Nano Reef Aquarium

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 ...

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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 w...

I have compiled a short list of useful online tools to help you work out costs of running a reef tank and a simple programme that allows you to keep notes of maintenance on you computer, i will be actively looking and adding to this list as i come across them. The link list is found on the right hand column of this blog. 

If you are a newcomer to this fascinating hobby you might not realize that there are many types of corals available for your aquarium. You firstly need to know why and how they are different, also what this means to the amount of time you will need to spend caring for them. Soft corals. These are the easiest corals to keep in your reef aquarium and ideal for the beginner. These corals generally have a leathery texture to them and have no skeleton structure to them. They rely on photosynthesis to grow. These and many others corals have an algae present called zooxanthellae. Both the coral and the algae rely on each other, if one was not present the other would simply die. So in order to keep these corals you will need lighting such as T8's or T5's will be more than adequate. Examples of Soft corals include: zoas, button polyps, mushrooms, ricordias, toadstools and more. Hard corals. These make up the majority of the remaining corals but come in two forms LPS and SPS. Lar...

Here is my new sun coral, it has about 30 heads and opens when the lights are on and have to say it looks fantastic. I have always liked these non light loving corals. This came from a local reefer at a bargain price. It feeds really well. I just hope i can provide enough food so it can thrive.

Whats next for my reef aquarium? well after purchasing a sun coral and my first SPS, montipora from a local reefer. I have made a few decisions. The softies are going to be going in due course, I now have found a real intrest in LPS and SPS corals. This means a few things are going to change over the nest few months. Apart from fragging, selling and swopping,  most of my soft corals. I have realized from my recent purchase that i need a couple of items. Firstly i need a much better power head, having seen the new vortech pumps in operation and there many ways of controling water flow, and space saving pumps. I now have the "I want one of those" problems. I am going to see if i can swap my T5 Lighting luminaire for a MP10 or MP20 on one of the online forums, this will save me loads of money and allow me to use my cash for future livestock purchases. Secondly i am having outbrakes of algea. I need to get rid of it, and using rowaphos in a...