I set up my 102 gallon as a damsel tank: I love their color and fast movement. I traded off most of my corals during the change from my 54 gallon (which is now a freshwater) to the 102—and I’m trying to get the corals built back up.
Now, corals once happy can grow like bandits, even the stony ones. They want water with calcium in it, at a certain ph, and they want light, and food, and to be steady. Stable. Fixed as a rock.
But…certain damsels have this THING about Their Space. They want to decorate it (or not) a certain way.
Had this one piece of coral (we call it a frag) that kept falling down. No matter where I put it, it’d land on the sand.
Then I remembered: you know where in ‘Pirates of the Caribbean’ they say—‘Pi-rate.’ ” Well. I’m picking up this frag for the umpteenth time, trying to keep it alive, and I see this fat little 3-stripe damsel (vertical slanting black and white stripes) unafraid of God or devil and hovering. And I think: “Oh, yeah. Dam-sel.”
Yep. An hour later that carefully wedged-in frag was on the bottom again. Put it back. DOwn again within the hour.
At this point I get in, soaked to the shoulder, retrieve the frag, and get some ‘reef putty’, that green white-cored stinky stuff well-known to plumbers. YOu knead it til it’s white, and you put the frag’s little butt in it, and you shove it in a hole in the rock. It shapes to the rock, dries hard, and that frag is stuck.
Little so-and-so struck at my hand when I put that frag back in. I persisted and pasted it to the rockwork.
So far, so good. The poor battered frag is starting to bloom again. The damsel is annoyed, but thus far it hasn’t taken it down.
Hmm, maybe you could call the fish Howard Hughes (OCD)?
Would the damselfish appreciate a nice pebble or shell, of similar size and/or colouring as the fragment, in just that spot on the sand? Or is it the hollow the fragment is in, that the fish wanted for itself?
It is the entire 8×8″ piece of rock the fish wants, with all approaches to it. Plus the 30 gallons of water surrounding that rock, over and around. A third of the tank. Of course, since he’s only 2″ long, he has a large job defending it. He’s an active little fellow.
But I am happy to report, since I glued that frag in place, (and moved it out of his general line of sight) he is leaving it alone!
I think Hanneke might be onto something. Could the fish want a nook, a niche, in which to hide, lurk? Or could the fish be after a shiny/pretty thing that is his/hers, such as for a bower or nest, other than a hidden-hole, a den, a niche, pour se cacher?
Or on the other fin (heh), is the fish upset because the coral frag was obstructing his/her view of the great alien vista Outside the Tank, the air-breather world? Or, more fishily, obstructing his/her view of any potential rivals or mates within the, uh, mini-ocean?
I have never really considered whether fish have anything like complex thoughts, any intelligence on the level of even the most basic of mammals.
However, I’ve seen footage of cuttlefish, squids, and octopi, quite unrelated to fish. Those critters, now, are somehting else again.
(Is resisting saying they’re another kettle of fish… cuttle of fish…? Ahem. One apologizes, quite….) ;D
“Hidden-hole” was supposed to be hidey-hole, of course. Gods rot the rag-eared auto-incorrecter!
Ah, so it was keeping the approach to its castle free and its sightlines open, rather than decorating its patch of sand. In that case adding other decorative bits to the sand for it to play with won’t do a thing to appease it, I guess 😉
And it’s still in place!
Yay!
If Mr. Clownfish was able to pry loose an epoxied-in chunk of coral from a much larger outcropping, that would indeed be a mighty fish! One might wonder about the advisability of keeping him in such a tank (checks fish for a red S on his ventral side).
This is very interesting! I have only ever had fresh water fish tanks, and I tried to keep them low maintenance, as it was usually me taking care of them (I had a 20 gallon and a 10 gallon, and then I had a gallon jar I kept guppies and water snails in; I liked the colorful little guppies. I usually kept them with water-weed aplenty.)
How long does it take for coral to become mature?
It generally reproduces by splitting, so it’s born mature. But now and again it spawns and the spawn drifts on the currents, most becoming fishfood, but some lodging in just the right spot—then within a few months it’s become recognizable. Within the year, it may be a smalll colony.
Amazing. 🙂 Underwater environments are fascinating.