UPDATE: The BAYMAC website is up and running with the event schedule, a great list of raffle sponsors and more! Visit www.thebaymac.com for more info!

I caught glimpse of a message in my Twitter stream today from LiveAquaria.com teasing about “going live with something extra cool” this afternoon. So of course I came back to find out what it was and was pleasantly surprised to find it to be a video of a spawning pair of the ultra-rare McCulloch’s Clownfish. Seems that this specimen has only been successfully bred in captivity once!

Acrylic lends itself quite well to the hobby so its no wonder why so many people find this a valuable material for DIY and commercial applications. It is readily available, reasonably inexpensive, easily cut and fabricated and is inert meaning it doesn’t leech off any negative substances or reacts with the saltwater in our systems. There is a lot you can do with acrylic from a simple box to complex components like protein skimmers and media reactors. The best part is, it is not as difficult to work with as you may think. Here are some quick tips and tutorials on working with acrylic. I hope you find something useful and take the plunge and give it a shot.

Yesterday our local reef club had the pleasure of having Paul Baldassano visit to talk about the evolution of the hobby and share with us the trials and tribulations of his nearly 40 year-old tank. Yup, I did not stutter the man has a tank that has been in operation since the early 1970s and I tell you, this guy is the ultimate blue-collar reefer.

Here in Central California we had three straight days of record-breaking hot weather peaking at 100° F one day! Having the opportunity to work from home most of the time, I was able to check in on my tank and noticed the temperature had risen to nearly 84°. It was time to break out the fans and hit the AC a bit to bring it down and this got me hinking–now is the best time to prepare for the heat ahead.

Taking proper measures to eliminate problems at the source is key to being successful in the hobby. With high levels of nitrates or phosphates you have to figure out if you are adding them to the system unknowingly! To troubleshoot, take a look at the source and work your way to the tank.

This past Saturday Frank Burr of The Coral Oasis presented an interesting discussion called “Self Sustaining Marine Biospheres” to my local reef club Northern Valley Reefers. The enthusiastic and energetic Burr presented his experiments and perspectives for minimal or no maintenance reef systems.

Burr showcased four experimental tanks including a 30-gallon tank he has not touched more than adding top off water too in nearly four years. Yup, that includes no water changes, no additives, nothing. In the tank he added 40 pounds of live rock, 30 pounds of fine crushed coral substrate and is using two hang-on filters and two 55W JBJ power compact (PC) lighting. In the tank are turbo snails, one urchin and a variety of soft and LPS corals.

This minimalistic approach to maintaining a system may be bad news for us that like to constantly tinker and fiddle with the setup. Burr said it best, “When you reach a balance, leave it alone.”

To prove this statement, you only have to look at the second experimental tank. After reaching a state of balance about five months in, Burr made a few changes like adding more livestock, adding or moving corals, etc., and found the tank went downhill from there and never reached its full potential and eventually was broken down.

His approach and advice may shock us that are buried in the regimen of continual water changes but his points have merits. If we have adequate filtration and are testing weekly for everything including calcium, calcium hardness and magnesium and only use additives for something we test and only when needed, the tank will take care of itself and come to a point of equilibrium and balance. That is when we just need to leave it alone and admire our work.

A great example he brought up was when he visited a reefer to pick up some Tonga branch live rock for his frags. He noticed the reefer had two beautiful nano cube setups, some of the most amazing cubes he had witnessed. The reefer was building a spray bar for his system and while everything was in balance and wonderful as is, the reefer felt the need to tinker and add something that was hot on the forum boards. Burr convinced the reefer to scrap the spray bar and leave his tanks alone, even suggesting to stop water changes. He gave the guy a suggestion that if he felt the need to tinker, start another system, just leave the two alone.

Later at the Marine Aquarium Expo (MAX) in Orange County, he met up with the reefer and asked how everything was. It was going great and he hadn’t done anything to the tanks and they continued to flourish. The only other thing the reefer did was start a new tank!

This was a very unique and interesting presentation and just one of the many benefits of belonging to a local reef club. It was my first meeting with NVR and met some wonderful people and got to discuss reefing, how cool is that! At the end of the presentation Burr brought along a variety of rare and interesting corals and even donated a complete Marineland 10 gallon starter kit. Too bad I am not ready to add any corals to my system, there were some beauties I really admired.