I guess my urchin had a good run, it really helped with my algae issue back in the day. My carpet will eat anything it can latch its tentacles onto, and I guess my urchin got too close and couldn’t escape. You can see the skeleton as well as all its spines that the anemone couldn’t digest, so it spit it out of its mouth! But seriously, how can I be mad at such a beautiful creature? I will miss the urchin though!

Love this look just as the lights are ramping up. Everything wakes up and looks beautiful!

There we go with my 3 Little colonies of lordhowensis. I have the big Ball since 2021 now and back then it was just 1 polyp :) Hope you like it :)

I noticed this morning that the tip of my Feather Duster Worm's tube appears to be retracted. There is significantly more white than I typically see, there is currently approx. an inch visible, whereas there is normally only 1/4 inch visible. Is this an issue? Thoughts? Cause for concern?

We were just starting to learn coral propagation then with SPS, LPS and softies.Rule of thumb in those days was. 1ppg of live rock and that was dependent on type of rock. We had FL rock, figi, Tonga branch my personal fav. Then Brazilian rock was making a run and it was lite compared to others and had crazy surface area but also came with nasty friends. Like the Bristle fireworm I call it the fiberglass fireworm because that's what it feels and looks like when u get stung. Enough mantis shrimp to make a nice scampi. Crazy snails crabs etc. Reef Keeper nightmare. Then if you really wanted to play, you needed a second job just to pay . Between the salt,food supplements and most of all your electric bill due to the lightning that we thought was required. Metal Halide and Sodium Vapor along with VHO Florescent were the choices and alot of power is what the needed. The rule was a minimum of 5 watts per gallon for softies and lps. 8+watts for sps. You could hear the ballasts kick on and sometimes the lights in the house or buildings would flicker and then came along the ridiculous amounts of heat some lights would give off. The aquarium behind us in the picture is . Custom 150 gal and the light was aluminum house with 3)175 watt MH 10,000kelvin bulbs , 2) 6ft 165 watt actinic 03, )2 6ft 165watt 6.700kelv florescent bulbs. All my reef setups were simple. Tank, rock ,live sand ,big sump with skimmer , circulation pump and light . Depending on type of lighting sometimes I would have to add a chller to cool the water from the heat from Lighting. Anyway just wanted to share a pic of us OG Reefs that did all the leg work lol. Goodluck to all

This Is my peppermint shrimp that i bought for my aiptasia infestation, and now the population Is down to zero, now what Will they eat? Decayng macroalgae or should i buy shrimp food?

I've been waiting for these juvenile box fish to pop up in our rock pools. Finally got one today!

Should I leave the nem like this and let it figure out its own spot in the breeder box? Or should I try to place him right side up?

Anything to worry about with these crawling on hammer?

We lost a hammer some time back and I read somewhere about not removing dead skeletons (just in case). A few months later, we have new heads growing !

So I still have a soft coral tank at my parent's house, because I haven't had a chance to set up a new tank since I've moved out. However the whole tank has been overtaken by this grey sponge (at least I think it is some type of sponge). I have been hesitant to remove it, since I've read that certain sponges might release toxins when harmed. Has anyone ever seen something similar to this and/or know how to get rid of it? Apologies for the dirty looking tank btw, haven't been really up to date with maintenance and the sponge makes it harder to clean

It likes to grow out of the water

Hey all! Wanted to share an 8 month update on 7.5 gal cube reef tank.

Let me know what you think or anything you’d do differently :)

My anemone has finally decided to move into a better spot where I can see it. I think the two pair up quite nicely, don’t you? 🙃

3 of these flatworm looking dudes on my glass this morning. Strangely all three are attached by the part on the bottom of the pic and top half is sticking out into the water. Hoping they’re not the Euphyllia eating type? If a wrasse is needed I only have a 25 gal.

I am currently planning out an undergraduate research project in biomathematics. Because I have fallen in love with reef tanks, and because coral are generally very understudied compared to a lot of other organisms, I have chosen to focus on the morphological development of coral.

I’m sure the science nerds among us have seen the crocheted reefs that were made to relate hyperbolic geometry to the real world. (Interesting read even without a science background!) I would like to do a similar study with actual coral specimens.

https://theconversation.com/corals-crochet-and-the-cosmos-how-hyperbolic-geometry-pervades-the-universe-53382

Since I am an amateur hobbyist, I would be focusing mostly on LPS and softies. The project isn’t super high scale since I would be doing 90% of the work alone, so I would probably focus on 2-4 species with 5-10 specimens each. The plan is to have rows of each species in a frag tank (or multiple), and take long-term timelapse footage of growth. Ideally we would also be able to take 3D scans while the corals are extended underwater, but I am unsure if my university would be able to provide the tools to do this. The project is currently not very directed because I haven’t chosen species yet, so I am unsure of the specific geometric / topological components that I will be looking at.

What corals would you guys recommend? Ideally they would be relatively fast-growing, geometrically interesting, and not super hard to keep. I am in the Midwest US, unfortunately reef-keeping isn’t super popular here, so my resources are semi-limited in what I can get my hands on in decent quantities. I think plating chalices may be a good choice. Euphyllia are by far my favorite, but I am unsure if there are any that could grow fast enough for okay results over about a half year period.

Any input is welcome!

Why are my mushrooms all shrunken up? The one circled was one mushroom it may be because it’s moving but I don’t really know for sure?

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