morning coffee

Nothing Better Than A Nice Bare Bottom

Sand Bed or Bare Bottom? In the aquarium hobby, one of the most significant debates when building your reef tank is to decide a bare bottom or to use a live sand bed. Let’s discuss the benefits and disadvantages of…

Looking Forward To The Future Of The Aquarium Hobby

Things I’m Looking Forward To While going through some old books and magazines I came across a poster for MACNA from over twenty years ago, it made me laugh as the topic of my talk was “The Future of the…

Safeguarding Your Aquarium With Redundant Design

Redundancy      We have all been admonished by the phrase at some point in our lives “Don’t be redundant. To most that simply means don’t say something twice. By definition it also means don’t exceed what is necessary or…

Using Trace Elements In Saltwater Aquariums

Trace Elements           There was an old commercial jingle that ended with “because little things mean a lot”. As we all know in this hobby that is a definite truism. Whether it is doing the little…

My Memories of Aquariums and Christmas

Christmas is probably the one holiday that makes many of us most feel nostalgic, it often makes us think of how things were in the past and at least in my case how simple life was and maybe better. As…

A Few of My Favorite Fish

This time of year when they play “These are a few of my favorite things”, and I am in the Christmas mood I thought I would list some of my favorite fish. Besides just listing them, I would also loke…

A Visit to Elos headquarters in Italy

When I think of Italian companies whose designs fire up my imagination, the names Lamborghini, Ferrari or Maserati immediately come to mind when I think of cars, or Armani, Zegna or Versace when I think of clothing. In addition to…

The Amazing Reef Tanks of Italy

As I have mentioned numerous times in the past, I consider myself to be a lucky person. And one of the ways this luck has manifested itself, is that I have been fortunate to get to see one of my…

Falling in Love With the Hobby Again

There are countless clichés about love and falling in love and most of them are clichés because they are true. My two favorites are ‘it is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all’ and…

Jumpstarting a reef tank after a long break

With Labor Day fast approaching, vacations winding down and the kids going back to school, it’s a sure sign that the end of summer is upon us. And with Fall and the colder weather, many of us start spending more time with…