Husbandry
NP-Biopellets, the story so far
After a couple of months I still had some measurable nitrate (2.5 ppm) and phosphate (0.04 ppm) and I decided to really go “overboard” and ordered 3 more liters of NPBs. »
My kind of reef tanks
While reading a very interesting thread at Reef Central (Best tanks from around the world) I couldn’t help but to notice that my idea of a good looking reef tank isn’t exactly what many people prefer. Only four tanks out of the many posted on that thread are tanks that I would personally love... »
ULNS is not really L and far from UL
I’m annoyed when I see people boasting about their “ULNS” reef aquarium. Typically the “ULNS” crowd seem to think that their aquariums are at the very edge of complete dissolved inorganic nutrient elimination and that the corals they keep can barely cope with the underwater desert they’ve managed to create. All kinds of pseudoscientific... »
Tank update, October 2009
Phosphates are finally getting close to “zero”, currently 0.07 ppm PO4 Nitrates are dropping again, currently 0.5 ppm NO3 I think the corals are starting to grow again! I sold Achilles tang and Niger trigger to local hobbyists but added 8 Anthias, 5 P. squamipinnis and 3 P. dispar The new skimmer, ATB Medium, is absolutely fantastic.... »
Weapons of Nutrient Destruction: cone and pellets with sugar on top
I have recently added two new components to my nutrient export methods, a cone shaped skimmer and a new filtration media called Biopellets. I also continue to use my old and proven CaCO3 slurry filtration and DOC (dissolved organic carbon) dosing. I’ve also experimented with another method based on microscopic clay particles. Here is... »
It foams. I’m back.
After months of problems I think I’m finally back on path to a nice reef aquarium. The problems started when I made the stupid decision to replace a well working nutrient export strategy overnight to something I had no experience with. I stopped vodka and sugar dosing and started dosing moderate amounts of Tropic... »
Let it foam: Selecting a skimmer
I have always held the opinion that foam fractioning is one of the most important ingredients for a successful reef aquarium. This is probably mostly because of my obsession with water quality, always trying to find methods to more closely imitate natural waters over the coral reefs. Probably one of the most difficult decisions for... »
Sometimes half full is more than full
One common discussion between hobbyists is “how you skim? Wet or Dry?”. Most aquarists don’t have strong opinion, probably because the decision between two is not easily backed up by any data. Instead, we just use a setting we are used to – maybe because our mentor recommended one or other when we were... »
Charted waters
Sometimes we hobbyists can’t see the forest from the trees when we discuss and worry about the fine details about reef aquariums. It might be useful to remember why we spend so much time trying to find that optimal protein skimmer or argue about the merits of different additives: the ultimate goal of almost... »
Tank update, July 2009
Note! I now work mostly with my laptop and although it’s a fantastic (Unibody Macbook), I don’t trust it’s display enough to make any kind of color correction. So I’m shooting in JPEG (I usually shoot RAW) and just resize the images. My experiment with Tropic Marin Reef Actif backfired pretty badly; I’m still battling... »