Quarter million crown of thorns starfish eradicated by new injection method

The news about the natural reef environment can be so overly bleak, it’s nice to hear some progress coming out of Australia that bodes well for the future of the Great Barrier Reef. The Crown of Thorns starfish, Acanthaster placi,…

Top 4 Global Pet Expo product releases to look out for

Now that Global Pet Expo is behind us and the dust is starting to settle, we all huddled in the Reef Builders War Room and picked our Top 4 Global Pet Expo product releases to look out for. There was…

Tanne Hoff has written one of the most Practical Guides for the Reef Aquarium

When someone first gets tarted with reef aquarium keeping, one of the first things we like to tell them is to not read anything that is written online. Not because there’s bad information here on the interwebz, but because there’s so…

ProScope + iPhone + AquaPac = underwater microscope

The ProScope is a specialized iPhone case that turns your pocket computer & camera into a portable microscope. Better yet, throw the ProScope assembly into a specially designed AquaPac and take the whole rig inside your aquarium. With an iPhone,…

Reef Builders Editor’s Choice: 10 best products of 2013

It’s that time of year again, that time when we get to share with you the finest new products that greatly improved our reefkeeping experience over the last orbit of the earth around the Sun. Compared to last year’s Editor’s…

Don’t Contaminate Your Saltwater Aquarium!

When we think about toxins in a marine aquarium, the first thing that usually comes to mind is ammonia or a toxic allelopathic chemical released by a coral—in other words, a biologically produced toxin originating in the tank itself. But…

Marine Aquarium Problem? Don’t Panic!

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow famously wrote, “Into each life some rain must fall.” For marine aquarium hobbyists, that “rain” often comes in the form of a troublesome algae outbreak, the appearance of an uninvited pest, out-of-whack water parameters, sick specimens, livestock…

New Crowdfunding project tackles the dreaded AEFW

Even the hardiest and most seasoned aquarium veterans are susceptible to the dreaded acropora eating flatworm(AEFW), only recently described as Amakusaplana acroporae. The dreaded AEFW can devastate an aquarium relatively quickly taking years of growth out in a matter of…

CaribSea Rubble Zone is a ridiculously useful product

CaribSea’s Rubble Zone product may be little more than than small pieces of rock in a plastic jug but you can’t imagine how useful this product is to everyday reefers. We can’t even count the number of times a customer…

Marine Aquarium Acronyms: RO/DI Defined

As most marine aquarists will tell you—and as we point out frequently here at Saltwater Smarts—using purified source water for initial aquarium fill-ups, partial water changes, and freshwater top-offs is essential to maintaining the best possible water quality in a…