The Many Uses of a Turkey Baster

Why spend money on fancy aquarium cleaning and feeding tools when you can use as a simple turkey baster. That's right! A turkey baster is not only made for basting a turkey, but is an excellent tool for any aquarium owner to have. It only costs a few bucks, is easy to clean, made of all plastic and rubber materials, and can be found in most any grocery or department store that sells food preparation products.

What Can You Do With a Turkey Baster?

• Directly feed sessile invertebrates, such as corals, anemones, and clams, and fish that may be having a difficult time competing for their share of food.

• To reduce the amount of DOCs (dissolved organic compounds) that can build up in the substrate, which is the primary culprit for algae problems, every other day or so pick a small section of the substrate to clean by squirting the tank water over the media to fluff or stir it up. Once the particulate matter is free-floating in the water, it can quite easily be removed through mechanical filtration and/or skimming. This is also an excellent way to feed various types of corals, anemones, tube worms, bivalves, sponges and other filter feeding animals.

• Lightly blow off sufficating sediment and organic matter that can settle on top of live rocks, corals, other sessile invertebrates and delicate organisms.

• Blow off, suck up, and dispense of unwanted nuisance algae.

• Remove small bugs or other things that might fall into an aquarium that end up floating around.

• Acclimate livestock.

• Remove water from the aquarium for testing, without getting your hands wet.

• Suck up and remove smaller undesirable critters, like bristleworms.

Turkey Baster Discussions

• Feed a Mandarin in an Aggressive Fish Feeding Community
  
• Temporarily Blow Diatom Algae Off of Live Rock

Do you have other ideas? Feel free to share them.