Unicorn Mini Reef Bowl

Pico reef vases and mini reef bowls are gaining popularity right now, for some great reasons. If you crave a reef aquarium, but lack the time and money for a full fledged, large reef, but you still want something unique and eye catching, opt for a tiny reef in a bowl or a vase. Read more on Reefs.com

https://reefs.com/2017/06/19/felicias-unicorn-reef-bowl/

Felicia’s Unicorn Reef Bowl

by Felicia McCaulley | Jun 19, 2017 | Science, Tanks 

my first reef vase

Reef Bowls have been around for a while, but they’re still considered to be unconventional and experimental. Brandon Mason started a 1 gallon reef jar in 2006, and Mary Arroyo’s 1.5 gallon Maritza vase just celebrated its 5th birthday. There has been some criticism of tiny reef picos with naysayers claiming they would always ultimately fail and are too difficult to keep clean. Sure, they’d be impossible if you treated them like a full sized reef tank, overstocking with fish and doing only monthly maintenance. All successful reef bowls have one thing in common: simplicity. Most use a simple air pump for filtration, a heater, and a small light. That’s it. Weekly water changes maintain water quality and replenish calcium and other elements. Wiping algae in a tiny tank every day is as easy as wiping the kitchen counter every day if you make it part of your routine.

I have maintained some really amazing reef tanks, but the minimalist in me is obsessed with this little reef bowl. Every coral in my reef bowl is the star of the show; there are no fillers. Everything is chosen with much thought and planning, placed with precision. It is the reefing version of the literary advice to “kill your darlings.” Pare down, edit, streamline your work. Give purpose to every stroke of your brush.

happy toddler, happy fish, corals covered in algae

My journey into vase reefing began when my mom bought me a stunning antique pedestal foot vase a couple years ago. I planned on using it for dwarf seahorses, but at the time I had a 6 gallon cube with some corals and one hungry clingfish I let my toddler overfeed every day. The tank was overrun with algae. The corals were a few orphan frags I brought with me when I moved from another state, and I just never got around to setting up a better tank for them. One day in Spring 2016, it dawned on me that I should put my poor, sad corals in the vase.

I moved some live rock and the corals from the 6 gallon into the vase. I put it on a rickety end table in my upstairs bathroom. We have a double sink in this bathroom, so I put the vase right next to the sink, which would become the vase’s own dedicated sink. The light was an ABI 12 watt 50/50 LED. Instead of an air pump, I used an old Koralia nano I had packed away for water movement. I hid the Koralia and a small heater behind a rock. I did weekly 90% water changes and topped off every few days with RO water. I had a few inverts like a blue tuxedo urchin, scarlet and blue leg hermits, an emerald crab, and a banded coral shrimp who enjoyed eating bristleworms. The corals thrived in this tiny bowl. I added some new corals, and they grew from tiny 4 polyp frags into small colonies.

This reef vase ran without a hitch until April 2017 when the top electrical outlets in the bathroom failed. My Koralia turned off, and I didn’t notice right away. At first I noticed my 1.5 year old urchin dead. In total, all of my inverts and one new coral perished. I did a full water change and found a power strip to plug my equipment into. If I’d had the powerhead plugged into a different outlet, my urchin would be alive today. The majority of the corals were fine, but I was crushed. “Urchin” was one of my son’s first words when he was almost a year old, and the urchin was a gift to him. Overall, it wasn’t a major disaster, but I hate losing any animals, even hermit crabs.

My step-dad, a hobby wood worker, built a new stand for my vase since my old end table was cracked down the center and very unstable. I wanted an oversized stand, so we decided to make it an 18” cube with a door on the front for storage. I asked for a simple box, but he got creative with it and carved a unicorn for the front, which is why we started referring to it as “the unicorn bowl.” When I brought the stand home, I realized my vase would be dwarfed by it and decided to upgrade to a new bowl. I also decided to move it to the kitchen with my other saltwater tank to make maintenance easier. I found an 8.5 gallon bowl that fit perfectly on the stand. I got some more live rock and moved the corals in mid April.

I upgraded the equipment in the new, bigger bowl. The new powerhead is 600 gph, and I bought the ABI Tuna blue LED, per Mary Arroyo’s suggestion. The color of the new Tuna Blue light took some getting used to, but it really makes the corals fluoresce. I still do weekly water changes, but I only replace about half the water. I have cautiously added some new hermit crabs, an emerald crab, and some peppermint shrimp to eat the Aiptasia that came with the new live rock I bought. The corals I brought with me from Connecticut are the M. danae, and M. setosa. I brought frags to my LFS Ricky Fin’s and he gave me frags back when I was ready for them. The other corals are all from his shop, except the Gorgonia my sister gave me from her tank.

