Sea Slug

Sea slugs are mollusks, related to the shelled terrestrial snails that we are all too familiar with on land. They are distributed everywhere in both tropical and temperate seas, with the greatest numbers and the largest kinds found in tropical waters. Most sea slugs are rather small under 1 inch and some are as long as 12 inches, the largest which is found in the Great Barrier Reef of Australia.

Sea slugs display a great array of solid colors and patterns, and are also known as “butterlfies of the sea”. Most sea slugs have feathery structures (ceratia) on the back, very often in contrasting colours, and they have two pairs of tentacles on the head used for chemosensory and tactile reception, and have a small eye at the base of each tentacle. Being predominantly shell-less and daytime active organisms, creeping along the bottom or clinging onto submerged vegetation, usually in water just below the low tide line, these creatures have evolved some seriously potent and complex anti-predatory defenses.

Sea slugs graze on small sessile animals such as bryozoans, sponges, and coelenterates.  Some feed on sea anemones or corals, ingesting the stinging cells of their prey without discharging them and passing on from the slug’s digestive tract to the ceratia, where they are used for self defense. It is known that as the species are more colourful, the more toxic they are. The less toxic species tend to match the substrate they lie in. Most sea slugs are difficult or impossible to keep especially in small aquaria due to their specialised diet, delicate nature, and sensitive to acclimation. Stressed sea slugs releases toxic composition into the aquarium which may kill other organisms. These creatures are therefore not recommended for the inexperienced hobbyists.

Live Sand

LS can be collected live from the ocean, or can be cultured from a non-living oral sand to make it live. The quickest method in starting a marine aquarium is to use 100% LS which are commercially sold in bags. Using this method, there is no waiting period or delay in the biological cycling process for the beneficial bacterial to establish themselves to effectively and biochemically cycle your aquarium that will provide a healthy environment.

Some popular choices of many expert aquarists for LS are Caribsea or Nature’s Ocean. Both provides sand from the ocean with biofilm of bacterial in their natural state that immediately removes toxic waste from the water in every new tank.

LR plays a primary important role in a marine aquarium, as part of a crucial resource in keeping almost all livestock. LR can act as main biological nitrification base or biological filter in a marine aquarium, while enhancing the aesthetic appearance of the reef aquarium and providing shelters for many inhabitants.

LR immediately introduces bacteria, numerous algae, and small invertebrates into an aquarium, contributing to the overall quality of the aquarium water. LR offers more surface area for bacteria to grow than a trickle filter to handle significant bio-load of fishes and invertebrates.  Waste products from livestock such as ammonia, nitrate and phosphate are handled by LR in different manners.  Ammonia, nitrate and phosphate are readily assimilated by the many species of algaes and photosynthetic corals growing in and on the rock. Ammonia are quickly converted into nitrite and subsequently nitrate by the bacteria. Nitrate will either be absorbed by the algae and corals as their nutrient, or it can be denitrified by denitrifying bacteria in close proximity to the nitrate producing nitrifying bacteria.

Despite the wonders that LR can perform, LR should be quarantined in a new reef tank for a period of two to four weeks. This period is known as the “curing period” which allows observation and stabilization in order to reduce any potential pest and parasitic organisms, and to allow good cycling of initial ammonia, nitrite and nitrate spikes. Once the LR is cured, it can be an amazing complex living filter of all kinds.

Now, who would want a Dead Rock for their reef aquarium?

The effects of continuous exposure to ammonia in fish can be lethal and will cause severe gill damage leading to suffocation, kidney damage due to inability to osmoregulate, and the increased inability to secrete ammonia from the body resulting in metabolic and physiological imbalance. Even at lower levels, ammonia can reduce growth rate and damage to gill filament tissue in a fish, loss of equilibrium, convulsions and then death.

Ammonia exists in two forms, namely, un-ionized (NH3) and ionized (NH4+). Both forms are measured together and are referred to as total ammonia.

The levels of ammonia in an aquarium can be reduced by a efficient and effective biological filtration. With good filtration, ammonia level should always be kept zero. The aquarium design, number of fish and feeding regime are factors that affects the level of ammonia concentration.

Protein skimmers can be classed in two ways depending on whether they operate by co-current flow or counter-current flow. In a co-current flow system, air is introduced at the bottom of the chamber and is in contact with the water as it rises upwards towards the collection chamber. In a counter-current system, air is forced into the system under pressure and moves against the flow of the water for a while before it rises up towards the collection cup. Because the air bubbles may be in contact with the water for a longer period in a counter-current flow system, protein skimmers of this type are considered by some to be more effective at removing organic wastes.

(Source: Extracted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protein_skimmer)

All fish need to eat generally what Mother Nature intended, and there will always the case that an aquarium kept fish simply does not get enough of the variety of food they need.  There are different kind of fish food available, dry food such as flakes or pellets, live food as in any creatures that move to attract the fish to eat them, liquid food for the young fry, or frozen food of the dead living things. Some fish are. 

The most convenient method to feed your fish is flake, which is formulated by nutritionists to supply all the protein that a fish need. Feeding flake is not sufficient, a fish diet needs to be varied, just like us!  Live food such as tubifex worms, blood worms can be fed.  The disadvantage of feeding live food is the tedious manual process of getting them cleaned to reduce the risk of passing unwanted bacteria that will infect the fish. To be safe, one can hatch and rear brine shrimps to adult stage before feeding, which are generally clean.

