It is not uncommon to come across a retailer, wholesaler or transhipper in the marine aquarium industry that boasts a “secret supplier” of livestock. Consider this e-mail from Extreme Corals, an online retailer of corals and other invertebrates, on Wednesday of this week:

SECRET SUPPLIER CORALS JUST POSTED!!!! I have been waiting for these corals to arrive for over 45 days. This is more corals from my SECRET SUPPLIER, these are by far the best corals I get in. Check out these beauties, some of the nicest corals you will ever see! Really take your time and look at them these are INCREDIBLE!!!!

The myth of secret suppliers aside, ostensibly, the fact that the retailer from whom you buy livestock has a “secret supplier” is value-added to you as the customer. Presumably, the “secret supplier” is not serving a multitude of wholesalers, retailers and transhippers, and they therefore send all the choicest specimens to your supplier, which, in turn, provides you, the customer, more premium animals from which to choose. Perhaps it even means you have access to animals that cannot be purchased anywhere else.

Eddie is a high end coral exporter in Indonesia and has his own blog, My Coral Adventures, to share his coral hunting adventures with the world as he takes trips to find high end livestock for good customers. When we last left Eddie, he was taking and incredibly interesting aquacultured coral hunting trip in Northern Bali...

And now for Part 3...

Two weeks ago,  I started a weekly column, taking advantage of the new Comparison Shopping tool at The Reef Tank.

The goal of this column was to make The Reef Tank community aware of the importance of researching before buying anything for your tank. I've already compared and contrasted Protein Skimmers and Water Pumps.

This week, I am focusing on Heaters. Perhaps we underestimate the importance of heaters, especially to a saltwater tank. About.com's Saltwater Aquariums section says that "Most experienced saltwater aquarists know that using an inexpensive, poorly constructed tank heater can quickly lead to a disaster by either allowing the tank to chill, or worse yet over heat." And it's so true. That's why research is key.

A while back I decided to try out a metal halide system for my 46 gallon bowfront reef tank to replace my existing PC lighting.  This new lighting system was equipped with a 175 watt metal halide light right in the center of it, which was right over my aquarium’s center brace.  The new metal halide system was working perfectly and I decided to go to work for a few hours.  When I got home the metal halide had been turned off by my lighting timers and after a brief tank inspection I decided to go to bed.

The marine aquarium industry is a strange industry. That is not a bad thing, of course, just an observation.

We are an industry, after all, caught somewhere between being ecologically sensitive and environmentally indifferent. We rely on customers—hobbyists—some of whom, undoubtedly, are rich and even famous, and yet we so often struggle to make ends meet. We are a bunch of good guys (and gals) and yet we are, too often, suspicious and distrustful of one another. Yes, we are a strange bunch indeed, which of course is not necessarily a strike against us.

I am a writer—that is my position in the aquarindustry caste system. I write about the marine aquarium industry as I experience it—as a hobbyist, consultant, freelance writer and, at times, pen for hire for some of the bigger guns in the business. I do it mostly out of love, but it is also how I pay the bills. You may have come across my work in Tropical Fish Hobbyist Magazine or in Suite101’s Saltwater Aquarium pages, where I posture as the feature writer. You may have stumbled upon one of my blogs, like the one over at Microcosm Aquarium Explorer or at SaltwaterSense. Chances are, I’ve written more than a few of the descriptions at your favorite online retailer (not the ones with typos or grammatical errors, mind you).

Hi, I'm Christopher Taylor, author of the blog Catalogue of Organisms. At that site, I look at the diversity of life on this planet, and I've been asked if I'd like to contribute something for you to read here.

I have to confess, the request initially put me at something of a loss - I haven't any experience of my own in keeping marine aquaria, and only a little with freshwater fish tanks. So I'm not going to talk about fish - not directly, anyway. I'm going to talk about something else that you will all have living in your tanks, in large numbers, and which you've possibly never even noticed - bacteria.

Some of the less fortunate of you may be all too aware of the vital role that bacteria play in your tank. Many people (including, I have to admit, myself), when first setting up a new aquarium, will have tried to put too many fish into the tank too quickly, and then had the absolutely heart-wrenching experience of seeing them die off in quick succession. Not a pleasant experience for you, and I'm sure an even worse one for the fish. If you were more fortunate (or better prepared), you will have learnt all about the necessity for a properly set up nitrogen cycle before you started. Fish produce nitrogen waste products in the form of ammonia, which is highly toxic if allowed to build up.