Most Colorful Fish contest. Saltwater versus Freshwater.

Freshwater fishkeepers often say “Someday I will set up a saltwater tank. They are so much prettier.” Are they right?
Let’s have a contest. I will be the judge. Are saltwater fish more colorful than freshwater?
I’ll rate the fish from 1 to 5. Five is the best score, the prettiest a fish can be.

Let’s start with a red fish:

Freshwater fish, the Red Velvet Swordtail.

I’ll give the Red Sword 5 points.

The saltwater red fish, the Coris Wrasse:

I will give the Coris Wrasse 4 points so the score is Freshwater 5, Saltwater 4.
Wait a minute, the Wrasse grows up and loses his red color!

A beautiful fish but not red! I give it 2 points. The score is Freshwater 5, Salt 2.

Let’s look at a White fish:
The freshwater entry is the albino Corydoras Catfish.

This catfish does not look like this in the natural state. Albinos do not survive long in nature. I’ll give it 3 points.
I can’t think of a white Saltwater fish. Zero points for the Salties!
The score now. Freshwater 8. Saltwater 2.
How about a yellow fish?
Here’s the freshwater Gold Barb.

Not bad. I would say 2 points for them.
Here’s the saltwater yellow fish, the Yellow Tang.

Wow, that’s a FIVE for sure. That makes the score 10 to 7 for the Freshies.

Oh, wait a second, there is a last-second entry for the freshwater team!
The Electric Yellow Labidochromis. An African Cichlid.

That’s worth four points at least. The score is getting wider.
It’s Freshwater 12. Saltwater 7.
On to Blue.
Freshwater has Blue Platies and Blue Gouramis but the bluest is the Electric Blue African Cichlid.

I’ll give it two points because the female is not very Blue. (sorry, ladies)

Here’s a saltwater Blue Damsel.

That’s an easy 5 points for the Salt team.
The score is now Fresh 14, Salt 12.
Green fish are the next category. I thought there would be more green fish. They could hide among plants. From an evolutionary standpoint I think green would be a good color to be.
Here’s a freshwater green fish.

That looks like 4 points.
And, in the ocean, here is the Green Chromis.

I’ll give the Chromis 2 points.
The score is now Freshwater 18. Salt 14.
Hang on! Time-out! A penalty has been assessed against the freshwater team. The Green Tetra is  a genetically modified fish. Cheater!!!!4 points are taken from the Freshies.
The score is now tied 14-14.
Let’s look at Orange fish.
The Sunset Platy.

I like these Platies and give them 3 points for orangeness.
Here’s a saltwater Flame Angelfish.

Almost all orange except the stripes. That’s a beautiful fish worth 4 points to the Saltwater team.
The Salties pull ahead 18-17!!!
Black fish are next.
Here’s the Black Molly in a tank with a black background.

Here’s another Black Molly.

That’s the blackest fish in the world. 5 points for the freshwaters.
The saltwater entry is the Domino Damsel.

That’s four points for the salt. The score is tied 22-22.. oh wait here’s an adult Domino Damsel.

The damsel only gets 2 points.
Freshies are back on top 22-20.
The last category is multi-colored fish.
Here is a group of Discus.

Since these are all modified by captive breeding I’ll give them 3 points.
Freshwater 25-20.
The final entry for saltwater is the Mandarin fish.

Fantastic, that’s five points!!! I wish I could give it a ten.
The score is TIED 25-25!!!
How can I break this tie??
How about the ugliest fish??
Freshwater?

4 points?
Saltwater.

That is just as ugly. 4 points for the Salt team.
Still 29-29.
OK, one last chance to solve this issue.
I decided to do a Google Image search.
Freshwater fish.

…and the Google Image search for Saltwater fish.

And the winner is …… Saltwater … by one point.
I’ll admit the saltwater fish are more colorful, but just barely. If you have a freshwater tank don’t be jealous.
97.5% of the Earth’s water is saltwater. 0.3% of the water is in freshwater lakes and rivers. The rest is groundwater, snow, and glaciers.

