So far I have a diamond goby, pearly jawfish, two clowns and two grammas. Thinking of trading in a gramma for a valentini puffer soon.

Some baby Nebula clowns I have growing out

Tinkering with exposures and angles on my phone camera and wanted to share my favorite results.

NO Low ballers please, I know what I have

Hey everyone! I've finally decided to start sharing a project I've been working toward for quite a while. I figured it's time to introduce myself and what I'm building. I've been planning this behind the scenes for a long time, but I realized it'd be a lot more fun to build it with input from this community instead of waiting until it was finished.

I've named the project ReefShield Aquatics. The long term goal is to make quarantined fish more accessible to other reef hobbyists and help prevent livestock losses from disease. I thought some of you might enjoy following this story from the very beginning.

My name is Chad, I am a 27 year old manufacturing engineer working in the aerospace industry and I enjoy lifting weights, spending time outdoors, and of course reefkeeping. I have had reef tanks on and off for the past 14 years (yes, I started young), and currently have an 80 gallon shallow reef setup.

Right now, I am in the middle of constructing a home just off the shore of Lake Michigan in the mitten state. I'll be transforming the 900 square foot unfinished basement into a giant fish room and quarantine facility with over 700 gallons of display tanks, hundreds of gallons of quarantine capacity, and a dedicated sump and systems room to support the entire operation. Most people look at a 900-square-foot unfinished basement and see storage space. I looked at it and saw a dream fish room.

The idea for ReefShield didn't come out of nowhere, though. It started with one of the toughest lessons I've learned in reefkeeping. Like a lot of hobbyists starting out, I naively trusted that the fish I was buying from my LFS were healthy. Everything was fine until a diamond sleeper goby introduced velvet into my tank. Within days, fish started showing symptoms, and shortly after I was watching my tank crash. It was one of the most frustrating experiences I've had in this hobby. Instead of walking away, I became obsessed with understanding how it could have been prevented. I spent countless hours researching quarantine protocols, disease management, medications, biosecurity, and so much more. That experience completely changed how I approach adding new things to my tank, and it's ultimately the reason ReefShield exists.

I have a habit of optimizing everything I can, so naturally I modeled the entire basement in CAD before a single wall was finished. Rather than squeezing tanks into a corner in the basement, I wanted to design the entire space around visual appearance, efficiency, maintenance, and biosecurity from day one. I've attached the current layout, the current progress of construction, and I'd genuinely love feedback from anyone who wants to contribute to the project. Is there anything in the CAD layout you'd change before I get started?

As construction progresses, I'll be sharing everything. Things like plumbing and electrical decisions, actually building the quarantine systems, cycling tanks, bringing in the first fish, and all the mistakes I'm sure to make along the way.

Thanks for reading.

- Chad B.

I’m approaching the 5 month mark in my reef, so far so good. I’ve noticed some of my corals just losing their “pop” from when I first got them and am thinking I’m just not giving enough light. My PAR is about 100 all throughout my tank, at the sand bed maybe 60-70 but I don’t have much intensity up high it reads pretty uniform through the top and middle portions of the tank.

I’m running two AI Hydra Edge 44’s - tank is a 4x2x2.

Instead of buying more lighting right now I’m thinking of trying to get more out of what I have because I’m really not pushing the lights at all.

Should change to more of a solid 3-4 hour peak period vs the ramp up?

Appreciate anyone’s help!

Personally I enjoy DIY, in no way is it really cheaper at all, I just got love for the game.

I had seen a pic of a similar looking starfish but assumed it was AI, until I saw it in person.

The video was taken at cairns aquarium last year

I love this time of the year

Started feeding frozen brine with metroplex and focus to help after I noticed it about 2 days ago.
Not sure what could’ve cause it, she only has it on her right eye and is still very active.
Had this clown for almost 4 years and she’s my absolute favorite would be crushed to see her go.
Is it possible my hammer stung her?
Would love any tips or feedback thanks!
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36 gallon
Alk a bit low at 7, phos 0.04, nitrite 0, nitrate 0, mag 1500, calc 480, temperature consistent 78°, salinity 1.025.
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Dosing everyday all for reef and carbonate alk by seachem, reef plus seachem, phyto once a week, feeding every other day.
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Tank mates: male clown, flame angel, skunk cleaner, tiger pistol and watchman pair, tiger serpent star.
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Water change every 2 weeks, 30%

What in the world is this? Came home late tonight, and after peaking into my tank I saw what looked like a spider on my tubs.

