Ever wonder how your wild-caught fish, corals, and invertebrates are collected from the reef? Well, landlocked hobbyists are in for a treat, as Talking Fish gives us all a little more insight as to how one of the larger aquarium collectors operates. This episode follows the family owned and operated aquarium collecting group, Cairns Marine, on their way to collect aquatic life off the Great Barrier Reef. Besides showing us all how they collect and house their fish, we also get a brief explanation of the harmful practices used in aquarium collection even to this day. Obviously these practices, which include cyanide and dynamite fishing, aren’t being used by Cairns Marine divers, but is merely showing viewers just how much more sophisticated their own operations are and how they achieve such a healthy catch.

Climbing aboard a pair of vessels that each surpasses 70 feet in length, the collectors hand catch every single fish and take every precaution to make their trip back to the Cairns Marine holding facility as smooth as possible. Once the fish are collected, they are placed in a collection bucket and allowed to slowly decompressed. This process is intended to prevent any expansion of the swim bladder and is accomplished by suspending buckets at various depths for a certain amount of time. The buckets are suspended from a long rope and are hauled to the surface one after the other, simulating a conveyor belt. Once on the boat, each fish is placed into its own containers, which are then placed into a very large drum full of water. Upon the boat’s arrival back at the docks, the barrel of fish (there’s a firearm related joke in there somewhere) is unloaded, with each fish being grouped not by species, but by the diver that caught them.

This process of grouping fish to the collectors is unique in the industry, and allows for a very in-depth paper trail that helps clear up a confusing and convoluted supply chain. The methods used by Cairns Marine not only allow us to find out what part of the world the fish came from, but also who caught it. Sort of reminds us of a restaurant in Hawaii called Mama’s Fish House, where individual names are tied to the meal you eating, provided its fish that’s on your dinner plate.

Finishing off the clip is a brief view of how the fish are bagged and tagged. Each animal is individually packaged in a suitably sized plastic bag, and newspaper is placed in the outermost (or dry) bag to keep it as dark as possible to reduce stress. From there, the bags are placed in large styrofoam containers, permits are filled out, and everything is shipped to their destination, whether it be a final destination or just another point in the supply chain.

All in all, I would have to say this video is very informative, though not every aquarium collector goes to these same lengths.

Digital Aquatics has expanded their lineup of accessories to their ReefKeeper aquarium controller with the release of a brand new module, the SL2. This tiny little module features individually isolated pH and salinity ports, along with one temperature port and two switch ports that can be used to regulate an auto-top off or perform some other custom program. The salinity probe is built off a conductivity probe with temperature compensation, which is great if you have multiple aquariums in the vacinity or are gearing up for a water change and want to see how salty the new water is. Salinity is given in parts per thousand (PPT) and the entire module is upgradeable via firmware updates. The asking price for this module is set at $80 and should be hitting store shelves soon.

Found on Reefs.com

Corals that sit low in the aquarium are often covered with sand. They may not get buried in the sand, unless you have a sand sifting goby or something similar, but more often than not, these corals do get a few grains on them here and there. While the grains themselves are harmless and won’t kill the coral, if they aren’t removed by water currents or physically removing them by the aquarist, they can block out light to the underlying tissues and cause slight to severe bleaching. The solution is simple, just keep your corals sand free, but it’s often hard to do when you have a goby that acts like its on speed half the time. If constantly dusting off the corals is no longer something you want to do, either remove the fish or relocate the coral to a higher spot in the tank.

We’ve already introduced this petition to stop the ban on Hawaiian aquarium collection once before, but given its recent resurgence in popularity on social media websites like Facebook, we decided to write about it again to help keep the momentum going in any way we could. The petition is a simple one. It asks for nothing more than the State of Hawaii to not ban any form of fishing within its legally recognized waters. It further goes on to say that “we”, the aquarium community collective, support fisheries that have been deemed sustainable by scientific data.

We highly suggest that you read the petition (link in the above text) and sign it if you are in support of the aquarium industry. The aquarium industry is under constant attack from activists in Hawaii and other parts of the world, and anything we can do to help will help preserve our hobby for future generations.

