Reef Ramblings

Discover the new Coral magazine!

Coral 6.1, Triggerfishes is here, the first issue of the new Coral magazine.

Coral has been relaunched under a new publisher and promises to be better than ever.

Hailed by critics as “the world’s best reefkeeping magazine,” CORAL is written by leading aquarium experts and marine biologists, lavishly illustrated with breathtaking images, and filled with inspiration for beginning to expert aquarists.

The English-language edition of Coral is no longer being published by EcoSystem but has moved over to Reef to Rainforest Media, another US company, where the Editor & Publisher is James M. Lawrence, a name you may be familiar with as the man behind Microcosm Publishing, publishers of some of the best reef books on the market.

This means that there will be a few changes with Coral in the UK, both good and bad. The downside is that the price of the magazine has gone up from issue 6.1 because the US cover price has been increased from $6.95 to $7.95, this results in a UK price of £5.99 per issue.

Dottybacks, issue 5:4 was the last issue that we received from EcoSystem, I’m endeavouring to get hold of issue 5:5 but issue 5:6 was not published.

The upside is that we now receive Coral regularly and on time, we’re sending out 6.1 and 6.2 during August and will follow up by sending out a new issue every month up to the end of the year at which time we’ll revert to a bi-monthly schedule with the magazine coming out in the UK within a week or two of its US publication date.

SAIA News.

The Sustainable Aquarium Industry Association (SAIA) has published the first draft of the SAIA Code of Best Practices on the updated SAIA website www.saia-online.org

SAIA is seeking to start a public review process of these documents and is asking for your  comment on the the drafts. So whether you’re a hobbyist, a retailer, work in a public aquarium, or are just interested, please take a look at the code of best practices and send your comments on to SAIA. All comments will be recorded and addressed in the second drafts of the documents. Please contact us if you are interested to become the author of other technical documents.

The SAIA team have also started to prepare the official registration process of the organisation at the EU. If you are interested to become a founding member of SAIA, please contact SAIA for more information and study the EEIG Contract draft on the SAIA website.

I recommend that you take a look at the code of practices, particularly those on acclimation and quarantine, as they contain valuable information of practical use to aquarists, whether hobbyist or professional.

Product News.

Just in from ReefresH2O, manufacturer of the Cellpore bio-filtration material, is a new substrate suitable for both marine and freshwater, called Reef Rubble©. In a marine aquarium this substrate  provides a valuable refuge for micro-crustacea and other small fauna, and can also be used for mounting coral frags. In a freshwater aquarium this can be used as a decorative substrate that will also act as as filter by facilitating denitrification, and it can be used as a freeform media in pond filters.

ReefresH2O continues to increase in popularity with the 9” x 4” x 4” block being taken up by more and more reefkeepers as a solution to nitrate problems. The extremely high surface area of ReefresH2O, 10-100 times that of any other biofilter media, allows for aerobic and anaerobic bacteria to grow in and around the material. The interconnected pores, from sub-micron size to 500 microns, allows water to flow freely through the material, delivering water and nutrients to the biofilms.  Also available in plates, spheres, and frag plugs.

We’ve a new live food at Midland Reefs, Reef Scientific Zoo-Mix, Optimal Nutrition Live Zooplankton,  it’s a mix of of Brachionus plicatilis (Rotifers) and Tigriopsis Japonicus (Copepods), intended as starter culture for reef aquarium use, it can be cultured outside of the aquarium or used to seed a refugium. It gives you a wide range of live particle sizes, from  c10 – 2500 µm.
Grown and enriched with DT’s phytoplankton for an optimal nutritional profile, this product is a source of Carotenoids, Sterols, Omega-3’s & Omega-6’s, Essential Amino Acids and Proteins. A live product containing no artificial preservatives or additives. Cultured in the UK.

The Peppermint Shrimp.

The Peppermint Shrimp, Lysmata wurdermanni, is a wonderful addition to the reef aquarium yet, for some reason, I keep coming across aquarists, even those with Aiptasia in their tanks, who seem reluctant to invest in a small group of them. The purchase of somewhere between 3 to 6 of these shrimps soon return dividends in the form of a reduction of, or even eradication of Aiptasia. A small price to pay for protecting you corals from being stung or, in a worst case having to strip the tank to get rid of aiptasia.

It’s not just their function as a means of keeping pest anemones under control that makes them good addition to the reef, they bring with them numerous other benefits.

1. By breeding regularly they  supply a useful, natural addition to the diet of the other inhabitants of  your reef.

2. They’re a cleaner species, although seeing this activity in your reef may well depend on what species of fish are present.

What you will experience once your shrimps are settled in, is the curious sensation of being cleaned by a shrimp! Whereas your fishes may be sometimes be reluctant to let the shrimps provide their cleaning services, these shrimps seem to have little hesitation about cleaning the aquarist’s hand when immersed in the tank. The first time this occurs it can be a bit of a shock but it’s certainly a fascinating experience to have a shrimp, or even a group of shrimps, walking over and around your hand looking for particles of food such as dead skin.

3. As voracious foragers they ensure that no food introduced into the reef remains uneaten with the potential of polluting the tank.

