS ( local bait store tee hee hee ) and got the container labeled "mini red worms" but these guys must have been in there GROWING... they were monster three inchers. As soon as the salt water hit the poor guy and he started writhing it was All She Wrote. Since then Aphrodite has become MUCH more active during diurnal lighting periods and "picks over" the live rock CONSTANTLY. I had a good deal of odd-shaped, small stars in there before. In the last three days it's been harder and harder to find any. Today she grazed on some oyster and ate some prepared krill ( soaked for 10 minutes so it wouldn't expand in her tummy ). Compared to the other puffers I keep/have kept, I have made the following observations. Having kept GSPs, and DPs, she is probably the most aware of whats going on outside of the tank out of all, although not by a LOT more than my GSPs. She is as mobile consistently through the day as my DPs are when they hunt, and less skittish than the GSPs ( The Dwarfs are completeley fearless, and "bump" my hands when I DARE to re-arrange their plants ). Observations that I have made where I cannot compare conditions to my other puffers are mostly due to the fact that she is in a "FOWLR-REEF-ish" setup and my GSPs didn't make it to marine conditions 
. Mainly I would state that she is turning out to be quite a spitfire. I added a fiddler crab, for instance, the day I introduced her, just in case she was used to dining on crustaceans wherever she was caught. I declawed it and dropped it in, and she proceeded to ignore it. Today i noticed it is missing two legs on one side, one on the other, and one eye. I saw her sneak up and attack it today and she flipped it over, and hit the thorax twice, then swam away. Looks like she is getting the learning curve. Also, she sometimes goes around the tank and just messes things up, pushing over coral skeletons or knocking hermit crabs off their perch. It's pretty comical. I'd have to say I would prefer this to "pacing" activity. My two GSPs used to do that a LOT in the same tank when it was theirs, sadly it didn't have enough "terrain" then. The one behaivour I am trying to discourage is her looking at Collumbo like food sometimes, and chasing him when the night light is on a little ( I will get in to this "low-light" behaviour in a Pedia article submission, god willing, soon! ). I know C. Vallentini is not a piscivore, but my clown DOES have a tiny nip out of his tail fin. I bet she could kill him very easily if she wanted, so I'm betting on this being a "getting to know you" thing. I've seen HIM scare her away on occasion too, Keeling out all his fins and acting tough. When he does this she runs for the cave I made her. He did this tonight over the oyster I added, GO COLLUMBO!
Anyway, these have been my observations on acclimating an almost full-grown, female Canthigaster Vallentini to my semi-reef system. Hope to have shed a little light on Saddled Tobies getting comfortable in home aquaria.
) and even the hermit crabs. The first thing I got her to eat was a tiny bite of (dead) baby octopus that I manipulated with a shish-kebab skewer on the second day. After that she went a day or two with nothing. I added some ( gut loaded ) ghost shrimp from my FW showtank where they breed on they're own ( something I'm super proud of, that's hard to accomplish with conventional filtration, BUT NOT TO GET OFF ON A TANGENT heh heh ) and she attacked one after cornering it... She just bit a huge chunk out of it and immediateley spit it out. As the shrimp tried to crawl away she followed it, seeming to be at a loss for what to do. She watched it die, and then "pouted" in a little cranny in the live rock with her tailfin to the display quadrant of the tank for a half hour... So the next day I decided to try her out on worms. I have had success in getting my GSPs to eat those when they were in a funk. I went to my LBS ( local bait store tee hee hee ) and got the container labeled "mini red worms" but these guys must have been in there GROWING... they were monster three inchers. As soon as the salt water hit the poor guy and he started writhing it was All She Wrote. Since then Aphrodite has become MUCH more active during diurnal lighting periods and "picks over" the live rock CONSTANTLY. I had a good deal of odd-shaped, small stars in there before. In the last three days it's been harder and harder to find any. Today she grazed on some oyster and ate some prepared krill ( soaked for 10 minutes so it wouldn't expand in her tummy ). Compared to the other puffers I keep/have kept, I have made the following observations. Having kept GSPs, and DPs, she is probably the most aware of whats going on outside of the tank out of all, although not by a LOT more than my GSPs. She is as mobile consistently through the day as my DPs are when they hunt, and less skittish than the GSPs ( The Dwarfs are completeley fearless, and "bump" my hands when I DARE to re-arrange their plants ). Observations that I have made where I cannot compare conditions to my other puffers are mostly due to the fact that she is in a "FOWLR-REEF-ish" setup and my GSPs didn't make it to marine conditions . Mainly I would state that she is turning out to be quite a spitfire. I added a fiddler crab, for instance, the day I introduced her, just in case she was used to dining on crustaceans wherever she was caught. I declawed it and dropped it in, and she proceeded to ignore it. Today i noticed it is missing two legs on one side, one on the other, and one eye. I saw her sneak up and attack it today and she flipped it over, and hit the thorax twice, then swam away. Looks like she is getting the learning curve. Also, she sometimes goes around the tank and just messes things up, pushing over coral skeletons or knocking hermit crabs off their perch. It's pretty comical. I'd have to say I would prefer this to "pacing" activity. My two GSPs used to do that a LOT in the same tank when it was theirs, sadly it didn't have enough "terrain" then. The one behaivour I am trying to discourage is her looking at Collumbo like food sometimes, and chasing him when the night light is on a little ( I will get in to this "low-light" behaviour in a Pedia article submission, god willing, soon! ). I know C. Vallentini is not a piscivore, but my clown DOES have a tiny nip out of his tail fin. I bet she could kill him very easily if she wanted, so I'm betting on this being a "getting to know you" thing. I've seen HIM scare her away on occasion too, Keeling out all his fins and acting tough. When he does this she runs for the cave I made her. He did this tonight over the oyster I added, GO COLLUMBO!Anyway, these have been my observations on acclimating an almost full-grown, female Canthigaster Vallentini to my semi-reef system. Hope to have shed a little light on Saddled Tobies getting comfortable in home aquaria.