Dang Home Depot

I finally have a semi-free weekend, so I was going to plumb the new fish room rack. Went to HD and of course they are out of half of what I need. Oh well. Guess I'll order the parts on the internet and try again next week.

Our Hobby Will be Changing

In case you don't realize it.  Over time our hobby will change.  With the environmental and other pressures on the reef and oceans wild capture of fish and corals will eventually cease.  If we want the hobby to be around for our children and children's children we need to all work on captive breeding and propagation.  The following are the best sites on the net for those who are interested in coral propagation or marine ornamental breeding.

Of course, nothing compares to 120 Gallons, but I'm certainly not impartial.

 

As for marine ornamentals, there is only one site worth your time.  It is http://www.marinebreeder.org.   Matt Pedersen who helped found the site, was on episode 13 of our podcast.  This site is refreshing.  There's no politics, agendas, backstabbing, or put downs.  Just a few hundred people who are all working towards better ornamental fish breeding efforts.  Everyone from hobbyists to commercial breeders are represented.  Check it out.

 

For inverts, there's a similar site to marinebreeder.org.  It is project dibs.  Brian Plankis runs the site and they focus on breeding inverts.  If this is your area of interest check them out at http://www.projectdibs.com.

 

One other place to get expert advice is at http://forums.marinedepot.com.  There you can participate in forums featuring Eric Borneman, Anthony Calfo, Dr.Frank Marini, Steven Pro, Dr. Ron Shimek, and Kelly Jedlicki.  All can provide expert assistance and are quite active on the forums and very willing to help.  You've heard Eric and Steven on our podcasts.

 

So hop to it, get to it, use a spare tank and try to spawn a marine fish or invert and report back to the community your findings, even info about failures is helpful.  Let's all work towards saving our hobby for future generations.

Fish Room Progress

Made some progress on the fish room over the holiday vacation.  As always not as much as I wanted, but that's life.  I need an extra day in the week.  So to recap, installed a quiet fan to help exhaust the humidity.  You can see pictures of that here.

Next I built a 3 level stand.  It's pretty much complete, just need to install some cross pieces.  Next up is the plumbing.   As a side note, my pair of Bangaii's look great.  Now I just need to finish the rack so I can move them and start conditioning them to try to get them to spawn.

 

 

Preparation for the fish room

Today I installed a vent outside in my basement. With my single basement sump for my 120 gallons I had high humidity. With the fish room it will only get worse. I plan on installing a humidistat and bathroom fan or fans to exhaust some of the humidity. Now that the vent is installed, next step is to install the fans, humidistat and build the broodstock rack.