SaltwaterSense

Success with a Mixed Hard and Soft Coral Aquarium

I am an addict. I know. I admit it. That’s why I recently started not one, but two new saltwater tanks.

Admittedly, having multiple tropical saltwater aquaria gives me the ability to create different biotopes and avoid some common compatibility issues, but what if you only have one tank and you want to keep species that may potentially be harmful to one another? In most cases, best practices says don’t do it unless you are very experienced, have a massive system or are prepared to offer round-the-clock husbandry during the introduction and acclimation period. Mixing hard and soft corals may well be the best example of an exception to the rule, and that’s what I want to talk about today.

Let’s start out by discussing the compatibility issue itself. Imagine this relatively common scenario: A new saltwater hobbyist starts his or her first tank. He or she decides to go reef and are advised to begin with so-called “starter corals” such as leather or soft corals. After half a year of success with the soft corals, the aquarist starts thinking he or she might be ready to have a go at hard corals, but then someone tells them you can’t mix hard and soft corals in marine aquarium. Is this true?

Yes and no. First the facts:

• Most soft corals are easier to keep than hard corals.

• Many of the most popular soft corals are also some of the most toxic animals commonly kept in the hobby.

• Some of the more prized hard corals (especially those referred to as SPS corals) are particularly susceptible to the chemical warfare of which many soft corals are capable.

In other words, adding a hard coral to a soft coral-dominated tank can mean the demise of the hard coral as the soft corals in the tank—even if not directly proximal to the hard coral—release their toxins and mucous webs in an effort to repel the invader.

Whoa! That really happens? Yep.

While many soft corals are great beginner corals because they tolerate varied conditions, are less expensive and happen to be quite beautiful, they also are fully capable of allelopathy (chemical warfare) that can wipe out hard corals. Some soft corals can even sense a competing hard coral, even if it is several feet away, and, in the closed system of an aquarium, the resulting allelopathy can be fatal to the new addition.

But wait! I started this entry by saying that mixing hard and soft corals may well be the best example of an exception to the rule of avoiding known compatibility issues as a matter of course. It’s true. By being smart, showing restraint and slightly altering his or her husbandry and maintenance protocols, even the beginning aquarist can have success with a mixed tank. Here’s how:

• Research ever species thoroughly before purchase, and go slow when starting out.

• To begin, make sure each soft coral specimen has up to eight inches of buffer around it.

• Run robust filtration so that toxins are quickly diluted and then removed from the system.

• Run a reverse flow substrate reactor with carbon as a normal part of chemical filtration.

• Observe! Observe! Observe! And then adapt if necessary.

By following these simple points, even the beginning tropical saltwater aquarist can have success with a mixed tank containing both hard and soft corals.

Maybe I should start another tank and make it a mixed tank!

Hobbyists Helping the Saltwater Aquarium Hobby and Themselves

Marine aquarium hobbyists have a great track record when it comes to helping themselves, and, through the marine aquarium online forums, they are great at helping other hobbyists and the hobby in general. In particular, marine aquarists are good at finding information about how to set-up and keep a thriving saltwater aquarium because, let’s face it, there really are no instruction manuals in this hobby. Sure, there are some fantastic books that can really help, but when it comes to the definitive answer of how to plumb a UV sterilizer (in-line with your return or on a closed loop off your sump?) or where to place returns and powerheads to create the perfect flow pattern, the hobbyist often has to find this information on his or her own.

The Internet as a Resource for Saltwater Hobbyists

The Internet has proven a phenomenal resource for today’s marine aquarist. While I don’t want to downplay the role of local marine aquarium societies, you can’t always have one in your living room when you are deciding which protein skimmer to get. You can however, have the Internet and access to nearly limitless information at your fingertips at any time of the day or night. While there are a number of good sites that are driven by content written by “professionals” (WetWebMedia comes to mind), there are also countless forums where the content is generated by hobbyists for hobbyists. That is what I want to talk about today.

Marine aquarium forums or bulletin boards, like the one at Saltwtarefish.com, are remarkable resources filled with information based on actual experience. While the people answering the questions on the boards may not be published authors, they are often people with practical, real-world experience and a self-motivated desire to share that experience specific to the questions you ask. As a writer, I have often found “experts” for various articles on which I was working by posting a thread in a specific category of a bulletin board and seeing who responds.

