Reef Builders | The Reef and Marine Aquarium Blog

Pagurus curacaoensis is a deep-sea hermit crab that lives in scaphopod shells

Jake Adams — Mon, 28 May 2012 17:30:55 +0000

Pagurus curacaoensis is a gorgeous little hermit crab that lives in very deep water, a live specimen of which has recently been collected by the Curacao Aquarium submersible responsible for all those awesome deepwater reef fish from Curacao. With red and white-striped legs and claws, Pagurus curacaoensis could easily be described as a candy-cane or peppermint colored character.

Apart from its lively coloration, another thing that makes Pagurus curacaoensis unique is that it belongs to Pagurids, a group of hermit crabs which prefers the shells of Scaphopod, which are a seldom seen group of marine molluscs that are like snails, but with a straight shell instead of a spiraled one. This particular peppermint Pagurus is one of the only specimens ever seen alive and it’s a real treat to imagine how cute this little guy would be crawling around a colder aquarium with red and white carapace and a shell in the shape of a dunce cap. [Coral Reef Photos]

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Eheim UV Sterilizer uses power compact reflector to focus on germicidal efficiency

Jake Adams — Mon, 28 May 2012 17:10:12 +0000

The new Eheim UV Sterilizer is the third aquarium germicidal lamp from Eheim which features an efficient flow-through design ideal for piggybacking the water supply from canister filters. The third generation Eheim UV Sterilizer comes in 7, 9 and 11 watts, using a power compact UV bulb inside with a reflector for increased exposure of water to the ultraviolet (UV) light. Eheim’s new UV sterilizers are very easy on the eyes and are an easy add-on to existing aquariums using a sump or canister filter as primary life support for the aquarium system. The new Eheim UV Sterilizer will be available in Europe in October but won’t be released in North America for at least another year.

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Hawaiian Mann’s Anemone, Cladactella manni is a strikingly colored species from the surge zone

Ohm Pavaphon — Mon, 28 May 2012 16:30:11 +0000

If you want to look for something new and uncommon, the endemic Hawaiian Mann’s Anemone (Cladactella manni) is a worthy target. The anemone itself looks very different from what you might probably see in your local LFS. From outside appearance, Cladactella manni look similar to the cold water anemone of the genus Actinia with more weird bubble-like tissue popping out all over the base, and about the size of a tea cup. The tentacles of Mann’s Anemone are dressed in dark red/purple and held upright like an urchin spines.

Before getting a Hawaiian Mann’s anemone, make sure that you know their basic care requirements. First, Cladactella is not a host of all clownfish and it may eat them. And second, Cladactella comes from a surge zone. It should be warn that this anemone will not fit in your nicely decorated reef tank because it prefer highly oxygenated water with a lot of current to keep it alive.

Hawaiian Mann’s anemone is a challenging species to keep in an aquarium but it will have best chances when provided with lots of water movement. So anyone who want to blaze a trail, please prepare yourself with an idea of how to keep it alive in captivity. If you succeed with this, maybe an Hawaiian Surge zone biotope tank exhibition in your place is worth a visit.

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Micom continuous liquid feeder is an adjustable, always-on dosing pump

Jake Adams — Mon, 28 May 2012 14:18:02 +0000

Micom’s continuous liquid feeder looks like any other ordinary dosing pump, it appears identical to the original Micom liquid feeder, but it has one special trick up its peristaltic sleeve – it runs continuously. Whereas other dosing pumps have a preset RPM to the motor which is actuated at certain intervals, the Micom continuous liquid feeder is always on and has an adjustable RPM to vary the dosing rate.

The constant dosing feature of the Micom continuous liquid feeder can add up to the same volume as any other periodically dosing pump, and at the end of the day it adds up the same total rotations to the peristaltic head. The big difference of continuous dosing now is that you can use this kind of always-on dosing pump to feed a calcium reactor, to dose kalkwasser, to add buffer and calcium at a constant rate and better yet, the Micom continuous liquid feeder can keep a constant supply of planktonic foods to your aquarium – an azoox coral keeper’s dream.

LIke other stand-alone dosing pumps, the Micom continous liquid feeder is adjustable and has an external input for turning the motor on and off with a separate controller. The continuous liquid doser is expected to retail for just 89€ or $99 in the US although Micom is working on a stand-up version of their dosing pump which has a touchscreen interface and which will be able to alternate between periodic and continuous dosing. [C-Blue]

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The beauty of the flower anemone, an under-appreciated gem for any reef aquarium

Morgan Moore — Sat, 26 May 2012 00:03:55 +0000

Reef Builders is proud to welcome Morgan Moore as our newest contributor. Residing in Florida, she is is a professional coral aquaculturist and the owner of the Reef Gardener.

