Refugiums Control High Nitrate and Phosphate Levels – Even Unwanted Algae!
High levels of nitrates and phosphates have frustrated many a saltwater hobbyist. Now refugiums are here to save the day! A refugium uses macro algae, mud and/or sand as natural filters for reducing nitrates, silicates, and phosphates. As you harvest (remove) macroalgae you are also removing excess nutrients from the aquarium. Reducing excess organic nutrients helps control unwanted algae growth in the display aquarium.
Since a refugium is generally separate from the main aquarium it provides protection for copepods and amphipods, giving your aquarium a constant, natural food source. This natural food can be netted from the refugium or will travel naturally to the display aquarium via the lines connecting the two. Predators such as fish, shrimp, and corals should never be placed in your refugium.
There Are Four Refugium Styles
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Dog Face Puffers Teeth Need Trimming Again!
About a month ago my outside service techs brought a dogface puffer back from one of our service clients whose front teeth had grown so long the poor fellow could no longer eat. Just two years ago my staff and I trimmed his teeth, but they grew back, and here he was again. We needed to perform this tooth trimming operation to keep him from dieing of starvation.
The dogface puffer is one of the species that commonly has a problem with overgrown teeth. In the wild puffer fish kill and eat crustaceans with hard shells – keeping their teeth worn down. They also grind their teeth on rocks and rubble as they attempt to remove algae. In the aquarium they may eat a nutritional diet but it usually consist of soft foods, and even if they eat the occasional crustacean, they just don’t find rocks and rubble to wear their teeth down.
Here’s the operation: We kept this puffer in a holding tank for a few days to calm him down. Read More Here…
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How The Pro’s move Big Tanks
Moving big aquariums is exciting, fun and not as difficult as you might think – if you have the right equipment, that is. This picture shows a 540 gallon aquarium being set up in a home. The aquarium is 8 feet long by 3 feet wide and 3 feet high. Material lifts make it easy to large aquariums on a stand.
A material lift has a telescoping aluminum frame with steel forks and a hand crank. Large aquariums are usually shipped straped to a wooden pallet from the aquarium manufacturer. Just slide the forks inside the palate and start cranking. When the top of the pallet is even with the aquarium slide the aquarium off onto the stand. The aquarium in the picture took two 
lifts because of it weight.
Not long ago used one of these lifts to raise an eight foot long tank through a second story window. That was very scary especially if for the person on the bottom doing the cranking. These lifts can be rented from most equipment rental stores.
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P.E. Mysis Shrimp Have A Whopping 69.5% Protein
If you want to pack in the nutrition and put some weight on your fish and LPS corals then you should be feeding Piscine Energetics Mysis! This freshwater shrimp is collected in the deep waters of Canada’s lakes and is instantly flash frozen to lock in vitamins and keep the actual mysis shrimp from breaking apart. Keeping the shrimp whole makes it easy for animals eating the shrimp to recognize it as a real food source.
Another advantage of being frozen on the lake is there are no fillers added, just solid mysis shrimp. Since mysis live in freshwater it eliminates parasites from being transferred to your saltwater fish. This food makes a great diet for most fish and even corals and finicky eaters will take this food because of its high levels of fatty acids. If you want your LPS coral to be plump place a piece of mysis in the coral’s tentacles and watch it grab the shrimp and pull it in.
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Make The Inside Of Your Unfinished Cabinet Stand Look Sharp And Easy To Clean!
When using a wet dry filter or Berlin sump the inside of an aquarium cabinet gets covered in dirt and salt spray over time. Finished cabinets are usually easier to clean but unfinished have a rough texture making them difficult to clean. To make the job easier cover the inside of your cabinet with ABS plastic. ABS is available in a variety of colors including black, white and blue. White ABS gives a sleek appearance and hides salt creep.
ABS is easy to cut, Either cut it with a table saw or score and snap it. Cut the ABS so ti is the same size as the inside floor of your stand and drop it in place. The sides need to be attached to the stand to keep the ABS from falling. Use screws or glue. Once all the parts of your stand are covered use 100% silicone to seal the joints.
