That Fish Blog – Aquarium Advice and Information

Just wanted to announce That Fish Place’s first Frag Swap and event this January 31st at the That Fish Place/That Pet Place Retail Store

At this point, we’ve never tried such a hobbyist-centered event, and though many of us have been to swaps, we’ve never attempted one of our own.

The folks from NCPARS though (North Central Pennsylvania Reef Aquarium Society), crank them out all the time, so they’re helping us.

What intially was billed as just a frag swap, has since morphed into an extravaganza, as lots of vendors and top aquarium hobbyists have jumped on board to display products and give away stuff.

Entry fee is $10 for non-NCPARS members, and $5 for members. Entry fee also snags you a 20% off coupon for the store, as well as up to 25% off certain vendor products, including Marineland, Current-USA, Red Sea, Tetra, Instant Ocean, Aquatic Life, Brightwell Aquatics and others.

Experts like Anthony Calfo and Steven Pro will be on hand to give seminars and demonstrate products.

If you’re in the Lancaster, PA area, be sure to stop in.

If you need directions, check out here.

Check our further details here.

If you have any other questions, be sure to post them and we’ll get back to you.

It’ll also give you a chance to see our soon-to-be-expanded reef area in the fish room (Blog coming soon…)

Hope to see you there.

Thanks for being a loyal That Fish Blog reader in 2008! Have an excellent holiday and please accept this exclusive gift from ThatPetPlace.com 10% off your order over $80. Use promo code “HOLIBLOG” at checkout. Offer valid until January 2nd, 2009. 

Enjoy the holidays. New articles will be back December 26th.

Until than,

Happy Holidays from Dave, Frank and the rest of the ThatPetPlace.com Marine Biologists and Staff

The Fish Room has been buzzing lately with all the talk of the new wizziwigs in stock. We’ve set up a new system for the wizziwigs, every shipment is being scrutinized for wizziwigs and wizziwigs have been a big part of the lunchtime conversations. The past few weeks have been all about the wizziwigs.
By now, you may be asking yourself, “what on earth is a wizziwig?!” You aren’t alone. We’ve gotten some pretty confused looks from anyone who’s overheard these conversations.

“Wizziwig” has become the nickname we’ve affectionately given to our newly revamped “Your Choice – What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG)” category. These are special items, corals, frags, fish, and inverts that are set apart from others by showing exceptional color, unusual shape. They may even simply be uncommon offerings in the trade that deserve some special recognition. For example, we’re currently featuring a blue staghorn acro with intense baby blue tips that will really put on a show in a reef display, and a maze brain with neon green valleys and compact maze of sinuous ridges that really draws the eye.

Every one of these items gets its own unique item number and picture on the website so while you are browsing the WYSIWYG section, the picture you see is the exact item you receive. While we do our best across the website to provide pictures that are representative of the fish or coral available, the WYSIWYG pictures represent the specimen you are purchasing.

If you are looking for new, exciting, and collectible pieces for your aquarium, bookmark this page and keep checking in! These pieces are advertised only on our website and are all What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get, so act fast!

Over the past few weeks, we’ve gotten a lot of new and exciting livestock in our fish room for both freshwater and saltwater aquariums. These are some of our favorites, but hurry in because they aren’t likely to be here for long!

Lots of colorful adult peacock cichlids:
In addition to our smaller, juvenile African cichlids, we’ve gotten in a lot of colorful adult male peacocks over the past couple of weeks. These cichlids range from three to six inches in size and have the bright, mature color prized by collectors. Some of the species we have right now are:
Aulonocara rubescens, both the “Ruby Red Peacock” and the “Albino Ruby Red Peacock”
Aulonocara hyassae “Red Shoulder Blue Peacock”
Aulonocara steveni “Albino Taiwan Reef”
Aulonocara maulana “Bicolor Peacock”
Aulonocara jacobfreibergi, both the “Lemon Jake” and Lwanda” variants
Copidachromis mloto “Ivory Head Mloto”
Sciaenochromis ahli “Electric Blue Ahli”

