Once you keep a high energy planted aquarium tank for a while, you are bound to eventually keep hitting such high densities of plant biomass that several difficulties tend to arise: your plants may grow so thick that it is hard to keep the tank clean, the aquascape may have gone out of balance or it becomes difficult to keep up with growing demands for nutrient and carbon dioxide.…
Clearly one of the main factors that attracts people to planted aquariums is the apparent ease of maintenance and how easily plants can grow under a wide range of conditions without any help from the aquarist.…
The freshwater planted aquarium scene is becoming more popular than ever and this burgeoning segment of the freshwater aquarium world is beginning to attract a lot of long time reefers. The old salts are looking for something new to do with all the old reef equipment laying around and the cost of entry into aquatic gardening is very low as compared to reefing.…
I simply cannot recall seeing so many new products hit the scene, each with so much potential to change the way we run a reef tank and shifting paradigms about how certain pieces of equipment should work.…
The Flame Wrasse, Cirrhilabrus jordani, has remained one of the most highly sought after fairy wrasses for over a decade. Even with the influx of rare and never before seen fairy wrasses being collected from far flung, exotic new areas, the flame wrasse remains one of the most brilliant and popular wrasses for the marine aquarium.…
On September 5-7, 2008, over a thousand marine and reef aquarists flocked to Atlanta Georgia to attend the twentieth Marine Aquarium Conference of North America. This year’s event hosted the most speakers and attendees since the inception of the MACNA conference and the manufacturers and vendors or marine aquarium products were well represented as well.…
For years the Maxi Jet line of pumps has been one of the most popular powerheads of the aquarium hobby. Originally designed for general circulation and powering undergravel filters, the pumps have been reapplied for powering skimmers, reactors, media filters and there are modification kits available which elegantly convert the centrifugal pumps into propeller pumps.…
Part 3 will discuss Meandrinids, Mussids, Oculiniids, Caryophillidae, Hydrocorals, and others corals.
Dendrogyra cylindricus is arguably one of the most majestic Carribean corals after Acropora palmata.…
Siderastrea is a genus of small polyped stony corals which is also known as starlet coral. The three species are most often colored pale to dark brown but they can be vivid pink or blue in shallow water.…
Through its personal, day-to-day interactions with coral, the reef aquarium community as a whole has learned a lot about reef-building corals. However, since West Atlantic stony corals have been banned from collecting for the ornamental trade, most of the coral which is distributed through the aquarium trade originates from the Indo-Pacific region.…