Category: Aquarium Invertebrates
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Intro to the most popular copepods for sale
Most popular copepods for sale Copepods are tiny crustaceans that can either hitchhike their way into your tank or are added deliberately, as natural and nutritional food for your saltwater fish. This article will focus on a few of the most popular copepods for sale to feed to your reef aquarium and boost its biodiversity. Some…
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Brine shrimp: all about cysts and hatching
What are brine shrimp? The non-scientific short answer: brine shrimp are fish food that will drive your reef fish crazy. The more specific answer: brine shrimp are tiny invertebrates (arthropod crustaceans really), from the genus Artemia, that naturally grow in salt lakes. When fully grown, they are about 0.4-0.5 inches in length (about 1 centimeter)–which…
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Chocolate chip starfish: reef safe?
Chocolate chip starfish are quirky-cool and easy to identify, but are they reef safe? That’s the question I set out to answer with this blog post. Introduction So, what is a chocolate chip starfish, anyway? Here’s one, take a look: As you can see in the picture above, the chocolate chip starfish is a…
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Cerith Snails: MVP of the clean up crew
Looking to add another little critter to your clean-up-crew (CUC)? Maybe you could pick out a few cerith snails, the next time you head to your local fish store. Cerith snails are small, snaily scavengers with a pointy spiral shell. They only grow to be about 1 inch long and are well suited for small…
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Mysis Shrimp: A Favorite Fish & Coral Food
One of my favorite frozen foods to feed my saltwater fish is frozen mysis shrimp. Almost every fish I have ever kept has instantly recognized the floating white morsels as a meal. I’ve offered them at the same time as flakes (which would otherwise be voraciously eaten if it wasn’t competing with the mysis shrimps),…
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Emerald crab
Emerald crab: a fine addition to any reef clean up crew The emerald crab, Mithraculus sculptus, is a quiet, shy, and fun to watch member of the reef clean up crew (CUC). As the name implies, the emerald crab is green–but unlike the name–this crab does not shine like a jewel. Rather, the crab is perfectly camouflaged to…
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Starfish ID Please
Hitchhiker Starfish ID Please Do you have these starfish growing in your tank? I do. They are called Asterina Starfish. They are tiny starfish that grow up to be about a quarter of an inch to an inch across (Sprung 2001)—which I found out, through painstaking scientific examination, is approximately the same size as George…
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Role of sponges in a coral reef ecosystem
What images come to mind when you think of a coral reef? I don’t think it would be much of a stretch for me to guess that one of your top three images that came to your mind was certainly not of sponges. If stony corals and clownfish are on the coral reef celebrity A-list,…
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Clean up crew: is it worth it?
The job of a clean up crew (CUC), in a saltwater aquarium, is to keep the tank clean by eating the leftover food, algae, and detritus in your tank. A clean up crew typically consists of a mixture of crabs, snails, and the occasional shrimp. But the use of clean up crews is controversial in…
