Monthly Archives: June 2011

Monterey Bay’s Aquarium new section opens to the public on July 2nd and from the details emerging it will really be a striking new addition to this well known aquarist destination.  Key to the new exhibits will be a focus on lighting techniques and up close viewing stations allowing you to get nice and personal with puffins and sea turtles.  LINK  … More:

I know there have been numerous threads on building rock, but I think I make it differently. I make it hollow so besides allowing me to make it any shape, it also helps grow anerobic bacteria that will help with nitrates.
My entire reef structure is supported on this type of “rock” and I can build rocks very long and thin, something that is not easy to build with other methods. It is also very cheap, practically free and only takes about 15 minutes over 3 or 4 days.… More:

Final reminder that Reef Nutrition’s contest to name their new product line ends at midnight tonight.  As an added bonus, if one of our members has the winning entry we’ll send you a special Reefer Care Package! ENTER HERE

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I absolutely love boxfish. It doesn’t matter what species, I love them all! I’ve had anything from the most commonly available Yellow Boxfish (Ostracion cubicus) to the more exotic Flame Boxfish (Anoplocapros lenticularis).   Most people have an understanding or have heard that boxfish can be poisonous to other fish when stressed. Knowing this myself, I still find it hard to avoid keeping them with other fish. Of the many species I’ve kept over the years I’ve had three incidents in which boxfish caused the death of other fish. The first incident was in 2008, when mysteriously fish were being found dead in the morning even though they showed no signs of issues. They behaved completely normal the day before. Having tested the water and took many actions to uncover the issue nothing appeared obvious. As a precaution, I added carbon filtration. The deaths stopped for 2-3 days. I thought it had passed when suddenly the deaths started again. At this point, my Large Male Whitley’s Boxfish (Ostracion whitleyi) stopped eating. This alerted me to the fact that it may have been releasing a toxin called ostracitoxin. I removed the fish and did a water change and replaced the carbon. The deaths no longer happened.   Because of the number of boxfish I kept in the past, I believed this was an isolated incidence (okay, maybe the lack of intelligence on my part contributed). I kept others without the fear of poisoning other fish. I went incident free until I moved from Manhattan to NJ and put a Flame Boxfish in a bucket with my prized filefish and a powerhead failed. Within minutes of the powerhead in the bucket failing, all of the fish were dead. Certainly not enough time for oxygen depletion to be the cause. The Flame Boxfish must have gotten stressed and released toxins. As a result of the last circumstance I avoided boxfish for some time. It wasn’t until recently that I started keeping them with other fish again. I had a couple of male Blue Boxfish (Ostracion meleagris). One passed away without causing a problem. This built my confidence with keeping them in a community tank again. 

  So now we get to the situation that prompted this post. I recently acquired a small female Whitley’s Boxfish. I started having unexplained deaths in my 240 gallon tank. Water changes and carbon did nothing to stop the issue.… More:

 A reminder that several “listening sessions” of the National Ocean Council will be held over the next few weeks, this is your opportunity to voice your opinion direct to the council in regards to the national effort to protect our seas, lakes and rivers.  If you can take off work, do your part and make it to one of these meetings and represent the needs of the aquarium industry and the various conservation groups that make our hobby a sustainable activity. LINK… More:

 When you receive a new saltwater animal you don’t want to just dump it
into its new home. You want to give it time to get used to any water
parameters that may be different from the water in the bag and the
water in the tank. The basic idea of acclimation is that you slowly adjust the water in
the shipping bag of the animal until it matches the water chemistry of
your tank giving the new animal time to adapt to the new water
chemistry before release into its new home. Makes complete sense,
however, some ‘old aquarists tales’ have entrenched themselves in the
e literature and subconscious of aquarists and I think that these
ideas are at best a waste of time and at worse detrimental to the
health of the animal. Below, I hope to outline reasonable acclimation
procedures and present reasons why some of the ‘acclimation myths’
should be abandoned. There are many ways to go about acclimating new animals to your
aquarium. Here is my rundown on the basics for a new animal that looks
healthy in a bag of relatively clear water.
Float the shipping bag in the new aquarium or sump to get the water in
the bag to match the temperature of the tank (if the new animal is a
fish or coral please use a quarantine system to avoid introducing
parasites to the show tank, but for cephs and other inverts this seems
not to be an issue). . This should take no more than 10 or 15 minutes.
Remove the bag from the tank and either decant the animal into a
bucket (making sure to put something under one side of the bucket to
tilt the bucket so the water is deep enough to keep the animal
comfortable) or open the bag and clip it to the side of the inside of
the bucket. If decanting you will be doing the acclimation in the
bucket, if clipping you will be doing the acclimation in the bag.
Either way, the goal is to make sure none of the bag water makes it
into your tank because it could be ‘infected’ with parasites, but more
probably its nasty from having an animal sit in it for 24+ hours.
Begin adding tank water to the bag or bucket. This can be accomplished
with a cup, or you can siphon water from the tank with an airline hose
equipped with a valve or tied in a couple of knots to control the
speed at which water is added.… More: