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!

20141103 Green Hair Algae- What do I do???

Green Hair Algae, or GHA as many forums refer to it, is a bonafide nuisance in any marine aquaria. The bad news is, it is always an uphill battle against it. Good news is, unlike cyanobacteria, there are many more creatures who will happily gobble it up.

Green Hair Algae

In case you did not read my voice on cyanobacteria, with the exception that brown slim algae is not algae, just about everything else on the characteristic of cyanobacteria is the same as green hair algae- will thrive with light and dissolved nutrient. The one key difference is that this is an actual algae and will require iron, among other elements to properly grow. So on top of light control, nutrient control, and predator introduction, we can add one more element here: competition.

Unlike cyanobacteria that can disappear completely if you keep light off for an entire day or two, hair algae is an actual plant and can store enough energy to sustain an extended period of darkness, just like your corals would. So the light off trick must be carefully modified here- instead of all out for a day or two, you can attempt to change spectrum/color temperature and also shorten photoperiod.

Reduction of dissolve nutrients will not affect corals so this is a safe approach by limiting how much you feed your fish, inverts, and corals, and maximizing your skimmer.

Predators- Many creatures naturally prey on hair algae- all tangs, most dwarf angelfish (reef caution), all rabbitfish (reef caution), many hermit crabs, snails, urchins, etc.

Lastly- competition. So a hair algae's competition is obviously another algae- but you probably don't want more algae in the tank? a good option is to house some macro algae, here is a place you can find many different varieties with reasonable price: Reef2go- Macroalgae. Keep these macro algae in your established sump or refugium to absorb nutrient and minerals just like hair algae would, but at a much faster rate to out compete the hair algae.

Good luck!

20141030 Species spotlight- Harlequin Tusk Wrasse

The Harlequin Tusk fish (Choerodon fasciatus) is one of the most beautiful fish in the aquarium trade. This is a robust, hardy, and colorful fish with lots of personality. The only catch is- they are "Not Reef Safe". Despite needing a large tank size to house this fish, I would consider this a beginner fish since they are hardy and robust.

Harlequen Tusk Wrasse

The Harlequin Tusk can get pretty big in the wild, but I have not seen any over 8" in private aquariums. They are very greedy eaters and would happily accept mysis, krill, small fish, feeder fish, you name it, they eat it! They are also quite disease tolerant, in the years I worked in the trade I have not seen one die from starving or illness. The only one we lost is- jumping out! Like all wrasses, this fish is a jumper. So you should have a good, heavy lid over the tank for them since they are very powerful.

To keep this fish, just make sure you have reef condition- water temperature no warmer than 82 no cooler than 76. Salinity should be Specific gravity range 1.022-27. They will grow big and need lots of swimming room, so I do not recommend keeping it in tanks smaller than 120G. Do not keep this fish with small, slow fish, any crustacean, or clams as the chance of them becoming food is high. The fish will do fine with coral and other larger, robust fish like tangs, angels, triggers, puffer, eel, etc.