The Nuts and Bolts of Online Forums

Let’s back up for a minute and cover the basics of online forums for the uninitiated. A marine aquarium forum is an online discussion site or bulletin board (so-called because it is a vestige of the old dial-up bulletin board technology) where registered users are given access to a web application specifically built for the purpose of managing user content. That’s a mouthful! Participation in most forums (or “boards” as they are frequently called) requires registering where the user (you) will be asked to agree to the terms of service and verify your e-mail address. The purpose of this is to avoid abuse of the forum by spammers and others who are not truly interested in the topic of the forum.

Once registered, a user may (and commonly does) choose to maintain anonymity with fellow users by using a nickname or username and hiding his or her actual identity (often these usernames indicate something about the user on saltwater aquarium boards such as their favorite fish). While a user is not required to contribute user-generated content, most users will eventually posts in a thread. Posting is simply the process of posting a message in a self-contained box that includes the user’s username, date or post and other genera information about the user (perhaps even a picture or avatar). Generally the user has control over how much or how little personal information accompanies a post.

Posting in Threads and Forums

The user’s post is posted to a thread, which is a group of posts surrounding a topic that was started by one user usually as a question, comment or observation. Some threads only have two or three posts posted within a 24-hour period, while other threads may have thousands of posts over a period of years. The posts in a thread are generally moderated by a moderator or “mod” who insures that the terms of service are adhered to and that the forum remains friendly or “flame free.” The moderator or the site administrator may, in extreme cases, choose to delete a post or even an entire thread. The moderator or administrator may also choose to make a thread “sticky” so that it always appears at the top of the category of threads (this is done when a thread is perceived to be particularly useful to users).

While posts are posted to threads, threads are posted to category headings known as forums, and it is usually from these forums that the user begins their search on a board. For example, if you go to the Saltwaterfish.com board, you will find that the first forum is titled “Welcome to the Hobby”, and under that forum heading, there are three subtopics:

• New Hobbyists

• Tips and Techniques

• Archives & FAQ

If you click on “New Hobbyists”, you will see a series of “sticky” threads at the top. Take a look at the thread titled “101 Tips to Beginning and Maintaining a Saltwater Aquarium.” This is a sticky thread with, at the time of this writing, 130 replies (these are all individual posts) and 21,162 views (the number of times the thread has been viewed). If you click on the thread, you will see that it was started by someone with the username Lion_crazz (we can assume based on the username and avatar that this aquarists likes lionfishes) on 6 January 2008 at 6:58 pm. We can also see that Lion_crazz has posted over 13,000 posts since June 2004. Talk about experience, eh?

While the new hobbyists will read through this thread (and the others in this forum) with interest, the more experienced hobbyist may choose to head to a more specialized forum such as the SPS Corals subforum in the Corals Forum or the Captive Breeding subfolder in the Aquaculture and Breeding Forum. In reality, there is a forum for just about every topic one could imagine, and if there isn’t one, than the user need only start it.

User Beware

Now, while I am a big fan of the boards when it comes to finding, sharing and debating information, there are a few potential downsides of which the new user should be aware. For example, just because someone has posted 100,000 posts does not necessarily make them an expert. Any information you come across on a forum should be viewed as an opinion. Just like in “real life” there are those users who you will come to trust more than others, but just because you read something in a forum doesn’t mean you should take it as Gospel. It is a good idea to follow a thread carefully from beginning to end and then post observations and questions before making any decision informed by what you read.

There are tons of tools that make using the boards easier and more fun, but I’m going to leave it here for now while you go spend some time exploring on your own.

Happy reading and happy reefing!

Mandarinfishes--Not Just for Expert Aquarists Anymore

Mandarinfishes are amazing animals that are not quite as difficult to keep as was once thought. These “beautiful name” fishes are from the family Callionymidae (from the Greek “kallis” or “beautiful” and “onyma” or “name”), although you may know them simply as dragonets. Mandarinfish from the genus Synchiropus (especially green mandarins and spotted mandarins) are pretty common in the marine aquarium hobby, and most hobbyists cannot long resist their beautiful coloration and charming movement. The good news is that, with the proper husbandry, these fishes needn’t be considered “expert only” fishes.

The Difficulty in Keeping Mandarins

Originating in the Indo-West Pacific, these fishes feed primarily on tiny benthic invertebrates, and it is this feeding behavior that has been largely responsible for a higher than average mortality rate in the marine aquarium. In short, the wasting away of a stressed mandarinfish in an aquarium has been far too frequent an occurrence for many marine aquarists to heartily recommend mandarinfishes to anyone but the expert aquarist with the proper system (e.g. established system with loads of live rock and an attached, mature refugium).

