About Stock

Star polyps and Briareum are two of the most forgiving soft corals in the hobby, and they get recommended constantly for good reason. Both grow a fleshy mat or encrusting base that spreads outward, sending up small feathery polyps that sway in even modest flow. They are not fussy about light, they tolerate a wide swing in water quality better than most SPS, and they grow fast enough that a small frag can cover a decent patch of rock within a few months.Green star polyps, usually shortened to GSP, and its close relative Briareum (sometimes called star polyps too, which...

Chalice corals are some of the most photographed pieces in any reef tank, and for good reason. Their polyps sit in a thin sheet of tissue over a plating or encrusting skeleton, often patterned with eyes, stars or ridges in colours that shift depending on the angle you view them from. Two forms we regularly carry, the aquacultured Bubblegum Chalice and the aquacultured Green Convict Chalice frag, show off this growth style well: low mounds that spread outward rather than up, adding new tissue at the growing edge while the older centre thickens.Why does the growth form matter for care?...

Zoanthids are one of the easiest corals to fall in love with because a single colony can carry a dozen tiny suns worth of colour, and every grower seems to have their own name for a slightly different combination. If you have ever wondered why one tank's 'Rainbow' looks nothing like another's, or why frags labelled 'Utter Chaos' or 'Lunar Eclipse' command so much attention on a swap thread, this profile covers the naming quirks, the actual husbandry, and how to bring new frags into your system without losing them to pox or melt.Why do zoanthid names vary so much?Zoanthid...

Most hobbyists start with a glass heater sitting inside the tank, held by a suction cup, doing its best not to get knocked around by fish or aquascape rearranging. Inline heaters take a different approach entirely: they sit outside the display, plumbed directly into the water return line from a sump or canister filter, heating water as it passes through rather than sitting in the tank itself.How an inline heater actually worksAn inline heater is a sealed chamber, usually PVC or a similar rigid plastic, with a heating element inside and barbed or threaded fittings on either end. Water flows...

Most people's first wavemaker is a small propeller pump stuck to the glass with a magnet, pushing a jet of water in one direction. That's a point source. A gyre-style unit works differently. Instead of a narrow jet, it uses a wide, thin impeller housed in a long chamber to move a broad sheet of water across the tank, more like a river current than a fire hose.Point-source pumps vs gyre flowA standard propeller pump moves a lot of water through a small cross-section. That creates strong localised current with dead zones everywhere else, unless you run several pumps and...