The New Saltwater Aquarium Guide: How to Care for and Keep Marine Fish and Corals

By Albert B Ulrich III

The New Saltwater Aquarium Guide: How to Care for and Keep Marine Fish and Corals
Looking for a saltwater aquarium book that will show you step by step how to setup, stock and care for marine fish and corals? Then look no further.
The New Saltwater Aquarium Guide: How to Care for and Keep Marine Fish and Corals will show you what to do and how to avoid the problems that many newcomers to the hobby face when setting up a new saltwater aquarium.
If you are looking for a book that reads more like a scientific paper than a guide to the stocking and care of saltwater aquarium fish and corals, then this isn’t the book for you. The author’s style is informative, yet casual. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, it’s the feel good Saltwater Aquarium Book of the Winter, Spring, Summer or Fall. Whatever season it is for you right now!
Learning how to care for and keep tropical fish and corals doesn’t have to be boring. This book will show you how to do it with easy-to-follow instructions and will hopefully make you smile along the way.
Inside the book, you will find lots of pictures and will hopefully pay for itself in no time.
Few things, in life, are more relaxing or enjoyable than watching a living aquarium filled with beautifully colored reef fish and corals. They can be a focal point in a room or a subtle treasure only you see. With a good plan, the right equipment and the right knowledge, you can build a successful, thriving new reef aquarium.
The book will help you make important decisions like:
* What type of tank is right for you?
* What size should you buy?
* What equipment is necessary and what equipment is optional?
* What kind of testing is necessary and what science do you need to know?
* What are the best corals and fish to start with?
* How do you set up a tank?
* What can you expect to happen once you do?
Whether you already set up your new saltwater aquarium or are still deciding what to do, this book can help you be confident that you have the knowledge to create a thriving new saltwater aquarium.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Albert B Ulrich III
• Release date: Apr 11, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311559500

Albert B Ulrich III

My name is Albert B. Ulrich. My friends call me Al or Big Al. I have been an aquarium hobbyist for almost 30 years and my articles have been published in the hobby magazines Aquarium Fish International and Aquariums USA . I was on the board of directors of a local aquarium club, and I read and write about the hobby as much as I can. I have successfully bred the banggai cardinalfish, common clownfish and the neon goby.I am a jokester at heart and I don’t like to take myself too seriously. I hope a little bit of that personality shows in my writing. I’m not really sure if it translates well to the written word–but I’m generally trying to joke around and have a good time. This hobby shouldn’t be a mystery–and newcomers to the hobby shouldn’t be surprised by preventable, predictable problems. My goal is to help others avoid making the same mistakes I made. If you like my books you should come check out my blog at:http://saltwateraquariumblog.com

Book preview

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Appendix

Photography and Illustration Credits

Acknowledgements

Special thanks to my Wife and Father for the yeoman’s work they did fixing comma splices, misspellings, inconsistencies and even sentence fragments. They aren’t even fish geeks, they just offered their help. I also want to personally thank Susan Boenhke who somehow found time in between work and school, to provide valuable feedback.

A quick shout-out to Doc Leibel. I was in your office when the neurons first connected and I realized that YOU were the author of that South American Cichlids book I read years before and decided that I wanted to be like you. Your book was better, published traditionally and had a hard cover, but thanks for being an inspiration.

Preface

I am going to venture a guess that if you bought this book, you're interested in setting up your own saltwater aquarium—or you know someone who is. When I meet newcomers to the hobby, I'm always interested to hear the story of how or why they got into the hobby. I’ve heard stories of a fascination that started during a childhood trip to the zoo or public aquarium or fond memories of an aquarium their father or mother used to care for. Many people have had an aquarium for years and just want to jump into the saltwater end of the pool. What's your story? Stop by my blog, introduce yourself, give me a chance to say Thanks, and let me know what brought you here.

http://saltwateraquariumblog.com/contact

As far as my story—well, I’ve been an aquarium-nerd for a long time. I hope you’re not offended by the term. I wear that badge with honor.

Oddly enough, I became an aquarium nerd by an indirect pathway. When I was 6 years old, my grandmother bought me a Red-Ear Slider Turtle at a Farmers Market. Despite my parents’ protests at the time, I reluctantly coaxed them into letting me supplement the turtle’s diet with live feeder fish. From what I remember, the turtle (I don't even think I gave him a name) generally made short-work of the sushi offering. But my fascination with aquarium fish began a few weeks after I bought him a dozen feeder guppies.

As fate would have it, the turtle did not eat all the guppies from that bag. There were two survivors: one larger, drab fish and a slightly more colorful but much smaller fish. After a while, it seemed that the fish just blended into the background, completely ignored by the turtle. Well, guppies being guppies, it didn't take long for the drab-looking female guppy to give birth to several live offspring, which blew my six-year-old mind. In an ironic twist of fate, the guppies hunted down and ate their own young, providing scientific evidence for the cliché you are what you eat.

