Captive Aquatics: An Aquarium and Ecology Blogtag:typepad.com,2003:weblog-18468072012-09-16T20:39:46-05:00A freshwater, saltwater, reef aquarium and aquatic ecology blog with beginner and advanced articles, led reef aquarium lighting info, aquarium product reviews, and more!TypePadHow to Frag Branching SPS Coraltag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a010535f11c3d970c017744c79770970d2012-09-16T20:39:46-05:002012-09-17T08:25:17-05:00This guest post by My Reef to Yours Coral Frags will teach you all about fragging branching SPS coral! Fragging live SPS is easy and is a great way to share coral frags with your friends. This article will cover most branching SPS such as Acroporas, Birdsnest, and others. If it has branches, we can frag it safely. Tools needed: Latex Gloves Wire Cutters or Bone Cutters Superglue Gel Frag Disks or Rubble Rock You want to wear gloves during this process to protect the coral and to protect you. Take a bowl a fill it with tank water. We can then place our mother colony in the bowl for safe keeping. Examine the colony and determine what branches you want to take your frags from. Simply take your cutters and cut the branches you want to frag at the base of your colony. You are fine to remove the mother colony from the water during this process, you just don’t want the coral to become dry. Once you have finished your trimming you can place your colony back into your tank and place the fragged pieces into your bowl with the tank water. Next we will want to attach...Captive AquaticsEye Candy - 150g SPS Displaytag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a010535f11c3d970c0147e234375a970b2011-02-22T22:32:29-06:002012-09-10T01:31:46-05:00These photos feature my buddy Mark's 150g mixed SPS display tank. His beautiful tank is a prime example of successful simplicity when it comes to running a tank. Enjoy!Ryan BurdiosGreat Coral ID Resource Unveiled by SDMAStag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a010535f11c3d970c0148c807f98d970c2011-01-29T17:10:10-06:002012-09-10T01:32:33-05:00Remember the AIMS coral ID site? It's an amazing yet relatively untapped online representation of JEN Veron's Corals of the World books. I say "relatively untapped" because it's nearly unuseable - navigating and searching AIMS is about as user friendly as this intersection. You'll notice the AIMS link is to an Acro valida, because after 15 minutes I still couldn't find the index page for that site. Well, fortunately for us the good people at SDMAS said "no more!", and through an incredible amount of work they put together a hobbyist-friendly version of the AIMS site. The link is right here, enjoy!Miguel TolosaRefractometer Calibration: the Myth and Risks of using RO/DI Watertag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a010535f11c3d970c0147e1b60c47970b2011-01-19T03:45:45-06:002012-09-10T01:33:29-05:00I recently got a new refractometer over the holidays, and immediately after my first water change my tank began having problems. Well, to be fair my wallet was what immediately had a problem being that those have gotten ridiculously expensive in my area, especially when combined with California's seemingly 3,000% sales tax these days. I couldn't figure out what was wrong, I mean, my water was at 1.025-1.026, my refractometer came with instructions that said to zero it out with distilled water, and they wouldn't give out bad information would they? Turns out yes, yes they would. After doing a lot of research I came across endless debates online regarding zeroing a refractometer with ro/di water vs using calibration fluid. Both sides had good points: the scientific side said the only accurate measurement was with calibration fluid, and the general hobbyist side echoing what refractometer instructions say. Unfortunately it was the general hobbyist side that usually overwhelmed the debates, which made it seem like ro/di was the way to go. All I knew was that the refractometer was the only thing that had changed, and my tank was a disaster, so I decided it was time to test both sides...Miguel TolosaMarine Habitat Magazine Launches!tag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a010535f11c3d970c0147e055d485970b2010-12-03T00:13:00-06:002012-09-10T01:38:07-05:00Marine Habitat Magazine launched in the UK on the first of this month, as did their website and blog! The mag is dedicated to saltwater aquariums and marine ecology, and I'm looking forward to a more advanced, quality publication (even if it'll be a bit harder for us here in the states to get our hands on a copy). Our own Mike Maddox is a launch columnist of this new publication, as well! Straight from the Marine Habitat Magazine website: "Marine Habitat is a new and very exciting printed magazine dedicated to the marine fish keeping hobby and the on-going support of marine conservation. Marine Habitat will be published bi-monthly and will be packed with facinating articles writen by a selection of the best marine experts from around the world. Marine Habitat has 2 faces, the printed magazine publication and its sister online website, together aiming to provide an all round resource for readers. The magazine will be packed with articles and amazing images but sometimes there just isn’t enough room and so the website will offer additional content, in the form of extra article text, additoinal photos and more over video footage to support printed articles. The website will...Merritt AdkinsSpecies Spotlight: Cryptic Six Line Wrassetag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a010535f11c3d970c0133f64c0c47970b2010-11-27T18:13:05-06:002012-09-10T01:38:33-05:00The Cryptic Six Line, also known as Pink Streaked Wrasse, is often bypassed and unheard of by many. Both names do not suit Pseudocheilinops ataenia. The wrasse actually has eight lines and the streaks are a bright orange-yellow. The eyes of these fishes are bright. They glow neon orange. They are commonly mislabeled as Pteragogus cryptus, but do not resemble the