Podcast: Play in new window | Download
In this episode of Aquarium Tip Tank we talk about the three main methods of filtration and how they are performed. In the next episode of this filtration series we will go over the devices that are used in an aquarium set up to perform the different types of filtration and discuss the filtration system that I am planning on using for my 30 gallon marine tank.
Do you use all 3 methods of filtration? Leave comments below!
TJ
Today’s Aquarium Tip Tank tip of the day will keep you safe. First, you should know what you have in your aquarium, and the threats that your livestock may pose to your safety. However, when you reach into your tank to re-position that power head, pump, or magnet cleaner that has been there for a day or two you have to realize that there may be an errant tube worm, sharp shell, or stinging tentacle that has found its way to where you want to grab. It’s easy to protect yourself. Just make sure that you wear the proper exposure protection when you must place body parts in to your fish tank.
This may mean that you put a pair of gloves on. If your tank is huge it may mean that you jump into a wetsuit. You may even want to throw a pair of protective glasses on to protect your eyes. I know, it sounds like I’m going a little overboard here, and I’ll admit that I don’t usually put gloves on. I also know that I’m not allergic to marine animals, or shellfish, and that I don’t keep any poisonous livestock. I also try to only take hold of things that I can see and inspect first. However, if I’m going to grab something buried, or hidden, I always make sure to throw on a pair of gloves.
Wear the proper exposure protection and save yourself from stings, cuts, scrapes, and possible poisoning. It has happened to the most experienced hobbyists I know, and afterwards they always claimed that they wouldn’t have gotten stung had they took the 2 seconds to throw on some gloves.
Been cut, scraped, stung, or poisoned messing around in your aquarium? Tell us the story! Leave comments below.
TJ
Today’s Aquarium Tip Tank tip of the day is one of the steps to help acclimate new fish to your aquarium. This acclimation step is the one that will really help get the fish acclimated to the temperature of the water in your fish tank. Its really simple. Just keep your fish in the bag that it came in and float that bag at the top of your aquarium for about 30 minutes with the lights off.
If you have a refugium, wet/dry filter, or sump below your fish tank or somewhere out of sight, you can also float your fish bag there without turning the lights to your main tank off. Of course, this location has to be big enough and have enough of your aquarium water running through it to float your fish bag. Otherwise, float the bag on top of your main aquarium tank and make sure you turn the light off.
This will allow the heat of the water in your tank – or temperature of your water considering the fact that I guess there is a possibility of your aquarium water being cooler – to slowly transfer to the water in your fish bag. The temperatures will slowly equalize and your fish won’t be stressed by quickly being dunked into water with a different temperature.
The water in the fish bag shouldn’t be too far off from the water temperature of your aquarium. After all, you should be purchasing livestock that are well suited for the conditions of your tank, and the store that you bought your fish from should be keeping the fish in similar temperature water. However, you did have to transport your fish home, and that just leaves time for the water in the fish bag to change temperature. How that water temperature changes all depends on the ambient air conditions that surround the bag on the way home.
Adding new fish to your tank? Leave your comments below!
TJ
Here at Aquarium Tip Tank we talk a lot about saltwater aquariums because that is what most of us keep, I have a small one that I am keeping, and I am in the process of setting up another 30 gallon saltwater aquarium. However, many of the aquarium tips, tricks, and advice that we give can be used for both freshwater and saltwater tanks. Therefore, we figured that we would list some benefits to keeping a freshwater fish tank, explain those benefits, and compare to a saltwater set-up. Here we go.
When I look at the list above, I realize that almost all of the freshwater aquarium benefits can be grouped under the last two. Freshwater aquariums are generally less expensive and easier to care for. All aquariums require a tank, substrate, filters, lights, test kits, food, nets, scrapers, and possibly a quarantine tank. A saltwater tank requires a few more pieces of equipment such as a hydrometer, power heads, a protein skimmer, extra test kits for calcium and alkalinity, and possibly some live rock and sand instead of the cheaper gravel that is used in a freshwater tank.
Obviously, all of this extra equipment costs money, and has to be maintained in properly working order. This is also only for a fish only with live rock (FOWLR) set up. If you want to keep a reef tank with corals and other invertebrates you will need a lighting system that will deliver more light to those light hungry invertebrates. You will probably also want more live rock, a refugium, and a reverse osmosis (RO) filter unit – we recommend RO filtering all of your water for freshwater or saltwater tanks, but you will definitely need one for a reef tank.