Watermelon Zoas

sunny delight Zoas

Orange Zoas

Montipora setosa

Montipora

Danae

a Danae frag Ryan Pettit gave me in 2014 – a piece of it lives on in the reef bowl

Top is ABI Tuna Blue, bottom is ABI 50/50

Tiny cucumbers I always find during water changes

Blue Hornets – about 6 months of growth

slow growing green toadstool

Blue Tuxedo Urchin

I’m very happy with the new bowl so far, even though I was disappointed I couldn’t find one with a pedestal foot. I have had issues with hair algae since overfeeding the tank the live rock came from, but more on that later. My Montiporas and Zoas needed this extra space, and the bowl is visually stunning with the extreme magnification of the curved glass. Once the corals grow in more, this bowl has the potential to be one of my favorite tanks ever.

my son Lachlan with our 8 gallon reef bowl

one year of growth on M. setosa

TOP 10 FALSE FACTS ABOUT SEAHORSES

Train Live Food Eaters to Eat Frozen Food

Some of the most beautiful fish in the aquarium hobby have live food diets and refuse to eat frozen food right away. With all the distractions and stress of the display tank, live food eaters usually starve without food training.Quarantining new fish isn’t only for disease prevention. Finicky eaters should be conditioned and trained to eat frozen foods in a quarantine tank. A bare bottom tank is easier to keep clean, and makes it easier for the fish to find food. Fill an appropriately-sized tupperware container with sand for burrowers. Keep lighting low and use a PVC pipe to give your fish somewhere to hide. Take a few minutes to siphon the bottom of the tank before and after each feeding. Keep the quarantine tank free from feces, uneaten food, detritus, and ammonia.

Live food eaters simply don’t recognize frozen foods as possible food items; it’s up to you to teach them. Research the fish’s natural diet and provide similar live foods until the fish has gained weight. Buy live foods before your fish arrives. HUFA-enriched live adult or newly hatched Artemia are an easy, cheap alternative to natural foods for most finicky eaters and can be substituted for live shrimp or copepods, though some copepods are easy to culture at home. Obligate Corallivores may need live coral sacrifices. Try pasting frozen mysis onto a skeleton or live coral to entice them. Attach frozen food with a rubber band to a clam shell or live clams from the grocery store for angelfish. Larger ambush predators like lionfish and anglers prefer live ghost shrimp or small fish like damsels (never goldfish). Use water movement from a pipette or a feeding stick to make frozen food “look alive.”

Make sure frozen food is as fresh as possible! Live food eaters are more likely to refuse food with an “off” taste or smell, even when it looks fine to us. HUFA and omega 3s degrade quickly in frozen food. Never use food that has been thawed and refrozen. Discoloration or freezerburn is a sure sign of bad food, like brown mysis. Don’t rely on the expiration date when feeding finicky live food eaters, as the food’s flavor and HUFA profile will change well before the expiration date. Ideally, use food that has been in your home freezer for no more than a few months. Your LFS should use a commercial freezer which keeps the food at -30C or -22F.

Garlic in the diet of marine fish is controversial, but many aquarists report an increase in appetite with garlic use. It may also help condition fish to recognize new foods when they are trained to associate garlic smell with food. Soak the fish’s preferred live foods in garlic. Once they’re accustomed to that, freeze the garlic soaked live foods and introduce that along with live food. Mix in garlic soaked store bought foods until the fish eat frozen food well. Garlic can be slowly removed from the diet once training is complete.

Be persistent. It can take months for a stubborn fish to learn to eat frozen food. Keep in mind that some fish, like dwarf seahorses, will never eat frozen foods, and some species, like mandarins and sponge eaters, may not thrive on a strictly frozen food diet.

Full Article: https://reefs.com/2017/02/16/train-live-food-eaters-eat-frozen-food/

Bristleworms: Should You Battle Them?

