Diagnose My Tank --- Forced to Foster Fish

[r3dbullxxx]

Evening!

Long story short...I have become the anxiety-driven foster owner of what I believe is an entire community of Jade Sleeper Gobies.

Also know that my family and I have kept & bred the most common freshwater and saltwater fish in tanks up to 200 gallons. We've also kept crayfish, crabs, and all the common "pet store pets" as they were when I was a kid. I'm not saying I'm an expert, by any means. I try and research and learn because my theory is that if the life of my animals is worse with me then I am not prepared to keep that animal. I just want to make sure I know what I am dealing with...if that is possible.
Also, I know my tank is too small, my fish are too big, and there are too many for that size tank.
As I will explain, I didn't even have an established tank nor did I intend to embark on this adventure.

That being said, where I live in Florida there is a current "boom" and many construction sites, new roads, and all the mess that comes with this has popped up near me.
One day I was walking and saw that the crew had bulldozed, filled in, and cut across several of the tiny waterways that most people in the area probably never knew existed. During times with no rain, there is no visible water other than some gross cloudy water that dribbles out of some drain pipe but by no means even touches all of the branches of the waterways. Think of the Finger Lakes, but on an insanely small scale.

Anyway, their plan cut through the Mini-Finger-Lakes (MFL) and blocked the drain pipe and water filled in with the 1 Finger (Think of a hand with the thumb disconnected.) containing drain-water and whatever was there prior to the construction. The depth was no more than 12 inches or so.I noticed some flickering of small guppies and whatnot and figured I'd grab my minnow trap, load it up, and see what those little fish were. Their patterns were interesting and I thought it would might be neat for a small 5-10 gallon display.
So, I came back, dropped the trap, and went to another location. (I was searching for a baby blue-gill)
Later that afternoon, I came back and the crew had come back and marked the Thumb with orange cones to be filled in the next day.
I thought that was terrible, honestly, and pulled up the trap.
I peeked inside and had none of the fish I saw & wanted, but there were some others that were about 1"-2" and reminded me of little bass.
I put the batch into my bucket and threw the trap back and caught another batch. I figured I'd come back in the early AM to try to get more to save them from the ditch-of-death.
Unfortunately, that wasn't the case and I was unable to get any more...at least from there.

After progressing through tanks, filters, trial and error...I am at a 75 gallon tank with 2 external filters rated for 100 gallons each. I have added some live plants, ghost shrimp, some rosy reds and 3 crayfish.

I took some photos of a lot of aspects of the tank from abnormalities and injuries and some basic photos looking for some explanations, opinions, information, etc. since I am trying to get them/keep them healthy and pass them along/sell them to good homes. They apparently can grow to ridiculous sizes if given the proper diet and space to do so and I don't want to stunt/dwarf them in an overcrowded tank for longer than I have to if you know what I mean.

I have the photos and video clips...which are unedited but, being new and all, I have that banner that says not to post links...so, I am unsure what to do next...so, I thought I'd write this out first and see if I should upload files here directly or to my YouTube as a slideshow or something.

I have an insane number of photos which borders on some kind of disorder...I'm sure....but, I obviously want to share as many as people would want/need to see...but, I have no gauge as to "how many is too many" so please advise. I have at least 20-30 I can think of with what I've explained so far but, I do have 1000's more just because I've wanted to learn about these fish and have come to really enjoy them.

Thanks in advance!

r3dbullxxx

*UPDATE* I forgot...I've had them about 7 months. Thanks.

 

[r3dbullxxx]

ok....so, a few reads and no green lights or red flags so, I'm going to begin posting.
Please let me know if I am doing something wrong!
Happy looking!

r3dbullxxx

 

[BIG-G]

First off welcome to MFK.
I’m not familiar with the sleeper goby you mentioned. I mean I’ve seen them never kept them though looks like a cool fish to keep.
I’m interested in seeing you photos and video.

ok....so, a few reads and no green lights or red flags so, I'm going to begin posting.
Please let me know if I am doing something wrong!
Happy looking!

r3dbullxxx

Is there something specific you have questions about?

 

[BichirKing]

yes lets see them!

 

[r3dbullxxx]

 

[r3dbullxxx]

 

[BIG-G]

They look awesome. Cool fish

 

[r3dbullxxx]

 

[r3dbullxxx]

They are definitely skittish and I’m assuming because they were wild. They do not like to come to the top and actually wait for the food to get to the bottom. If the food pellets drive past them they wait for more pellets and only go search the bottom if there still hungry. I’ve tried a different variety of foods that they were supposedly like to eat. Their favorite are sinking shrimp pellets and the weirdest thing I tried was putting a chicken wing in on a string and they tore that up like a bunch of Piranhas.

I’ll see if I can post more but lots of the videos clips are short but the site says the file is too big to upload. If anyone sees anything as far as sickness, let me know. I’ve began a parasitic bloated belly treatment simply because so many have fat bellies and I’ve yet to see eggs or TINY babies yet I know I didn’t trap this many out of the ditch. There’s 30-40 in here and I know I caught maybe 12-15...simply because I know they wouldn’t have all fit.

The included photo is when I was trying to ID them and shows the initial size I acquired them as they were tiny compared to my smallest blue fish net.

It also shows the interesting thing because I had a few jump out of the tank on the ground they always rated themselves and put their fins out as shown in the photo which I thought was interesting and also helped me identify what they were. About seven or eight jumped out of the tank and I did lose two or three that way however even after being out of the tank for several hours I was Able to put all of them back and they have survived. Amazing!

 

[r3dbullxxx]

They are amazingly social and will lay all over Each other, the crayfish, the Algae eater, etc. and come out and are hesitant to interact with me unless I move very slowly. It took about six months for them to even consider swimming with the lights on in the tank and the only time they would come up out of hiding was when the tank lights were off and the room lights were on and I could see the shadows. They are supposed to be somewhat territorial especially during the breeding and all of that however I haven’t seen Anything to really show that there are mean or aggressive but the bigger ones do you know the little ones out-of-the-way to get where they want or whatever they want otherwise they seem to be tolerant of all the other fish and less there’s an issue.