A Death In The Crew

My hardest working sand-sifting starfish died last night. It is very unfortunate because he was my hardest worker in keeping the sand nice and turned over. I will now be on the lookout at local fish stores (LFS) for a nice replacement.

Scrubbing Algae

When scrubbing the inside of either a glass or an acrylic tank, make sure to frequently check the tool for sand. Any little bit will scratch the tank like crazy. An easy way to avoid it is to just not get close to the sand bed at all.

Cleaning Acrylic

When you are cleaning an acrylic tank, don't make the mistake of using windex or any other ammonia based product. It causes little cracks to appear that can't be buffed out. It is a permanent marking that will ruin the tank.

Live Rock

When working with live rock, be cautious and gentle. They're rocks. Rocks are sharp. Sharp things cut you. Sharp rocks cut you over and over in various places. Sharp rocks in saltwater makes it worse. Saltwater in open wounds stings like crazy. Lesson in a nutshell, be prepared for cuts and stinging when working with live rock.

Water Changes

The most important thing about keeping a tank is to keep up on water changes. A water change takes out old, contaminated water and replaces it with new, nutrient full water. When you mix salt water, you are not only adding salt. You are also adding in nutrients that the corals absorb to survive. As they remove these from the water, you need to replace them along with removing the collected waste in the water. An ideal tank should get a 10% water change at least once a week.

Overflowing

Today at work, I learned a great lesson. My manager had unplugged the sump to the reef tank to do something. While I was walking past, I noticed a puddle underneath the stand. My other coworker panicked and hurried to plug it back in. My manager said that was a bad thing to do because wherever it was leaking from, it would have shot out quicker with the pumps back on.

Die Off

When your corals experience the poor event of dying, it is important to take care of the dying parts before it spreads to throughout the whole tank and takes more coral with it.

To prevent this from happening, follow these steps:

1. Start a siphon into a bucket and suck off all the die off from the corals
2. Empty the bucket and then siphon some about 2.5 gallons of tank water back inside the bucket
3. Add 25 drops of Lugol's Solution to the bucket
4. Take out corals that had die off and place them in the bucket for 10 minutes tops
5. During the ten minutes shake the corals around to get additional die off out of the bases
6. After the ten minutes, add the coral back to the tank, no need to rinse