Protect the environment and your frags.

Are you near the Baton Rouge, LA area and have a reef tank? I’m headed that way soon to do some filming and would love to meet with some local reef keeper types during my stay.

Let me know if you fit the bill and I’ll be in touch.

- Mark

Happy July 4th!

Waiting for your new saltwater tank to cycle can be a real P.I.T.A. For roughly a month when you first start your tank, you can’t put anything in your tank: no fish, certainly no corals, no invertebrates. So you get to stare at a dark, empty tank. Can you say BORING?

(Note: some people advocate adding damsel fish to help your tank cycle. Please don’t EVER do this as it is mean to the fish as they have to swim in toxic waste. Also, damsels get very aggressive and they are impossible to catch without tearing apart your tank. Additionally, using ANY fish to cycle your tank is cruel, don’t do it).

To solve the new tank cycling problem, there are several products such as Brightwell Aquatic’s MicroBacter7, or SeaChem’s Stability that contain the bacteria your tank needs to fully cycle. Lots of people claim these bacteria-in-a-bottle products are snake oil since “bacteria can’t live in a bottle” or “you can’t speed up mother nature”.

I’m here to tell you that these products work and here is a graph of my 90 gallon tank when I was cycling it to prove it. For 2 weeks, I didn’t add any bacteria products to the tank and my cycle trudged along…slowly. Week 3 started and I couldn’t take staring at an empty tank anymore so I added Stability to my tank and 7 days later, my tank was cycled and ready for livestock.

(In the graph above, Nh3 is ammonia, NO2 is nitrites)

For $8, I recommend using Stability to help your tank cycle. The product worked great for me and if it doesn’t pan out for you, you’re out $8 and your tank will continue to cycle anyways. Minimal risk, huge potential reward.

TIP: Buy Stability (or MacroBacter7) from the largest retailer you can find. Why? Since this product contains bacteria, the shorter time it’s been on the shelves, the better. A large retailer will turn these products over quickly, helping to ensure that they are fresh.

Thanks to everyone who has been sending me updates on how knowing their tank personality has improved their tanks. I’m glad to hear things are going better for you all?

I’m curious though – what would you like to hear more about from the saltwater tank world? What’s something you are dealing with in regards to your tank that if I addressed that issue, would make things better for your tank?

This is your chance to tell me what you’d like to me to talk about on the blog and on my show, Mr. Saltwater Tank TV, so post what you’d like to hear more about in the comments below.

#1: Hang on the Back (HOB) Overflow Boxes

HOB overflow boxes came about so people with non reef-ready tanks (tanks that are not drilled) could use a sump. HOB overflows work by creating a syphon to draw water over the top of your tank and then down into your sump. When the syphon breaks, then your return pump in your sump pumps all the water in your sump into your tank, causing an overflow.

Many people drill me for saying HOB overflows are bad because they assert that when HOB overflows are setup properly, then they are fail safe. Setting them up properly requires buying extra pumps and modifying the overflow, which is like buying a new car and the salesman says, “to make sure it runs right, you have to bang on the hood twice, turn the key just right, then check under the hood every other day” Who would buy that car? Not me.

Lots of people have stories about HOB overflows that have run fine for years, which is great. I also have several friends who had HOB overflows which were professionally installed, and they all had several floods each. They don’t have any floods anymore because they switched to a drilled, reef-ready tank. Just because you can play with fire and not get burned, doesn’t mean you should keep playing with fire.

#2: Canister Filters

Canister filters are great for freshwater setups, not for saltwater tanks. Unless they are cleaned regularly (like weekly, EVERY week), then these canisters become nitrate factories and cause more problems then they are worth. Maybe you reef junkies would be up for that kind of work, but if you are a reef junkie, then you are going to have a sump and won’t need a canister filter anyway.

#3 Tap Water

Yes, its paid for, but if you use it, you’ll pay for it down the road. Tap water is full of all kinds of nasty stuff we can’t see with our eyes – metals, chorine, rust, sediments, etc. Using straight tap water introduces a whole bunch of things that will either harm (and probably kill) your fish, or create a huge food source for nuisance algae. There are declorinators that condition tap water to an extent, but make it easy on yourself. Use ONLY RO/DI water in your tank.

After 3 days of trying, I finally caught my 6-line wrasse. I filmed the whole thing so I’ll post video of it soon!

WOOHOOO!!!!

