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Testing is something I always recommend to anyone, especially if their tank is seemingly off. But what about testing when everything is right? When talking to Joe Yaiullo of the Atlantis Aquarium (formerly the Long Island Aquarium), he mentioned how he tests repeatedly to make sure the results he gets are accurate. Specifically, if salinity is dead on, he tests again and again to make sure that it's actually correct and not a false sense of security. As he pointed out, when we see the numbers ...

One of the metal halide ballasts became problematic this week. I noticed about a month ago that it was occasionally not lighting the bulb on the left end of the reef, but with a little tinkering it resumed as expected. By tinkering, what I mean is taking down the ballast, cord, socket and bulb and hauling all of that into the kitchen to test it in a different outlet, and naturally it turned on just like when you take your car to the mechanic and everything works perfectly.

Last week, ...

I decided to try and make a couple of corner boxes for the sump that I could used to either add media or add some small live rock. The drain manifold would output into these before entering the compartment the boxes are in. I have little room so I decided to make them in the shape of a triangle. Since the sump is currently in use I did not make the base portion at the bottom of the boxes yet. I will have to make these when I pull the sump to finish the drain manifold. Below is a photo of the parts ...

It has been 3 weeks since I filled the tank with water so I thought I would give an update. I have had no issue with the tank itself. There are 2 MP10's for flow. I have a Avast Marine calcium reactor kit, Avast Marine biopellet reactor kit both with Sicce Syncra 1.0 pumps and a TLF 150 reactor. The return pump is a Sicce Syncra 3.0. The return manifold has 5 output ports with 1/4 valves. Four are in use with the current setup. I was going for 6 outputs but had to remove one to be able to remove ...

I have had this lobophyllia for at least four years. It should be a bigger colony by now, but neighboring corals did a number on it. Still, I love the giant polyps of this LPS coral and view it (located in the front right corner of my reef) daily. Yesterday I hopped up on the walkboard to take a few topdown pictures when the lighting was in 20,000K mode. All that blue makes corals pop naturally, but the camera just captures a blue haze. It always impresses me how our eyes can see things correctly, ...