Super Reef is a Portuguese language reef aquarium channel on YouTube with Edo Viega. Over the last few months this Brazilian reefing content creator has been amassing interviews with saltwater fish and coral gurus from all over the world, with guest appearances from Dana Riddle, Julian Sprung, and last week was my turn to address our South American reefing brothers.
I debated whether to share this interview at first since it was a pretty relaxed conversation that we wouldn’t describe as entertaining, but we did touch upon some deep, important points about reef keeping. My decision to share this video arose after several reef aquarium professionals in America commented on some of the interesting topics that were brought up.
Most notably, a few reefers want to know more about what I describe as the “inheritance of unnecessary processes” that are still being passed along and repeated like reef aquarium gospel. Memorable among these is the over emphasis on cycling an aquarium for corals – see our one day nano reef build for context – using a turnover rate to quantify water flow that should really be measured as a speed, and the near uselessness of taking and measuring PAR values in the absence of water flow metrics.
My conversation with Edo is not meant to be a riot, but if you want to get a peek behind the curtain of reef aquarium ideology, how we got here, and some pointers of really thought provoking ideas about modern and historical reef aquarium practice, this is a fun video to take for a spin or a listen.
