Category Archives: Tank Tales

11.27.12

What the heck is fragging?

Posted by Christina // 6 Replies

First thing is first….does anyone remember Fraggle Rock?

All my little cousins think I make these critters up. Boo-yah.
Ohhh to be a child of the eighties. Second thing second….below you will find a lot of words.
Pictures are at the bottom for you visual learners. For those of you who are curious about this whole “fragging” thing we are always talking about. I am going to break it down for you. “Fragging” is short for fragmentation, it’s the process of reproducing corals. The long story short is you break a piece off of your coral and call that it’s baby. Fragging is usually pretty simple and a good way for you to share or sell some of your corals. A lot of people frag their corals and hold onto the mother colony…kind of like breeders. The best reason to frag is simple….conservation. Corals are dying off at a remarkable rate and one day the majority of corals will be found in homes. Sad but true friends. Corals are almost always fragged out of the water, you generally don’t want to keep them out of the water longer than 15 minutes and no extreme temperatures people. You think your Hawaiian pretty piece wants to visit the chilly South Pole….nope. They are tropical peoples.

If you want to frag a coral with large polyps, gently wave your hand over the coral before removing it from the water so that the polyps retract. Major tissue damage can occur if you lift some corals with large polyps out of the water while the polyps are fully extended. Ouch.

How you frag depends on what coral you are fragging. If you are wanting to split a soft coral or leather then we suggest a scalpel. If it is a rough and tumble kind of coral, then try coral cutters or even a band saw. Be careful please, no coral is worth being thumbless.

Here is where I will beg you to always wear safety goggles. There is a woman from our neck of the woods who was blinded after a Zoa attacked her eyeball with it’s squirt. Danger, please wear goggles….oh and gloves too. Ok, now I am done preaching. Love ya.

We always dip both the mother colony and the new frag in a coral dip containing an iodine solution after fragging. This dip will help ward off bacteria, fungus, and protozoans. Gotta keep your babies healthy.

After you break a piece off from your mother colony, you can return the her to the water and let her relax…she had a long day. Using some aquarium-safe super glue for SPS corals and epoxy for LPS, stick the frag to a rock or plug and return it to the water. Eventually, the frag will encrust the plug or rock.

We use epoxy on most LPS corals because epoxy can handle the weight of the frag better, and it generally only comes in contact with the dead calcareous skeleton. The epoxy curing process will kill any tissue it comes into contact with, so Super Glue is really the best bet for SPS corals even if it sounds crazy.

It is important to never frag more than about 25-30% of your mother colony at one time. Seems like common sense….but you know.

Happy Fragging my friends!

11.13.12

Our shark egg cloned itself....

Posted by Christina // 4 Replies

So you may remember that Tim suckered me into buying a shark egg.

We’ve been watching our little baby grow day by day, but there is a problem.
He is not growing.

Then magically this happened.

Our shark egg cloned itself right before our eyes.

If you are buying that then I have a really cool sandbox to sell you.

Here is what really happened….Tim gave me the puppy eyes until I let him buy another one.
He said that he needed two so that he can compare them.
Like a science experiment. He is smart like that.

His thorough research has shown that…our original egg was probably a dud.

We are going to keep the first egg – affectionately named Chihuahua by the lovely Sandy – in the tank just in case, but odds are looking about as good as the Rams season. We are going all in on baby shark number two….who still needs a name y’all.

Maybe when we get some real movement we will post a video to pull at your heart strings….everyone loves babies right?

10.30.12

We Will Soon Have a Baby Shark....Hopefully

Posted by Christina // 7 Replies

The other day we did something a little crazy…..

We went to our local fish store and picked up a couple things.
One of those things, was a shark egg.

I do believe our fascination with getting a shark egg began while we were on our East Coast Road Trip.
We ran across these babies while at the Shedd Aquarium.

We have been researching ever since.
Now that I re-watch that video, I feel like we should clean our egg up. Tim will be checking in to give you an “egglet update” and give you all the specs in case you decide you need a little baby shark in your life as well. It is a learning experience for us and we have been told that something like one in six don’t ever hatch. We have been holding light up and looking for some movement, T says the little guy is growing but I have yet to see him. If you never hear about our shark egg again, you will know things didn’t go so well! Say a little prayer that we will soon be proud shark parents….

