Category: 31 Day Challenge

  • Day 21: Weekly Partial Water Change

    Day 21: Weekly Partial Water Change

    Welcome to Day 21 of the 31 Days to Build a Better Saltwater Aquarium Challenge Today’s task (you might have guessed it already) is to Perform a weekly partial water change. This is a simple, predictable task, but it is one of the most important things you can do. How is your siphon/gravel vacuum? Does it…

  • Add some live copepods

    Add some live copepods

    Welcome to Day 20 of the 31 Days to Build a Better Saltwater Aquarium Challenge. Fish go cuckoo for copepods. Your task today is to purchase and add some live copepods to your tank. Copepods are tiny invertebrates that are natural food for many fish species. Careful attention paid to growing copepods out as a…

  • Trim back overgrown corals

    Trim back overgrown corals

    Welcome to Day 19 of the 31 Days to Build a Better Saltwater Aquarium Challenge. Thanks for sticking with me so far. I can’t believe we’ve reached Day 19 already. How do you feel about the aquarium you’re building? Today’s Challenge As your tank matures, the corals in your aquarium will begin to fill in…

  • Create an Emergency Kit

    Create an Emergency Kit

    Welcome to Day 18 of the 31 Days to Build a Better Saltwater Aquarium Challenge. To build a better aquarium, you want to build something for the long haul, something that can survive the ups and downs of reef keeping. When bad things happen in your tank, they can spiral out of control relatively quickly. One…

  • Organize and label your wires

    Organize and label your wires

    Welcome to Day 17 of the 31 Days to Build a Better Saltwater Aquarium Challenge. Take a look behind and under your tank. Do you have wires going everywhere? Look at your powerstrip(s). Can you tell which plugs go to each piece of equipment? Chances are…no, you can’t. Well, today, we’re going to get organized.…

  • Deep Clean the Protein Skimmer

    Deep Clean the Protein Skimmer

    Welcome to Day 16 of the 31 Days to Build a Better Saltwater Aquarium Challenge. Your protein skimmer is a hard-working piece of equipment. It creates tiny, scrubbing bubbles that magically remove impurities from the water. Over time, your protein skimmer will become coated with a biofilm, that’s a fancy word for covered in bacteria…

  • Improve the Aquascape

    Improve the Aquascape

    Welcome to Day 15 of the 31 Days to Build a Better Saltwater Aquarium Challenge. Today, I want to challenge you to improve the way your aquarium looks. Your task is to look critically at and improve the aquascape. What is the aquascape? Aquascape is a fancy word to describe the way the rock work,…

  • Another weekly water change

    Another weekly water change

    Welcome to Day 14 of the 31 Days to Build a Better Saltwater Aquarium Challenge. You made it a full 2 weeks. Congratulations. Because it is Day 14, that means it has been 7 days since your last partial water change. Today’s task is to complete another partial water change. But let’s spice it up…

  • Add some macro algae

    Add some macro algae

    Welcome to Day 13 of the 31 Days to Build a Better Saltwater Aquarium Challenge. One of the simplest and best things I ever did to build a better saltwater aquarium was to Add Some Macro Algae to my sump.  I added chaetomorpha algae,(affectionately called “chateo”),  but you could certainly add any other species you…

  • Make a list of the dangers in your tank

    Make a list of the dangers in your tank

    Day 12 of the 31 Days to Build a Better Saltwater Aquarium Challenge I don’t mean to be a fear monger here, but there are some things in our tanks that can potentially hurt us—lionfish or rabbitfish venom and palytoxin are a few things that come to mind. You might think that these are no…