Photos for this post are from the Internet and are not mine at all. I usually use my own in this blog. I appreciate the use of these photos and hope that I have not offended anyone by using their pictures.

The latest fishy pictures and videos

The momma Marble Angel.

The Silver Molly male and the tank full of baby Endler’s and Mollies

Saltwater fish are 5 years old.

My Royal Gramma and two Ocellaris Clownfish are about 5 years old now. I set this tank up 4 years and 11 months ago so the fish must have already been born at that time.
We had carpet cleaners come recently (pre-Thanksgiving!) so I moved the tank and took the opportunity to empty it, rinse out the sand, hose off the rocks and dead corals and make a big water change.
The water was slightly cloudy for a few days but you can see the plants (Caleurpa and Chaetomorpha) are coming back and keeping everything in balance.
Rules for a healthy tank:
1. Not too many fish
2. Occasional water changes
3. Live plants
4. Don’t overfeed
The same rules for freshwater apply to saltwater. The only difference is that I use, and highly recommend, a protein skimmer for the saltwater tank.

Cleaning the Protein Skimmer

I have the cheapest style of Protein Skimmer, an air-driven model called a Berlin-type Protein Skimmer.
It works great as long as it is kept clean.

After running a week you can see the proteins (urine, etc.) that have accumulated in the top section of the Skimmer.

This is the part of the Skimmer that is underwater. The black tubing goes to the wooden airstone.

I use a scrub pad to clean the wooden airstone. I replace the airstone 2 or 3 times per year.

The bubbles will eventually crawl up the tube and "fractionate". In other words, they will break apart and leave the nasty bits in the skimmer cup.

Limestone with fossils in the Aquarium

To keep the pH of the aquarium at 8.0 or above, I use the limestone rocks that we have in abundance right here in Iowa.
In particular, this is great for African Cichlids (specifically the Rift Lake Cichlids of Malawi and Tanganyika) and for Saltwater fish.
A recent post by Aditix, a WordPress bogger, explains this subject quite well.
Here is a link to that post:
http://aditix.wordpress.com/2012/03/23/raising-ph-with-limestone/

I took a few pictures of the limestone rocks that are found around here, along rivers, or rockcuts from highway construction, and you can see the fossils in these rocks. There are shells and tubeworms, and coral formations that look like corals that are growing today. These fossils are from the Devonian Period, around 400 million years ago!

A friend of mine set up a Saltwater  “Nemo” tank for his little girls. The fish died and we discussed it but I never guessed what the problem was. He took a water sample to a Local Fish Shop and they found his tank had a low pH for Saltwater. I told him about using the limestone. Next thing you know, he was out walking around picking up limestone pieces. He cleaned them up and put them in his tank. The pH is correct and stable and his new fish are doing fine.
Of course, there are substrates like Oyster shell, crushed coral and Dolomite that accomplish this as well.

Lionfish eating Smelt

I fed the Lionfish this morning before I cleaned up the tank .

Frozen Smelt are too big for my Dwarf Lion and even though I sliced this one, it was still too big.

The Clownfish and Royal Gramma get a meal of Smelt eggs and scraps.

Saltwater tank maintenance

Every few months I need to pull out the Caleurpa (a macro-algae) that grows in my salt tank. I donate it to our local fish shop, along with Hornwort and Java Moss from my freshwater tanks. I also like to do a water change at the same time.

Too much Caleurpa! I can't see the rocks and coral and shells.

I mix salt into the aged fresh water.

After I yank out the Caleurpa the water gets a little cloudy from disturbing the bottom. That's the best time to siphon out the old water.

While the water is low I clean the glass.

Use a hydrometer to get the Specific Gravity (essentially the salt concentration) correct.

It's best that I have no idea how much the petshop sells these for!

