Buying live rock to mount new corals isn’t always economical. If it is for growout and you dont care how is looks, its downright stupid. For my growout system I found a simple and cheap way to mount corals and let them multiply. All of the materials needed are available at Lowes, Home Depot, Walmart, or whatever your flavor of superstore is. To make these “plugs” you will need:
Portland Cement (Lowes or Home Depot)
Sand (Lowes or Home Depot, often called “Play Sand”)
Muffin Baking Sheets (Wal Mart)
Cooking Spray (Wal Mart)
Stirring Device (I used a 3/4″ piece of PVC)
Cheap Large Spoon or scooper
5 gallon bucket (for mixing and curing, two buckets is more convenient)
Water
To start simply mix about a 1-1 ratio of cement to sand in a 5 gallon bucket. You can mix with a ratio heavier on the sand side if desired, up to 2-1. More sand will make it more brittle, but it may be a good thing if you plan on dividing the plug to re-attach on something else. Add water to the mix until it looks something like oatmeal (while constantly mixing). Less water has the potential to make it more porous but to start out more water is easier if unsure. You can now spray your baking pans with a little cooking spray to make it easier to pop the plugs out. Use a spoon to put the mixture in the muffin pans. The height should be less than an inch. Knock the pan on the ground to get the mixture flattened out. Let these pans dry for at least a day.
Once dry, empty the plugs from the pans into a 5 gallon bucket. Knock the pans upside down on grass to prevent breakage. Fill the bucket with water. For about one month empty the bucket every 2-4 days and replace it with fresh water. You do this because cement can dramatically increase PH of the water. Another method to “cure” the cement is initially soaking it in vinegar for a day or so and then in water for a few more days. I cannot personally recommend this method, but if you are bold, tell me how it goes! With curing time of one month I put 100 plugs in a 200 gallon system with no noticeable change in PH or alkalinity.
Gluing corals onto a plug is a novel in itself but suffice to say super glue works wonders. Below I have included pictures of some star polyps days after I sliced them off their mother colony. They don’t seem to care what they are attached to isn’t live rock!
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Anemones can be some of the most challenging specimens to keep in a reef aquarium. Not only do they need the lighting and high water quality of coral, many also need to be fed to sustain themselves properly. One of the easiest (a relative term) anemones to keep and even propagate is the bubble-tipped anemone. I have included a video of the method I use to feed them. This should be done about twice a week.
Simply mix about 5 drops of the Selcon(c) in with a small chunk of frozen mysid shrimp in a pill container (pill containers are available at any drug store, they have a seperate chamber for each day of the week, although you won’t need all days they are a good size for mixing and storing). Let the mysid thaw and the selcon soak in. When thawed take the turkey baster and mix a little of the tank water in the container, this makes it easier to suck up all the shrimp. Suck up the contents of the container and squirt it directly into the anemones mouth. If the anemone is healthy most of the shrimp should stick to its tentacles and it will eventually move them to the mouth. After the first time you should be able to gauge how much the anemone can actually eat per feeding. This mixture is great for fish and almost anything else, just make sure you dont introduce more into the system than your critters can eat in a few minutes. You can view the profile of the BTA here.
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
After a lot of learning and work I’ve finally written the site in PHP and it is fully functional! My next step is compiling as much species information as I can in the database. It’s only gunna get betta!
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
The move is coming along well. I purchased a book from the O’Reilly series, which I always like, on PHP. In the few and far between spirts of free time mixed with motivation I’ve started to reconstitute the code. If anyone is a fusebox framework user moving from coldfusion to php hit me up with questions about getting the skeleton application to where you want it.
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
The site has been down for a while after my Railo installation started flaking out, I’m not sure if I did it correctly but reguardless I’m going to rewrite the application in PHP for a few reasons.
Installation already working on the server
PHP has a huge community of developers and support
I want to learn the language
So check back soon, after I get it written I intend on filling out a lot of species profiles with at least basic information.
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
Pros:
Accurate and stable temperature control
Easy to adjust
Extremely durable (relative to glass heaters)
Exterior is black and unnoticeable
Cons:
Not the cheapest heater (but WELL worth the investment)
I have always loved the Visi-Therm line of heaters, but the Stealth model is the best yet. They have taken the reliability of the previous models and repackaged it in a durable shell that is both low profile and klutz-proof. I have personally broken more heaters than I’de care to share. I got up the courage to knock it on the floor with force enough to break most heaters and it stayed in one piece. After monitoring it for weeks I haven’t seen any temperature fluctuations in a relatively small (30 gallon) tank. The heater also claims to have protection from burning out when run dry (although I haven’t tested it personally). I have yet to use a heater that is more reliable and durable.
After realizing that my hosting was costing as much as a Virtual Private Server, I moved the whole thing to a VPS and use several open source solutions. Thanks to Railo, Tomcat, Apache, Redhat Linux, MySql, and of course Wordpress!
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
After a lot of hard work scraping the internet and literature for all the species I could find, AquariumDB.com is up to 491 species listings! I will be adding more shortly and plan to add even more functionality.
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
The site is live and now fully functional. You can suggest species, update species profiles and post comments. As of now no registration is required to do any of this. If spam becomes bad I may have to add it but I’m going wait and see. My next task will be to add as many species as I can!
These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