According to a recent article in West Hawaii Today, animal expert and television personality Jeff Corwin recently visited the reefs of Kona to gather footage for three upcoming episodes of his popular show “Ocean Mysteries”. Each episode will focus on monk seals, green sea turtles, and the vast amount of ocean life respectively, and the visit gave Jeff the opportunity to assess the health of Hawaii’s reefs. His opinion: the reefs were “teeming with life”. Corwin described what he saw as a kaleidoscope of life, as he witnessed surgeonfish, parrotfish, and many others thriving in Kona. He indicated that his overall impressions were of hope and encouragement, but that people need to continue to be stewards of the reef.

This assessment of Hawaiian reefs stands in sharp contrast to the picture painted by anti-aquarium activists, who keep beating their drums to the rhythm that the aquarium industry is decimating their fish populations. We realize that reefs all over the world are threatened by many human factors such as global warming, pollution, ocean acidification, overfishing, what have you, but the aquarium industry is not doing the kind of damage many people would lead you to believe. In fact, the term overfishing more often refers to the commercial and recreational fishing industries than aquarium collection. Regardless, it’s nice to have an outsider’s perspective on the reefs of Hawaii, and even more so because Jeff Corwin is concerned about the environment and not completely disinterested in its health.

Story via MASNA.

For those of you looking for a bit of quality content to fill those iPods or give yourself a nice lengthy distraction while you sit at your desk at work, the MASNA Live podcast is a great place to start and the January 2012 episode just became available to download. Featuring some big names in the aquarium industry, this most recent discussion starts out with a brief chat about the infamous Dr. Gail Grabowsky video, but quickly moves on to a much broader view of the issues the aquarium industry is facing in Hawaii. Everything from fighting the moral arguments of anti-aquarium activists to imposing quotas on aquarium collection are discussed in detail, and it all makes for an interesting and educational talk that I highly suggest listening to. The back and forth chat isled by Kevin Erickson of MASNA, and features Tal Sweet, Richard Ross, Andrew Rhyne, Eric Cohen, Matt Pedersen and Jim Adelberg, who all chime in at one point or another. Despite being a widely varying group, this wily collection of aquarium enthusiasts spans virtually all aspects of the hobby and allows for a varying spectrum of opinions that all have the same underlying theme: sustainable aquarium collection. I was privileged enough to sit in on this conversation, and even though it was more of a “fly on the wall” role, I did offer up some opinions toward the end. In summary, my main points were in support of aquarium collection quotas and limiting the removal of certain species from the wild.

Most aquarium hobbyists use the larger grain media in their calcium reactors rather than the smaller grain substrates. The preferred use of the coarser media is often attributed to the fact that it will not tumble and move around in the reactor with the use of high flow circulation pumps. Despite this, the larger media really isn’t different from the smaller grain, and it certainly isn’t any better. Both types of media will dissolve readily in the low pH environment contained within the calcium reactor, and both will provide you will very similar calcium and alkalinity levels.

Back in September, AquaNerd contributor Keith Hatch stumbled upon a brand new open top aquarium from Deep Sea Aquatics (DSA) called the Neo Storm. The aquarium, which is basically a beefed up version of the Neo Nano, was first spied at the Super Zoo pet show in Las Vegas, and despite looking very similar to its smaller predecessor, the Storm has some fancy new features that allow for better water flow while still keeping the surface virtually ripple-free for optimum look down viewing. When we first laid eyes on the tank and heard a few details about its return plumbing, we weren’t exactly sure how it would all work. We weren’t doubting its abilities, rather we were curious how water was going from the rear chamber to the front two outlets. Fortunately, the guys at DSA have released a “how to” video demonstrating the proper setup of this tank, which clears away all confusion about how it operates.

The back wall of the Neo Storm aquarium, which is significantly taller than the rest of the tank, holds a three chamber drain and return system. The two smaller chambers that flank the much taller middle chamber serve as dual drains into the sump. The tall middle chamber is the return, which is where the Neo Storm stands apart from the Neo Nano. In the older Neo Nano, the water simply fills the chamber and flows over the top like a waterfall. This water was pushed over the chamber slow enough to be dead silent and not create a lot of surface movement, but the tank obviously lacked any real water flow. The Neo Storm, on the other hand, modifies the concept by pushing water both through holes in the chamber (which are submerged) and through two outlets toward the front corners at the bottom tank. As the chamber fills, gravity causes the pressure to build up forcing water through soft plumbing and gently out of the two return fittings. But not wanting to limit flow options for customers, DSA did something rather ingenious. They put multiple holes in the return chamber of the Neo Storm, but also included plastic fittings to fill these holes. The more holes that are plugged, the greater the pressure is within the chamber and the more water will be pushed out of the two returns at the front of the tank.

