Reef Chronicle

Food

Many marine fish will eat Flake food, which you’ll be able to find at the fish store. Tetra is popular. You can also purchase frozen foods at the fish store to feed your fish. Remember, Tangs are herbivores, so they will not want meaty foods, but rather algae based foods. Frozen Spirulina Enriched Brine Shrimp, Frozen Mysis, Frozen Blood Worms, Frozen Plankton are all good choices, and you can rotate through these over the period of a week, mixing their diet nicely. These foods come in trays, frozen in cubes. One thawed cube is sufficient for a few fish, so avoid overfeeding. You should see all the food consumed in 5 minutes. If you see food after that, you’ve fed too much. Feeding once a day is enough, unless you have a Tang. Then feeding twice a day is better, as these fish graze all day long in the wild. A good choice for feeding tangs is “Nori,” which are sheets of dried seaweed that you can clip to your tank and the Tang will rip off pieces and eat them.

Handling Sea-life

Make sure your hands and your equipment are clean. Never put your hands in your tank if they have soap or hand lotion on them. Never clean any equipment with soap. Buy a new sponge that does not have “anti-mildew” additives, and keep it with your saltwater stuff, where it never will be used with soap accidentally. You can often times clean things with a mixture of common white vinegar and hot water, to remove calcium deposits.

Tank Size

Make sure your hands and your equipment are clean. Never put your hands in your tank if they have soap or hand lotion on them. Never clean any equipment with soap. Buy a new sponge that does not have “anti-mildew” additives, and keep it with your saltwater stuff, where it never will be used with soap accidentally. You can often times clean things with a mixture of common white vinegar and hot water, to remove calcium deposits.

Lighting

Most tanks come with a single “Normal Output” fluorescent bulb, which is sufficient for fish. If you desire greater variety of items, such as corals or anemones, you’ll need far more lighting to allow them to thrive, let alone survive. When you get to that point, then your options will be VHO (Very High Output), PC (Power Compacts), or MH (Metal Halide). These will be very costly, but your inhabitants will respond with healthy growth. These lights are not necessary for tanks with a few fish, however. Buy a simple 24 hour timer to plug in your lights, so they run about 10-12 hours a day.

Clean up crew

Adding a few snails and small hermit crabs will help keep your tank clean. The snails will eat algae that grows on the glass or rocks, as well as the hermits. They also will consume excess food and waste the accumulates in your tank, helping keep things clean. You can not add these janitors until your tank has fully cycled. If you see a snail that is upside down on the floor (or substrate) of your tank, take the time to flip it back over, or a hermit crab will eat it and take the shell as its new home.