My parents shut down the old turtle operation sometime after that. I remember the 10-gallon tank being broken-down and thrown away. I remember moving the turtle to a smaller, plastic cage (that I would never put a turtle in now that I have a more mature appreciation for animal husbandry). And I sadly remember the day I found the turtle drooped lifelessly from within his shell. But the seed was planted, and after a few years I transitioned into the aquarium hobby.

I walked to the mall with a friend of mine (about a mile and a half, both ways uphill) as a weekend afternoon adventure. I don't remember what my friend bought, but while I was there, I bought a 5 gallon tank at the Phar-Mor—which was incidentally at the other end of the half-mile long Franklin Mills Mall, in Philadelphia, PA. I lugged the aquarium home and set-up shop on an end-table in the basement.

It was a spontaneous purchase. I hadn't cleared any of this with my parents before-hand. I think they were impressed by my conviction, evidenced by lugging the thing home 2 miles without breaking it.

Now that I look back, I'm amazed that I didn't drop the thing on the way home.

Determined to rekindle my livebearer success, my first purchase was a pair of Green Swordtails, Xiphophorus helleri, a freshwater live bearing fish (similar to the guppies I had years before). Of course it did not take long before my tank was full of little Swordtails—and I have had wet thumbs ever since.

Over the years, I branched out from livebearers to many different fish species. I had Neon Tetras, Paracheirodon innesi, and Tiger Barbs, Puntius tetrazona, spawn in my tanks—although I never successfully raised any of the fry. The first egg-laying fish I successfully reared was the Convict Cichlid, Amatitlania nigrofasciata. I kept a pair of young adult fish in an un-heated 1-gallon hexagonal aquarium. I am not suggesting in any that was a reasonable setup for such a large tropical fish—just reporting the story and demonstrating the low level of technique required to rear such a bulletproof fish. The trickiest part of that arrangement was finding room for the fry (which I later moved into a few separate, unheated goldfish bowls. My room looked like a cichlid refugee camp.

Eventually, I upgraded to (and over-crowded) a 20 gallon tank and kept various species of cichlids. I bred the South American cichlid Geophagus brasiliensis, and the African Dwarf Cichlid, Pelvicachromis pulcher, more commonly known as Kribensis.

In college, I was fortunate to have met, studied under and worked with one of the best minds in the aquarium hobby— Dr. Wayne S. Leibel, expert in all things New World Cichlid. I was amazed by the volumes of magazines on Wayne’s bookshelf, each containing an article which he had authored. It was when I was in his office that I had decided to be an author.

It wasn’t until I was in my mid-twenties, however, that I became all salty...pun intended. Of course I was fascinated by saltwater reef fish and invertebrates—but I had no experience keeping saltwater fish.

My wife bought me a nice 75-gallon aquarium as a gift, and I decided to take the plunge into the saltwater hobby. I started with a basic fish-only tank—crushed coral substrate, a few decorations and some damselfish. After a few months of success, I added some live rock, upgraded my lights and added some mushroom coral. From there, I have scaled up a little bit more and added a rack of tanks in my basement (I call it a fish room, but it’s really just a rack of tanks in a basement). I have successfully spawned the Banggai Cardinalfish, Pterapogon kauderni, Common Clownfish, Amphiprion ocellaris, and the Neon Goby, Elacatinus oceanops. I have also kept and propagated many coral species.

But that isn't why I'm writing this book. I'm actually writing this book because I've made nearly every mistake possible—generally out of stubbornness—and I have such a strong affinity for this hobby that I want to keep you, if you're interested, from making the same mistakes I made.

When I transitioned from freshwater to saltwater, I was already convinced I knew everything there was to know about keeping saltwater fish. By the time I switched over to the salt-side, I had been keeping fish healthy in captivity for years. But a lot of what I read—in books and online—seemed a bit too scientific (like it was written to impress me with how many scientific terms the author knew rather than educate me). The advice was also generally sterile and written in absolutes as 'the best' or 'only' way to do things. It didn't take long to find a few conflicting accounts where different authors recommended completely opposite things. So, I pig-headedly blazed into the hobby convinced I was going to do things the way I had always done them. Of course, I made a lot of mistakes along the way.

My goal with this book is to try and strip-down the scientific mumbo jumbo into basic chunks and lay out practical advice that anyone can follow and have success in this hobby—because I want more people to join this hobby—and I want them to be successful.

Real people are not scientists, and they don't have unlimited amounts of time to dedicate to routine maintenance on their systems. Real people are busy, take short-cuts and need to know what the most important elements are so they can focus on those—because they plan to ignore the non-critical elements.

So I am approaching this book with a (hopefully) friendly, yet informative style intended to make the concepts approachable to the non-scientists out there. For those enthusiasts who are well schooled on the subject, I ask for your leniency, as I will likely take some creative liberties to express these concepts in a casual way that will undoubtedly leave out some technical aspect, in favor of achieving understandable simplicity.

I also think this is a fair time to warn you about my dry sense of humor—if you read something and it feels like I am pulling your leg—I probably am. If you read something and it does not make sense—I may be making a joke, or perhaps I just can't write clearly. Either way,

Reviews for The New Saltwater Aquarium Guide

[Jindong Yang · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

It was easy to understand yet had so many great tips