Friendly fish for small marine aquariums

Two fairly uncommon, peaceful blenny species are back in stock – the Segmented Blenny (Salarias segmentatus) and the Lined Blenny (Ecsenius lineatus). Both are adorable small species that are perfect for smaller aquariums that might be too small for another algae-eating blenny like the Lawnmower or Starry Blennies.
The even smaller Panda Goby (Paragobius lacunicolus) is ideal for tiny nano-reef aquariums. These tiny gobies have a maximum size of only one inch and have white bodies with black fins and an orange head. They aren’t available often so when they’re gone, they might not be back for several months.
Another small goby, the Tangoroa Shrimpgoby (Ctenogoboips tangaroai), is a good partner for small pistol shrimp or on their own in community aquariums. They have generally white bodies with a long dorsal ray and can be found building a burrow or scooting along the bottom of the aquarium.

Rare and unusual saltwater fish:
Hybrid Lemonpeel Pygmy Angel (Centropyge flavissimus var.) – a first for TFP! We only have one of these pygmy angels in stock, but it is a new favorite worth mentioning. While most of its coloration is typically of the Lemonpeel Pygmy Angel, this particular fish has a black tail and black trim around the back of its body, making us think it hybridized with an Eiblii or Half Black Pygmy Angel at some point. Very unique!
Mystery Wrasse (Pseudocheilinus ocellatus) – This rare little wrasse has been here for a few weeks now and is making himself at home! The Mystery Wrasse has a gorgeous blue and green coloration and is safe for most reef tanks. The one we have is super active and definitely has put aside the secretive “mystery” part of his common name!
Helfrichi Firefish (Nemateleostris helfrichi) – This little dartfish is on on the wish list of most of our Fish Room staff. It has a beautiful coloration, a peaceful nature and small adult size, and isn’t a picky eater. These fish never stay in our Fish Room long when we are able to get them and we don’t expect to be able to keep the one we have left for very long.

Acro, Acro Acro!
It’s been a good week for SPS lovers! A few new coral shipments have left us with some gorgeous Acropora’s – ultra colorful, unique formations, dense colonies, even a large Table Top Acropora.

Keep in mind, patrons of our Lancaster, PA retail store have first dibs on the livestock listed here. If you are interested in a species, I would recommend giving the livestock department a call ASAP at 1-877-367-4377. Even if we’re no longer in stock, most times we can special order what you’re looking for.

Thanks,

Eileen

First of all, Red Sea makes a kit for almost anything a hobbyist could desire to test for. They have test for standards such as ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate, to reef kits such as pH, alkalinity, calcium, magnesium, and phosphate, to ones for more obscure parameters like silica, dissolved oxygen, and residual ozone. Red Sea also makes a full range of test kits for freshwater, as well, including important tests for freshwater planted aquariums like carbon dioxide, iron, and both general hardness and carbonate hardness. To do them all justice would take pages and pages, but I want to point out a few test kits and their particulars that might not be as well known or recognized yet.

I have written and given presentations on marine fish diseases extensively. Inevitably the use of copper comes up. One drawback to using copper is certain test kits only accurately report the values of certain formulations of copper, so one must take special care to properly match the test kit with the medication being used. Red Sea eliminates that confusion by packaging both the copper test kit and the medication in one box for ready-made use. This falls in line with Red Sea’s motto of “making it easy”. By the way, the copper medication (Paracure) is also available individually for those that require additional copper for dosing larger tanks or for repeated usage.

Most titration style test kits, such as those for calcium, usually tell the hobbyist to watch for a color change from pink to blue. But, Red Sea goes a step further by including a color chart with their titration test kits which demonstrates both the starting and ending colors so the user does not have to guess which shade of blue is the proper end point of the titration.

With the color matching style of test kits, those in which the hobbyist must match the color of the reagent in the vial to a color bar, Red Sea has gone to great lengths to make their tests have very distinct color changes. Some other brands of test kits I have used have color bars that change from yellow, to darker yellow, to still darker yellow, to yellowish-green, to green with a hint of yellow. Very much ever changing shades of grey which make accessing parameter values somewhat difficult. Red Sea’s tests have very dramatic color changes which provide easy to interpret results.