Additional maintenance on this tank includes changing, or washing, the filter cartridges, and cleaning the protein skimmer. The protein skimmer is so important I think I’ll write a separate post about it sometime soon.

Clownfish don’t always clown around

I have two Ocellaris Clownfish. I bought them over 4 years ago and they are going strong.

The most commonly  kept saltwater fish such as Clownfish and Damsels can be aggressive and territorial. They are similar to keeping freshwater Cichlids, such as the South America Firemouths and Convicts, or the various African Cichlids.

In this video clip you see my two Clowns tussling over a dead minnow. The minnow wasn’t dead about 30 seconds before this video started. The first Clown to grab it nearly tore it in half. I don’t recall Nemo the Clownfish tearing another fish to pieces in the movie.

When you put your saltwater fish together keep a close eye on them for awhile until they work out their differences.  If the fighting doesn’t settle down in a few days, you will have to decide what fish to remove.  Do you remove the most aggressive one, the most or least expensive one, or the prettiest one?  It’s  up to you.

If you add a new fish to your tank, give it a chance by re-arranging the decor of your tank so your old fish think they are in new surroundings, too.

Bristleworms in Saltwater

I turned on the lights of my Saltwater tank around 3 am one morning. I think the fish were not happy and that should remind me to turn on the room lights for 5 minutes before I turn on the tank lights.  I don’t want to startle the fish into smashing against the glass or even leaping out of the tank in terror.

When I looked in the tank there was a big hairy worm, a Bristleworm, crawling up the glass. It was about 2 inches long. I watched him as he slowly turned around and headed DOWN the glass to the bottom of the tank.  Over the next few days I did spot a couple of other Bristleworms crawling on the plants. I read about them and felt reassured that they are harmless to my fish.

I had forgotten about them until I rinsed out the filter pads of my outside filters. There they were, Bristleworms. Maybe a dozen on each filter pad. Picture little tiny centipedes, maybe half an inch long.

I decided to neither try to kill them or save them. I just rinsed the filter out as normal. I’m sure the worm population of my tank will recover. For all I know, there may be hundreds in there.

We have a little screen in the drain of our kitchen sink. I picked up the screen and there they were, a dozen little Bristleworms. I disposed of them, and breathed a sigh of relief that my wife didn’t find them! So that is my advice…it’s OK to clean filters in the kitchen sink when your spouse is gone, but make sure to hide the evidence. Rinse down the sink and then flush out the drain screen. And hope she doesn’t read your blog.

Saltwater tank made easy

I set up a Saltwater tank 4 years ago,  I started with 2 Ocellaris Clownfish which are still alive, a Royal Gramma who is still alive, and a Blue Damsel, who died of old age. I recently added a Dwarf Lionfish who is doing great. I have bought NO other fish.

I have not had any smashing success with the invertebrates. Little hermit crabs would live a few months , then disappear, Feather Duster worms also faded and died. My worst choice was to try a Bubble-tipped Anemone and it also died a slow death. Currently there is a healthy population of snails, micro tube-worms, and various other worms and “bugs”.

Saltwater can be expensive, VERY expensive. But my saltwater tank is not. Essentially it is the same as a freshwater setup, with the addition of a Protein Skimmer, which is essential.

I do not have “reef quality” lighting. I do have two fluorescent bulbs over the tank, which I would call strong freshwater lighting. The bulbs I have are 10,000K and 6,700K, which is enough to grow the plants in my tank but would never be good enough for live corals. If you want live corals and anemones in your tank start reading, a lot, on other sites about those subjects. If you want a tank with a few healthy fish and some nice green plants let’s keep going.

Locally I can get rocks that are limestone. The bedrock in this part of Iowa was once in an ocean and this limestone is full of fossil coral and shells, really neat stuff to look at. A few of these rocks in the tank looks great but also serves to help keep the pH of the tank around an 8.0

Our city water is also high pH, at least 7.8, which is also perfect for African Cichlids by the way. But back to the saltwater, I just use a little sand on the bottom of my tank, about an inch deep, but you should probably buy a bag of shell-based substrate that is made for a saltwater tank to keep that pH in line.

