Reef Tank: More Firefish Pictures

When I came home from work tonight the firefish was out front and center, and he's been at the glass begging food and attention ever since. I managed to get some decent pictures of him (her?) and the new coral:

Reef Aquarium: First Fish

Today we took a trip over to Skipton's and looked for a good first fish for the reef tank. As a person with a history of past impulse purchases, I wanted to make sure I limited my selection to species I had read about and knew would be good fits for my tank. I made up an email with common names, photographs and scientific names of the six fish I was interested in and mailed this to my iPhone. This turned out to be really helpful when staring down the tanks full of gorgeous saltwater fish.

We ended up deciding on a Purple Firefish, Nemateleotris decora. Here is a shot from when he was drip acclimating.



Quite the looker, and the colors are even more vibrant under the metal halide lighting. Its been hiding under a rock on the side of our tank for the majority of the time so far. I saw it eat a few marine food flakes that I dropped in experimentally, so hopefully all is well and its just being shy/angry about the new tank. I also picked up some frozen food while at the store, mysis shrimp and a marine blend. Once I see this guy show himself around the tank I will try out a little of that.

I also couldn't resist getting this Zoanthus colony. I've really wanted some polyps for the tank, and they were too nice to pass up. The polyps are most closed up in this photo, I will take a better one tonight showing its placement in the tank.

Blenny Lips Video

Its always fun when your professional life intersects with your hobby. Working for an online video service, the potential for this is quite high due to the number and variety of video publishers we work with. Blenny Lips has always been one of our favorite small video publishers, publishing great scuba shots from Bonaire:

Reef Tank: Copepods

I got a call from Cassie while on my way home that "some of the corals didn't look very good" and that there were "crawly things in the tank". My immediate thought was that some sort of pest, possibly the 'red bugs' associated with Acropora corals had been introduced with the recent coral frags. This turned out to be a case of "new parent" needless worry on both our parts. After getting a few of the new critters under my microscope, and verifying the identification, it turned out to be harmless copepods, a coveted food in the captive reef aquarium for both corals and fish. In other words, a good thing.

Here is a good article on Copepods, and also a few photos from the microscope.





At this point there are hundreds, if not thousands, of these guys in various stages of growth around the tank. I've been reading that a new trend in reef keeping is to avoid adding fish until the tank has been established for a few months, allowing populations of these smaller animals to take hold and establish themselves before larger predators are introduced. So far this seems to be a good approach.

Reef Tank: More Frags

With the new metal halide lighting in place, I wanted to have someone take the compact fluorescent fixture off my hands. A one bedroom apartment is not the sort of place that you tend to keep unused equipment sitting around in. I posted listings on the aquarium forums I use, and on Craigslist. One interesting note came in from a Boston area reefer who offered up some coral frags in trade for the light, in lieu of the price I had been asking for.

Throughout the entire history of this project I have tried to plan and move slowly with each aspect. Impulse purchases and stock acquisitions can be a real problem with keeping aquariums. The prudent move would be to watch the corals I introduced on Friday carefully for two weeks, and then proceed with further stocking. Furthermore, the corals being offered in trade are some of the more difficult of the stony corals to keep. I decided to get them anyway.

Here are some photos, along with trade names and my best guesses at scientific names.

Acropora rosaria:



Acropora sp., "purple slimmer":



Acropora sp., supposedly a tabling formation:



Acropora millepora:



I acclimated these with the same slow drip procedure used for my previous coral acquisitions. So far everything seems at home, with decent polyp extension. I think I'm close to my limit on coral species and space in regards to the room they will need to expand into over the course of the year. Now the long wait while they slowly fill in.

Reef Tank: First Corals

Here are the first corals to hit my tank. All are aquacultured fragments of larger colonies that have been thriving in captive conditions. This makes them more likely to survive in a new aquarium system compared to wild caught specimens, or so I'm told. In the future I will hopefully be able to write up in more detail the particulars of each species, and hopefully figure out how to take some better photos. I'm afraid that last part might involve some expensive camera equipment.

Seriatopora stellata:



Porites cylindrica:



Pocillopora damicornis:



Stylophora pistillata:



Pavona maldivensis:

Reef Tank: Coral En Route

This morning I placed an order at Live Aquaria for a stony coral frag pack. While stony corals can be more difficult to keep because of their increased need for light, calcium, and water current, I find them some of the more interesting species and was what I always envisioned keeping in my tank. The package I ordered is for five frags (small fragments from a larger colony) of aquacultured coral colonies. Aquacultured specimens, as opposed to wild card, are purportedly more tolerant of aquarium conditions and less likely to be severely traumatized by the introduction to a new tank.