Now lets talk a little bit about ease of care. I don’t want to scare you out of keeping a saltwater aquarium so I will first say this…I honestly don’t think that the maintenance of a saltwater tank is that much more difficult. There are a few extra maintenance tasks to take care of for a saltwater tank, but in my opinion, they don’t take a long amount of time, and they aren’t that difficult.
First, water changes for a freshwater tank are a little bit easier. This is mainly due to the fact that you don’t have to make your saltwater. You can keep a beautiful freshwater tank by using dechlorinated and filtered tap water. With saltwater aquariums you have to dechlorinate and RO filter your tap water into storage buckets to mix the salt in. This saltwater making process is usually done a few days before a water change.
Second, the livestock of a freshwater aquarium is generally a little bit easier to care for. The vast majority of freshwater aquarium fish are tank bred and tank raised. The Aquariums are their homes and where they are used to living. They are used to being fed and eating aquarium foods. They were not transported from a reef halfway around the world. Therefore, freshwater fish are much less stressed about their aquarium environment and end up being hardier fish that are a little bit easier to care for and keep happy.
You also won’t be able to keep any corals with specific demands for lighting and water conditions. Sure, you may want to keep some live plants, but you can still keep some live freshwater plants with NO fluorescent lights and dechlorinated and filtered tap water. Some freshwater plants may require more light intensity for photosynthesis, but it is not near the light intensity necessary to keep corals and other sessile invertebrates.
Finally, please don’t let any of this dissuade you from keeping a saltwater aquarium. Once you have your tank and your equipment and it is all set up, cycled, and the proper lighting and water conditions have been established, the maintenance tasks for keeping a healthy marine aquarium are not that much more expensive or difficult than keeping a freshwater aquarium. You can always buy your saltwater from a LFS instead of making it yourself. You just have to have containers to keep it and transport it in. If you choose and care for your fish wisely, marine fish also aren’t that much more difficult to care for. Just remember, a lot of marine fish in your LFS are probably taken from the Earth’s reefs. Keep your fish happy and healthy so that you’re not the aquarium hobbyist depleting those reefs of tropical fish.
Comments? Got some cool pictures of your tanks? Leave a comment below!
TJ
Today’s Aquarium Tip Tank tip of the day will give you confidence that your fish tank will stay upright and you won’t come home to a broken tank and water all over your floor. It’s really simple. Just make sure that your tank stand is sturdy enough to hold your aquarium!
First, water weighs a whole lot. With all of the equipment, substrate, rock, etc. just round up and say that every gallon of water is 10 lbs that your stand has to hold up. For a 30 gallon tank, that’s 300 lbs. For a 100 gallon tank, that’s 1,000 lbs. Please make sure that your stand can hold all of that weight.
Second, sturdy doesn’t only mean that it can hold a lot of weight. With all of that precious cargo you also don’t want your tank to tip, wobble, fall over, and break. Make sure that your fish tank and its stand are on level ground with sure footing. You don’t want to end up with your fish tank, all of your water, your pet fish, and all of that great equipment broken on the floor!
Ever had any issues with your tank stand? Leave comments below!
TJ
Today’s Aquarium Tip Tank tip of the day will help you get more of that detritus (fish waste) out of your fish tank when performing a water change. Less fish waste means less work that the helpful bacteria in your tank has to do to break down the nitrates and nitrites, and better chances of keeping the ammonia level in your aquarium at zero. High levels of ammonia are toxic to fish and invertebrates. Therefore, this will help keep your fish happy and healthy! All you have to do is use a gravel cleaner when performing a water change to get down into your substrate and remove the waste that has settled there over the last week or two.
A gravel cleaner is nothing special or expensive. In fact, it is probably already on the end of the siphon tube that you use to perform your water changes. Some manufacturers put special filters, bags, pumps, and other features onto their siphon tubes, but all that stuff isn’t really necessary. Don’t get me wrong, it may make the job a little simpler and easier, and even those aren’t very expensive. However, the larger, hard plastic tube at the end of my siphon, that has an angle at the end to make it a little easier to get into the substrate is all I use.
Once I get my siphon primed and running, I basically just go around the bottom substrate of my entire tank. I stick the “gravel cleaner” into the substrate until the substrate gets pulled up the tube and almost starts going into the smaller tube. Then, I crimp the smaller tube with my other hand to stop the flow of water and allow the substrate to fall back to the bottom. This usually creates separation between the detritus and the substrate itself. See, the detritus is lighter than the substrate and even if I let go of the crimp in the tube that I created with my other hand and let the siphon start pulling water into my dirty water bucket before the substrate is all the way back down on the bottom of my tank, I usually end up getting all of the waste to travel into my dirty water bucket without any of the substrate.
