Great, not another guy up on his soapbox, letting everyone know what he thinks and how they should do things.

Well the reason I'm putting this here is so that you have a bit of an understanding on how I think about reef keeping related things, make decisions, and process information.

There are only two necessities in the keeping of marine water organisms, one is the container to hold water and the other is the water. If you are told that it is "vital" to have something, a particular piece of equipment or additive, then that is not true! "Wait a minute, this guy is talking complete nonsense, what about the metal halides, heaters, pumps, calcium reactors etc."

What I'm saying is that those two things are not vital to keeping an marine organism, it may not live very long and be in a lot of discomfort and finally die, but you will be able to keep it. (Note: I do not advise anyone does this sort of thing, on the contray I like to provide as natural environment as possible for my residents). Everything else added to the aquarium set up after the water and container are to allow keeping of the organism for a longer period of time, under more natural conditions, hopefully its full life span in conditions that are conductive to its well being and health.

Therefore, the addition of a heater elevates the water temperature to that typical of the water where the organism usually lives, lighting is to provide the ability of the photosynthetic organisms to photosynthesis, and so on and so forth. What that suggestion that a piece of equipment is "vital" really means is that if you want the conditions to be better or improved for your organism then this will help.

It is also typical that each piece of equipment has some drawback in improving one particular system parameter, i.e. a skimmer removes surface active compounds before they have a chance to decompose which has been a god send for this hobby, but it also may remove important compounds from the water. Therefore, when a selection of the entire aquarium set up is made, the inclusion of each piece of equipment must be justified to improve the conditions contained within the aquarium for the organisms and system as a whole.

When every I hear or read something, I don't take it at face value, take it with a grain or bucket of salt. Is there something to back it up, a large sample of research, or just anecdotal evidence? The thing is that something that works in one case may not work in another, the problem is that there are way too many variables involved in reef keeping and one other than that mentioned could be the culprit. Be wary when listening to others advice, use your judgement and find out if it will apply and work as such for you. And that includes the information that I am providing here on OZ REEF.

As soon as someone says that they are "correct" then alarm bells start to ring! No one is absolutely correct in this hobby! As stated before there are a multitude of variables involved and there are also a multitude of ways of manipulating them to maintain them at correct values. OK, it works great for them, with those given conditions, with that load etc. etc. My opinion is to take such pointer carefully, don't take what someone else says as gospel.

Finally the inhabitants within the aquarium are within your care, and they rely totally on you for the condition of their environment. It should be a goal to achieve the best conditions possible for any given organism that is introduced into the reef aquarium. Additional, some of the organisms have been remove directly from a natural reef, so the supply is not limitless and may be damaging the ecosystem that they were collected from. Therefore trying to minimise the number of collected specimens is a well worth goal, with zero being the ultimate. We as a species, are doing enough damage to this biosphere as it is.

Happy Reefing!!