The aquarium industry has seen its fair share of high end controllable powerheads over the years, and it seems like this technology is finding its way into our return pumps more and more these days. For the longest time, aquarium keepers have had to rely on constant speed pumps to serve as the primary source of water movement between the display tank and its associated plumbing, or even closed-loop setups. These pumps came in a variety of shapes and sizes, but were very limited in functionality. And in a world of constantly changing technology, relying on single function products is quickly starting to lose ground to using equipment that can adapt and change to better suit the hobbyist’s needs. Because of this increasing demand for more control, companies are designing new products to meet the need and the latest offering to aquarium keepers in the world of controllable water pumps is a fancy new set of high flow, high pressure controllable sine wave pumps from Deltec. Already well regarded for their protein skimmer line, Deltec surprisingly has few products designed to just move water. But that hasn’t stopped them from going over the top with their new E-flow water pumps.

Being offered in three different models, the Deltec E-flow pumps use a brushless DC motor that allows them to run almost completely silently. On top of that, they are protected by an overload circuit that shuts the pump off if the impellers becomes blocked off. Once the blockage has been removed, the pump will turn back on automatically. In terms of controlability, the E-flow pumps come stock with a control panel that can be used to adjust water flow speeds. And once that flow is dialed in, there’s no need to fear about power outages causing the pump to revert back to a factory setting as the control panel will start back up in the last saved setting. But the fun doesn’t stop there.

Later this year, a separate multifunction controller will be available to control up to four pumps at once. This controller will operate much like our powerhead controllers by allowing the pumps to operate in multiple different wavemaking modes. The estimated release date for the controller is late April 2012 and we expect the pump and controller combo to really give traditional closed loop setups a run for their money. Of course, this setup will be far more cost prohibitive than a closed loop, but the energy savings will definitely be a much talked about selling point.

As we mentioned before, there will be three Deltec E-flow models available. Each of these models and their respective specifications are listed below.

Deltec E-flow 16

Technical data

• Minimum/Maximum water flow: 5000/14000 lph (1300-3700 gph)
• Minimum/Maximum power consumption: 20/180w
• Maximum head height: 9.0 meters (29 feet)
• Performance selection: 17 stages
• Inlet size: 50 mm (2″)
• Outlet size: 40 mm (1.5″)
• Price (from D-D The Aquarium Solution): £1099.99 (~$1730)

Deltec E-flow 12

Technical data

• Minimum/Maximum water flow: 5000/11400 lph (1300-3200 gph)
• Minimum/Maximum power consumption: 25/130w
• Maximum head height: 8 meters (26 feet)
• Performance selection: 12 stages
• Inlet size: 540 mm (1.5″)
• Outlet size: 40 mm (1.5″)
• Price (from D-D The Aquarium Solution): £959.99(~$1510)

Deltec E-flow 10

Technical data

• Minimum/Maximum water flow: 5000/9000 lph (1300-2400 gph)
• Minimum/Maximum power consumption: 20/80w
• Maximum head height: 6.0 meters (20 feet)
• Performance selection: 7 stages
• Inlet size: 40 mm (1.5″)
• Outlet size: 32 mm (1.25″)
• Price (from D-D The Aquarium Solution): £1099.99 (~$1730)

Information and images sourced from D-D The Aquarium Solution and Advanced Aquarist

Not every anemone is a suitable host for every clownfish. In the wild, certain anemone species play host only to very specific clownfish species native to their common region. Other anemones don’t play host at all, often packing a very powerful sting instead. When picking out an anemone for your clownfish, keep in mind that what you’re selecting may not be naturally occurring, and just because you put a clown and anemone together, they may not be accepting of each other. Some clownfish will refuse to reside in an anemone and choose instead to take up residence in corals. Anemones may sting and kill the clownfish. To make sure things work out, pick anemones and clownfish that are found together in nature and you’ll likely not have any issues.