20150329 Janesville Fragswap

It is amazing that the Wisconsin are has so many aquarium clubs with multiple fragswap or similar community events each year to provide vendors and hobbyists a fair trade platform for quality, and inexpensive experience to fill up their tanks. The event took place at the Janesville convention center, a small venue but sufficient for this function.

Before the event begins, all venfors busy prepping for their start.

Some sexy corals from one of the vendors

 Though there weren't as many vendors at this event (still an impressive 15 or so) as the Madison fragswap event, the quality of livestock and corals is definitely no lesser than the Madison swap.

Torch coral of variety colorations

Coral pricing divided by glowstick

One of the vendors provided some diversity with sea-pen, and a large group of lyre tail anthias

Cool looking nudibranch, though I don't recommend the average hobbyist keeping these difficult to maintain animals

20150329 180 Reef Tank update

A video update of my 180 Gallon Reef Tank after a couple weeks of intensive stocking effort.

Below are some of the new additions from this weeks fragswap at Janesville Wisconsin.

Middle of the 180 tank

New 4" Squamosa Clam

New Rose Bubble Tip Anemone about 3" disk, 6" open

Elegant coral in the process of swallowing some food

The Clarkii clownfish ditched the long tentacle anemone to host this rose bubble tip within 10 minutes of the anemone's introduction!

Live Aquaria- Diver's Den Behind the scene tour: The Corals

In case you've missed my previous posts on the facility's fish and inverts, here are their links:
Fish
Invertebrate
And for you coral fanatics here is the coral section of the facility. The Diver's Den facility of LiveAquaria is also the coral farm for this company. Here is a little background and fun facts of the place: http://www.liveaquaria.com/general/general.cfm?general_pagesid=377

The coral display tank by the office in Diver's Den, very impressive and colorful.

A video of this tank:

First I want to show you this beautiful sps and lps coral display tank made of the aquaculture corals here at Diver's Den. This tank sits at the corner where the coral farm meets the offices.

Live Aquaria's aquacultured coral grow out farm

Here is a panoramic video view of the facility:

The coral farm here at the Diver's Den facility are made of numerous 3'X6' approximately 1' deep. The water is crystal clear and each bin houses a few turbo snails and a surgeonfish for algae patrol. Some of them are impressive adult chevron tangs! The corals all sit on a grid of egg crate that's boosted 4" off the bottom. I see the tangs darting back and forth from the top of the corals to the bottom of it. Some bins contain sand as they place lps or sps onto it. Some bins are bare bottom. Each of the LPS corals are carefully placed onto a ring of cut PVC pipe to prevent the sand from irritating it.
All of the corals that I could see had nice but not abnormally large polyp extensions.

A bin with crushed coral bottom housing non-photo synthetic corals

There are 2-3 bins like the one above housing the non-photo synthetic corals. And as you can see from the reflection, instead of Metal Halide or LED lighting, these bins use t-5 lighting for any misc. photosynthetic coral they need to place here. I also want to mention that one of these bins had a school of baby bangaii cardinal fish and it's a perfect environment since they feed these bins heavily with nutrient rich zooplankton to keep the non-photo synthetic corals happy.

A bin of marincultured sps corals

The bin above showcase a group of the marine cultured sps corals. As you can see they sit on a PVC ring with their sky#, price, and ID clearly labeled so you will always receive the correct item. The egg crate is 4" above the bare bottom with a chevron tang patrolling this bin for algae control. Each bin only houses one vegetarian fish, and with a turbo snail to supplement. You can see this bin features a 400W metal halide from the reflection. The halide sits on a track and is moved up and down the bin to provide the corals lighting from all angels instead of creating a "hotspot"
Here is a short "tease" of what these corals look like with the water flow and the light.

A bin with mixed marincultured sps coral and aquaculture frags

This bin also features some beautifully colored marine cultured sps coral, with some aquaculture sps & lips frags. Apologies for the really blue hue of the picture- I believe they use 20K bulbs for all the corals under metal halide.
I'm just going to post a few more photos here without much further description as they are pretty self-descriptive.

A bin with primarily aquacultures corals here in different sizes and shapes.

Amazing group of blasto frags here. I was really tempted to take them all!

How about a garden of hammers? all in different colors too!

Corals are sectioned of for pricing and ease of identification when workers here pick them for order. These lps and soft corals are under LED lighting as you can see from the reflection.

Another bin of amazing hammer corals! raise your hand if you want them all!

