That Fish Blog – Aquarium Advice and Information

Overfeeding your aquarium is one of the most common mistakes made by aquarium hobbyists, and it isn’t one only made by beginners. It’s easy to go overboard when our fish “always seem hungry” and even appearing excited when they see you coming towards the tank with food in hand.  Healthy fish pretty much always look hungry. It also doesn’t help that we’re directed by packaging instructions to feed amounts that may be inappropriate for the type and number of fish we are keeping. We want the best for our fish and we want to be successful in keeping them, but it’s easy to cross the line from feeding enough to feeding way too much.

Problems Caused by Overfeeding

Leaving uneaten food in the aquarium is never a good idea. Watching food fall to the bottom of the tank, with the thought that your fish to eat later, can lead to big problems. Many fish are kind of programmed to eat food at certain places in the tank. Surface feeders, column feeders and bottom feeders tend to feed within their comfort zones, so you won’t typically see surface feeders travelling to the gravel for a snack, and fish that feed in the water column usually ignore food bits after they settle. No matter what kind of fish food you distribute, pellets, flakes, frozen foods or even live feeders, anything not eaten is left to decay. This unprocessed food, in addition to the waste produced by the food that is actually digested, can quickly create issues with your tank’s water chemistry and/or cause a bloom in the population of naturally occuring scavengers.

Uneaten foods quickly start to decay, adding to ammonia and nitrate levels of the aquarium, and it can very easily result in more bacteria than the nitrogen cycle can handle causing cloudy water. Overfeeding is not only dangerous to the health of your fish, but it causes unnecessary demands on your filtration, often resulting in poor water quality. Fortunately, the problems that arise from overfeeding are quickly and easily reversed or eliminated once you get your feeding habits under control.

Aquarists are also often shocked or full of disbelief when we tell them that the hordes of unsightly little “bugs” or worms creeping up the glass and through the rock and substrate are a probably a result of over-feeding their aquarium. What you see are probably either scavenger nematodes or planaria. Chances are there were a few of these critters in your tank from the start. They can be introduced via fish, plants, wood or other things you add to the aquarium as their microscopic eggs can travel on any of these things. They are generally harmess, but when you overfeed the opportunity arises for their populations to boom with the abundance of decaying matter in the substrate. Reducing the frequency and amount of food will help to bring the population back down to size, but you may also choose to treat the tank with anti-parasitic medications to speed the process along. Read More »

You may have heard the term refugium if you’re in the aquarium hobby, but do you know what it is and the benefits it can bring to your set-up? A refugium is  essentially a safe area for inverts and macro algae, but it also acts as a biological filter to help control nitrates and phosphates. Refugiums may be part of your sump, a separate hang on back unit, or even another tank plumbed into the display tank system. Generally, it consists of a deep sand bed (DSB), live rock, and macro algae with very slow water flow through the area and a relatively strong light source to support the live plants and inverts you choose to put inside. The light should be in the spectrum between 5,500-8,000k to allow for proper photosynthesis.

Refugium Styles

Let’s take a look at the different styles of refugiums first. One of the most common types is the in-sump refugium. This is a chamber in the sump that has a slow flow (roughly 30% of the water flow from your overflow box) moving through it. This flow rate allows the macro algae and beneficial bacteria to remove waste and nutrients. The best in sump refugium designs are set-up so you can control the flow through the unit, like Trigger Systems Ruby Elite. This style of refugium tends to be one of the most efficient. Read More »

I can remember foraging in ponds and puddles as a kid, especially once it got warm enough in Spring  that the ground was thawed and everything would reappear after a long winter dormancy. How could I not be fascinated by the frogs hidden at the water’s edge and the newts and salamanders I’d find under moist rocks and rotting wood? But what would really grab my curiosity and attention would be the various jelly-like egg masses that would appear along the water’s edge, speckled with black dots and begging to be observed. It was on more than one occasion that my siblings and I gathered a cluster of eggs in a jar to take home for observation. If you have a small spare aquarium and a few other simple pieces of equipment, you can raise amphibian eggs, too, and watch them change from a speck in an egg to a fully developed frog or salamander. Watching tadpoles in aquariums is a great educational project for kids and adults!