Frozen food is an alternative to feeding live food and these food can be either bought from the stores or home made. All that is needed is to get these food stay frozen and kept fresh in the freezer. Getting frozen food ready for feeding is easy. Just get the food thawed properly without heating them to maintain as much nutrition value as possible. Good frozen food should contains good nutritional value for the fish.

Make your fish happy, by feeding them with a good rotation of variety of diet between dry, live and frozen. 

If you are lucky, your fish may let you fondle its head while it feeds off the food from your hand!  Do you know which fish does that?

It is necessary to have an efficient aquarium chiller in tropical or countries experiencing summer season to do the effective chilling job for the aquariums. As most fish and water living beings come from cold waters in the nature, it will be ideal and perhaps necessary to replicate these conditions with, in most cases, a temperature lower than 30°C. Most will thrive well in the temperature ranging between 22°C to 28°C.

As the water temperature increases, so does the fish metabolism and lower dissolved oxygen levels in the water. The higher the bio-load in an aquarium, the greater the risk that oxygen will become depleted when the water gets warmer. Under increased water temperature condition, fish, invertebrates or corals will suffer.

One of the advantages of using a chiller is the automation of the chilling process that will allow you to go for a holiday and be away from your aquarium without worries. One of the obvious cons would be running a costly chiller will consume more electrical energy which translates to higher electrical bills! The larger the aquarium, the more powerful chiller you will need to do an effective job. So unless you are on a budget, consider manual jobs like using ice-bottles for a start and start saving for that chiller.

When buying a chiller, the aesthetics, quietness, energy consumptions, built, quality and warranty will be one of your considerations besides the budget, in deciding which brand of chiller you will go for. But if you can afford one, you will definitely be making your fish happy.

Within the reef aquarium, phosphates will greatly affect the formation of coral skeletons by reducing calcification by over 50% and by inhibiting the deposition of strontium. It is suggested by Borneman that phosphates are a direct poison to calcification. 

It is prudent for the aquarists to use a good phosphate remover product for curbing the unsightly algae boom problems.  There are many phosphate remover products available, which are commonly found in aluminium oxide or other iron based products.  Good phosphate remover media should not leach back the phosphate content back into the aquarium once the media is exhausted after prolonged use.

Mushroom corals belong to a family called Fungiidae which are solitary, mobile species distributed throughout Pacific and Indian Oceans. The reproduction of mushroom corals remains a challenge for scientists to discover. Mushroom corals are very diversified and so abundant.  

The discovery was surprised many coral reef scientists.   “We know in detail the reproductive patterns of more than 500 coral species, but no one reported before on the fact that some coral species may change sex,” says lead author professor Yossi Loya, a zoologist at Tel Aviv University.

Source: UltimateReef.com

It reaches a length of approximately 3.2″ (8 cm) in the wild, but is considerably smaller in aquarium bred specimens that rarely exceed 2″ (5 cm). Ocellaris is a hardy, long-lived clownfish that is excellent for the beginner hobbyist. It lives harmoniously with other non-predatory species and is best in aquariums with the presence of anemones such as Heteractis magnifica and Stichodactyla gigantea. It can become aggressive towards others of its species. A good suggestion would be to keep a mated pair of Ocellaris in the same aquarium, or as a school introduced to the aquarium when they are very young.

There is no external characteristics to differentiate a male and female and are sexually immature when hatched, i.e., the fry do not have a pre-determined sex. The fry develop into males and females depending on the hierarchy of the school. Ocellaris exhibits parental instincts and will pair off to lay the orange coloured eggs along the base of the host anemone, which serves the purpose of protecting the eggs. The parents will defend the eggs and will occasionally fan them.  The eggs will hatch after eight days. Without proper preparation, rearing the fry is challenging in an aquarium and demands proper preparation of the water condition and care.  The fry should be removed from the harm of any predators and their parents after hatching.  

Ocellaris feed mostly meaty foods and frozen herbivore preparations. Flake food, brine shrimp and mysis shrimp are also readily accepted. It is a good idea to rotate the types of food to prevent the fish from becoming picky.

Featured Freshwater Planted Aquarium Video

You would have dreamt of keeping one of those aquariums and be part of your life. So you venture into researching for more information of your interest. Freshwater or Marine Aquarium? This was a very similar decision I took back in my younger days. And to start off with an advise, freshwater is an easy start for most novice, cheaper and easier to maintain. Marine aquarium are more for the advanced. Lot’s of novice started off into the marine aquarium hobbying during the “Nemo” craze period few years ago, and many of them gave up being unable to maintain the delicate sea creature without proper knowledge of aquarium keeping.

Featured Marine Aquarium Video

However, marine aquarium keeping can be very rewarding for the experienced, as the ocean creatures are indeed exotic, and beautiful than anything a freshwater aquarium could have given you. Marine aquarium keeping is demanding in respect of maintenance, and if you cannot afford the time and money, it would be a very bad idea and disastrous, which most likely ended up your interest in the hobby being short lived.

Whichever you choose, any aquarium will add a touch of your personal character to any place where you keep it.