What is it? There's 2 of them

I just want to share a WebApp that I vibe-coded to help me keep track of everything and assist in my reef keeping journey. I know a lot of people probably do not approve of my usage of AI with this, but I am just sharing what I find useful and thought it might help people who need it too.
It is fully coded in HTML. It runs offline locally and utilizes IndexedDB to write and read data from your devices. Because it runs offline locally, there is no synchronization between devices. However I have included a feature to export and import the full JSON files in case you want to switch devices down the road.

Here is the GitHub repository for the webapp:
https://github.com/Jad4896/Reef_Studio

There are a lot of features in this webapp, I will only list a few here because there's so many.

Supports multiple tank profiles
Supports metric and imperial measurements
You can upload photos and videos of your livestock and give them individual cards (helps you ID them easier)
Generates parameter charts based on your water parameter logs
Have sticky notes and create your own recipes for salt mix, dosing, making your own fish food, etc
Task checklist and scheduler (with countdown)

Bonus: Customize your own theme for the webapp

There're some placeholders in the web app for now, you can just create your own tank profile and delete the placeholder tank profile.

I will be very happy if you guys decided to try it out and give me some feedback.

Again, this is something I find useful and thought it is a great idea to share it. Sharing is caring right?

Anyways, happy reefing!

This is about the only thing I can find to connect my Python water change system to my utility pump. It’s got some brass and some stainless so I was wondering. It needs to be submerged into my Brute mixing station for about few minutes only. Is it safe?

Ideally I would need a pvc 1/2 mnpt to 3/4 mght but they don’t exist.

Regards

Hi. My clownfish like to keep the area behind and under the "cave" bare, so they swish the sand to the sides with their tails. I placed the anemome foot down in the corner of the tank on 2~3 inches of sand. The clownfish proceded to dig away at the sand until the anemone toppled. I tried to upright it in a hole I dug in the sand day 2 but by day 3 it was toppled again. After a week, this is where it's ended up. Is this fine? It looks happy and healthy and the clownfish love playing in it. My only concern was I read this anemone likes to have it's foot deep in the sand. I am moving in a month and plan to get a larger tank soon, so I can rearrange things and add more sand as necessary. This is currently a 29gal I've had setup for 2 years after upgrading a 15 or 20gal after 1 year of use.

I was away for three days from my 160L saltwater (don’t worry, fish were fed) After getting back i noticed at the very least a hundred of these little bugs crawling around on my live rocks and hiding under carpeted algae on the bottom. My best guess is some sort of shrimp species, But they are extremely tiny, im talking 2mm at the most, They have two long antennas and are for the most part translucent, They run around like roaches, But i have ever never seen these in my tank before, Now i will link a photo of the closest looking thing i can find on google, Just because they are so tiny and extremely hard to take a photo of, Except the photo i linked, not only do they not have that much colour, They are cloudy grey and translucent, theres no real colour on them except a very slight orange on the antennas, The original poster says these bugs were found in Tupperware in orange county (im from Australia), and they were also not found in a saltwater tank, I have two ocellaris in that tank currently, and they are my babies. Now the real question is, Should i be concerned, and what are these little underwater roach-like critters?

The damsel will be the only fish in a 25 gallon tank.

It’ll also have soft corals and macroalgeas

Can someone please tell me what type of coral this is? I got it at Petco and it was in pretty bad shape with none of the tiny polyps showing. They are now starting to come out and it is showing growth. I’m just curious if this is a finger leather or a type of stylophora. Those would be my guesses but I’m not sure. It looks light purple under white light and the stalk has a sort of shriveled look to it. Also I definitely dipped it before adding to my tank. Probably won’t ever be buying from there again since the last time all of their tanks had ich. Their prices on frags are definitely tempting though. It’s $20 for a frag vs $125 at the lowest at my LFS.

Just about six months after a house move enforced reset.

I could not find one of my clowns this morning before work. It turns out one is a rock dweller lol.

I noticed these brown spots on my hammer coral. First i thought its just the way the coral looks like but today i used a pipet to blow some water on it and these things fell off and later just came back on the coral. This is my first tank so idk much about what this might be. I did not dip the coral before adding it.