Then you get the salt mix. Any brand name salt mix will work. You need a hydrometer to measure “specific gravity”, which tells you the salt concentration. Try to set yours close to 1.022. Add salt to make it higher, add water to make it lower.

Of course you have a heater, right?  Pretty obvious.  Set it to at 78F. Don’t go below 75, and 80 is wonderful.

I wish Skimmers worked in freshwater too, but they don't.

The Protein Skimmer. I use the cheapest kind you can buy, an air-driven skimmer. Mine is called a Berlin-type skimmer. It uses a regular aquarium air pump and a wooden air stone.  It pushes micro-air bubbles through a narrowing passage, then the air bubbles come out into the top chamber and expand and “fractionate”, they burst into separate components and the fish pee (and other proteins) stays in the skimmer.

Google “Protein Skimmers” and read about them, decide what you want. My cheap skimmer cost about 35 bucks a few years ago, plus the air pump, tubing, adjustable valve, I must have 60 bucks in the skimmer. You can spend hundreds if you want. I did see a Skimmer, similar to mine, at PetCo recently for around 50 dollars.

You can see the bottom part of the Protein Skimmer.

You need a filter. In my 35 gallon tank I am currently using 2 side filters with cartridges that slide in and out, just like in a freshwater tank. These filters claim to pump about 150 gallons per hour. I don’t use any carbon in the filter but you sure can.

I was using only one side filter but when I added the Lionfish I figured he was adding a large biological load to the tank, which is to say he eats and poops a lot.

Time to give away some Caleurpa. See the little Lionfish hiding at the bottom right.

I keep two types of aquatic plants in my saltwater tank for the same reason I like plants in my freshwater tanks. They are natural filters. They take waste and turn it into “leaves”. One of the plants I have is a type of Caleurpa, which is truly a “macro-algae”, an algae with big leaves. The other plant is called Chaetomorpha, which looks like a blue-green scrub pad.

The Chaetomorpha is the plant on the far left.

I’ll write a separate post about the Caluerpa because there are some issues that people have with using it but I like it. I have not had the problems that I have read about.

The real reef experts in the Saltwater community use Caluerpa and Chaetmorpha in their “refugiums”. A refugium is a tank that is connected to their main tank and used to filter their water. In a way, my main tank is a glorified refugium. I like it. It’s cheap. When I want to do corals someday I’ll buy the expensive lights and filters and…wait a minute, I ain’t gonna do that.

What else do you need? Ah yes, PATIENCE. Set up the tank, run it for weeks with no fish. If you can, borrow a handful of  sand/gravel from someone’s saltwater tank. That will speed up the process. Your tank has to “cycle”. Read all about it.

When I set up this tank  I used some Mollies to cycle it.  Buy a pair of Mollies, keep them in a small tank or bucket and add a little saltwater to their tank over the course of several days until they are in nearly full-strength saltwater, then add them to your tank.  In my case, the Molly Mom had babies in the tank and it took me weeks to catch them when I finally got my Blue Damsel. I started with a Blue Damsel because they are tough and only cost 4 bucks. You can leave the Mollies in the tank or take them out and slowly convert them back to freshwater (or preferably brackish water but that’s another subject!).

This Balloon Molly was born in my saltwater tank.

If your ONE fish lives a month, add another one or two. It should take you months to stock your tank, not days , not weeks, but MONTHS.  PATIENCE!

I have had this Royal Gramma for 4 years.

Feed them good food, make 20% water changes every month, monitor and understand the skimmer, which means empty it and clean it so it functions properly.

If  you can take care of a  freshwater tank and understand your fishes behavior, you can easily do the same with Saltwater.