New articles
When most people think of a coral reef, the first thing that usually comes to mind are the large, majestic colonies of Acropora corals shimmering in bright sunlight with lots of small fish darting around. Since the beginning of the hobby, keeping Acropora successfully has been the Holy Grail of...
Intermediate Topic
UV Sterilizer Plumbing: Skimmer Order, Bypass Loops, and What Happens to Your Copepods
Where you plumb a UV sterilizer in a reef sump affects how well it performs, and it also affects something a lot of reefers don't think about until later: the copepods and other zooplankton many of us are actively trying to grow in a refugium. There's no single correct location that works for...
“The Eye Fluke” - Neobenedenia melleni
Jay Hemdal
Aquarium Curator (retired)
The Toledo Zoo and Aquarium
This serious disease of marine aquarium fish is caused by a type of flatworm termed a monogenean (requiring only one host to complete its life cycle). Because they do not require a secondary...
Intermediate Topic
UV Sterilizers and Well Water: What Reef Keepers on Private Wells Should Actually Check Before Trusting Their Source Water
If you fill your RODI unit from a spigot connected to a private well, you already know the local water district isn't testing anything for you. That responsibility landed entirely on your shoulders the day the well was drilled, and most people find that out the hard way, usually right around the...
Hi reefers. I did a video today trying to describing the "titration" method and the "fixed amount of acid "method. Observe that alkalinity end values in "fixed amount of acid" method is based on using only bromocresoolgreen. Manufactures may have wider range if combining pH detecting reagents...
If you've been in this hobby for more than a few months, you've probably seen the debate come up in almost every "what equipment do I need" thread: do you actually need a UV sterilizer, or is it just another box that hums in your sump and eats electricity? The honest answer is that it depends on...
The Orphek Reef Journal
🪸 Exploring coral reefs, science, and the future of marine life 🪸
Coral Bleaching: What Can We Actually Control?
During Coral Bleaching Awareness Month, a different question is worth asking: when a coral is under stress, which parts of its environment can we control...
Did Christmas come early this year? Nope, that’s just the candy-cane-striped Stenopus hispidus, more commonly referred to as the coral banded shrimp. A favorite among aquarists thanks to its relatively large size and bright colors, this species can be found on every list of popular aquarium...
When setting up or running a reef tank, the goal is to optimize the conditions for the system’s inhabitants to grow and flourish; this is the definition of a successful aquarium. As our knowledge about the hobby has increased, success in reefkeeping is much easier to achieve than ever before...