Pteragogus genus. The confusion continues today as some dealers continue to lable them Pteragogus cryptus. I have only seen these wrasses four times at my local fish stores in the 10 years I have been in the hobby. Though they are not extremely rare, they are uncommon. The second time around, I quickly jumped to purchase one of the wrasses to replace a Six Line Wrasse I became quickly annoyed with. The more common Six Line Wrasse is known to be aggressive and bullies its tank mates. The Cryptic Six Line is not the slightest bit aggressive. It is very shy but will eventually venture out normally as it gains courage. Cryptic Six Lines easily accept most foods. Within the first hour, my very own was eating pellets. They eat almost the same things as the common Six Line....Ryan BurdiosT5 Spectrums: Choosing the Right Bulb for Youtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a010535f11c3d970c013488d6b558970c2010-11-10T00:01:00-06:002012-09-10T18:56:28-05:00Since I use T5 lighting over my farm system, I'm always comparing different bulb colorations to use in different combinations. The spectral graphs of some of these bulbs are a pain to find sometimes, so here they all are in one place! For metal halides, a lot of people tend to model their T5's after Phoenix 14k's and Radium 20k's. You can find the spectral graphs for both from Sanjay Joshi's unblievably helpful study. The Grim Reefer from ReefCentral has done some PAR analysis on several bulbs, that you can find here: http://tfivetesting.googlepages.com/par. I am only looking at Giesemann and ATI bulbs at this time as well as KZ's Fiji Purple, if you would like to see other bulbs here please feel free to send us the spectrographs. White Daylight Bulbs Top - Giesemann Aquablue Plus - An OK bulb, but is A LOT yellower than they claim, to me this thing looks more like 8-9k. This bulb is good for SPS and LPS, but has a tendency to brown out some SPS and stress LPS. I used these for a while before switching over to the ATI's and have never looked back. Put one of these side by side...Miguel TolosaHoliday Vacation? 6 Ways to Prepare Your Aquariumtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a010535f11c3d970c013488ba0981970c2010-11-06T04:07:04-06:002010-11-06T04:07:53-06:00Getting away for awhile is one of the best things anyone can do for themselves. After enjoying our vacations, we hobbyists want to come home without any troubles from our tanks. They bother us enough when we're around! You'll find many horror stories of people finding their tanks crashed after a short trip. Take that trip. Simple steps can help save your investment. Make sure your auto top off device is working and not clogged. It is essential to keep your salinity stable while you're away. Make more than enough RO/DI for top off just in case you don't return on time. If you're looking for an ATO unit, I recommend the Tunze Osmolator. Inspect any heaters for signs of failure. Heaters are known to get stuck in the on position overheating your tank. You don't want clownfish stew. Heaters can also build up calcium carbonate on the surface making it inefficient and may even cause the heating element inside to overheat and explode. Broken heaters leech heavy metals into aquariums (upgrade to a titanium model if possible!). If you dose anything, fill your containers. SPS keepers know that keeping your Calcium and Alkalinity levels stable are a must. You...Ryan BurdiosPhytoplankton - What Your LFS Isn't Telling Youtag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a010535f11c3d970c0134885fbda4970c2010-10-26T00:01:00-05:002012-09-10T19:00:35-05:00Ah, the green stuff. The miracle cure, the lifeblood of a reeftank, the savior of fan worms and clams of all ages... Or maybe not so much. Could it be that phytoplankton actually does more harm than good in a reef aquarium? In the ocean there is a lot of phytoplankton and it's crucial to the ecosystem. In the ocean. In your tank, however, phytoplankton dies and fouls up your water quality. I mean let's think about it, you're pouring live green stuff into your tank where chances are that only a miniscule part of it will be used for food. In fact, it is arguable if any realistic part of it will be used for food by your tank's inhabitants. To lay to rest some of the myths: fanworms do not need phytoplankton, neither do pods, tubeworms, your rock, or clams. Or anything. It's quite possible, and by quite possible I might mean a 100% certainty (refer to disclaimer below), that nothing at all in your tank will notice the difference as to whether phytoplankton is present or not. In my system I haven't been using phytoplankton from day one, and I have walls of fanworms and tubeworms, tons...Miguel TolosaPacific Coast Imports Gen-X Pumps: Settle For Lesstag:typepad.com,2003:post-6a010535f11c3d970c0133f50c663b970b2010-10-18T22:59:10-05:002010-10-18T23:00:13-05:00This is a bit of a longer article so please bear with me. First and foremost, if you have submersible Gen-x pumps IMMEDIATELY inspect the back of the pump for rust. There is a plastic cover on the back that is easily removable. This article was written about two years ago, but I went to a local dry goods wholesaler last month and the pumps still had exposed metal so if you've got one of these in your tank chances are you've got a rustbucket. The sad fact is that this company has been knowingly manufacturing this substandard and quite likely dangerous product for more than 5 years! A few years ago I'd been having some long-term issues with my farm. Even with impeccable paramters and vodka dosing something was wrong. Algae was growing out of control, there were mysterious LPS deaths, all of my Acroporas browned out completely. Then, one day while the floor was wet I put my hand into my tank, and zapped myself pretty good. Hmmm, probably should have checked that first. I bought a voltimeter from Home Depot (best $10 I ever spent by the way), and found a stray 5v shooting through that tank....Miguel Tolosa