Did you find a bristleworm in your aquarium? Don’t panic. They are scavengers of meaty foods, but common aquarium bristleworms do not prey on living animals or corals. They perform a necessary function in most aquariums, eating leftover foods and decaying matter. Identification Most aquarium bristleworms are small. You may only see the first few inches of a worm because they hide most of their bodies in holes in the rocks and can grow up to a foot or two in length. They’re pink, brown, grey, tan, and may be iridescent. You’ll typically notice them at night with a flashlight, during feeding time, or when you’re moving rocks. Tufts of bristles run along both sides of the body and feel like irritating fiberglass shards when stuck in your finger. Try duct tape or cover the area in glue then pull it off; the bristles should come out with it. This is a good reason to wear gloves when working in your aquarium.

Bristleworm, Fireworm or Eunicid? 

Fireworms are a venomous type of bristleworm. It’s unlikely you’ll have an allergic reaction from the painful sting, but soaking in hot water and taking benadryl may help. Fireworms can be identified by a prominent caruncle between the eyes. All but one species are peaceful scavengers; Hermodice carunculata is a coral predator.

Eunicids are another type of polychaete worm. They can be identified by five short tentacles around the mouth. They lack bristles and are thicker and larger than bristleworms. Very large specimens are not common in captive reefs, but some of the largest Eunicids ever found in home aquariums were over 10 feet long. Most are harmless scavengers, but some species are known to prey on small fish. When should you remove bristleworms? If you have a predatory Eunicid or fireworm, too many bristleworms, or sensitive livestock like seahorses which can be injured when they consume bristleworms, you may need to remove them. If your tank has bristleworms as far as the eye can see, you’re likely overfeeding or you have a dead, decaying body in the tank somewhere. Address that issue first. Removal methods

You can find bristleworm traps at your LFS, or you can fashion one out of a soda bottle or a pair of nylons. Use a sturdy bait like krill. Set the trap each day just before dark and empty it in the morning. Do this every evening until you have removed the excess worms. There are also many species of fish and inverts that consume bristleworms. Bristleworms are easier to control in FOWLR tanks because many typical FOWLR fish like puffers, triggers, and large, aggressive wrasses like Formosa and banana wrasses eat them. 

Reef safe, peaceful bristleworm predators 

• Coral banded shrimps Stenopus spp. 
• Possum wrasses Wetmorella spp. 
• Yellow “eel goby” Dinematichthys spp.

Reef safe with caution, semi aggressive bristleworm predators 

• Dottybacks Pseudochromis spp. like P. springeri
• Pseudocheilinus spp. like the Six Line Wrasse 
• Arrow crabs

With a Grain of Salt - Lying About Aquarium Success on Social Media

Read about a man who owns an aquarium maintenance business who lied on social media about his success with keeping seahorses and Acalycigorgia sea fans in an aquarium. When caught in his lie, he tried making excuses and blocked the person who proved he was lying.

This behavior is unacceptable. It is not good for our hobby or for the animals we keep.

https://www.reefs.com/forum/mag.php?do=wp_post&articleId=171

The Skinny Seahorse :(

Customers Behaving Badly

Our local fish stores are in danger, and customers may be partly to blame. Read my latest article on reefs.com about some of the deplorable behaviors customers engage in at the LFS.

https://www.reefs.com/forum/mag.php?do=wp_post&articleId=164

Sea Dragon Video by Todd Martin

A fan, Todd Martin, sent this video today of the sea dragons at the Sheds aquarium in Chicago. Awesome video! 

Molly Miller Blennies eat Aiptasia and algae

House of fins in Greenwich, CT employs some professional aquarists with incredibly impressive resumes. One of those was Ken Wingerter - marine scientist, author, marine ornamental fish beeeder, and jack of all trades in the science and aquarium fields.

While working together at HOF, I learned a few new things from Ken. One morning I was putting together a fish order from Florida. Ken turned to me and said, "see if they have molly millers. They eat Aiptasia." Why had I never heard this?

Ken explained that when he was working in an aquaculture facility, they had a major outbreak of Aiptasia. But the tanks housing molly miller blennies never had Aiptasia in them.

So we started experimenting with our display tanks. I never actually sat still long enough to witness the molly millers eating an Aiptasia, but the tanks we put them in were clean within the week.

Our maintenance team and customers started stocking their tanks with hordes of these fish. All raved about them.

What could be better Aiptasia control than a small, peaceful, reef safe fish that tolerates others of its own species? They also eat all sorts of algae and have awesome personalities.

