20150220 New Year resolution painting series

Female Japanese Swallowtail angel- Acrylic on wood panel

One of my new year's resolution for 2015 is one painting a day. It seems to have been a long forgotten skill as I worry much of mundane business. I did not want to get these posted earlier as I wasn't sure about this commitment so I wanted to wait and make sure I am able to keep up. Now that it's mid February I feel I have been keeping a pretty good cadence in my daily painting so I decided it's time to start posting!

20150219 Planted Tank competition

Not everyone has the patience, and the aesthetic point of view to design, and execute a planted tank landscaping. But a competition is always fun to watch.

A group of ladies designing a planted tank landscape

A small planted tank competition

One of the finished products of the planted tank design

20150217 Real Reef Rock

Many saltwater/reef hobbyist might not realize how devastating the removal of liverock from the ocean can be.
Liverock from the ocean is essentially the coral fossil in the ocean. When coral calcify and dies more coral grows onto it. The results of this layers upon layers of coral, clam, and oysters growing and forming calcium carbonate structure results in liverock, which all corals grow on today in the ocean.
Ever since I have learned of this, I have stopped purchasing liverock collected from the wild such as Fiji, Tuvalu, Tonga, etc. The fact is these liverock forms important foundation for coral and many reef dwellers to survive, by removing a cubic feet of liverock we are ripping as many possibility of corals to grow and thrive on it.
For this reason I have been purchasing rocks strictly from other hobbyists torn down tanks, as well as Florida dry rock- rock that has been dried and buried on land, not in ocean to be cultured into liverock.

Real Reef Rock artificial liverock with beneficial bacteria

A company called Real Reef Rock also provides a sensible, eco-friendly solution- they offer artificial rock that looks, and feels just like real liverock with the same porous structure. They have also packed these new pH balanced rock with beneficial bacteria to get your tank kick started in cycling without the nasty curing and dying off process of wild collected limericks!

The cross section of a real reef rock liverock showing the porous structure

Real Reef rock liverock comes in variety of size shape, and even coloration to fit your tank landscaping desire

20150208 Acrylic Sump

One company that stood out in the aquarium show was ZeroEdge Aquariums. Below is an example of the type of aquariums they produce. This captured my attention because this is not the first time I have seen a tank like this- the first time was actually the Giant clam display at the Waikiki Aquarium!

This Zero Edge Tank here features the water flows off the side of tank.

And below was the photo I took of the Zero Edge tank at the Waikiki Aquarium. A Tank like this in your house would likely cost well over $6,000. But the view is unmatched!

ZeroEdge Aquarium at the Waikiki Aquarium giant clam display

Another very interesting line of product they offer is this full functioning acrylic sump with built in refugium. Unfortunately they aren't cheap either, even though they look fabulous if you have the sump easily accessible as part of display.

Acrylic sump with built in refugium

Acrylic sump with built in refugium

Here are some other options if you are looking for acrylic sumps:

Synergy Reef

Melev's Reef

Advanced Acrylics

20150203 Jellyfish Tank

Recently my mother told me a story that sounds quit horrible but is undoubtedly happening at most developed and wealthy nations- A girl whom she calls daughter but is not related to me, lives in Beijing and has quite a wealthy family. One day the girl's husband felt inspired to purchase a Jellyfish tank despite having no previous experience in keeping anything saltwater, not did he do any study on it. So the natural course of this sequence is tank bought, something got put in, and then died within days, then the tank just left unattended and dried up.
So the point of this story is- Jellyfish is not impossible to keep, in the contrary, they are quite simple. But- like keeping any animal, one must either have adequate knowledge or some experience to successfully keep them thriving. And here is a great set up that I thought I would get- if I wasn't already so committed to the amount of fishtanks I am attending!

Jellyfish Art comes with a complete kit and option to ship the jellyfish separately until you have successfully set up and cycled the tank. It is compact and doesn't take up a lot of room. The tank also comes with pretty illumination to accent the translucent creatures!
But before you commit, once again, I suggest doing some thorough study on keeping these beautiful creatures: Jellyfish keeping

20150201 African Cichlids

Until I became exposed and deeply memorized by the marine fish trade, I once considered going hardcore into African Cichlids. They are by far the most vibrant, colorful freshwater fish there is. Not only that, they are also quite hardy. And with the hard, high pH water here in the America Midwest, it is perfect for them.

African cichlids are easy to keep, and many of them are mouth brooders thus easy to breed and raise young. Unfortunately they have earned a bad reputation for being aggressive. Not only that, because of what people perceive as their aggressiveness, they also tend to offer them improper diet- Most African cichlids are primarily vegetarians but many people offer diet closer to the carnivore range.

The truth is, much like many marine fish, African cichlids are extremely territorial and requires a large range of space between each other, especially if they are nesting for comfort and security. For this reason, if you are overstocking the fishtank they can't help but squabble and display aggressiveness. While the tank above stocks quite a few of them for display purpose, for the long term health of the fish and tank, a tank of this size should really host no more than a three to four pairs of cichlids. And no, they aren't really community fish.