So far so good with the emerald crabs.  They haven’t eaten any of my corals and have been nibbling on the nuisance algae in my tank.  The only downside that I’ve noticed is that they tend to hide a lot.  Other than that, these two little creatures are a great addition to my reef tank!

I would recommend keeping these in small numbers in case they do end up being problematic (a guy I know bought a ‘colony’ of emerald crabs only to find they nearly ate all of his mushrooms).  Plenty of people don’t encounter that problem when kept small in number.

We are pleased to announce that Reef-Tracker.com is officially open for business, and membership is available completely free of charge! When you sign-up, (which we hope you will!) we ask that you please remember that we are still testing a lot of features and the best features are still works-in-progress.

To help solve issues that are likely to arise, we built a custom support ticketing system to keep track of everything.

Over the weekend, I purchased my first emerald crab.  In the same trip, I purchased two more cerith snails and one more nassarius snail, bringing the totals to five cerith and three nassarius snails.  Unfortunately, I found the emerald crab lifeless on the tank bottom yesterday, with a nassarius snail completely covering the carcass.  I decided to try again and went out and picked up two emerald crabs today.

I’m trying to combat a bubble and hair algae problem that was introduced to my tank after buying a mushroom-covered rock from a local fish store.  I’ll be measuring two things in the next few weeks:  (1) Emerald crabs’ effectiveness in removing bubble algae, and (2) Emerald crabs’ compatibility in a reef tank atmosphere.

I finally bought into the whole Twitter phenomenon and created an account just moments ago.  My main motivation for this is the development of a new web-based reef/aquarium tracking utility.  I’m bringing my professional experience with web development and programming and personal experience with aquarium-keeping together in hopes to create the perfect tool, which will be available as a free service to the public (there may be a premium membership at some point, but as of right now I do not want to go that route).

I don’t want to give away too much about Reef-Tracker.com, but it will be well worth the wait.  I’m working day-after-day to get it up as fast as possible, while making sure that it is the best it can be.  After the initial release, we will continue to update the web-based platform and add new features.

I want your feedback!  If you are interested in beta testing (not quite there yet, but e-mail me still), or have an idea about a particular feature, please tweet me or comment on this post.  I can’t wait to hear what kinds of ideas you have.

Follow me on Twitter

Edit on 6/17/09:  After talking to a few respected members of ReefLounge.com, my mind has been put at ease (mostly).  I am told that this is most likely a macroalgae of some sort and should be harmless.  According to one member, my best bet would be finding a marine biologist who specializes in marine algae.  If anyone can point me in that direction (I would really like to know what I have), I would be very grateful. Thanks to the good folk over at ReefLounge.com.

Over the weekend, I put together my own hang-on-back siphon overflow.  I don’t have the U-tube or prefilter sponge for it yet, but I will soon.  The total amount spent so far is $20.  When purchased premade, this type of overflow starts at around $100 and can cost a few hundred dollars.  I estimate that I will have to spend roughly $20 dollars more to finish the project.

Parts/Equipment Needed:

• $10.99 – Lee’s Aquarium Specimen Box (Large)
• $9.99 – 1″ Bulkhead Kit (includes strainer and L-shaped PVC adapter)

According to my research, the 1″ bulkhead will give us a maximum of 600 GPH, which will be more than enough for my application.  Here’s a picture of what it looks like so far:

On Saturday, I visited Captain Nemo’s, a store in Southeastern Pennsylvania, and bought a green star polyps frag.  After drip acclimating it for a little over two hours, I put it in the tank and it opened up within 12 hours.  Green star polyps are a great addition to any reef tank, and relatively easy to maintain.

On a side note, I changed my activated carbon today. and yesterday I used a turkey baster to clear off the live rock and sand.  Who doesn’t love a little maintenance?

Everything is going great with my 20 gallon long aquarium. My ammonia and nitrites didn’t see any huge spikes and were only elevated for two days after switching. It made me nervous but I’m glad it didn’t last long. Through the use of my refugium, one saltwater plant, denitrator filter media, and biweekly water changes, I have managed to reduce my nitrates to below 5 ppm.