If you have a spare 5 or 10 gallon tank lying around or a small garden or patio pond, prepare to be amazed! Start by filling the tank or pond with clean water. Ideally you’ll let the water cure for at least a day or two, particularly if you have chlorinated municipal water, but you can also use a dechlorinator to make the water safe. Your tadpoles absolutely depend on having fresh, clean water for proper health and development. You’ll be bringing a small amount of source water with you from wherever it is you collect your eggs, but chances are you won’t be carrying several 5 gallon buckets of it back with you. Take care to have an environment prepared for your egg cluster before you bring it home.  Don’t put eggs into an occupied aquarium, keep them safe in a separate vessel.  Read More »

That Fish Place – That Pet Place is proud to introduce a new premium salt brand to our line of quality salt water products:  H2Ocean Pro+ Natural Reef Salt from D-D the Aquarium Solution.

Similar to brands like Red Sea Coral Pro, D-D H2Ocean Pro+  is harvested from sea water naturally evaporated with solar energy. What could be more natural than real salt water? After harvesting the salt, the natural product is tweaked a little to provide better results for use in our aquariums. For instance, the calcium and magnesium levels are slightly elevated above natural salt water levels. Why? Well, these two elements are quickly used up in reef aquariums, and because our reef tanks aren’t naturally replenished like the oceans, our inverts rely on us to keep these key elements in check. By slightly elevating the levels of calcium and magnesium, D-D H2Ocean Pro+ allows you to dose less, without getting too far out of sync chemically with their natural salt product. Furthermore, the chloride content is slightly reduced from what we see in natural saltwater. By slightly reducing the chloride content in the bucket, D-D H2Ocean has accounted for the extra chloride that usually comes along with dosing in reef tanks where most supplements utilize calcium and magnesium chloride. This helps make sure the chloride content doesn’t elevate too far beyond natural salt water levels in your reef tank. Just one other fine detail addressed by the chemists at D-D H2Ocean.

When this salt  is mixed to a S.G: of 1.025 @ 25°C = 35.5 ppt, your aquarium water parameters should look like this:

pH  level 8.3, range 8.2-8.4 
dKH level 9.3, range 8.7-9.8 
Calcium (Ca2+) level 440, range 430-460 mg/l
Magnesium (Mg2+) level 1340, range 1300-1380 mg/l
Chloride (Cl-) level 19550, range 19960-20130 mg/l
Potassium (K+) level 410, range 380-420 mg/l

So what makes this salt so good? Well, one thing we know about the ocean is that its parameters are pretty consistent. You’re not going to have one day on the reef where the calcium is 500ppm, and a week later be 400ppm. Its important that in our reef tanks we offer the same type of consistency. And, being that corals are from the ocean, doesn’t it make sense to stay as close to natural saltwater conditions as possible? D-D H2Ocean Pro+ mixes quickly, helping hobbyists get consistent results without having to wait 2-3 days for the salt to thoroughly dissolve. Those of us with sensitive stoney corals can attest to how finicky our corals can be over slight changes in parameters. Even hobbyists running Ultra Low Nutrient Systems have benefited from using D-D H2Ocean Pro+ because of its close-to-natural-saltwater levels. Regardless of what corals you keep, its vital to our reef systems to only deal with manufacturers with great quality control. 

Beyond the parameters, this salt is usually less clumpy, less dusty (not much worse than a salt cloud going right up your nose), and mixes up rather clear.  All and all, its this bloggers opinion that D-D H2Ocean Pro+ is one of the best salts offered at That Fish Place – That Pet Place. We currently offer the salt in the retail store, and it will soon be making it’s online debut.

Many years ago I established a school of 75 Boezeman’s Australian Rainbowfish (Melanotaenia boesemani) at the Bronx Zoo.  The exhibit, which they shared with mangrove snakes, land crabs and crayfishes, made for a stunning display.  And although the building also housed proboscis monkeys, marsh crocodiles, hornbills and other impressive beasts, the brilliantly-colored Rainbowfishes drew a great deal of attention from visitors.

But many keepers become disappointed when, after a time, their fishes’ fading colors do a disservice to the “rainbow” part of their name.  Based on experience with related species, I’ve always provided my Rainbowfishes with highly varied diets, in which insects were heavily featured.  Those under my care have usually retained their bright colors, and breeding has been consistent.  A recent study that examined the natural diet of wild Rainbowfishes seems to bear this out, and has important implications for the care of other species as well.

Uploaded to Wikipedia Commons by Roan Art

Terrestrial Insects: an Overlooked Food Item

My lifelong observations of captive and free-living fishes have led me to conclude that land-dwelling insects play an important role in the diets of many freshwater fishes.  As anyone with a pool or outdoor pond can imagine, untold numbers find their way into fresh and marine waters each day.  In 2009, the research of National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration biologists revealed that terrestrial insects comprise up to 100% of the diets of some US fish species. You can read more about this topic in the articles linked below. Read More »