Salty Q&A: How Long Before My Tank Is Cycled?

Question The fish store dealer who’s helping me through the setup of my first saltwater aquarium told me I need to give the tank time to cycle before I put any fish or corals in it. As of right now,…

Testing: Nano-Bubbles

Recently, the folks in my area got enamored with the topic of “nano?bubbles” for the reef tank. Being a curious engineer and avid tinkerer of tanks, I jumped right in to test it for myself. So what are nano?bubbles and…

Bubble-Tip Anemone Safety Tips

The bubble-tip anemone (Entacmaea quadricolor), or BTA, is justifiably popular in the marine aquarium hobby, being relatively hardy and easy to keep as anemones go as well as being a suitable host anemone for many clownfish species. But to horribly…

5 Common Causes of Marine Aquarium Ammonia Spikes

You come home from a long, vexing day at work only to notice that the fish in your marine aquarium are all gasping at the surface of the water or cowering in a corner of the tank and behaving lethargically.…

Why Many Marine Fish Benefit From Mature Tanks

Astute salties out there will likely have observed that in some of our fish species profiles, we emphasize the need to keep the fish in a “mature” aquarium—meaning one that has been set up and established for at least six…

How to Cycle Your Saltwater Tank

Before any aquarium can support livestock, whether fish or invertebrates, it must be completely “cycled”—another way of saying that biofiltration must be fully established in the system. Sounds good, but what on earth does that mean? A system is considered…