The New Reef Aquarium: Setup, Care and Compatibility (+ Free Bonus Material) (Aquatic Experts)

I am fully invested in Nest cameras so it's not easy to just change. I have 7 1st gen "Nest" cameras, and this is my second 2nd gen "Google Nest" camera, so I now have 9 cameras in total.The cameras themselves do have some new, improved features... they now have an internal battery which allows video to keep recording and saved internally if power/wifi goes down, or you need to mount where there is no power, or just for temporary use. Also, they are now "smart" and can detect familiar faces so it tells you is spotted someone it knows (or doesn't.)Now for the down sides... images are generally darker and less clear, and night vision is also less effective. I use both mobile and desktop apps and it's the same in both.But the biggest backward step is with the software support... I did buy another one of these 2nd gen cameras because I do hope that Google will get this all sorted, but for now, it's a serious issue...The Nest App and 1st gen cameras are awesome...On the iOS app, I can see the 7 1st gen cameras, see event clips, save events to a clip to view or forward later, set notifications for each zone, see a timeline of events and slide back through the full history.On the web app, I can set up multiple zones, configure different notification settings by zone (Alert me if you notice a person outside my front gate anytime, but only notify me if you notice a person inside my front gate when I'm not home), and have full 60 days 24/7 video history for all cameras with my Nest Aware subscription. I can select any time period in the past 60 days on the timescale and save a video or time lapse clip to a file, and even enhance the video. Google Nest 2nd gen cameras... well, they aren't available in the Nest app! They just don't exist there.But Google must have created somewhere new that you can get all this functionality from the 2nd gen cameras, right? This is just a legacy issue. Wrong!The Google Home iOS app... this has all my Google Home devices, including all the cameras, so there is a place I can see all 9 cameras, BUT... I cannot see or set zones, I cannot access the history for the 7 1st gen cameras, but I can access history for the two 2nd gen ones. History for these is only 10 days 24/7 and 60 days for events (if it noticed movement and recorded).The Google Home web app... this does say it's in "preview" mode, so Google are still hedging here... I can see all 9 cameras on my desktop monitor. No zones, no history available for ANY of them. Just a live view. All I can do here is turn a camera on or off. No ability to set or change zones, events, notifications, video resolution to save bandwidth etc.I really do hope Google get this sorted, because I'm too heavily invested to change, but the user community has been screaming at them since they released the 2nd gen devices in Spring 2021, and it hasn't changed yet! I'm happy to update this review if/when they do... but if I were making a new purchase from scratch into a new platform, I can't recommend Google Nest right now!

Having decided to add to the house security system three new cameras, I took a friend's advice and got three of these and chose the re-chargeable version (vs hardwired). I was concerned (living in a winter climate) about having to re-charge them too often. I already had the Google Home app so adding these to that app was easy. Installation went well. And I was careful to choose a spot for each I could get to easily.Each camera tells you, after calibrating how "busy" each camera is, how long they have before needing to be charged. Right now, my least used camera has three months left before the needing a charge and so far I've never had to re-charge it since installation. (All were installed over two months ago.) So that one's getting five months without having to be charged. The second most used one has also got three months left on the current charge and has been charged once after initial installation. And the most used one in the front of the house which catches every pedestrian and car driving or walking by has to be charged about once every five weeks. It has been charged twice since installation.Recharging is easy. Go grab the camera. Take it inside. Put it on a charger. Wait five hours. Stick the camera back in this base outside. The app will tell you how the charging process is going and when it's done.The video is excellent. The alerts are accurate. You sort of learn what to ignore and what could be of interest. And you can hear whatever noise is going on also when it takes video. If you're viewing the camera live, you can respond and talk to someone. These aren't combo lights and cameras. Just good quality easy to use cameras. Recommend.

