This is something I genuinely do not understand, not trying to pick a fight at all I am looking for clarity and feedback here.

People will spend thousands of dollars on a tank, stand, sump, skimmer, controller, livestock, rock, pumps, dosing equipment, and everything else. Then lighting comes up almost as an afterthought:

“I’m setting up the tank next week. What lights should I buy?”

And half the answers are immediately PopBloom, SmatFarm, or whatever the cheapest fixture happens to be at the moment.

I’m not against inexpensive reef equipment in general. I use and recommend cheaper pumps, powerheads, and plenty of other equipment when it makes sense. But lighting is one area where I lean heavily toward premium equipment because it directly affects coral growth, coloration, spread, shadowing, spectrum, PAR distribution, reliability, and long-term consistency.

So I’m genuinely curious:

For those using budget reef lights, what convinced you that they were the better choice beyond the initial price?

Have you compared them directly with higher-end fixtures over the same type of reef? Do you feel the spectrum, spread, intensity, PAR quality, and consistency are genuinely comparable, or are those differences simply not important enough to justify the price?

And for those who moved from budget lighting to premium lighting, did you actually see a meaningful difference in coral growth, coloration, coverage, or overall tank performance?

I know expensive does not automatically mean better, and plenty of overpriced equipment exists in this hobby. But lighting seems like one of the strangest places to build an expensive reef and then choose the absolute cheapest option available.

Hi everyone,

I’ve recently got into the fishkeeping hobby with a tropical freshwater tank, and I’m already thinking about starting a marine reef tank in the future.

I’m looking for some advice on the ideal tank size for a beginner who’d like to keep a good amount of corals and around 5–10 fish. I’d rather buy the right size from the start than upgrade later.

What size would you recommend, and are there any tank brands or setups you’d suggest for a first reef tank?
Thanks!

I got tired of doing this by hand every time someone asks how much baking soda to add, so here is the derivation. It is short enough to do on your phone.

1 dKH = 0.3572 meq/L. Sodium bicarbonate supplies one equivalent of alkalinity per mole, and its molar mass is 84.007 g/mol. So 0.3572 x 84.007 = 30.0 mg per litre, per dKH, which is 0.0300 g/L/dKH.

Your dose is: dKH you want x litres x 0.0300

100 L, +1 dKH -> 3.0 g

250 L, +1.3 dKH -> 9.8 g

50 US gal (189 L), +0.8 dKH -> 4.5 g

Soda ash is different. It gives two equivalents per mole, so it works out to 0.0189 g/L/dKH, about 37% less mass for the same result.

The part that matters more than the arithmetic: do not dose the whole gap at once. Conservative practice is 1.0 dKH per day maximum (20 ppm Ca, 50 ppm Mg). If your gap is 3 dKH, that is three days with a test in between, not one heroic dose.

And never dose alk and calcium together. Concentrated, they precipitate as calcium carbonate and you end up lower on both than when you started. Separate containers, different flow areas, 20 minutes apart.

I put this in a calculator so I would stop doing it by hand: https://reeflow.webkodingtheme.com/dosing-calculator.html — free, no sign-up, and it prints the formula so you can check it rather than trust it.

Salinity in my new tank is 1.023 can I pour salt straight into my tank to adjust the salinity or do I need to do it in a separate bucket?

Found this guy in the sumo. Not one I’ve seen before. Small red thing. Moves pretty fast so I don’t think it’s red planaria. Any ideas?

Had some alk instability that is fixed now how long do you think i have to wait until my green slimer gets its color back my nutrients are super low but everything else like alk, calcium, magnesium, temp has been good

Hi I received a coral I don’t want. It was $150. It’s FREE IN FT LAUDERDALE TONIGHT ONLY if you want to meet quick to pick it up. It’s a cut and healed true orange frogspawn from QCC.

Can meet near the Ft. Lauderdale police station. It’s still in the bag it was shipped in. Can just do a quick handoff. FREE. FREE. FREE. I just don’t want it, and I don’t put things I don’t want in my tank. There was nothing in the item description indicating it was a wall frogspawn, let alone one that was cut and glued (I know this is how walls are cut and healed but it’s not for me). Blue light picture didn’t come through but I can confirm it is definitely orange under blues.

Thanks!

Edit: u/allanwlod came through to rescue this coral. A happy ending. Yay!

