20140919 Japanese Swallowtail Angelfish

Last weekend I visited my local fish store Living Art Aquarium and noticed they have this angel available- Paul, the owner labeled it "very rare, and very good price" at $99. For those of you who are not familiar with this fish, many would pay up to $400 for a male specimen.

There are two fish in the Genicanthus family sharing the common name "Japanese Swallowtail Angelfish"- Genicanthus melanospilos, and Genicanthus Semifasciatus.

The first one is also known as a spotbreast angelfish and is quite common in the Aquarium trade with price ranging from $70 -$120 for female and a bit higher for male. Personally, I think the female of this species look prettier than the male (so do many of the other members of the Genicanthus family).

But not the Semifasciatus. While I think the female looks really adorable with the black mask, the male specimen of Semifasciatus is simply regal with the golden mask and trim streaming down the mid section separating tiger striped upper section and the silver abdominal portion.

They are not common, thus Paul's quote "rare", and they are also not the hardiest during shipping and acclimation due to their origin- ranging from Philippines to Japan, living as deep as 300ft, they can come from water as cool as upper 60's but also as warm as upper to mid 70's. So depends on the source, they might not always enjoy the tropical, reef temperature. Secondly, because they could have been collected at a greater depth, improper decompression can result in swim bladder disfunction, which was common in the genicanthus family but has been better in recent years.

Now, why was this fish so cheap, you might ask? Well, Paul explained when he was picking up livestock from the wholesaler, this fish was severely beaten and was in really bad shape. With the huge order Paul had placed, the owner just toss this in for free but not optimistic with its chances. After the fish had arrived Paul's store, it rebounded and recovered almost completely and was eagerly accepting food. I could not pass on this. 

If you google some of this fish's photos, you can see that my fish is actually in the midst of a gender reassignment. That's right, they are hermaphrodic and can change gender back, and forth at will. This fish appears to be on her way to become a male. You can still see a hint of the black mask around the eye, and the tiger stripes have not yet fully appeared. (Either that or it can be reversing it from male back to female, but I am hope it is the first one).

Currently I have a 5" female watanabe angel in the tank, as expected there is some squabble between the two since they are in the same family. But it has not grown too violent since at least one of them is female. It is only day two of the fish in my tank and it has been eating very well! I will have more updates later.

Aqua Illumination SOL super blue- Controller set up

Hello again,
Today's episode is about the controller set-up. This is the most important part of your light installation as the controller is what really gives you the ultimate power to control and customize the color, timing, and even weather effect of your reef tank.
Drs. Foster and Smith will ship this new controller if you order it along with the light.

Controller basics: left square is select/enter, right square is escape/back
Up and Down arrow allow you to go through items
left and right arrow allow you to adjust attribute/value in these items.

Caution: Don't plug in the fixture until you have this set up, the fixture will run at its full intensity until this controller is programmed to link to it. I recommend you set all lights at 50% intensity and then increase/decrease as needed after you have connected them.

Step 1 is lighting. You can choose to go to the custom lighting set up to set the hourly color % of each light. Or you can cheat and do a simple set up by designate a sunrise and sunset time. The ramp time is a cool feature no other lights can offer- mimic sunset or sunrise in a slow-progressive way.

After pressing enter, you will come to this screen. You can choose the amount of energy you want to dedicate to each of the three colors offered in SOL super blue. You can also choose the % of light in the nite/lunar mode. I choose 3% royal and 1% blue to give it a slightly brighter look.

Or you can also pick the light condition to resemble some of the world's most famous tropical waters ranging from Fiji to Great Barrier Reef, Florida Keys to the Philippines.

If you keep arrow down on the main select menu, you will come to screen#2, the cloud icon is for weather effects.

You can "test drive" it  by start now. And you can set the chances of severe weather to happen, how often, and the time range it will take place. You can also choose to have lightning or not. If you are sitting in your room you can tell the storm is coming when all of a sudden all lights dims down to deep blue, to mimic heavy cloud.

The lunar cycle is another cool feature to allow your tank as natural of a light experience as it can.

Once you set up the lunar cycle, your tank will actually go through the cycle by having a few brightest nights with some totally dark nights to mimic the lunar cycle.

If your previous lighting system is less intense than this light, you can use the coral acclimation program to gradually increase the intensity of your light to where you eventually want it to be.

Now, to actually activate all of your settings, you must choose which light and what channel your fixture will be one (if you have multiple units) This controller can be use to control AI vega wirelessly, Sol and Nano with wire or wirelessly with an adopter sold separately.

Besure to pick the correct unit for your setting to function properly. You can now plug in your fixture to see it lit up, and make any necessary adjustment now.