Getting the better of film algae---the stuff on the glass
It's an ongoing problem. Most snails just make helpless little trails through it, and you scrape and scrape, and in tall tanks--reaching it is a pita.

I have found a combo of things that is working for me.
1. phosphate reduction. I run a fuge nearly half the size of my display, AND I have a gfo reactor, AND I use ro/di only. This takes care of a major fuel for algae blooms.
2. my algae eaters: strombus...

How many can I have?......
I hear a lot of questions like: "How many fish can I put in?" "How many tangs?" How many for a CUC...how much should I feed? Can I have a school of fish? ---

The universal answer is: "A couple fewer than you may think."

Here's the reason. You set up your expensive tank in a period in your life when things are going pretty ok and when you are absolutely obsessed with your tank---a period that lasts quite...

Where can you cut corners with procedure?
...and when's it not a good idea?

We start everybody out telling them the ideal basics. "Do these things as an ironclad rule and you won't get hosed"...unless by meteor strike or your local power grid.

Obviously the longer you're in this hobby the more you know WHY you have to do certain things, and the more you can make some choices.

Let me suggest to you where it's safe to cut corners, ultimately---but...

Inevitably when there is a thread on quarantine, there is That Guy, who turns up to tout his lack of quarantine and how he never gets ich in his tank.

The real reason is that a number of distributors and major online merchants run their own qt and treatment programs that you never see. Many fish stores that can, add their OWN qt and treatment program atop all that.

Then That Guy, in all his confidence, changes sources and buys The Deadly Fish from some source he's never...

Why put lime in your ATO?
It's called 'dripping kalk', from the German word for lime. It's appropriate for anyone with clams or stony coral, ie, a tank that sucks up calcium faster than weekly water changes can supply it.

This is why stony coral keeping is a lot easier than people think it is---easy, as in, "very little work"...as in, "actually far less work than keeping a FOWLR."

First you need an ATO [automatic topoff]. Everyone does who...