Took some pics of my nano reef

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Colin ... dont you ever sleep.. it’s 3 in the morning there...
The neighbours dog has separation anxiety and keeps barking and howling and that wakes me up. When I'm awake I get pissed off with everything that has happened to me and the brain starts ticking over, then I can't get back to sleep. The dog is going to die soon, and that's coming from someone who likes dogs. That bloody animal is doing my head in. And yes the council knows about it and its been going on since 2016 when I first moved here. Bark all day, now its started barking all night.

Plus I have trouble breathing when laying down so I tend to fall asleep in my chair and wake up with impressions of the keyboard on my head.
 
Sorry to hear that Colin. Have you tried earplugs?

Voting in the contest will be a positive temporary distraction too.
 
Yeah I sleep with earplugs and in winter (which is now) I also wear a beany and hoody and I still hear it going off every 5 minutes.
 
Get a white noise machine. I love mine! Are you sure it’s not your goblins barking. Please don’t whack the dog in the head.
 
Colin got most of the IDs, but I should add a note on the blue fish. He's a bit of a mystery; he is in the damsel family, but I don't have a solid species. I've had two of them over the years; both were accidents shipped into the same shop many years apart. They start out looking a lot like juveniles from some Amblyglyphidodon species, but they just stay like that aside from slowly loosing the big-eyed baby face. They're also very good at making patterns of spots and stripes. A lot of marine fish will have a "spooked" pattern that they show (flushed or darkened, showing stripes, etc.) but these little guys don't do exactly the same pattern every time. He shows his weird patterns when the lights are out or if I startle him. A few years back I saw a pic of another of the same that was identified as an "unidentified deepwater chromis." That's the best ID I've seen so far. From my experience, they are very nervous fish. The other fish that is in there, a pajama cardinal, is the blue fish's comfort blanket. Mr blue has to be with his buddy or he would be in constant freak-out mode. The other one I had some years back had a bangai cardinal buddy for the same reason.

I wouldn't really say that marine tanks, particularly reef tanks, are just like a freshwater one with extra minerals. Fish-only marine tanks can be quite similar, but reef tanks like this one where there are so many coral and invert species crammed in together have an ecological side that I've just never seen happen in a freshwater system. With a good reef tank, you have an intricate ecosystem in place and have to keep everything in balance from the microalgaes, worms, and weird little crustaceans all the way up through the shrimp, corals and fish. Maintenance wise, my water changes on this tank just involve pouring out the canister filters (which are full of filter feeding organisms all over the walls) to clear out debris in the bottom and refilling them with clean water. Nitrogen-based nutrients register 0 and primarily I have to worry about calcium and other trace element depletion as corals and other inverts suck it out of the water to build skeletons/shells. I run carbon to catch anything that isn't biologically uptaken as well as to mitigate chemical warfare between corals.
 
I wish I had your knowledge to set up such a tank and watch it grow and develop. Stunning!
 
If the fish is an unidentified Chromis species, it is nervous due to lack of companions. All Chromis sp naturally occur in large groups and they stress when on their own or in small numbers (less than 10).

If I had my books I would be able to tell you what species it is. Unfortunately they were all thrown out in 2016.

Cardinalfish need to be kept in groups too. They occur in small groups that contain between 6 & 20 adult fish, and any young babies. They are mouth brooders, very easy to breed, and make really good parents.

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For Deanasue, set up a tank and try it. If you want to spend lots of money you can, but you can also do them on the cheap.
 
Colin, I have kept marine fish for a long time and had quite a few cardinal fish. They do not need to be kept in groups to live long healthy, happy lives. In fact, you can actually run into problems in an aquarium (even a pretty big one) if you get the gender radio messed up with a group, and they can start tearing on each other when they reach maturity or if you have one that's just weirdly aggressive. When breeding in an aquarium, pairs are often isolated from any larger group to avoid problems. These statements are based on both direct personal experience with several cardinal species (including breeding pairs) and discussions with other hobbyists who worked with the fish and captive bred them. A single cardinal fish is a very common marine tank addition and they do just fine.

Similarly, while the blue fish may be a "deepwater chromis," those photos of it in the wild that I saw did not show it in a school. Common name doesn't imply much; and nothing really when there's no genus to go along with it. Bear in mind many damsel family fish have to be kept singly in the aquarium or they also rip on each other in a really rather sever way. Amblyglyphydodon species, which this fish does rather closely resemble, fall into that category with most home aquariums - content to school as juveniles but not as adults. This fish also doesn't exactly show schooling tendencies. It just needs another fish in the tank that is chill and out in the open for it to explore the tank - at which point it behaves pretty much like every other damsel I've had.
 

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