When visitors come to see my tanks and realize that the tanks are full of live coral one of the questions I get frequently asked is “So what’s your favorite coral?” To me that is akin to asking me, who…
morning coffee
It’s Always Something When You Have a Reef Tank
Recently while watching an old Saturday Night Live show with my daughter, Gilda Radner as Roseanna Rosanadanna responded as she always did to Jane Curtin that “It’s always something, if it’s not one thing it’s another. Within seconds of this…
Old Tank Syndrome Revisited
In the mid-1990’s I wrote an article about something I was experiencing in one of my tanks and which I had seen in a few other tanks and dubbed it “Old Tank Syndrome”. This is actually kind of funny now,…
Reef Aquariums Through Time
As the Rolling Stones once sang “Time waits for no one, he won’t wait for me”. With the passing of yet another long-time hobbyist, Albert Theil, recently it got me to thinking about time and its relationship to the hobby.…
Ecotech Marine Products And Service Over The Years
Over the years we have been fortunate in seeing innovation after innovation come to the hobby. Initially, most of these innovations came from Europe, which due to their being in the hobby longer undoubtedly accounted for their innovations…
Wanting Versus Needing
Wanting Versus Needing While my daughter was at home for Spring Break, one of her most frequent refrains was “I need this” or “I will die without that”. As a parent one of the things I tried to…
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…
Living the Reef Life Part Two
Recently I have tried to go back in time and enjoy one of the aspects of hobby that I really miss: the road trip. As I discussed in an article last year, one of the things that the internet has…
Reef Tanks Can Suffer From Too Much of a Good Thing
By now we have all probably heard the quote from St. Bernard that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. That seems to be an especially appropriate quote for this hobby where it seems that often when we…