I've been on this DIY home video journey for about several years. It started about 2 years ago with my purchase of Ring. It's motion detection was lousy. A UPS guy would deliver a package to my front door and Ring would start recording when he was 4/5ths down my driveway. This journey actually seems much longer because this has been a very frustrating journey. After Ring, I paused in my search for a better video system because I was waiting for Ring to get better. But my recent search for a system started about 6 months ago when my neighbor across the street noticed that a guy was lurking in front of my house and approaching my front door and wandering around the side of my house into the backyard. This was at 11:30pm and I was sound asleep in bed. My neighbor called me (I didn't answer because I was asleep) and then called the police. No break-in or damage but it spooked me enough to begin investigating a video system. I wasn't interested in ADT or CPI or any of the large companies that were going to charge me $50/month to monitor my house 24/7. I just wanted to know what was happening outside of my house when either I was asleep or not at home. So I first started with Amcrest. I bought an 8-camera system that needed to be wired for power and internet. My electrician told me that the way my house was built, he could install cameras in the back of the house but not the front. The cost for wiring a system in the back and a totally separate system in the front was $1600 (Just for the installation!). I passed on that. He said I needed to look into a WiFi system, which then led me to ARLO Pro, which has rechargeable batteries (cool) that last about a month or two (depending upon how often the motion detector goes off), and it was connected via WiFi. I've used the ARLO system for about 3 months. The thing that I like most about ARLO is that you can position these cameras anywhere since they don't require a power cord to plug in and they connect to WiFi, and it was a very user-friendly interface (which Amcrest was not. Amcrest is really for IT guys and not for the lay DIY person who just wants the thing to work). The thing that makes me crazy about the ARLO system is that the cameras only turn on when they detect motion and by the time they detect motion, the activity has almost left the visible screen. There were also times when I would pull into the driveway, walk into my garage and a camera that is pointing AT the house would not turn on. But if a leaf blew in front of the camera then it would turn on. There were a hundred false alarms per day as something tripped the motion sensor but when actual people (like a UPS driver) would walk up my driveway, put a package on the ground and walk away - the motion sensor would pick him up AT the door and as he was walking away. ARLO picked up a LOT of false motion and failed to pick up or was slow on real motion. That kind of stuff made me bat shit crazy. I worked with ARLO's discussion board to try to fix the issues (Ghosting; Pixilation; and slow detection times) but the product is what it is at this stage. So I went searching for a system that would give me 24/7 video, would have high-quality cameras (1080p), night vision, audio, microphone and look nice. I had heard about Nest but I also didn't want to pay the monthly/ yearly subscription, but I looking into what the subscription meant (what features were available) and thought I'd give it a try. The purchase comes with a free trial period, so I thought maybe the 3rd time is a charm. And it IS! I only ordered 1 camera because I wanted to test it out and my camera came this morning. I followed the easy installation steps and got it installed and operational within an hour. I have an outdoor outlet in the front of my house and I bracketed the wire down the trim of the house and then plugged it in. (I'll get an alert if it is unplugged or the wire is cut). At some point in time, I'll have an electrician come and drill a hole in the exterior so the wire is not exposed, but I'm really happy with the product as it is. I've left the house several times and checked my phone to see what was happening while I was away. The phone app is easy to use, the video is really 24/7, the installation was easy (I ran into zero issues getting up and running), and I now get alerts that are meaningful. The Nest Aware actually has algorithms that know when a person is in the frame, rather than a bird flying by. AND, I can scroll through the entire video of the day within minutes, AND download a video clip to my Photos on my phone. I'm so happy with this purchase, I just purchased another one that will arrive tomorrow and I'll install that one as well in the back. And, as I learned more about the subscription, I'm Ok with the cost. It's 100/year for the first camera and then $50/year for each additional camera. So for $150/year I can have both the front and back of my house monitored 24/7, and I have use of all the advanced features that come with Nest Aware. I'll still use my ARLO inside (they do work quite well inside), but the Amcrest cameras will be donated to charity.

I decided that I would start a marine tank last June and this was one of the first things I bought. I found it very interesting, good set out only one thing it would have been nice to have coloured photos inside the book.

This book is very informative and contains all the up to date knowledge you will need to set up and maintain your reef aquarium. However, one downside to this book, and personally I think it is a huge downside, is that the pages of the book are black and white. One of the main attractions to having a reef tank is the wide variety of beautifully coloured corals that are available and this book not only fails to do them justice but also makes distinguishing them, and therefore learning about them, difficult.

This book starts with the basic s and takes you through setting up and maintaining marine and reef aquariums. Very informative but importantly easy to read. Plenty of pictures too. Well worth adding to your library.

Great book, detailed for all levels on every page.

All the photos are in black and white, not great for identifying corals for the beginning