Once I’m done going around and cleaning out all of the substrate in my tank I usually still have more water that needs to be siphoned out of the tank. So, I go around the aquarium gathering water from all spots, and maybe I go back to some areas of substrate that looked a little dirtier. All the while I’m allowing dirty water to travel out of the tank and into my dirty water bucket. If I still have more water to get out of the tank after all of that, then I just make sure that I haven’t pulled the end of the tube out of the water (after all, this would make my siphon stop!), I place the end of it in a safe place and just allow the water to flow into the dirty water bucket until I’m done.
Performing water changes regularly? Got a special gravel cleaner that works really well for you? Leave comments below!
TJ
Yes, I’m sure a lot of you are looking at this Aquarium Tip Tank tip of the day and saying, “DUH! I’m not going to buy a saltwater fish for my freshwater aquarium or anything.” However, there is a little more to it than that. If you follow this tip, do a little research about your fish, and put it all to good use, you’ll be able to relax, knowing that your livestock is happy and healthy.
See its not just about putting freshwater fish into a freshwater tank. You have to ask yourself questions like, what kind of fish do I have in my aquarium already? Will my new fish get along with the fish that I currently have? Is the aquarium big enough for another tang?
Angelfish are beautiful saltwater fish, but they are also aggressive. You can’t just have a tank full of angelfish because they will fight, get stressed, and some of them will die. Clownfish are very hardy saltwater fish, and can be great for beginners. However, clownfish can also be aggressively territorial. Unless you find a mated pair, you should only keep one clownfish. If you want to add a clownfish to your tank you should also make sure that the tank is big enough, and that it has a cave, hole, or anemone in a section of the aquarium that it can call “home”.
These are just a few examples of things to look out for when purchasing fish for your tank. First, when you set up your tank, you should have put some thought into the fish and livestock you wanted to keep. Then, once you have an established tank, its much easier to make sure that any additional fish you’d like to keep will actually suit your aquarium conditions rather than trying to change the conditions in your tank, and possibly stressing the livestock you currently have, just to keep one new fish.
Having fun stocking your aquarium? Leave comments below!
TJ
Every once in a while we here at Aquarium Tip Tank get the chance to take some vacation, get out into nature, and do the things that got us interested and excited about nature and the underwater world. I had aquariums before I started SCUBA diving, but really got interested in keeping an underwater ecosystem in my home when I strapped on a tank and dove for the first time in St. John, USVI. We had a little bit of a long weekend for Memorial Day this past weekend and were able to jump on a buddy’s sailboat out of South Florida for 4 days. Dry Rocks Coral Reef and the Christ of the Abyss in John Pennekamp State Park off the East coast of Key Largo is one of the places that we had the opportunity to SCUBA dive.
It was our second day of sailing and we were on our way to Key Largo Sound in John Pennekamp State Park to grab a mooring ball for the night. On our way we decided that we may as well stop at Dry Rocks coral reef. When we arrived it was late afternoon and there were several boats with snorkelers that had already grabbed the mooring balls closest to the statue. We grabbed the mooring ball on what I believe was the South West side of Dry Rocks coral reef. Of course, this was the one farthest from the buoy marking the Christ of the Abyss statue. No worries though. We had the gear to allow everybody to swim on over and plenty of air for those that were certified and wanted to strap on a tank.
We got all geared up, I grabbed some coordinates to swim to on my compass that I was diving with, we performed all of our checks, jumped in, and started swimming to the Christ of the Abyss statue!
Divers Swimming to Dry Rocks Reef and Christ of the Abyss
This reef is quite spectacular! Honestly, I was delightfully surprised by the health and beauty of this coral reef! I’ve been on a few dive trips with SCUBA dive charters in the Key Largo, FL area before and I seem to remember them saying something like, “Well, its nothing special.” or, “It’s only in 20 feet of water, so its better for snorkelers.” I disagree.
First, the reef is something special. There was an abundance of thriving coral and fish swimming happily through the reef. Some of the brain corals were gigantic! I saw schools of blue tang, grunts, a spotted box-fish, golden trevally, lobster, conch, and many more! What I didn’t see was any lionfish, and that is also a delightful surprise.
