I have long cited a calcium reactor (CaRx) as THE piece of equipment that got me over the hump with SPS. That was back in 1997, and the reactor was a Marine Technical Concepts ProCal. Those who may be familiar with my posts know I am an unabashed fan of MTC gear; and have used their stuff successfully and reliably for over 25 years. Times change, and while my enthusiasm for their gear remains undiminished, the actual company is now retired. I've had them build modifications for me over the...
Proper lighting is one of the most important aspects of successfully maintaining a reef aquarium, yet many hobbyists leave it to chance. I’ve pondered why this is for years--perhaps it is because it can be a complicated subject with many variables involved (compare this to water chemistry where there are rigid numbers such as calcium and magnesium at 400-450 and ~1,500 parts per million, respectively.) It could be that light meters tend to be expensive, and once light patterns in an aquarium...
Lego, made of ABS, Acrylonitrile butadiene styrene. Yes, @Brew12, you can have Lego in your reef tank.
This is a royalty-free image from by MW from Pixabay.
Welcome to Part 2 of Plastic for the Reef Aquarium. In Part 1, we covered some background on plastic, why plastic is of interest to reef aquarists, and we talked about plastic in general terms. Now we'll get a little more specific.
Unfortunately, most of the research that I've read about plastic does not test plastic specifically...
Introduction
At the beginning of January, 2019, I wrote an article about glass. Shortly after that, I was asked to write an article about plastic. This is the result. The article below is organized in a similar way as the glass article.
Plastic is of interest to reef aquarists because we use it. Some people have acrylic tanks; plastic elbows are commonly put inside quarantine or hospital tanks; plastic pipes plumb saltwater systems; and there are lots of other common uses for plastic in...
Hi everyone!
Thank you for taking a look on the forum at the Adelson illusion (Adelson 1993) shown in Figure 1 (left)! It created some great discussion that caused me to redraft the entire follow-up article!
Indeed, we did couch the question differently than Edward Adelson. We asked the following question: “Which square, A or B, do you think is receiving more light or more intensity?” We edited that question quickly--really to match the topic of the article. Which is--how do you know...
A drop of water.
This is royalty-free image from Pixabay.
Automated Water Changes
Automation is all the rage these days, with a sizable percentage of reefers believing that a controller is essential to the keeping of a reef tank. It's not, but it is a nice-to-have as long as you are sensible about what you expect it to do for you ….. and not do for you.
For those of us in the hobby long enough to remember when there was essentially NO automation, the things that modern technology can do...
The author of this article, David Smith, has a small zoanthid business in Youngstown, Ohio. He is an expert on the care of zoanthids and did a special piece for us on how to frag zoanthids effectively.
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Tips on Fragging Zoanthids
Here, I will highlight how I go about fragging zoanthids because that's what I specialize in. I will also highlight a few products that I like to use during this process.
To begin, I would like to start off by saying that the...
I’ve been keeping reef aquaria for a very long time. My first reef tank, softies and zoanthids, was set up around 1987. What folks newer to the hobby may not appreciate is the dearth of equipment choices that was available to us back then.
I built my first skimmer, not because I wanted to, but because the commercial options were so limited. There were no wavemakers, precious few lighting options, and certainly no algae scrubbers. We were forced to be resourceful, and do-it-yourself was...
