Recent content by Biotoper

Small tanks are tough. I've had 3 dwarf puffers in a 10 for a year, but I'm tired of them, pretty boring - they're heading for the club auction in a couple weeks. I had my female betta in a 10 for a while, but when I moved her to my 75 community tank, she became a completely different fish...

That data in Mongabay is all from Fishbase http://www.fishbase.org/search.php?lang=english. The biology data on preferred habitat is particularly interesting. But Fishbase doesn't have any aquarium-related info like Mongabay does for FW fish. Still a good resource though.

Hey Billy, I took a look at Chromis, but what I read indicated that they need more room to swim than Chrysiptera and prefer to be in a school (vs. more territorial damsels that are better alone). Thanks for the tip on adding flake - I sort of thought LR sort of keeps itself going for a while...

Mongabay http://fish.mongabay.com/ is my bible for FW. I haven't found anything even close to this online for biotope/zonal info on marine fish/inverts.

This is a pretty good coral FAQ with lots of data on aquarium requirement. http://www.cs.uu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/aquaria/reefkeeper-faq/part2.html HTH, Ryan

This is my first SW tank, so I think seahorses would not be a good choice for me. Also, I don't want anything that I need to do a lot of work to keep fed. A small damsel like yellowtail would be another safe choice for me, but a sixline wrasse is my favorite right now. Anyway, I'm going to...

Did you get ammo/nitrite spikes as well or just nitrate? If the former, something probably died (microfauna, sponges inside the rock?) when you transfered the rock and sand, or soon after. If the latter, I'm not sure, but it may have to do with the loss of the denitrification from the...

You may not want to take rocks from your backyard, but rocks from the woods or a stream/pond would likely be fine (I'm sure those who sterilize everything they put in their tank will disagree). There's no guarantee that garden store rocks are perfectally safe. Vinegar test is simple - just...

The main issue is rapid change in salinity. It depends on what you're keeping, but a rough guideline I've read is to avoid decreasing the salinity more than 0.001 with each addition of freshwater. So if you notice a significant drop in water level, it's a good idea to add a portion, check...

I recently started up a 20H SW tank, which I'm planning on building into a "seagrass" biotope, composed of some LR, macroalgae (species that spread over sand rather than rock), and plastic Vallisneria to stand in for seagrass. Currently I've got 2" sand and ~15lb Florida LR I got from a friend...

One problem I have with most stands is they're too low. I have a home-built stand for my 75 that is about 4' high, right at eye level when standing. I think the normal 3' height is better if you're putting the tank by seating, like behind a sofa, in which case there's no need to look nice. I...

There are cases where you would not want to have a skimmer or only minimally skim, such as if you were trying to keep lots of filter feeders like sponges, sea squirts, etc, doing a seagrass biotope... However, such a tank is not recommended for beginners, you have to keep a very, very low fish...

Watchmans and shrimpgobies are the same thing. Several genera are included, Cryptocentrus, Stonogobiops, Amblyeleotris, a few more. Yellow watchman goby (C. cinctus) is probably the most commonly kept and very hardy. Stonogobiops are small and popular for nanos - might not like being in a 75...

If you're going to use a small tank for your first foray into SW, you'll want to be conservative in your stocking levels. I would just put 1 firefish in a 10g; 1 firefish and 1 clownfish would be fine in a 20g, preferably a true or false percula. Most clownfish are very good choices for...

Good choices include: Firefish Smaller clownfish like true and false perculas Smaller cardinalfish Lots of different gobies (clown, shrimp/watchman, neon, etc.)