I have always been a champion of the underdog when it comes to corals in this hobby and what is considered the most popular at the moment, often times are not my favorites. Flower anemones (Epicystis crucifer) are a truly underappreciated animal, mainly because they do not host clown fish and most retailers only carry the common tan, white, army green color morphs.

Many people I talk with seem to think all anemones are created equal meaning they are hard to keep, move all around your tank killing corals in the process, grow very large, and will jump into your powerhead at a moment’s notice. The popular clownfish-hosting anemones, like rose bubble tip (Entacmaea quadricolor) and long tentacle anemone (Macrodactyla doreensis), do tend to support this belief.

Flower anemones may not host clownfish but they have so much more going for them. They are one of the easiest anemones to keep and once introduced to a rocky spot in your tank that has good light, they usually will never move. If they do move they creep and will not jump off into the water column. They do host porcelain crabs, sexy shrimp, and anemone shrimp which are very entertaining and interesting to keep in a reef tank.

Flower anemones can be kept in groups, creating a beautiful anemone garden. They love light as their main source of food and can also be trained to take mysis shrimp if you want your anemone to grow faster. Most flower anemones grow to about 5 to 6 in. wide and it takes a long time for most to reach this size without supplemental feedings.

Best of all, flower anemones come in some really phenomenal color morphs. I even received some slightly deeper water morphs this spring from Jesus Larralde of Farside Tropicals that I had never seen before. These particular flower anemones came from about 30 feet of water and preferred shadier areas of the reef compared to the more light-loving flower anemones I usually keep. Though these morphs are quite rare, there are plenty of neon colored flower anemones that are more readily available.

If you are looking to buck the status quo and try something new, do not hesitate to get one or more of these hardy, beautiful anemones that will be a definite standout in your tank.

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Libra Vessel from Vertex are thoughtful, stackable dosing containers

Jake Adams — Fri, 25 May 2012 19:32:00 +0000

What’s there to say about the LIbra Vessel from Vertex? It’s a dosing container with a graduated metric scale built in to the clear viewing sides and the Libra Vessel also has well placed intakes for your dosing pump. But the best part of the Vertex Libra Vessel dosing container is that they are stackable, with the access port placed neatly on the side of the lid.

Vertex will offer the Libra Vessel in at least two sizes, a 2.5 liter and a 5 liter. Of course the Libra Vessels will stack with others of the same size but we failed to ask whether the sizes are inter-stackable. Sure you could just use the jug that your reef dosing juice came with but the Libra Vessels just look really good just sitting there, stacked up on top of each other. Now if the Libra Vessel could be easily outfitted with some kind of lip we could clip-on Coral-Shop’s stand alone Dosijet 1 to a Libra Vessel and have neat little unit of self-contained dosing.

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Fritz-Zyme gets backup from a few independent university studies

Brian Blank — Fri, 25 May 2012 18:47:29 +0000

Fritz-Zyme #9 was always a trusted go-to product for biological remediation in new and overstocked saltwater tanks to get them back in balance due to toxic ammonia and nitrite levels. With the plethora of enzymes and nitrifying bacteria additives on the market, it can be dizzying to wonder if any of these do in fact work. If first hand experience or word of mouth isn’t enough for you to be sold on Fritz-Zyme, there are some independent studies the company have on its website to help make an informed decision.

Three reports from the University of Texas A&M Corpus Christi, University of Nevada Las Vegas and Cal State Stanislaus put Fritz-Zyme head-to-head with other products. While there is plenty of information to sift through, we will highlight the most recent study from Texas A&M Corpus Christi the school’s mariculture program. The study was to test the viability of using commercial nitrifying bacteria in an indoor shrimp nursery.

The study found that in the high-density shrimp system when adding Fritz-Zyme’s TurboStart nitrifying bacteria there was a significant reduction in ammonia and nitrite, allowing for increased production with less water exchange. These closed system containing over 34,000 juvenile shrimp in low water volumes and the tests indicated some impressive survival rates. Granted, shrimp systems and aquariums are different beasts but impressive none the less.

Going slow and safe if the better way to go but you never know when biology decides to rear its ugly head on you and having some products that work on hand can save your critters and your sanity. If you want to find out more about these studies, head over to the Fritz-Zyme website.

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Todd Gardner is breeding success with AlgaGen Copepods & 20,000 Gallons

Matt Pedersen — Fri, 25 May 2012 18:11:21 +0000

Captive-bred Bowtie Damselfish, N. melas. Image by and courtesy of Todd Gardner.

Earler today, Todd Gardner (the man to first breed Liopropoma basslets) announced a new breeding success at the Long Island Aquarium where two damselfish species were specifically mentioned. Neoglyphidodon melas, the Bowtie Damsel, was reared from larvae collected in the 20,000 gallon reef. A quick check of the MBI Database revealed a prior succes with N. melas. However, it’s the other species that has me all excited because it represents a likely species first, the Barrier Reef Chromis, Chromis nitida.