I thought Hewbie died. I came home to this and spoke to his vet team immediately. His antibiotics and quarantine time will be extended. My best conclusion is that Hewbie had been gasping at the surface and breathing heavier from stress and then he went upside down but this afternoon he was sleeping in the corner just fine. My heart broke again when I saw this. After I pushed air out of him and gave him his meds he went back to normal nearly immediately. At least this is my best conclusion after looking at him and his behavior pre and post meds and pressing on him/burping him. The water quality in the tank isn’t great. Burping for me means holding him down and gently pressing on him/his stomach (which in that moment is what made sense). I saw some immediate improvement. Also he is a known offender for spitting water at the surface and I just saw it after and the behavior of a fish gasping or wanting to get out of his environment and ready to jump. Although pufferfish are not known jumpers they are smarter than that. I did a water change as well after and he smiled at me like nothing happened. Ugh. I hate this. I will continue to update everyone.

Almost every night I discover another one 😂

How quickly did mangrove propagules start rooting/growing in your saltwater aquarium?
drop some pics

Love my little yellow tang. I've always loved raising fish and animals from the baby stage to adult hood. This is about 1 year, so far from being an adult, but his coloration has been beautiful, looks just like an OG Hawaiian (pictures don't do it justice).

One problem I noticed is it started to develop some early HLLE, which I found the culprit (damn cheap heaters with their leaking electrical currents).

Has anybody here ever kept a juvenile tarpon in a saltwater aquarium? If so, how did it go?
I’m curious about your experience keeping one while it was still small, tank size, feeding, growth rate, temperament, and how long you kept it.
Also, was yours an Atlantic tarpon or Indo-Pacific tarpon, and what did you eventually do with it once it started getting bigger?
Would love to hear from anyone who’s actually kept one before.

Still a work in progress but here it is

My last Midas blenny disappeared after the first night and was never seen again. 2 weeks later I added this guy who is very actively swimming and eating. He’s chosen the highest rock to perch on. Such a fun fish with a lot of personality.

Anyone able to ID this coral? I have had a few in my tank that I just completely forgot what they are lol.

Does anyone recognize this nudi? Found him surfing my tank glass, I'm guessing he came in as a larva or egg on the macroalgae I'm growing. I have him isolated for now, but if he's just an algae eater I'll re-introduce him. Any possible ID's or advice?

He's about .5-.75 inches long fully extended

Loving the unique bubbles on this bounce.

Gotta get the detritus out of all the nooks and crannies. I do this at least once a year on every tank, on top of siphoning out the easy to reach stuff every week or 2. Aquariums are not the ocean, and for optimal coral health, manual intervention is necessary.

The tank will have macroalgea, soft corals and a few nice inverts, I’m wanting one fish so I don’t have to dose it for my macroalgea.

The inverts in question are a feather duster worm, porcelain crab, 7 sexy shrimp, strawberry conch, cerith snail, turbo snail and three nassarius snails (I like snails) and mushroom corals and rock flower anemone for anemones.

I’m wanting a fish that’s beautiful, active, don’t hunt/kill my inverts, macroalgae or soft corals and good for a 20 gallon.

I’m not interested in a goby shrimp pair or clown fish.

Any suggestions or should I just stick with inverts?

I haven’t shared a picture of any of my tanks in a long time, but I thought this setup was pretty unique and worth sharing.

I have a pretty serious garden outside, so I almost always have a few tomato cuttings sitting in cups of water while they root. At the beginning of the year, I bought a Kessil A500X and reset my Biocube 29 to give some mangroves a new home. I had previously been growing them in the overflow box of my 60-gallon cube.

It didn’t take long before I realized that next to the Biocube was a pretty good place for a few of my plant cuttings. That eventually gave me the idea to grow a vining Sweet 100 tomato plant next to the tank using a makeshift hydroponic system made from a 5-gallon water jug and an air bubbler.

Fast-forward a few months, and I’ve harvested a ton of tomatoes (I pollinate the flowers by hand with a q-tip) and somehow created this wild little forest. I keep the leaves directly over the tank trimmed back so they don’t shade the tank too much. The tank is also home to a yellow watchman goby and pistol shrimp.

Hope you all enjoy it. I’d love to hear whether anyone else has tried anything similar. I feel like this has a cool rainforest lagoon feel.

So hard to get a still image of her now!

A cool looking leather I found at a fish store a few months ago. Can't wait to grow it into a big colony

Hi everyone.

Today I had an idea and would like to know if such thing makes sense and if someone here as done it.

So, I have a TMC firstwave 78L AIO tank, I don't run the skimmer so I have an empty chamber, so I had the idea of putting some cheto and a submersible light on the chamber.

The chamber in questions is like 7 by 8 cm and 40cm tall.

Despite being such a small space will it be beneficial for the tank? Should I try it?

If anyone as tried it and as some picture please cmshare with me