My goal is to help hobbyists create the reef tank of their dreams. That’s it. And to do that I focus on three main areas: Cultivation, Education and Inspiration. My blog, online course, and book are the educational tools I use to share knowledge I have accumulated over the years, providing a roadmap for success.
Over the many years I have been keeping reef tanks I have learned that it is critically important to have stable, rock solid parameters, especially alkalinity. Like other reefers, I had no other choice but to use a hobby grade test kit to measure alkalinity.…
Taste can very subjective when it comes to selecting eye-catching SPS corals for a reef tank. For me, I am an old school reefer and today I tend to stay away from the over-priced corals with a lot of hype and buzz.…
Years ago when I first entered the hobby, I was mesmerized by a giant blue clam at a LFS. It was about 5 inches and I had never seen a blue clam with that type of pattern. I was told it was a Blue Squamosa clam, considered at the time to be the holy grail of clams.…
One key to keeping an eye catching SPS dominated reef is to plan ahead and think about what the reef might look like in a year or two when it matures. Do your homework and gather all the knowledge you can about the corals you are interested in adding.…
Your tank is on cruise control and all SPS corals are in a happy zone, growing and thriving like you had always imagined. Then one day the lights come on and your eyes zero in on a dead coral. What the heck?…
Is good polyp extension necessary if you want to have success with SPS corals? Not necessarily. However, if you dig fuzzy sticks then there are a few things you can do to fulfill this desire. Here are my Top 5 Tips to Maximize SPS Polyp Extension:
Avoid Fish with a Hankering for SPS – Perhaps this is a no brainer, but you should bypass fish with a tendency to snack on SPS.…
Reef keeping is an art form and this art can be brought to life when using macro photography to expose the rich and infinite details in coral and other reef tank inhabitants.  The basic premise of macro photography is to achieve high magnification of the subject.…
So you have a reef tank and you also have an affinity for keeping marine angelfish, a potentially bad combination since many angelfish have a reputation for snacking on and destroying corals. But wait, options do exist!…
Given its vivid coloration, the ORA Pearlberry is a must have coral for many SPS collectors. When it first came out it generated a lot of excitement and I was stoked to add it to my tank. According to ORA’s description of the Pearlberry, the coral looks like an Acropora desalwii, although they never came up with an official lineage.…
For the last 4 weeks I have been running my 187 gallon reef tank without a skimmer as sort of an experiment.
A few months ago I lost a number of corals due to what I believe were very low levels of phosphate in the tank.…