Now you, too, have a professional-looking sleek, easy to clean cabinet interior.
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Live Red Hair Algae Removal
Many kinds of unwanted algae can overtake a saltwater aquarium when left unchecked. Mainly I see a lot of green hair algae, bryopsis, but recently I had the opportunity to work with a reef covered in red hair algae. The first photo shows just one area of the aquarium with red hair algae. But I can assure you it was spread throughout the entire aquarium.
This reef has a refugium, some blue and red leg hermit crabs, astraea and nassarius snails. The refugium and invertebrates are great at helping keeping in check most algae but they did nothing to rid the aquarium of the unsightly red hair algae! I prefer to use natural solutions rather than adding chemicals, so, in this case I called on the Pacific Coast Mexican Turbo snails (Turbo fluctuosus) to the rescue.
Three and a half weeks after adding 12 Mexican Turbo snails to this 120 reef there were no more visible traces of the red hair algae. There is one concern when adding these Turbo snails – Read More Here…
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What Should The Specific Gravity Be In My Aquarium?
Although there are currently a few saltwater fish hatcheries, most saltwater fish sold in fish stores are collected from the oceans. The salt content or specific gravity of ocean water varies in different parts of the world as well as individual oceans. These saltwater fish which are collected from various oceans are shipped to aquarium stores and homes and are expected to live in whatever specific gravity the aquarium keeper decides on.
Back in the 1980’s and early 90’s I recommended my customers to keep specific gravity for their saltwater fish aquariums at 1.020. The theory back then was that parasites were less prevalent at lower levels of salt. This theory has been proven completely wrong – parasites continue to thrive at this level. Specific gravity has to be much, much lower to kill parasites. The flip side is that most fish also thrived at a specific gravity of 1.020. But then I recommended my customers to keep specific gravity higher in aquariums with invertebrates and live corals.
Eventually it seemed to make sense to maintain a common specific gravity for all the saltwater Read More Here…
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The Green Wolf Eel Can Be A Great Saltwater Fish To Add To Your Aquarium
Green Wolf Eels or Carpet Eel Blennies are fish that look like, are named like, and are commonly mistaken for eels. Green wolf eels (Congrogadus subducens) are really a pseudochromid (Dottyback.) These hardy fish are frequently for sale at most fish stores.
One of the neat features about this fish is its great eyesight. When a customer asks about this fish I generally grab a tuffy (rosie red minnow) or a small feeder goldfish and hand feed it. Even though Green Wolf Eels are wild-caught in a very short time they will eat out of your hand. I have never had one miss the food and bite me but it is probably wise to use feeding tongs, it’s just not as cool.
Green Wolf Eels grow to a maximum length of almost 18″ so it requires an aquarium of at least 55 gallons. They need a meaty diet consisting of foods like krill, shrimp, squid and other frozen and live fish. They generally are quick to learn to eat in captivity but if you have a finicky eater feed it glass Read More Here…
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The Internet Is Filled With Facts – And Many Peoples’ Beliefs!
So How Do You Know The Difference?
This is a common concern from my clients. They search the Internet with questions about their fish, corals or anything else but all they find are different answers to the same questions. The reason there are so many differing answers is because people believe different things. The people that write about their experiences actually believe in their conclusions.
Lets take an example: “I changed fish foods and my fish got ich. The problem must be from the new food.” Maybe, but let’s ask some more questions to see if something else caused the sickness. This may seem a little silly but this happens all the time. Many times false correlations are made.
My goal in this blog is to work to base the information contained herein on solid fact. After owning a large aquarium store with an aquarium maintenance division for over 25 years I have learned a lot. I am going to share my knowledge about fish and reef keeping. Plus, I have many experienced friends whose knowledge will also be part of this site.
My goal is to give straightforward information so everyone can be a successful hobbyist.
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