Possible first-ever captive-bred Barrier Reef Chromis, Chromis nitida. Image by and courtesy of Todd Gardner.

The breakthrough in question surrounds the first captive breeding and rearing of the Barrier Reef Chromis, Chromis nitida. Not only is this a very handsome and uncommon species in the trade, but its relative, the Green Chromis (C. viridis) is the single most highly collected marine fish in the trade based on recently released data. The Green Chromis spawns thousands of very small eggs and has larvae that hatch out as small prolarvae, not unlike the larvae of pelagic spawners like Dragonets or small-egg substrate spawners like the Harlequin Filefish.

The breeding and rearing protocol reported for the Green Chromis basically included the use of 2 copepod species and greenwater technique with Nannochloropsis, and yielded a success rate of 5%. What is interesting is that one of the copepods used to rear Green Chromis is a relative of one of the foods reportedly made available to the Barrier Reef Chromis.

Even more encouraging is Todd’s ongoing use of only cultured copepods in the rearing of the eggs and larvae collected from the 20,000 gallon reef tank. The three species Gardner mentions, Acartia tonsa, Pseudodiaptomus pelagicus (a relative of Ps. serricaudatus used to rear Chromis viridis), and Parvocalanus crassirostris, all have pre-existing known applications (Damsels, Mandarins, Angels and others). These copepods are all available through AlgaGen as we told you about last year. Amazing what a year can do.

What Todd is doing at the Long Island Aquarium should be considered mission-critical research to address a common aquaculture question – “What ELSE can I do with these materials”? In every sense, Todd’s work should be replicable by a landlocked, inland aquarist with the same basic raw materials. It is truly only a matter of time before we see things like hobbyist-reared angelfish. We here at Reef Builders applaud Gardner for continuing the ongoing legacy of “open source breeding”, where the open sharing of breeding successes and the methods used allows us all to advance together.

All Todd will tell us now is that there’s still more in the works…so stay tuned.

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AquaSpaceLED 200 from AquaMedic is 200 watts of LED weak sauce

Jake Adams — Fri, 25 May 2012 17:18:47 +0000

What do you do when a 100 watt LED multichip isn’t enough? Well if you are AquaMedic you find a 200 watt multichip and make one of the biggest LED aquarium lights ever seen. The thing is, at 800 Euro (~$1,000), 200 watts of LED power from AquaMedic won’t come cheap, it doesn’t do any tricks, and it’s not exactly competitive with the huge current offering of aquarium LED lights. To be quite honest, the AquaSpaceLED 200 looks really cool but it lacks innovation and vision.

It’s one thing to buy an off the shelf 200 watt LED gym light and to mate it up to a reflector on the business end for better spread and more usefulness in aquariums. But taking that same gym light, not tweaking the color with some added blue and worst of all mating it with a 15 year old design for a mogul base metal halide reflector shows a lack of effort on AquaMedic’s part. Heck, it looks like the hole in the reflector was cut by hand, with scissors.

If you have to have all two hundred of your LED watts coming from a spotlight-style fixture with a single color multichip, we guess you could go with the AquaSpaceLED 200. But unless you’re a public aquarium, the average reefer will be able to find better than a hybrid gym LED downlight mated with a metal halide reflector.

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Cerebra Multi-Bar power center shows that the Vertex controller is getting closer to release

Jake Adams — Fri, 25 May 2012 14:24:14 +0000

The Cerebra Multi-Bar power center from Vertex is a clear sign that the company is inching ever closer to getting the Cerebra out into the world. It was two years ago at InterZoo 2010 that we got our first glimpse of the touchscreen Cerebra controller from Vertex. The Android-powered and app-capable aquarium controller has been in development and making steady progress towards reality since then, with the unveiling of the near production Cerebra motherboard itself last fall, and now with the Cerebra Multi-Bar power center.

Whereas the Vertex Cerebra controller is loaded with all the connections to the outside world like USB ports, wifi, ethernet, bluetooth and HDMI out, the Cerebra M-Bar power center is loaded with all the connections to the inside world. A single USB port connects the Multi-Bar to the Cerebra, six outlets power the aquarium devices, five BNC connectors receive a plethora of sensors and another three more inputs are ready to talk to a range of aquarium devices.

The Cerebra Multi-Bar doesn’t have a fixed price since it will be part of the package for a Vertex Cerebra controller although some power users may request additional Multi-Bar power centers in the future for exceptionally sprawling aquarium setups. We are excited to see Vertex gaining some ground on their Cerebra aquarium controller project which we were told would finally see some beta testing this summer with a full release optimistically slated for August.