When busting up live rock in order to make small rubble pieces, be sure to use the proper tools and personal protective equipment (PPE). The hammer and chisel make for a great set of tools to hack away at some calcium carbonate rock, but the violent action can lead to flying shards of rock that could hit you in the face or some other exposed portion of skin. To prevent any injuries, at least to the sensitive eyes, make planned and methodical hits on the rock. Also be sure to wear safety glasses and maybe even gloves to keep from scraping your hands against the sharp edges. If you are more inclined to play with power tools, a rotary tool does wonders when cutting up rocks, though it may cause weird burning odors.

When babysitting corals for a hobbyist in need, do not take it upon yourself to grab a frag or two for your troubles. Even though you might get offered a frag at the end of your coral sitting gig, it’s just not polite to act before given permission. Heck, I wouldn’t even feel comfortable asking. But these sorts of things do happen, and far too often. I’ve seen coral sitters fragging up their friends stuff without permission time and time again locally. One of the infamous stories occurred when someone “accidentally dropped” a very large Acropora colony, causing it to shatter into pieces all over the concrete floor. As the owner of the coral, what can you do? The damage has been done, and some people prey on that. Our suggestion is to not be a total jerk, but do the right thing. Don’t steal from your friends during their time of need.

When re-aquascaping the rocks in your aquarium or just moving a couple of things here and there, you will release at least some, if not a lot of detritus into the water that has been trapped in low flow spots and in the sand. The detritus will immediately foul up your water quality, causing a spike in ammonia that will throw off the stability of the aquarium’s nitrogen cycle. When this happens, the corals and fish will start to feel the impact of the very harmful ammonia almost instantly. Because of this, you should have a bucket of water on hand to do a water change in order to remove as much free floating material as possible. These water changes should also be repeated on a daily basis if ammonia is still detectable on your test kits or the animals start looking bad.

Celebrating big for the Super Bowl later this evening? Well, if you are hosting the game and have a long-standing reef aquarium in your living room or some other part of your house where football fans will be frequenting, then you might want to consider locking down the canopy and stand doors. At some point, one of your inebriated buddies will spill a beer or scatter a bunch of Cheetos. Depending on your home’s layout, some of these items might find their way into the aquarium. While these incidents are likely not intentional, you might get the occasional friend who decides to feed your fish or add his own decorations.

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.

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.

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.

Coral propagation doesn’t have to involve actively cutting coral fragments and gluing them to frag disks. Instead, it can be a very passive process. If you have a coral that’s growing too large for it’s rock, simply place other smaller rocks under and around the colony. As the coral grows out, it will encrust onto the smaller rocks and frag plugs nearby. Once the coral is attached, the plug can be broken away leaving behind a small encrusted frag. At this point, a new plug can be inserted under the coral. This method may not give you the tall frags that hobbyists typically pine for, but it will result in a fully encrusted coral frag that didn’t undergo the stresses of being cut and glued.

Even though aquacultured fish, coral, and invertebrates are usually more expensive than their wild-caught counterparts, aquarium hobbyists should make every attempt to buy captive-bred animals first. There are a lot of different home grown species available to the industry, and the list grows by leaps and bounds on a yearly basis. Besides being better on the environment, aquacultured animals are hardier and do better in captivity long term. They are easier to acclimate to the aquarium life and readily take prepared foods, not needing live foods like many finicky wild-caught fish.

Want a quick and easy way to maintain calcium levels in your aquarium? Try adding a canister filled with aragonite-based media to your RO/DI filter. The water will pick up a little bit of calcium as it passes through the media, which will therefore also add calcium to the aquarium every time you top-off water or do a water change. The calcium-filled media chamber should be placed after all of the stages in the RO unit, as you don’t want to exhaust any of the filters prematurely. Also, you might get a little extra phosphate in your aquarium if you go this route, so you might have to incorporate a reactor with some type of phosphate removing media (e.g. GFO, biopellets, etc).