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Showing posts from March, 2010

The Reef Aquarium With Low Magnesium - What Can Happen?

Hopefully you will understand that keeping corals is a huge responsibility and can become very expensive to yourself and the environment. Corals are very interesting animals and unless you are willing to nurture them properly, you should find another hobby. After checking the usual, Salinity, Nitrate and Phosphates. You should be checking Magnesium, Alkalinity and Calcium. These three parameters are very important when keeping short polyp stony,and long polyp stony hard corals, SPS and LPS respectively. So what effects will low magnesium have on your reef aquarium? You will find it very difficult to maintain high alkalinity and calcium levels if magnesium is low. Corals will slow in growth and will cause some corals such as Duncans and torch corals to recede, and in some cases die. You may as many other reefers do, think you have something unseen and/or unheard of eating your corals, because branching heads or receding one by one. Don't get fooled by this, it more likely

My reef blog is looking for sponsorship

My reef blog is looking for sponsorship. If you are the owner of a online shop and are looking for a place to advertise. My Reef Blog would be really happy to hear from you. I can offer banner, and or links in many of my interesting articles. My Reef Blog currently receives about 12000 hits per year and growing constantly. Terms of 3,6,9 and 12 months are available. Please complete the form below for pricing and acceptance. 

Hair algae, the most likely cause

At some point in your reef keeping days you are most likely to come across green hair algae, some more so than others, but what is the cause? There are three simple reasons that i have found to be the cause. The most likely cause has to be flow or lack of it. If you have any dead spots in your aquarium you will soon find them because this is where this dreadful pest will start. Little tufts of green strands will start to appear. Maybe it is time to upgrade your power head or maybe add another. The second cause of that should not happen if you are doing regular parameter checks, is high phosphates. Simply resolved by the use of media such as rowaphos. It has to be said that this can be placed in the bag provided into good flow in the aquarium. Better methods include a fluidised reactor, although this creates additional cost but is a much more effective way to deal with the problem. The final method i have read about is the actual lighting period, Too much of it will create this alg