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How-To Guides

Free Coral Guide PDF

Posted on by Chad
Coral Guide Page
The Western Australian Museum has put out a free coral identification guide. There are other such guides out there but I have found most of them don't have photos of good enough quality to really assist in making an identification. This guide is an exception. It won't cover 100% of the corals you might come across but I think it does a pretty good job with the major ones you are going to run into....
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How to Pick Fish for Your Tank

Posted on by Chad
Skunk Clowns in Anemone
The most frequently asked questions on the forums tend to be those about just which fish to purchase. This is a deceptively simple question because there is so much that goes into it. It's part about the fish, part about the environment that the fish will live in and then becomes an equation involving the other fish that will live in the tank, the desires of the aquarist, and of course, your pocke...
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Survival is NOT Success

Posted on by Chad
fat and happy goby
There is a common trend I've noticed on some of the forums I admin where people feel that they are doing well if their fish survive. Of course we want our fish and other livestock, and plants, to survive, but survival is not the measure of success. Survival is the minimum thing. What we are looking for as keepers of things in water, is for those things to thrive. To thrive is better than to survi...
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Arowanas – and other big fish

Posted on by Chad
Arowana
The below linked article is about the popularity of the Arowana. If you haven't heard of them I'm not surprised. They aren't readily available in most fish stores anymore. Time was you could get them at Pet Smart. Some species of Arowana, like the Asian Arowana are banned at the federal level in the US though you can still legally get the Silver Arowana. The Asian Arowana does well in American wat...
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Do you need a fancy salinity testing pen?

Posted on by Chad
New fancy salinity testers
When keeping a marine tank, a reef tank, or a brackish tank we all know it's important that the salinity be maintained and correct. I mention three different kinds of tank above because they can have different salinity from one another. Sometimes you will see salinity recommendations expressed differently, sometimes you see something like 32 and others 1.025. There are different ways to measure it...
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