u/premierReefs

Not very popular, but I love how these grow. Photo taken under exceptionally white light with no filter or post editting. A cool old school sps coral.

About to tear this all apart to move it over about 2 feet so I can add on a 4ft×6ft frag tank.

No Context needed

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.

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

A nice thick staghorn acropora

My livingroom tank. Top down. 36x36" marineland "cube" (its only 27" tall, and actual volume is 134gal vs. The marketed 150gal

Oxymonacanthus longirostris among acropora colonies.

These fish do NOT eat the polyps of prized Acropora, but rather, they use their straw like mouth to remove the slime from the polyps. This does bother the coral a little, but healthy coral will have no real detriment, especially when there is a myriad of coral to browse.

little frags will not handle the extra attention. These fish are very very difficult to get eating frozen food, as they are such specialized eaters. This is a fish I've always loved. These shouldn't be as easily available IMO, but in the right tank, they can do very well. If this fish continues to thrive, I'll get a mate to have a pair. Unlike most corallivorous butterflies, these can be kept successfully longterm, and not make a noticeable impact on coral.

Just returned from a 5 day trip and was quite happy to see my tanks were just fine. No controller or automation. Time and again, I see bad programming ruin a tank. Many of the "apex saved my tank" stories are because redundant, fallback programming caught an issue with bad setup, low quality equipment, or poorly written control. I don't even use ATO with float switches/level sensors. Just more points of failure.