The reef aquarium hobby’s not getting any younger, and with each passing day our reef aquarium equipment is getting less cutting edge. There once was a time when the Eco-Aqualyzer was going to revolutionize water quality with simply magnets, and you weren’t even really reefing unless you were adding Coral Vital. Remember all that goofy stuff?
Less questionable in usefulness would be those dusty IceCap 660 ballasts you got sitting around, some 430s if you go way back. While servicing an old Reverse Osmosis membrane housing a couple of weeks ago we uncovered this fossil, the state-of-the-art circa 2000 Kent Marine 60GPD “Hi-S” membrane which promised to remove almost all silicates from our tap water. We’re not sure if Silicates ever really were that big of a deal, and the Hi-S branding kind of went away.
We have our little reef aquarium museum of equipment from years past, and although much of it has been completely surpassed in performance by modern offerings, we simply can’t let go of our VHO tubes, Otto pumps and Iwasaki halides. What’s your favorite piece of reefing gear that is close to vintage, and perhaps still usable but better enjoyed on a shelf to bring back old-school reefing memories?