10.19.12

The Great Debate....

Posted by Christina // 11 Replies

Is not over immigration or the economy, it’s over what to put above our tank. We have looked at tons of art with no compromise in sight.
We tried getting Romney & Obama’s suggestions, but apparently they are busy.

So when I started going vinyl crazy, T suggested some custom vinyl art.

We quickly settled on the quote, “Here fishy fishy” because of a laughable scene from Deuce Bigalow.

After cutting the vinyl on my Silhouette Cameo….we got started.

Funny story about that laser level. After seeing my crazy crooked application on my jars. Please pretend you didn’t notice okay?Tim decided that he was not leaving me to put up the vinyl…something about being impatient or in a hurry or some jazz.So we rushed out to get a laser level. Gotta say, one of our best investments to date. Just wait till you see the next project it inspired.Back to business.

So what do you think? Would you have gone with a goldfish painting? Should we have added a fish hook, or is that just cruel?

10.17.12

What the heck is ICH...

Posted by Christina // 5 Replies

When people start getting into the saltwater hobby, they soon learn about ich. The scientific mumbo-jumbo is Ichthyophthiriasis. You will usually hear it called “white spot” or ich for short.

Ich is a very contagious, very common parasite that affects aquarium fish.
Here is the ringer…it can be lethal.

Ich appears as very tiny white specs on the fish, no bigger than a grain of salt. The spots are generally consistent in size and once they are there, you need to treat them.

Early signs can include the fish scratching on the rocks or swimming in an odd behavior. Like they are doing an uncomfortable little dance trying to brush this infection off.

Ich is for fishies what colds are for you and me. The causes can be bad water conditions, live food that’s infected, and even stress.
Believe it or not fish get really stressed when you change their environment.

Ich spreads like a second grade chicken pox epidemic, so you need to be careful when you are buying fish to look for the symptoms above.

If you do happen to catch a little white spot, there are a few treatments.
We usually start by supplementing garlic in their food, that helps to boost their immune system and fight the parasite.

There are lots of medications that you can buy at local fish stores, but we have not tried any so we aren’t giving out recommendations. There are other remedies like UV light treatments, fresh water dips, lowering your salinity levels and even adjusting your temperature. Like I said, we haven’t tried that so we can’t give you any advice. Now if you want to know about vodka dosing….we got cha.

Our best recommendation is to pay attention to your tank, you will catch ich early and be able to take simple steps to get your fish back kickin.

10.10.12

Our fish get crunk when we vodka dose....

Posted by Christina // 10 Replies

Recently, Tim and I had a bit of a nitrate problem.
We did some research and kept coming up with a very strange remedy.

Vodka dosing.
This perfect drawing found right here.

Let me tell you that the night T came to me and said he wanted to put vodka in our tank with my beloved fishies, I was a little more than leery.

I did my research right away since like most men, he couldn’t wait more than five minutes to get started.

Since we are still officially “youngins” we did happen to have an extra bottle of vodka just lying around, but before he started ~~popping bottles~~ pouring away…I had to get my facts.

I have heard stories of haters pouring nasty bleach in their enemies tanks to kill everything in the tank…..so mean.
If you ever want to break my heart, just threaten that above sentence.

I did what any caring fish mama would do….I made a pun.
Then I got my research on and found out where this crazy idea came from.

Charles Delbeek, M.SC. who is a marine biologist at the Steinhart Aquarium explained that: “the “vodka method” is a means to add inorganic carbon in the form alcohol to cause bacteria to grow. In boosting bacterial growth, nitrate and phosphate are incorporated by the bacteria, lowering these values in the water. The excess bacteria are then either removed through skimming or are consumed by other organisms, such as sponges.”

There were a few debates over this method but the general consensus was it works really well but is a little bit of a shock to your tank so don’t dose alcohol everyday or anything. Which is fine by us because we don’t want to host an A.A. meeting in our tank every Monday.

I gave Timbo the go ahead and he poured in the dose he already had preportioned and waiting.

We are by no means recommending this, because we haven’t done it enough. I will say that we have seen a drop in the nitrates and maybe it’s just in our heads but the colors seem to really be popping!

Check out what my phone thinks…

We shall see…I will keep you posted.

Don’t you love learning new things about your hobbies!