Here is Ken's more scientific account of his experience with the molly Miller blenny.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2012/9/fish

Women of the Aquarium Industry - Felicia McCaulley article on Aquanerd Blog

I'm honored to be featured in the latest Aquanerd blog titled Women of the Aquarium Industry - Felicia McCaulley

I also found out that one of the customers that frequents my place of employment, the Fish Factory in Bristol, PA, has a tattoo of a photo I took. What a small world! He most likely found the photo on the internet and added it to his reef-scene tattoos. Little did he know, the tattoo he has was photographed by someone who not only lives in the same city as him, but works at his local fish store! He discovered this while reading Aquanerd's article about me and saw the photo his tattoo is based on in the article. The photo is of a Trapezia crab in an Acropora secale I used to have when I lived in Wisconsin. It's awesome that a stranger got a tattoo of one of my pets.

Extinct in the Wild Ameca splendens breeding in captivity

I've been a fan of livebearing fish all my life, so naturally, I've always wanted to breed enangered or extinct Goodeids. The problem is, they are hard to find. Thanks to Msjinkzd, I have a breeding colony of six Ameca splendens, my favorite extinct in the wild Goodeid. I took them to the Fish Factory in Bristol, PA where I work and put them in our 90 gallon corner display tank (you're all welcome to visit them any time!) They are finally old enough to breed, and sure enough, have been dropping fry.

my young pair of Ameca splendens



young male Ameca splendens



Their parents at Msjinkzd





Some of the tankmates in the 90 gallon display:

a pair of rare Alfaro culturatus Knife Livebearers



 More about Ameca splendens from Wikipedia:


"Ameca splendens, a bony fish from the monotypic genus Ameca^[2] of the splitfin family (Goodeidae), is commonly known as the Butterfly Goodeid or Butterfly Splitfin. It was formerly found throughout the Ameca River drainage in Mexico; the type locality is Rio Teuchitlán in the vicinity of Teuchitlán, Jalisco. The species was only ever found in an area about 10 miles (15 km) in diameter.^[3]
Today, the species is rated as extinct in the wild by the IUCN, though it is noted that this assessment is obsolete:^[4] a remnant population has been found to persist in El Rincón waterpark near the town of Ameca. Possibly, it also exists in a feral state in the USA; individuals apparently derived from escaped or introduced captive stock were met with in southeastern Nevada.^[5] For some time, it was a popular fish among aquarists, but hobbyist stocks have declined quite a lot more recently, placing its survival in jeopardy."

My 90 gallon Saltwater Aquarium

It's been a while since I posted an aquarium update, since a lot has changed. I've moved and changed jobs this past year, and things have been hectic. Not too hectic to continue keeping fishes. Many of the fish I brought from Wisconsin a couple years ago have passed away, some from old age. I still have Stormy, my Blue Jaw Tilefish, and Cleopatra, my beloved seahorse, one of which I raised myself who is the daughter of Hoover and Juniper.

My 90 gallon "reef"

My lovely Stormy, the Blue Jaw Tilefish, is best friends with my new Blue Tang.



Some of you might remember Mandy, my Sustainable Aquatics Fancy White Ocellaris. She's a couple years old now and paired up with an ORA Naked Ocellaris, and they are finally old enough to be practicing spawning. Let's hope for eggs soon.



 A picture of Mandy from Nov. 2011, notice the color change!



My newest fish, a beautiful Blue Hippo Tang named "Dory" of course.



All the fish are very tame!





saltwater Sailfin Molly - a freshwater fish that can live in saltwater also





a 4" Sixline Wrasse

"Nubs" the Bearded Dragon

"Nubs" is a 2 1/2 year old female Bearded Dragon. She lives with me in a dining room and living room of a Philadelphia row-home. She has a basking area and a heating pad under the TV stand, and also likes to be put on the windowsill of our big bay window to watch the fish tanks and the cars driving by. She eats about 3 dozen large crickets a week, and gets daily meals of bearded dragon food and fresh vegetables like carrots.

Nubs is pretty much exactly like having a dog. She does have a large cage, but we started letting her out more and more, and eventually, she hated going in her cage at all. This situation wouldn't work for every bearded dragon in every home, but Nubs is a special lizard. She is potty trained to go on plastic bags in the shoe corner, but sometimes misses and gets the shoes. She's extremely friendly and outgoing, always coming out to check out visitors. She loves to fall asleep on her favorite people's chests, snuggling up to our necks.

Nubs is missing a hand and part of her tail because she was injured by her brother as a baby. This is common with young dragons. She doesn't let it bother her, and she runs all around the house at full speed after basking in her favorite spot.