4. One of my recent observations indicates that peppermint shrimps may also have a function as coral caretakers, cleaning up damaged coral tissue. My display reef at home features a large Euphyllia ancora,  Anchor coral, as the center piece, it’s absolutely gorgeous but does have the annoying habit of waging war on the other corals it shares the tank with, in particular a large Turbinaria peltata. Prior to introducing 3 peppermints to this tank a few months back, the surface of the Turbinaria would often exhibit patches of bare skeleton where it had been stung by the Ancora, these patches would slowly grow back as its such a resilient coral but nevertheless the site of the sting would always tend to form a patch of bare skeleton which would spread from half a centimetre across, ending up a couple of centimetres in diameter.  Since the shrimps have been in residence the damage is far less as they appear to move quickly to the site of a fresh sting and remove damaged and necrotic tissue, cleaning the wound up, allowing the coral to rapidly heal.

For this last reason alone I’d recommend their inclusion in a reef.

Coming Soon …

Keep an eye out for some new additions to the Reef Scientific range of products around the beginning of September. This growing range is based on products  produced or sourced in the UK that offer excellent value for money along with a high standard of quality.

There are few changes happening regards the distribution of EcoSystem Aquarium products, Miracle Mud, etc. So watch out for news of EcoSystem Aquarium UK.

Tim Hayes

Midland Reefs

©2009

I’m often asked about the control of Majano anemones. This article details my personal experience with this beautiful but invasive species.

Background.

At the end 2008, after a busy year of travelling it was time for me to give my various tanks and systems their yearly overhaul. That year I found I had a one tank in particular that needed serious attention. The tank in question was suffering from a major outbreak of Majano anemones; I’d been holding a number of specimens with the intention of researching into the possibility of controlling the species with other reef organisms but, given lack of attention owing to my busy schedule, the anemones had gotten completely out of control.

Majano Anemones.

These are a fairly small scientifically undescribed anemone species, possibly Anemonia species that bear a superficial resemblance to the Bubble tip anemone, Entacmaea quadricolor. It’s an attractive small anemone possessing fluorescent green tentacles, unfortunately if it gets out of control it can be almost as destructive as the more familiar Aiptasia species pest anemone. In a well-maintained, nutrient poor reef they can be considered fairly harmless. The usual methods of control familiar to you when it comes to Aiptasia are rarely effective against these anemones, hence the reason I was holding them for experimentation.

Although they may be a destructive and invasive species in a regular reef aquarium, I’d certainly recommend keeping them for their beauty but would suggest doing so in a nano tank where they’d be easy to control.

Mechanical Removal as a Means of Control.

Given the quantity to be dealt with I decided to go the route of mechanical removal. These anemones have a leathery pedal disc far thicker than that of Aiptasia anemones. So by careful use of a tool, it is quite easy to separate them from substrate without tearing the pedal disc, leaving fragments of tissue behind to regenerate into fresh anemones. This is similar to the technique used to separate a host anemone from its substrate, here I’d typically use my thumbnail or perhaps an old credit card to gently separate the pedal disc bit by bit, until the point where full separation is achieved, sometimes with the anemone itself apparently letting go its hold.

For removing the Majano anemones my tool of choice was a pair of forceps with broad smooth ends. Each coral or rock was removed from the tank in turn; each anemone tackled one at a time. Either wear eye protection when carrying out this procedure or at the least make sure the mouth of the anemone is facing away from you, as often the anemone will release a jet of liquid during the operation. I have no idea if this is just seawater or not but after an incident some years back where I suffered a bloodshot eye for a number of weeks after being squirted by a mushroom anemone, I try not to take any chances. After the anemone has been physically released from the surface there may be some mucus still holding it loosely in position so either wash it off in salt water or pick it off with the forceps. If an anemone won’t separate easily go on to another. Sometimes you encounter anemones lodged into holes, put these into a lower light region of the aquarium to encourage them to move out of their hole, this also has the benefit that they will not be so strongly attached after moving.

It was interesting the way that these anemones are able to attach to the surface tissue of corals and algae, even to quite slimy soft corals. In all cases it proved quite easy to separate the anemones from these living substrates, although with sps corals, Montipora sp. in this case, a little more care was required to separate the anemones without damaging the thin surface tissue of the stony corals.

A useful tip is to place a rock encrusted with algae or star polyps, Briarium species, on top of an infested area, wait a day or so and then peel of the Majanos that have migrated on to the rock.

Afterword.

I was fortunate that this outbreak occurred in an aquarium heavily stocked with corals, because of this mechanical removal was fairly easy, if time consuming. It certainly wouldn’t be as straightforward in a reef composed mostly of rockwork. For me this has been a valuable  experience discovering that the mechanical removal of Majano anemones is a relatively easy task and, that if done with care, carries little risk of new anemones regenerating from the rockwork.

As with many other pest species eradication is not a quick and easy task, it requires a certain amount of application on behalf of the aquarist and a great deal of patience.

Ignoring or putting off dealing with a potential pest species will invariably result in a lot of work being required to correct the problem, work which could have easily been avoided if the problem had been dealt with when first noticed. This is a philosophy that should be applied to pest species such as Aiptasia, photosynthetic flat worms (Convolutriloba sp. ), any coral parasite, Bubble algae (Ventricaria and Valonia species), and the many other species of invasive algae.

Tim Hayes
Midland Reefs
©2008 -2010