Articles in Guides
- Guides Best Reef Tank App in 2026: Free & Paid Apps Compared Which reefing app fits your tank? Compare five established apps on real workflows, free features, lifetime pricing, subscriptions, controllers, and data portability.
- Guides Why Goniopora Can Suddenly Die: Chemistry, Feeding, and the Alveopora Difference A flowerpot coral can look beautiful while trouble develops. Learn why Goniopora decline, why Alveopora often has a better reputation, and which measurements actually help.
- Guides A Fish Has Died in Your Tank. What Now? A calm guide to protecting the remaining fish, investigating a loss, and recording the date, suspected cause, and evidence in Reef Trak.
- Guides ReefDock: Search Reef Supplies Across BRS, Amazon, Saltwaterfish, and Petco in One Place Need a 200-watt return pump or Hanna alkalinity reagent? ReefDock searches BRS, Amazon, Saltwaterfish, and Petco in one place. Built into Reef Trak and also available at reefdock.com.
- Guides Reef Trak vs Reefability: Reef Tank App Comparison (2026) Reefability is the AI-first reef app, with a chatbot inside and a $5.99 per month subscription wrapped around it. Reef Trak lets you export your whole tank and paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, or whatever AI you trust, and it unlocks once for $9.99. Here is how they stack up.
- Guides Reef Trak vs AquaticLog: Reef Tank App Comparison (2026) AquaticLog has been logging reef tanks for 13 years, with deep parameters, ICP imports, widgets, AI-related features, and read-only controller imports. Reef Trak takes a broader connected-management approach with a $9.99 lifetime unlock. Here is the current comparison.
- Guides Reef Trak vs ReefBay: Reef Tank App Comparison (2026) ReefBay combines peer-to-peer marketplace and community features with tank logs, analytics, reminders, widgets, and AI insights. Reef Trak focuses on connected tank management, monitoring imports, and portable TrakAI exports. Here is the current comparison.
- Guides Reef Trak vs Aquarimate: Reef Tank App Comparison (2026) Aquarimate is the only product in this comparison with native Mac and Windows apps. Reef Trak combines TrakAI exports, monitoring integrations, nine supported ICP providers, PAR Map, ReefDock product search, and a one-time $9.99 Premium unlock. Here is how they stack up.
- Guides Goniopora vs. Alveopora: The Difference, the Care, and the U.S. Ban Story Count the tentacles: Goniopora normally has 24 and Alveopora 12. That simple visual difference hides separate evolutionary histories and a much messier husbandry story than “hard coral versus easy coral.”
- Guides How to Set Up a Saltwater Predator Tank Without Building a Feeding Disaster A predator tank is not a reef tank with scarier fish. The livestock plan changes the tank size, rockwork, filtration, feeding, cleanup crew, coral choices, and even how safely you can put a hand in the water.
- Guides Wood vs. Steel Aquarium Stands: The Material Is Not the Engineering Steel is not a magic spell, wood is not a structural apology, and member size alone is not engineering. A monster aquarium stand succeeds or fails as a complete load path.
- Guides Live Rock vs Dry Rock: Did Pest-Free Reefing Create the Modern Ugly Phase? Dry rock gives reef keepers control. Live rock imports a functioning community. Did eliminating pests also remove some of the ecology that made older reef starts feel different?
- Guides Fish Quarantine vs Ich Management: The Reefing Debate That Never Ends Strict quarantine aims to keep Cryptocaryon out. Ich management accepts that the parasite may remain and tries to keep fish resilient and parasite pressure low. Here is what each strategy can and cannot promise.
- Guides Building a Monster Reef Tank: The Benefits, the Costs, and the 2-Inch Plumbing Reality A monster reef gives fish room to move and gives chemistry more water to move through. It also turns ordinary plumbing, pumps, lighting, salt, and electricity into a different class of expense.
- Guides The Triton Method: Refugium, Sump, and Dosing for a Water-Change-Free Reef The Triton Method runs a reef without routine water changes by leaning on a large, living refugium and precise dosing instead. Here is what it actually requires, from refugium size to why you deliberately skip the filter socks.
- Guides Reef Tank Water Changes: How Much, How Often, and When You Can Do Less Water changes are the default reef maintenance task, but how much and how often actually matter, and some setups can do far fewer. Here is a practical guide to doing them well, and doing fewer safely.
- Guides One Aquarium Tracking App for Reef, Freshwater, Planted, and Custom Tanks Most hobbyists keep more than one kind of tank. Reef Trak now supports reef, freshwater community, planted, and custom setups, so the same app holds the history for every tank you run while keeping its serious reef tools intact.
- Guides The Reef Tank Maintenance Schedule: Daily, Weekly, and Monthly A healthy reef is built on a routine, not heroics. Here is a clear reef tank maintenance schedule split into daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly tasks, so nothing important slips through the cracks.
- Guides 10 Habits of Successful Reef Keepers The reefers with the best tanks are rarely the ones with the most expensive gear. They are the ones with good habits. Here are ten that keep a reef stable, and the routines worth building early.
- Guides Best Reef Tank Management App in 2026: Tracking, Dosing, ICP, Livestock, and ReefDock A modern reef tank app should do more than store a few test results. Here is what a complete reef tank management app actually looks like in 2026, and why Reef Trak is built around the whole system instead of a single number.
- Guides HYDROS Alternative: How Reef Trak Pairs With Coralvue HYDROS for Reef Tracking HYDROS is a reef-tank control system. Reef Trak is a record system. They pair. Reef Trak imports HYDROS probe data and combines it with everything else you log.
- Guides Apex Fusion Alternative: Why Reef Trak Pairs With Apex Instead of Replacing It Apex Fusion and Reef Trak pair instead of competing. Reef Trak combines Apex readings with the rest of the tank history, while Node One adds confirmed local control for supported switches.
- Guides First Reef Tank Livestock: What to Add First and Why After the cycle, what goes in first? A single snail to test the bioload, then a hardy fish, then a beginner coral. Here is the order and the waiting time between each.
- Guides The Reef Tank Ugly Phase: Why Your New Tank Looks Awful at Weeks 4–10 Every new reef tank goes through an ugly phase between weeks 4 and 10. Diatoms, cyano, dinos, hair algae. Beginner reefers panic and crash their tanks trying to fight it. Here is how to wait it out.
- Guides How to Cycle a Reef Tank: Complete Cycling Guide (Dry Rock, Live Rock, Bottled Bacteria) Cycling a reef tank means growing the bacteria that convert ammonia to nitrite to nitrate. It takes 2 to 6 weeks and cannot be rushed. Here is exactly how to do it.
- Guides How to Set Up a Reef Tank: Complete Beginner Setup Guide (2026) Setting up a reef tank takes more decisions in the first week than most hobbies take in a year. Here is the full beginner-friendly walkthrough from buying the tank to the first coral.