Upgrade!!

 

Moving on up… I have had this little cabinet ever since my 75. It used to house my ballast and stuff. Now I have turned it into a high tech phyto growing station. This puppy can handle four two liter bottle now instead of the two the bucket was housing.

 

Have you started your own yet?

Got Well Soon

I don’t know how many of you followed when I posted about this finger leather a few weeks back. This guy went through massive trauma and I lost the whole center core of him. Typical degeneration in a large leather in captivity, he developed a really bad spot in his lower extremities. Safe to say he is now flourishing and every leg that held on is now fully healed and extending great. He really does make the tank too. With him shriveled everything looked shriveled. Ohh well…. Just thought I would share.

(Also, on a side note, I got the other Mp40 up and going today. Stay tuned for more.)

 

 

Artificial Reefs

Well, some may be for them, some against. Much of these are up for speculation. I have often called the term a false definition for dumping unwanted things into the ocean. Then other people claim that its beneficial. I can see how this is possible. While the fish of our planet need a place to hide, many of these things are not exactly what one would think of when they hear the term reef. Ships, building blocks, Metal balls with holes, and even old tires are sometimes used as these. My opinion is what is next, are we going to just start dumping our old refrigerators out and calling them a reef too. In my honest opinion if a ship went down on its own or was shot down such as pearl harbor then its a marvel to see. By all means these places should be preserved but, dumping the USS Bush on the floor of the ocean just to call it an artificial reef, nah. I look at some of the photos and see trash. This is junk no one wanted and something that someone said ohh, reef!..  Never the less if people want to do this no one will stop them until some drastic change is found. I have never dove these sites so I cant say what they are like in person. I am sure there are studies that will prove me wrong and say that they are beneficial and that I am just some quirk that doesn’t get it, well…. I am that quirk I guess.  I say leave the trash on the land and get the tires out of the ocean.

What is your opinion on this? Do you think Artificial reefs are beneficial or do you see them as I do, trash. Let me know what you think.

 

HELP!!…. Not really but here is my explanation of this common post we see everyday on the forums.

So, after changing the bulbs and ballast over my tank, things are not happy. This was expected and should pass but I can’t help but notice the people on sites I visit that always ask “Why are my leathers shriveled up and slumped over?”

Its not uncommon on the forums, the random post of “HELP!!” my leathers are dying are an everyday thread on 90% of them. I tend to surf and I read how all of their parameters are the same or nothing has changed and the sob story of how they swear it just “happened”.  Well almost nothing ever just happens in a reef tank. If there was any place where we can see the laws of physics happen its defiantly in an aquarium.

First, if everything checks out okay and the tank has been left completely alone except for the regular maintenance of 20% water changes and the scheduled feedings then a tank should be thriving and this is almost always the case. When a tank is left alone and everything is in order and hasn’t changed then the creatures inside have had time to adapt, change, and handle the stresses put on them under the given body of water. Now this is were it always goes south.

Almost every time something seems to be too good to be true, what do we do as humans, we mess with it. It might not be much and often times its very slight but as with anything else that is living its noticeable. If I were to change the room temperature where you are up a degree or two after you have felt it the same I am certain you would be able to tell. Just the same as if I pumped the same sweet smell of fresh lavender into our office for a month or two and one day I just started pumping in the cheap stuff you get from the hang on the mirror things.  You would notice right away right? Well every creature in our tank does too.

In most every case of these online forum screams for help, after enough interaction with the frightened poster, their problems can always be traced back to one slight something or another. Often times its something as simple as they changed doses of trace elements to a different brand or they changed salt mixes during water changes. These types of things most people do not think about. Other times it’s a little more drastic such as they moved the coral or they rearranged the rock work and now nothing looks good. We have to remember that sometimes something as trivial as changing out the light bulbs in our tank can effect every animal inside and they have to have time to adapt.

I read in the current Coral Magazine about thresholds and when is everything going well in our tank that the threshold for our animals is at a significantly higher place than the levels they cannot tolerate but, every time we do some little something different it lowers this threshold little by little. That is why it is so important not to do anything in this hobby to the extreme. Slight changes are always better than any massive amounts we can do. If we do too much it pushes this threshold down so far that in some cases our animals simply cant cope and will parish.

I am now in a waiting game. My corals look better with each passing day and soon will be accepting of the lighting I have over my tank and will thank me for it but now… We have to wait until they can get used to the suntan they are receiving.  Think about this the next time you change a light bulb in your home or the next time you spray on a different cologne than you are used to. It’s a different life trapped inside a glass cage and things should always be done on a very small scale.