Group of long tentacle plates, the cutie at the bottom right is now in my tank!

And lastly a bare bottom bin featuring a garden of elegant corals!

Diver's Den Tour- Invertebrate Section

To continue the previous thread, this post will feature the invertebrate section of the facility.
First I want to show you the massive protein skimmer and reactor combo at this LiveAquaria, there are several of them:

This protein skimmer is taller than me... enough said.

Asked my wife to model for scale, humongous carpet anemones

More carpet anemones

Each of the anemones in this section, including carpet and a bunch of bubble tip are all hosting a pair of clownfish. it's really cool to see they make them all happy, even though as a retailer it's completely unnecessary to pair clownfish with anemone since one or the other would be sold soon anyways. But they did what they can to make each feel happy.

A bundle of long tentacle anemone

 a cluster of derasa clams (not yet offered on diver's den, they were exclusive for the tour), and a bunch of cultured maxima clam. very sweet deals! I managed to snatch two of these handsome derasa clams

Lighting may be one of the biggest questions any hobbyist buying from LiveAquaria wishes to ask. In the photo below you will see a broader view of the facility with lights running on a track. The lights run in a lateral movement so that it can cover all angles of the photosynthetic animals beneath rather than creating a "hot spot". When I toured this place a few years ago all lights were 400W 20K Metal Halide. Today this facility has a mix of high end LED (such as AI hydra + a few other varieties). All holding raceway are no more than 12" deep. All the animals look healthy and for clams I can observe significant growth indicating excellent health condition.

The livestock raceway

Here is a picture of the holding section for shrimp, small crabs (such as acropora crabs) and small shrimp (pistol shrimp or squat lobster, which by the way are size of a pinky nail!) They are held in individual transparent containers approx. the size of a film box (if you are born after the mid 90's you might not know what that is lol).

squat lobster, I can't believe how tiny they actually are compare to the online photos.

maxima clams in the diver's den section

And lastly, the diver's den clam section. I must say, almost all the clams in this section appears much larger than what is seems on the photo (contrary to the squat lobster), and honestly, the photos don't do justice on how beautiful they are. One of these clams I purchased looks like a mustard, brown color online but turns out to be a shiny gold in person! All of them are kept under 400W metal halide, 20K bulbs hence the very blue photo here. And one thing they offer that no one else do is live arrival ad 14 day guarantee.
Here is a couple videos:

Live Aquaria Behind the Scene Tour part 1- Fish

panoramic view of Diver's Den's Aquacultured coral display tank

LiveAquaria is an online aquatic retailer operated under Drs. Foster & Smith, one of the largest and reputable pet supply online retailers. Three times a year LiveAquaria opens up its doors for passionate hobbyist (like myself) to tour the facility in Rhinelander, Wisconsin and purchase livestock at a discount price in person. The Rhinelander location is one of the two LiveAquaria facilities, all of the Diver's Den livestock are kept and shipped out here while most other "generic" items are kept in a California facility. This facility is also LiveAquaria's coral farm where they propagate and grow out coral frags in the aquaculture corals section. If you have not been there or seen anyone posted the behind the scene photos, here is a glimpse of where your livestock was once kept and grown while you were ordering them online!
To see some fun fact about their facility, click here.

Diver's Den uses Reef Crystals exclusively, these are their massive holding vats!

Fish holding section, there are eight walls like this

The guy in charge of the fish section was very friendly and explained the fish holding, catching (they did not use net to catch the fish, which is amazing), and bagging process. I also asked some questions regarding the fish's health- The fish are held for at least 14 days before they are available, and the fish are also only available when they are actively accepting frozen food. He dosed just thawed frozen brime shrimp into at least 4 or 5 of these large tanks and I swear all the fish, even the anthias were eating like pigs! In fact I did pick up a MFF trio of bartlett anthias. The one thing I do need to mention is the fish are only lightly medicated so when you order from them I would still recommend a thorough quarantine- without the worry of getting them to eat though!

The legendary conspicuous angelfish, the most expensive fish, that I know of, in the world at $3,000!! happily mingling with other fish here in this holding tank, and happily accepting food too!

A larger group of bartlett anthias male and female mixed along with a Tinker butterfly, some rabbitfish and copper band butterfly

Two of my dream fish- Blueface Angelfish and Powderblue Tang, though I will not be having them anytime soon due to space limit in my tank

Here is another gem- the super rare candy basslet at $699 (see the price tag)

Even though the tag says "Giant Angler" this guy is really small seen in real person, about the size of a quarter. They seem much bigger in their photos online.

