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I've never seen the micro snails for sale. The ones I have are around 1/8", so really small. People sometimes have trouble with them because they can jam some types of flow devices.

Only tiny Collunista snails that came in with my live rock....and a blue-leg hermit for the bigger stuff.

Pom-Poms are great little critters. Tip - Trochus are generally quite hardy snails, but if you see one obviously dying make sure to remove it right away. A decent sized decaying snail in a 12g can turn the water milky as bacteria bloom and ammonia can spike to dangerous levels quickly. I...

Wow, looking good! All the best with the 2.0!

That's a good question and without knowing the exact composition of each product the answer is uncertain. I've used Kalkwasser for decades, either from Two Little Fishies or Mrs Wages Pickling Lime. Personally, I haven't noticed any difference between the two in any of my tanks over the years...

I took a stab at creating a diffuser for my LED array recently. The first attempt a few weeks back did what a diffuser does and dispersed the LED point source lighting well, but it also wiped out all shimmer :(. I thought about this conundrum today and came up with a simple 'hybrid diffuser'...

That's a loaded question since it depends on what corals you are keeping. When in doubt, start with a lower light level and slowly work up from there.

Did you apply a compensation factor? Since LEDs tend to be heavy on blue (which the Apogee meter reads too low), add a correction factor of ~ 10 - 15% at 100% for both blue and white. At 15%, that'll give you ~ 190 PAR center for #2. Even so, at 13" directly under the light it does seem low...

Coral selection and placement is part of the 'art' of reef keeping. But even those longest in the hobby make mistakes and miscalculations that you likely won't hear about ;)

I've been keeping corals for a long while now, and 'Shrooms never get old for me :). Word of caution with Discosomas, once they get started they aren't easy to control and they kill almost everything they contact. I find it best to have them on their own separate rock, or not at all. All the...

Hmmm, well there goes the 'low nutrient' hypothesis :) Two of those lights will put out some good PUR at your settings even if PAR is not all that high. Have you found any threads with similar Kessil lighting setups where PAR is referenced? Having more blue than white intensity is typically...

If the lighting type and intensity have been constant, and the corals now have little color, it is likely that the tank is too 'clean' since you left it fallow for 1-1/2 months (I'm assuming that you didn't 'ghost feed' the tank during this time). I also don't see much in the way of algae in...

Great story. 'Tough, but little brains' sums it up nicely :)

Your BF was wise to be cautious. I once added a Blasto that I thought I could revive and ended up with a Brown Jelly infection that wiped out 3/4 of my LPS.

Thank you Geneva! Wow, you read all 36 pages :) My hope is that more reef aquarists will look at a small tank as not just a short-lived play thing for newbies, but an end unto itself. As with many things these days, people are rediscovering that quality can come in a small package, too. I...

Exciting, isn't it? One of the most difficult parts of a reef tank is right at the beginning where you're itching to add all those colorful corals. However, the best practice for long term success is to take it real slow in the beginning. The reason for this is to allow the 'ecosystem in a...

Thank you and glad you are enjoying the Rics :) Coral warfare is part of the natural environment and ultimately will show up in a well stocked reef tank. With as many different types of coral that I have in this tank, I just let most of them sort it out themselves and only intervene when...

LFS, and on-line, mostly.

Thanks, Trigger. I'd like to see it hit the 10 year mark :)

A bit of a milestone as the tank hits the 6 year mark: The tank is still running as simple as it has for years (no mech/no chem). When I started in 2008 I was shooting for 5 years, now I'm shooting for 10 :)