That Fish Blog – Aquarium Advice and Information

Some days just don’t go like you expect them to…spilled blackworms on the fishroom floor, overflowing systems…all the little things that can make a good day go bad. I had one of those days a few weeks ago all thanks to my male dovii.

My guy is a bit of an idiot. He likes to hurl himself out of the water and smash into the water droplets that form on the glass canopy of his aquarium. At first, it was funny and cute (at least to me), but when he does it every hour, it starts to get old. He doesn’t just tap the glass, he hits the glass with such force that with the door closed I can still hear him make contact. One day, soon after arriving to work, I happened to get a call from the leasing office in my apartment complex. Apparently, water was leaking into the bedroom of a tenant below my apartment from the room where the tank is set-up housing my Dovii pair. Read More »

Your reef tank may be immaculate except for a rusty-brown dusting of diatomic algae on your substrate. Tired of siphoning just to have the diatoms come right back? Relatively inexpensive and highly efficient, a sand-sifting sea cucumber may be the solution you’re seeking.

There are many species of sea cucumber available in the aquarium hobby. They get their name from their elongated, cylindrical body shape. Some are colorful, some are not, some are smooth, while others appear knobby or textured. Some are filter feeders that cling to the glass, waiting for food to come to them in the water flow. There are three specific types of sand sifters that are commonly offered which do a really great job cleaning up your sand. All of them belong to the genus Holothuria and they are very efficient at what they do.  Read More »

After Jose’s blog in May about some of our coworker’s mishaps and misadventures, I’ve been badgered and teased (again) about what we refer to around here as “the eel incident”, one of my own prize foibles that Jose had forgotten when he wrote his blog. Since he wants to tell all of you anyway, here it is in my words….

Along the back wall of our fish room, we have two large coral tanks side-by-side. Now they are coral tanks, but at the time of this incident, we used them for particularly large or aggressive saltwater fish. In the smaller tank on the right, we had a green moray eel affectionally known as Captain who was about three feet long. The other tank had another eel that was about four feet long and was from the old incarnation of our 700 gallon display tank where it used to live with a huge Bumblebee Grouper named Buzz. That eel wasn’t named, so I’ll refer to it as eel B. Read More »

A few hundred years ago, people in Western cultures like 16th century England often drank very little water. Because of untreated sewage draining into water sources and contamination in rivers, other beverages like beer and wine were actually preferred as safer choices. As technology and our understanding of health and technology advanced, we came up with more ways to purify our water sources. At the start of the start of the 19th century, a scientist named William Cumberland Cruikshank found that chlorine would purify water by killing microbes and bacteria like the notorious E. coli. Chlorine is still used in most developed countries to make drinking water safe and chloramine, a combination of chlorine and ammonia is starting to overtake even this old standard. Read More »

Rules, rules, rules, why do we have to follow rules?  Well, for the most part, because they are for your own good.  Kind of like going to the dentist.   However, some rules should not last forever.  Sometimes they‘re no longer relevant, sometimes a better idea comes along, and sometimes they turn out to be bad ideas to begin with.  This is true in just about any facet of life, and aquarium keeping is no different.  I could rant about several rules that come to mind, but my rule of the moment is the old “Watts per gallon” rule when it comes to choosing lights for your aquarium, particularly live plant and reef aquariums, which require higher intensity lighting. Read More »