Building A Budget REEF Aquarium: Step #10 Adding Fish

Give Your Fish Jobs, NOT Diseases

In Part #10 we show you how we add our first fish to our budget reef tank tank. An important thing to note is that in our last video we went over cycling the tank, and this is about a week and a half later. At this point, we're getting no more ammonia and no more nitrite readings in the tank, which means this tank is safe for fish. As long as you're getting ammonia and nitrite, the tank is not fully cycled, and it's not safe for fish.

For this video, we visit the Aquarium Arts store in Mesa, Arizona. We pick out some fish, put them in the tank, and show you how to acclimate them.

When I'm picking out fish, I'm typically looking for fish that are easy to take care of, and that do a job. It's cool if they look good, we all like attractive fish, but I also want them to do a job. The first fish that leaped out to me was some Aiptasia-eating Filefish. If you add one of these, you shouldn't ever have an aiptasia problem. By starting with one of these guys, it'll help prevent us from ever having that problem. They're also called Leafy Filefish, and you can kind of see how they get that name. They kind of look like a leaf. They can actually change their color slightly to try to blend in.

The next fish we picked out is this Yellow Coris Wrasse. What I really like about these guys is they're very brightly colored, but they also serve a job. These guys are great at eating coral parasites like various flatworms. They could also maybe eat some Montipora-eating Nudibranch, and putting these in at the start will prevent those problems from popping up later on. If you do get a coral with some parasites, these guys will help take care of it. So I think it's a great fish to start with to help prevent problems that come up down the road.

Now the last fish that's going in the tank is not going to come from the store, it's a Tang coming from my house. Tangs are great algae-eating fish and adding one Tang can really reduce the amount of maintenance that you do on the tank. I have a Chevron Tang that's in a tank with six other Tangs, and he's getting a little too crowded in there, so he's going to move from my house to the work tank. I would highly recommend if you have a tank the size that we do, a 55, you add some kind of Tang. Especially one of the Bristletooth to eat algae in the tank.

Back at the office, we add the fish to the tank. But we don't just want to put them in. The first step whenever you take your fish home is you want to get the bags and float them in the tank for about 10 to 15 minutes. This will equalize the temperature between the water that the fish are in and the tank. Parameters other than the temperature you need to consider are pH and the water hardness. And to acclimate the fish to those parameters that they're used to, to the parameters of your tank, we're going to drip acclimate the fish.

To drip acclimate the fish, we'll first open them up and put them in a bucket with the water from the store. Then set up a drip line to slowly drip water from the tank into the bucket to slowly equalize those water parameters. One important thing to note is that we could put these fish in the same bucket because these fish shared the same water. They weren't in the same tank but the tanks are plumbed together in the store, so the water they were in should be the same. If they came from two different systems, where the water was not shared, you'd want to use separate buckets for each fish.

The key to acclimating the fish is to slowly drip water into the bucket. This will slowly equalize the other parameters to acclimate the fish to the water. I use a section of Python Airline Tubing. To attach the tubing to the side of the tank I use an ista CO2 Air Pipe Holder. I start clipping the Pipe Holder holding the Tubing to the side of the tank. It holds the hose below the surface. I suck on the tubing to get some water traveling, then tie a knot in it by pulling the knot tighter. You want to have a water flow that is somewhere between a drip and a stream.

I make a note of where the water level is. Once the water level has doubled or tripled the parameters should be somewhere between what they were in the tank the fish came from and the tank they're going into. This can take anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour.

Once we have the fish acclimated, I could just pick up that whole bucket and just pour it in the tank, but we are not going to do that, and the reason we're not going to do that is because I don't know what was in the fish store's water. Now I really like the guys at Aquarium Arts. I'm sure they're great, but as a general rule don't trust anyone else's water. You don't know if it has medication in it that could poison corals or something else in your tank. You don't know if it's disease-ridden. Hopefully, you picked up some disease-free fish, but it's just best to not put someone else's water in your tank if you can avoid it.

I use a JBJ 8" Fine Fish Net to transfer the fish. My general recommendation with a net is to get the biggest net you can get that's not so big you can't move it in your tank. It's going to give you more margin for error when it comes to swiping for the fish, and we're using the fine fish net because the fine fish net is specifically designed so that fish that have spines have less of a chance of getting tangled in the net. You may have noticed at the store that when Ian grabbed the little Filefish he used his hand because he was worried about the fins getting tangled. We're going to use the fine fish net and I believe that'll do a good job.

We got the fish in the tank. Didn't get tangled at all. We'll update you guys as things come along. Next up we'll do some maintenance videos, do a water change, add a cleanup crew, do some testing, do a fish food video, and then add the coral. Thank you very much. Stay subscribed if you'd like to see more.

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Building A Budget REEF Aquarium: Step #10 Adding Fish

Give Your Fish Jobs, NOT Diseases

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