I want to preface by saying i love this fish, and i dont really care if hes not what i was sold. Hes a character (an absulute c*nt), and one of my favourite fish.

I bought this fish as a "white tail tang" for $50. At the time, i had no idea what that fish was worth. I just googled a photo of him as an adult and bought him thinking that in a few months he will start changing colour.

Fast forward 3 months to today, and I discovered that I had an $800 fish?! WHAT???

But he still looked EXAXTLY the same as when I bought him...

Sooooo, I went on a google mission, and saw that my baby tang looks NOTHING like a baby whitetail bristletooth tang, as I was led to believe he was...

Google AI says he is a yellowfin tang... worth exactly what I bought him for... but do I trust AI??

Sooo, tell me, have I been sold a dud?

Please excuse the horrid photos... they're screenshots of a video, because the bloody fish never stays still.

So I have two star fish in the tank and this one I’ve had for about two months and the other “much much smaller” for about 5 months. Yesterday it was doing fine and moving around a bit and today I saw it like this. I’ve had starfish die on me where they start to disintegrate ( I was new at the hobby and it was a fairly new tank) but it didn’t look like this. Any helpful advice? Last pic is just a top down of the tank. Thank you!

What is growing under and through my zoa colony? AI suggested a nudibranch, but it does not look like pictures I've seen. Whatever it is, it is pushing little pieces out in several places. Should I dip it? I've had this colony four months and don't want to lose it!

Hey all, I just added an orange spotted blenny to my already established tank made up of two clownfish and a lawnmower blenny. I noticed that my lawnmower blenny started attacking the new fish and now I’m thinking that he’s why my firefish goby died. Any suggestions?

Hey guys! I have a 15 gallon saltwater cube and im wanting to put a pair of clownfish in there. Is it possible to also put a Royal Gramma in there?

I just noticed this white spot on my purple tang. Possibly 4years old. I bought a fauna Marin icp
Test and plan to send it out Monday after my weekly maintenance. Anyone know what’s going on? Pic in the first comment

I currently have one tank with a plethora of pods and one tank which is totally barren of them. I'd like some good ideas on how to get a large number of them from the one tank into the other. Any suggestions welcome. My current idea is to simply place a new rock into the tank with the established colony for a few days/weeks and then just drop that rock into the other tank, but I feel like there has to be a better way.

It’s been a fragging kind of week for us to list on our site and make room in our main displays.

Have been spending some time growing out and organizing some colorful frags lately, and I’m loving how these are turning out! 🪸💚💜 Always fun seeing what pops under the reef lights.

I guess you could say I’m just goni with the flow while my Acro obsession keeps branching out! 🤣

What are everyone’s personal favorites in the reef tank world? Are you team Acro, Goni, zoas, euphyllia, mushrooms, or something totally different? Always love seeing what everyone else is obsessed with! 🐠

Got this frag the other day and noticed what I had thought was algea on the frag. Did my usual dip and crap of crud off the frag and though I got these little things. Low and behold... theyve popped out of hiding again and it kinda looks like there's more. They look like little feather duster worms to me but id love to hear thoughts.

Nervous I've introduced a pest from a ineffective dip.

Edit: thanks for the quick responses. Consensus was hydriods so I pulled the frag out and scraped and rinsed it off in another bucket. Cheers.

I cant get a straight answer on Google. I have since moved my tank around and there is a large one almost touching my frogspawn. Im not sure if I should remove it or move the spawn

gonio is around 2 months in my tank and the clowns are 6 days in.

usually after lights out (this is ambience light from the living room) the gonio did not retracted as bald as this but today after work i found them rubbing and wiggling really close onto the gonio ball.

do they eventually will kill my gonio? anyone have experience?