One interesting to note is that many of the fish does seem a bit "different" in person versus seeing them online. Most of the common items like tangs, basslets, and angels don't have much room for difference since most hobbyists have pretty good ideal what they "look like" already. But some of the rarity and novelties tend to be a bit "surprising" to see in person. For example, this angler in the photo is really tiny in real person, but it looks much larger on the photo displayed in website. I think this fish is no longer available but here is a similar fish I also saw that was tiny. That said, don't be fooled, these anglers do get big and won't thrive in a nano system.

Couple more coolfish- Achillis Tang and a Redtail trigger

An Emperor Angelfish with a half black Foxface Rabbitfish

If you purchase multiple fish of the same species, such as a trio of anthias or a group of cardinals, the fish collectors here scoop the fish out with a container instead of net (at least that's what they did with my bartlett anthias, and you know how tough and fast they are to catch), they then separate them and bag each fish individually in dark bags to reduce stress.

One of the bagging stations

Their Bagging station is kept very clean and sanitary. The floor is surprisingly dry (you would expect this place to be a swampy mess!), and each bag is inspected for the correct item at bagging. They inject oxygen, clamp the bag with metal clamp and place the bags in appropriate sized foam box with a heat pack and peanuts for shipping. I honestly cannot pick on anything about the entire process. Although the 5 layer bags you will eventually receive can be a bit troublesome to open and acclimate fish with. But it's all worth it for a stress free journey.

One of the two boxes I came home with. The larger bag has one of the anthias with the smaller bags containing corals and invertebrates.

20150317 Camera is back

Without turning this into a Tech blog, I just want to say I take most of my photos published here using my iPhone5S. And when that camera goes out of commission it becomes very difficult for me to take photos and post them.
After a long and hard battle with Apple I finally found a replacement and now back!
Here are some tank update! While I was away, I added two anemones!

7" Squamosa Clam

This is the new long tentacle anemone I found. I am a true believer now in the symbiotic relationship with specifically the Clarkii clownfish with the long tentacle anemone. I placed the bubble tip anemone in the tank two weeks before I introduced the long tentacle. It took the Clarkii about 3-4 days to settle into the bubble tip compare to 30 seconds of me introducing the long tentacle.

The new Long Tentacle green anemone, hosted by a Clarkii clownfish

And a new bubble tip anemone, not so bubble tip right now though

20150303 Pleco feeder

One of the more intriguing inventions/products in the last two years is this pleco feeder. This tool secures some of plecos' favorite vegetable items and clips on the side of tank for easy place observation and cleaning.  I purchased one last year when the owner of this company first came out with this. But the new generation that came out has a wider back allowing you to use this in larger tanks with thick frames as well.

Pleco feeder features stainless steel with a long spindle

My personal observation: I have four places in my 92 gallon corner tank: A gold nugget, a snowflake, a leopard, and a pushynose. These four places have different personality and slightly different preference for diet. The snowflake and the bushynose are benefit from this tool the most. 

I have tried several different vegetable and I have concluded that zuchini/cucumber is their absolute favorite. However, I also prefer zuchini over cucumber as it does not "dissolve" in water like cucumber does and it doesn't club up the filter intake like cucumber does. If you have a place, and want to make these magnificent creatures happy, you should get one of these!

20150302 Pre-packaged plants

So I have seen quite a few "pre-packaged" plants being offered in both chained pet stores (Petco, Petsmart, etc). But I have also begin to see individual aquarium stores carrying some of these pre-packaged plants. The chances of seeing them in an average aquarium store would be less likely as they sell at a much smaller volume and while these plants are living in a package they do not last as long of a "shelf life"as they would underwater. Below is a display of them packaged and being sold like salad.

pre-packaged freshwater plants

So should you purchase them? Well, it all depends on the condition of the plant by the time you hold it in your hand. Like any vegetable in the grocery store, they have a shelf live and will spoil after a while. However, do not let the dryness fool you. When distributors ship plants to pet stores, they never actually ship the plants in water. The added weight is too expensive for shipping. In fact, all plants are shipped "damp" while wrapped in plastic and newspaper with a spray of moisture. That said, they must not stay too long in that state of they will begin to suffer.

Lastly, many of the "aquatic" plants in the North American trade are not "true aquatic" plants. they are plants the can be flooded for an extended time but then must be exposed to air, instead of being soaked underwater for its entirely. So please do your homework before you purchase the plants.