My mandarinfish and clarkii clownfish are both doing great. My current livestock is as follows:

• (1) Clarkii clownfish
• (1) Mandarinfish
• (2) Narcissus snails
• (3) Cerith snails
• (1) Turbo snail
• (4) to (6) Blue-legged hermit crabs

I also have some coral in the tank now:

• Pulsing xenia
• Blue/green mushrooms
• Clove polyps [grew off initial live rock]
• Brown button polyps (some with neon green center)

When I bought the ten gallon tank, I purposefully bought equipment that would work in a 20-30 gallon tank.  Last week, I bought a 20 gallon long tank and 20 lbs. of CaribSea Arag-Alive Fiji Pink to supplement the sand I already had which resulted in a 1 1/2 inch sand bed tank-wide.  There were a few things that prompted me to get a slightly larger tank:  Clarkii clownfish will grow to 5 to 5½ inches, need more surface area for copepods to live (they feed the mandarinfish), help keep water levels stable and leave more room for error, want more swimming room for fish (reason I opted for 20L over 20H).

I put down the new sand first and added the “old” sand on top to help prevent any major cycle from happening.  I like the look and feel of the CaribSea Fiji Pink sand.  The sand isn’t as fine as the Nature’s Ocean blend I bought for the 10 gallon, but it has some nice shells and other fragmented things from the ocean.  The only downside was that there were all these dead worm-looking things floating around by the time I emptied the bag.  I used the fish net to skim the surface.

I made a huge mistake in doing all of this… I started the switch at around 9 PM, and mistakenly thought that I could finish this all by midnight.  Needless to say, I was wrong…very wrong.  I was up until 2:30 PM trying to get all of this done.  This was my first time ever moving a tank/upgrading.  I definitely learned a lot in doing this.

To those of you who are thinking about or planning on doing this, I offer the following advice:

• Give yourself an entire day to move the tank.  The entire process will typically take 1-3 days, though it can take longer depending on the circumstances.
• If you are upgrading, have all or most of the water premixed, heated, and properly aerated the day before.  Make sure you have freshwater on hand as well.
• Make sure all of your equipment will be sufficient for your new tank.  If you have coral or plants, make sure you have the proper light intensity and watts per gallon standard.
• Put any new sand down first, then cover it with the existing sand.  This will help keep the beneficial bacteria alive and reduce the possibility of a “large” cycle.
• To ensure a quick and painless process, exercise extreme care when placing the sand in the tank.  If the sand is just dumped in it can cause cloudiness that can last for days.  I recommend waiting at least an hour before turning on any pumps or filters.  I made the mistake of leaving everything on and had the HOB refugium impeller (AquaClear 70) clog up and stop.  My heart nearly stopped, but I cleaned it out and got it to work again.  Use the cup method to prevent excessive cloudiness (put sand in cup, place your hand over top so no sand falls out, place cup upside down on bottom and slowly pull it up).
• If you have livestock, make sure that the new tank conditions match those of the old tank.  After getting them established in their “new” environment, you may continue to make adjustments.
• Research, research, research.  This is not an extensive list.  These are just things that I personally picked up along the way, both through research and experience.
• Be patient.  (I can’t stress this enough…)

If I missed anything, please feel free to comment!

Using a DIY refugium tutorial I found, I crafted a homemade, hang-on refugium for my ten gallon nano reef tank using the AquaClear 70 power filter.  I decided to do this for two reasons: (1) to have refuge for copepods to breed with the final result being to feed a mandarin, and (2) filtration.

Parts & Supplies Needed: AquaClear 70 Power Filter, an appropriate fluorescent blub w/ clip-on fixture or similar, razor, scissors, macroalgae (chaetomorpha), piece of glass (optional)

To light the unit, I use a 50/50 10 watt compact fluorescent blub that plugs into a regular light socket.  I am considering getting a higher voltage grow lamp from Home Depot or Lowes to see if I can improve the current situation.  The light is mounted using a clip-on fixture I bought for $11 dollars.  Because I use reverse lighting (i.e. when my tank lights are off, the refugium light is on, and vice versa), I am able to point the light on my tank to add a little extra light for the anemone and coral.

I won’t go into great detail on exactly what I did to create this because there is a link to the actual tutorial at the bottom of this post.  Basically, you cut the basket into three parts (bottom + two sides).  The bottom is used to prevent the macroalgae and refugium inhabitants from flowing into the tank.  One side of the basket is used to divide the macroalgae from the biological filter or whatever else you decide to put in there, and the other side may be used to divide it further.

HOB refugium tutorial for pico and nano reef tanks