Work in progress 👀👀👀

Working on my first tank right now and I picked up some saltwater from my LFS that they said was mixed to 1.025. I added the water in a few hours later once I got my rock setup and calibrated my refractometer to 1.026 using the BRS calibration solution. Tested my tank water and it was at 1.020, which seemed weird for my LFS to be that far off on their salinity. I then tested some RO and that was way off so I calibrated my RO to 0 and then tested my tank water and it sat perfectly at 1.026. Using the RO calibration point, my calibration solution reads around 1.033.

Should I assume the calibration fluid is the one that’s off and unreliable or could it be correct? Does anyone have experience with the BRS refracto/solution?

So I have about 10 years of experience in the hobby but that was also almost 10 years ago. I recently wanted to dip my toe back in the water and get started on a nice little nano reef. Found a steal of a setup on market place (innovative marine 10gal, ai prime light, ATO and DIY hood) and went to my lfs to get the rest. I was talking with one of the employees about how the indistry has changed and he seemed pretty well experienced. Live aquaria is apparently trash now, live rock is much less available and instead carib sea "life rock" is the standard, and the most shocking piece of advise i was given was how to cycle my tank. Now ive cycled quite a few tanks before and was planning on doing some "life rock", live sand, ammonia, and an api test kit and wait like normal. He said the best way is to simply add the rock and sand and throw a fish in there and even a hardy coral and do a fish in cycle day 1. "Just let the sand settle". didnt even recommend getting a test kit. Online seems to refute these claims saying a fish in cycle is risky and harmful to the fish. Before I go any farther I was looking for the internets take on things. I didnt end up getting a fish or coral (yet) and havent dosed ammonia (yet). still deciding what path I want to do. Any bonus info on how the industry has changed is appreciated in here as well. Thanks!

She's a menace. Makes him stay below it all the time.

I came home after a long weekend and noticed about 25% of a small patch of zoas was gone (maybe 10 polyps).

There was a scheduled electrical works for one of the days i was away for 4-6 hours, i'd just assumed it was an adverse reaction (tank is 20g) to that and they'd melted.

Later this week i noticed a the polyps have turned up wedged into a crevice on the other side of the tank. They're tucked in between a large rock and a smaller rock with a devils hand. Still getting light and were open.

Any insight how this would happen? My CUC is 7 trochus and a hermit crab. Would a trochus have bulldozed through, somehow they've attached and then subsequently detached?

Or alternatively a trochus detaches them and they're them picked up by the flow and randomly deposited?

Cheers

I added this nem to my tank over a week ago now. Originally placed him just underneath the large plate on the left of my scape where I thought he could put his foot and get a good amount of light without too much flow, fully expecting that he would move and find himself a new spot.

He’s been floating round the tank now for over a week. My concern is that he keeps ending up in areas of low flow and can’t move back out of there since there’s no rock for him to grip onto, only sand.

Any advice on what I should do? I could try placing him again but he always moves anyway

So hard to get a good photo and of course half of them started closing when I switched the lights to get a picture.

11 varieties of Zoa/Paly in this tank alone. I think I have 14 between all my tanks but this one became the dedicated Zoa garden.

I have already posted in R2R but posting here too for reach because I’m pulling my hair out trying to id and deal with these suckers.

I’ve tried a three day blackout didn’t work.
I’ve tried running UV sterilizer for weeks. didnt work.
tried siphoning them out and removing them…. hasn’t worked.

There’s no bubbles in the display. It’s not really stringy. It’s hanging out on the sand bed and on the lower part of my rocks and it stays there pretty much 24/7 it doesn’t really go away.

Any ideas?

DISCLAIMER: I’m not complaining. I know this is part of the hobby. I’m still learning, as is everyone in the hobby, please don’t yell at me (I’m more fragile than a Red Sea seam)

Thoughts on my attempt at a diy stand for my tank plus sump? Still haven’t sanded or painted. Took me WAY longer than I expected 😭

Just filled my first nano tank and I’m so happy to start cycling, water is still a bit cloudy and I’m not sure about the water level in the display/sump but yay at least I started

crack. damned it I love this tank... going to the pet store to buy a temp before it let's go and floods my house...