Recent content by Chris Jury

Agreed, this is caused by self-shading and a fixed angle of lighting. It's not harmful per se. Reflective (white) sand can definitely help. Other than that one would really need to move the position of the lights (e.g., with a light mover) which isn't the most practical most of the time. cj

Carden Wallace recently put up a key for the species online. She is arguably the premiere expert on the taxonomy of Acropora. Unfortunately, without large colonies with normal growth forms IDs become difficult. Using a live coral instead of a skeleton makes IDs very difficult. Having a live frag...

We'd be lucky to narrow this down to one of 300 species (could possibly exclude 60 or 70 species). There's no way to even get close to a species ID from the photos.

Sometimes these extrusions will begin calcifying normally, and sometimes they don't. You could give it a try if you like.

Fair enough. I should say that the consequences due to overdosing a balanced additive (except perhaps kalkwasser, which would raise the pH quite substantially) end up being relatively benign. cj

p.s. This is generally one of the worst looking but relatively least harmful mistakes commonly made.

I wouldn't worry about it. You can try to siphon it out if you like. After a week or so, after things have had a chance to shed the 'sediment' (sedimentation is a common stressor in nature, and reef critters have to be able to shed sediment) you probably won't notice anything. Agreed with the...

As mentioned, this is *relativey* harmless. You added too much of the two part too fast, causing a bunch of CaCO3 to precipitate abiotically. This likely won't redissolve to any significant degree but shouldn't cause any harm either. After this happens calcium and/or alkalinity may be low. I'd...

I would rate lions and bears as much easier and more practical for the average person to maintain ;) They are beautiful, but the chances of success even for professional aquarists is dismal at best. cj

I'm not so convinced. Maggy Nugues was a postdoc in our lab before I got here, and she does amazing work, but...I'm not convinced, at least that Halimeda is a vector. cj

That's not unusual. The precipitate is mostly Mg(OH)2. Ideally the addition would be made slowly to an area of strong mixing. Otherwise, just a slow pour into an area of strong mixing (e.g., right in front of a pump outlet) works well. This happens because the pH of this additive is quite high...

"If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it." --Albert Einstein Hypotheses, explanations, models, etc. that might seem completely nonsensical can turn out to be exactly correct. If we dismiss ideas, though they may seem absurd initially, we will never figure things out...

The older I get and the more I see (not that I'm that old or have seen that much ;) ) the more I learn that I need to carefully consider what everyone has to say, even if it seems ludicrous to me at first (not that Walt does, I'm just saying...). I need to avoid jumping to conclusions. I also...

Humans are not objective creatures, by nature. We recieve information with our various senses but our brain interprets this and puts it in a context we can understand. Our interpretation of this information is, by definition, subjective. It is only by rigorously taking measurments, analyzing...

Yeah... Yeah....... Usually I'm not too bad, but a lack of sleep sends my typing skills down the tubes. You'd think coffee would help, but just the opposite. cj p.s. I'm on too little sleep and coffee right now ;)