Large Brain Coral at Dry Rocks Coral Reef off Key Largo, FL
Second, so what if it is a shallow site? Okay, I’ll agree that when you’re paying for a dive operator to supply you with tanks, take you out to nice coral reefs, and you’re paying to rent SCUBA gear that maybe you want to go someplace deeper than 20 ft. so that you can feel as if it was necessary to pay all of that money. I’ll also admit that we have all of our own tanks and gear so we weren’t paying for any of that anyway. However, I’ll let you SCUBA divers in on a little secret, corals like sunlight, and a lot of the beautiful reefs with lots of colorful corals and fish are going to be found in shallow waters where they get maximum mid-day tropical sun. I was also bringing my underwater camera with me. I knew that I was going to want to be at the bottom of the Christ of the Abyss statue at 20 feet deep taking pictures of people with the statue. I wanted to hand my camera to somebody so that they could take a picture of me. This is a lot easier to do if you don’t have to hold your breath.
Christ of the Abyss Statue in John Pennekamp State Park
In the end, it ended up being a fantastic dive for the people with tanks on their backs and the people without! Then, I was able to use the pictures that I had taken to educate some of the less informed on the boat about what they saw, how the organisms live, and the beauty of the underwater ecosystem!
Christmas Tree Worms on Coral at Dry Rocks Reef John Pennekamp State Park
Have any fun SCUBA or snorkel stories? Leave a comment below!
TJ
Going on a trip? Maybe a nice vacation to the beach to do some snorkeling and some SCUBA diving? Today’s Aquarium Tip Tank tip of the day will help you keep a little calmer about the health of your fish tank while your out of town. You don’t really want the caretaker of your fish to have to do too much or deal with too many emergencies while you’re out of town. Why not make sure its as clean and as waste free as possible for the fish sitter right? All you should do is perform a 20% water change about a week before departure and another 20% water change as close to actual departure time as possible.
Personally, if I’m going out of town for a long weekend and I’m heading out on a Thursday night, then I try to make sure that I have a couple minutes to perform a water change early Thursday afternoon. My job is a little bit weird with times, and this works for me. It probably wouldn’t work for somebody that has a normal 9-5 job who’s leaving straight from work to catch their 7pm flight. In that case, just make sure you get that last water change done on Wednesday evening.
Normally scheduled water changes are about every 2 weeks anyway right? Well, doing it this way when traveling will add another water change, but your fish and your pet sitter will love you for it. You can never underestimate the importance of good water quality. Performing these simple water changes will keep your mind at ease. It will also allow your pet sitter to just stop by, feed the fish, check the water temperature, and make sure all of the equipment is still on and running. Also, this good water quality can help your livestock survive even if all else fails (can you say power outage?) and you’re not home to fix it!
Heading out on vacation soon? Got a good fish sitter and maintenance crew? Leave a comment below!
TJ
Yes, Maris has given birth to the first Beluga whale calf to be born to parents who were both born in captivity. The calf was born in the Georgia Aquarium on Friday May 18, 2012 shortly after 10:30pm. We knew about it a little bit earlier, but at the Georgia Aquarium we like to allow our benefactor, Bernie Marcus, to make the important announcements to the media when the time is appropriate. It has been released, and we can discuss! Below is what I know, and a link to the official press release .
Currently, the calf is actually in critical condition receiving first class care around the clock by the best veterinary staff and aquarium experts. First-time pregnancies are very often unsuccessful with beluga whales no matter if the first-born calf is born in the wild or in a zoological setting.
When the calf was born it took its first breath, but needed the assistance of divers that were immediately on hand and in the water to help. The calf then tried to swim with her mother, Maris, and it was immediately apparent that the calf was just too weak to navigate the waters. The Aquarium staff took over and placed the calf in critical care and performed a physical exam. It was then that they found the flukes had not hardened on the calf and that it weighed only 82 pounds, much less than an average beluga calf.
The mother, Maris, is doing well, and the calf is getting the best 24-hour care that it can possibly receive. You can read the official press release and get updates via Georgia Aquarium’s blog. Until further notice, the beluga exhibit will be temporarily closed to the public to allow for the veterinary and animal care staff at the Georgia Aquarium to completely focus on the comfort of Maris and her new beluga calf.
TJ
Connect with us on the following social networks!
Did I make a bad decision getting a Canister Filter for a Reef Tank?
Coral Basics
Freshwater Aquarium vs Saltwater Aquarium
Aquarium Tip Tank Podcast 016 | Aquarium Care Tips for a Holiday or Vacation, a Fish, and Some Problems
Easy Cleaner Crew Acclimation
How To Perform an Aquarium Water Change
Aquarium Tip Tank Podcast 015 | The First Fish in My Aquarium
Unpacking the AquaC Remora-S Protein Skimmer
TJ: Wes,
Thanks for the comment! Honestly, no, I'm n...
Wes: Are you sure mechanical filter media only needs re...
TJ: Thank you! A little work. A good camera for pictur...
click: Wow. This blog site is sick! How can I make it lo...
