Pests & Diseases
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Coral Bleaching vs STN vs RTN: How to Tell Which One You Have
Bleaching leaves living tissue on the skeleton. STN and RTN strip it off. Telling them apart in the first few hours decides whether the coral lives.
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Hammer Coral Losing Heads: What It Means and What To Do
Hammer coral losing heads is an energy-budget failure, not usually an infection. Why the base goes white first, whether to frag, and how branching and wall hammers differ.
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Why Are My Zoanthids Not Opening? Causes, Pests and Palytoxin Safety
Which polyps are closed tells you more than any test kit. Flow and detritus, light, pests, zoa pox, and how to handle palytoxin without ending up in hospital.
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Why Is My Torch Coral Not Extending? A Diagnostic Guide
Closed polyps tell you almost nothing. Work through flow, light and UV, nutrients, neighbors, flatworms and brown jelly in the order that actually finds the cause.
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New Coral Not Opening After Shipping: What’s Normal and What Isn’t
Most newly shipped corals stay closed for a day or three and are fine. Here is how to tell sulking from dying, why you should not drip acclimate, and what to do in the first five days.
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Marine Fish Diseases: How to Tell Them Apart and What Actually Cures Them
Ich, velvet, Brooklynella, Uronema and flukes — how to identify each one by eye, what genuinely treats them, and the popular remedies that do nothing at all.
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Coral Pests 101: How to Identify and Treat the Bugs Eating Your Coral
A visual ID guide to the pests that eat coral — AEFW, red bugs, Montipora & zoanthid nudibranchs, sea spiders, sundial snails, fireworms — and exactly how to treat each one.
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Common Reef Tank Pests: Aiptasia, Asterina, Vermetid Snails & Hydroids
Pests are part of reef keeping — even a carefully aquacultured, well-quarantined tank can end up with aiptasia, asterina starfish, vermetid snails, or hydroids sooner or later. None of these are usually an emergency, but all of them are much easier to deal with early than after they’ve spread across your rockwork. Here’s what each…
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Acclimating & Quarantining Marine Fish: Ich, Black Ich, Velvet & More
More fish are lost in the first few weeks after purchase than at any other point in a reef tank’s life — not because the fish were unhealthy, but because of how they were acclimated, or because a parasite nobody caught made it straight into the display. Getting acclimation and quarantine right, and knowing how…
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How to Dip Corals (and Why You Should Never Skip It)
Every coral that lands in your tank has spent time outside a controlled reef system — in a bag, a cooler, a delivery truck, or someone else’s holding tank. That’s true whether it came from us, a local fragger, or a big online vendor. Pests, parasites, and bacteria don’t care how reputable the seller is,…