Free Reef Starter Guide
Free · 25 pages · No fluff
The Reef Starter Guide
for people who don't want to kill anything
The first eight weeks decide whether your tank thrives or becomes an expensive algae farm. This is what I tell customers across the counter, written down, from nineteen years of keeping reefs and running two stores.
The $1,000 build
An itemized starting list — what to buy, what to skip, and where the cheap option genuinely outlasts the premium one.
Six corals that forgive you
Photographed in my own tanks, with the light, flow and feeding each one actually wants.
An eight-week cycle log
A printable table you tape to the stand. Test, write it down, and you'll see trouble a week before it kills something.
Every number, once
Salinity, alkalinity, nitrate, phosphate, temperature — the targets, and what a reading outside them is really telling you.
Send it to me
One email with the download. After that, three short emails on the mistakes that kill new tanks. Unsubscribe any time.
No AI-written filler and no AI-generated coral photos. Every photo in it is mine.
Who is telling you this. Nicholas Cook — marine biology, nineteen years keeping reef tanks, roughly eighteen of them professional across two fish stores, and eight years with coral as my only income.
I have watched hundreds of tanks fail. Almost none of them failed for an exotic reason. They failed because someone was in a hurry.