My new metal halide fixture arrives tonight as well, so I hope to be able to get that setup and post pictures of the tank. This should represent the last piece of equipment that was part of my original tank plan, although I've already thought of several things I'd like to change and upgrade in light of the decision to keep stony corals primarily.

Parameters from Last Night:
Temp: 80F
SG: 1.025
pH: 8.3
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 20ppm
dKH: 9
Calcium: 400ppm
Phosphate: 0

Reef Tank: Evicted Crab

I found this guy dead on the rock this afternoon. Since everyone else appears healthy, I'm assuming he was the victim of a shell-jacking, and not something more worrisome like water quality. Earlier I had also found a snail turned over on the back of its shell. Nerite snails are unable to right themselves when this occurs. I would have liked to put this guy under the microscope, but he was already starting to stink and I was on my way out the door when I noticed his corpse.



Marine tanks are certainly more violent than planted aquariums. I'm going to keep an eye out for any other activity, and fingers crossed that this isn't related to me screwing something up with the water change. I should probably get a bunch of empty shells to prevent any future outbreaks of violence, should that turn out to be what happened.

Reef Tank: More Testing

Here is a graph I generated showing the process of the nitrogen cycle in my tank to date. Note that the x axis is not to any particular scale as I don't test at regular intervals. Still, it shows all tests going in the right direction, towards 0.



Today I got another set of tests for the reef aquarium. Once corals have been added to the tank, it is important to keep levels of calcium high in the water so that they can create their skeletons. It is also important to keep the carbonate hardness of the water level (also known as alkalinity) high to make this calcium accessible to the corals and buffer against pH swings. The third test measures phosphates, which form from animal waste and precipitate calcium, making it unavailable to be used. Phosphates can also serve as fertilizer for algae growth. To summarize, I am looking for calcium levels between 400 and 500ppm, KH at 140 to 215ppm, and no signs of phosphate.

Todays Parameters:
Temperature: 81F
Specific Gravity: 1.026
pH: 8.0
Ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: 20ppm
Phosphate: 0ppm
Calcium: 480ppm
KH: 179ppm

I must say I'm surprised at how well everything has gone so far. The water levels above, aside from a slightly low pH, could probably sustain coral growth quite well. With ammonia and nitrite undetectable, the tank is ready to be populated. I am going to hold off at least another week before stocking, while I finalize the list of corals and fish I want to keep in my tank. I also need to upgrade my lighting fixture to metal halide before I can order any coral. Another week or two with the snails and hermits should help the tank to slowly prepare itself for these additions.

Field Trip: The New England Aquarium

After the nine thousandth call from the New England Aquarium informing me that my membership was about to / had expired, I figured I might as well march over there and renew it. They have a good sized coral tank, and I was looking for some photos I could use for raw material while working on the design of this blog.

It was interesting to observe the tank now, after five months of research into setting up my own tank. Previously it had been fairly inspirational, but now I was able to identify some short comings, or at least what would be viewed as such by the reef tank elite. Bubble and hair algae was rampant throughtout the tank, and the fish and invertebrate diversity was relatively low for what would be possible in a tank of that size. That said, it is still a beautiful aquarium and only one of the many tanks worth spending some time with at that facility.

Click any of these photos to head over to Flickr where you can get a larger view of them.

Reef Tank: Snails and Hermits

On Saturday morning I did another round of tests and found ammonia to have dropped to zero. Nitrites were still low and nitrates were elevated to 40ppm. I decided to try and add some of the first inhabitants to my aquarium, a group of snails and hermit crabs who could feast on the new growth of diatoms and the stuff that came in on the live rock.

I went to Skipton's Pet Center in Boston, which is the best fish store in metro Boston, as far as I know. They helped me settle on a dozen Nerite snails and ten hermit crabs, a few different varieties of Clibanarius, including red and blue colorations. Both snails and hermits originate in the Caribbean and are quite common, which makes them affordable to purchase compared to other species. The snails are intertidal and therefore spend a lot of time crawling above the waterline to breathe. Everyone appears to have survived their first night, and I've been watching both snails and crabs tear into the diatoms on the rock and glass.

Still trying to figure out the white balance while shooting under actinic light, so please excuse the yellow tone of these photos. The picture of the blue hermit crab is closer to the correct coloration. Also, if you go to a larger view of the snail photo, you can see the barnacles on its shell extending their feeders. Pretty cool!







Saturday Parameters:
Temperature: 81F
Specific Gravity: 1.026
pH: 7.9
Ammonia: 0ppm
Nitrite: 3ppm
Nitrate: 40ppm