I’ve joined forces with Austin Reef Club to offer a weekly newbie roundtable chat! During the chat, you can ask your questions and get real answers from me and other Austin Reef Club staff members!

Note: An username on the Austin Reef Club is required. There is no charge for user names…just register on the forum!

What: Newbie Roundtable Chat with Mr. Saltwater Tank and the Austin Reef Club Staff
When: Every Tuesday night, 7-7:30p
Where: www.austinreefclub.com
Why: Because getting real time answers to your questions is priceless.

I’ve been running the CO2 scrubber for 2 weeks now so I wanted to post my thoughts on the product.

Overall, the scrubber was very successful in not only raising my pH, but also maintaining it at high levels. Before I was using the scrubber, my pH would drop about .3 overnight, now I’m only seeing a .1 swing. This, makes me happy and my corals are back to growing like crazy now that the pH is back to their liking.

The one draw back is that the cartridge is only good for about 2 weeks. Lots of users have been saying the same thing and I hoped I might see longer life out the cartridge, but I didn’t. $25 every two weeks isn’t in my budget, nor on my list of “must haves” so I’m on the hunt to find a cheaper way to get the same effect.

I see the CO2 scrubber becoming a lot like carbon: once many competitors enter the market place, then the price will drop and reefkeepers will replace their CO2 scrubber media just like replacing carbon.

Evidence of the robber.

I walk in my house last night from happy hour with my wife and I immediately sense something was off. I sniff the air and smell feces.

Immediately I start walking the house wondering if someone has broken in. I turn down the hallway towards the back bedroom and the door to our A/C closet is open..

“That’s strange” I think.

Next, I walk into the back bedroom and it looks horrible. One of the drapes is pulled out of the wall, the bookshelf in the corner is pushed over, there are books on the floor and I smell poop.

I instantly rule out our 13 yr old yellow lab – she wouldn’t jump on the bed and pull down drapes – she sleeps all the time!

Then, I spot it. On one of the pillows is the evidence I’ve been looking for – a perfect paw print of a raccoon.

My wife and I had been hearing something in our attic, but we’d only hear it once a month or so, so I had been ignoring calling a animal removal specialist. Well, here’s what I get for putting it off – a destroyed back bedroom and raccoon poop spread amongst the items in my back bedroom.

I was at first angry with myself, but then I thought, “Thank goodness it didn’t go after my fish!” Raccoons eat fish. Who knows what kind of damage it might have done if it had tried to get into my tank!

The animal control company will be here in 30 minutes…

I love SPS. I tried to resist it, but I failed. Too many great looking corals that grow in too many interesting shapes and styles. So earlier this summer, I started buying some SPS frags to start my own farm.

And all summer long, I’ve been watching frag after frag bleach out and die. Great….

Coincidently, I’ve also been battling a low pH issue all summer. My pH ranged from 7.75 @ night to 8.05 during the day.

For the first two months of having low pH, my tank was doing great and my coral growth was stunning – up to 1cm a week for SPS corals. Then one day my SPS started bleaching rapidly for no apparent reason – no sign of pests, no new corals/fish introduced to the tank that might have brought something in with them and my Alk levels were constant @ 9.

After trying to dip my corals to see if the issue was bacterial, the only thing left that was out of whack in my tank was my pH levels. I tried adding pH buffer to the tank, which would temporarily raise my pH, but by the next day, my pH was back to 7.8.

At this point, I found a stumbled across a new product called “The CO2 scrubber” by MCU Research. The theory behind the scrubber is easy: houses that don’t get a lot of fresh air (that’s me – central texas, A/C on all summer which recycles air from inside the home), build up an excess of CO2, which in turns gets pulled into your skimmer, mixed into your tank water, which then lowers tank pH, etc.

So I tested out their theory. About this time in central Texas, the oven turned off (aka, the summer heat broke) so I could open my windows at night and during the day. Two hours after opening up my house, my ph rose to 8.2.

And…I’m sold.

3 days later, my CO2 scrubber arrived and my ph once again rose and has stayed steady ever since. (see graph below).

So for about $50 including shipping, you can fix one potential issue in your reef keeping system.

Links for the kit I put together:

- Bulk Reef Supply Canister $12

- 1/4″ MPT to 3/8″ Barb – available at your local hardware store ($2 max)

- CO2 scrubber replacement cartridge $25

Graph of effects of adding CO2 scrubber:

The graph below is over a 24 period – 7a to 7a.