Expert only?

No longer says Matthew Wittenrich in this month’s issue of CORAL Magazine. “Today, dedicated hobbyists are teaching their mandarins to accept frozen and even pelleted food,” he writes, “and, with a bit of patience, mandarins are no longer a ‘for experts only fish.’ “

Mandarinfish for Everyone

I had the opportunity to interview Matthew about mandarins for an article a few months ago (Matthew and I blog together over at Microcosm Aquarium Explorer), and I must say that if you are at all interested in keeping these beautiful fishes, there has never been a better time to give it a go.

What Matthew has learned about the husbandry of these animals is truly remarkable, and he has (along with the worthy contributions of folks like Julian Sprung and Matt Pedersen of MOFIB) put these beautiful creatures within reach of any saltwater aquarist committed to taking the time to properly wean them onto a captive diet. Talking to Matthew reminds me that we don’t know quite as much as we think we know about this hobby and that some of our “hard and fast rules” are really just thinly-veiled ignorance.

Weaning a Mandarinfish onto a Captive Diet

Okay, let’s talk specifics. While only adding mandarinfishes to an established aquarium with an attached refugium and a ready supply of Reefpods is still good advice, it is highly recommended that all aquarists keeping mandarins should take the time to wean their fish onto a captive diet before setting them loose in the main display tank. How do you wean a mandarinfish onto a captive diet? It’s actually remarkably simple. In your QT tank (or in a breeder basket or plastic strainer in the main tank), offer your new mandarinfish live brine shrimp. Then start adding frozen mysis to the live shrimp, and, over a period of days, gradually decrease the amount of live shrimp and increase the frozen shrimp, until the mandarins are feeding exclusively on the prepared food. Yes, it’s really that simple! Supplementing the mandarinfish’s diet with live food (like Reefpods) is still a good idea.

Once you have a pair of mandarins eating a captive diet, it’s time to really set your sites on captive breeding (check out Matthew’s article “Breeding Mandarins” in the January 2009 issue of CORAL Magazine), but I'll leave that for a later entry.

Acclimating Tropical Saltwater Fish

It’s winter, kids, and temperatures have been dipping into the colder-than-usual-range for many of us across the country. How does this affect your potential online purchase of marine aquarium livestock? It actually shouldn’t affect it all that much, IF you are willing to be patient and follow acclimatization procedures to the letter.

If you have purchased livestock from Saltwaterfish.com before, you know they go to great lengths to maintain the stability of the water in which your animals are shipped during the entire shipping time. In the winter, this means you will find heat packs inside the boxes to keep the temperature up, but when it’s super cold, and winter weather delays the FedEx truck, the temperatures in the bags can still get pretty low for a tropical animal. Fortunately, most animals are incredibly resilient to these temperature changes if you take the time to acclimate them properly.

Keep in mind that the temperature in the bags dropped slowly over the course of being shipping, and so it is absolutely essential to bring the temperature back up slowly. While you must still be concerned with acclimating the animal to the pH and salinity of your tank, it is temperature that is often the most critical parameter in the winter. Not temperature acclimating the animal slowly enough will lead to stress and even death. Acclimating the animal slowly (even if it appears lifeless on arrival) more often than not will “revive” the animal to a healthy state.

So how do you do this? A three hour (or longer) drip acclimation is the key. Check out the Acclimation Flash Presentation on the Saltwaterfish.com homepage for the details on how to effectively drip acclimate your new livestock. As Scott, owner of Saltwaterfish.com says, “Three hours is not a lot of time to insure the health of your animals.”

Once the animal has been acclimated, the acclimatization period is still not quite over. To allow the animal to truly recover from shipping, keep the lights off in the tank (and even in the room) for the first 24 hours and resist the urge to constantly be peering in the tank “checking on” your new arrival. Keep in mind we always recommend using a quarantine tank for all new arrivals.

As I’ve said before (and I’m sure I’ll say again), patience is the key to success in this hobby, and it is particularly applicable to acclimating new arrivals during the winter when shipping times may unexpectedly be longer than normal. Remember, even if the animal appears lifeless upon arrival, follow the full drip acclimation procedure detailed in the flash presentation and, more often than not, you will be amazed at how well these incredible animals recover.