Steve has maintained saltwater aquaria for over 20 years. Previous accomplishments include writing articles for Aquarium Frontiers, Das Aquarium, Koralle, Sea Scope and Breeders Registry and hobbyist newsletters. He has in the past posted numerous articles and essays on the Internet. Photographs have been published in _The Reef Aquarium_ Volume 1 (Delbeek and Sprung), _The Modern Coral Reef Aquarium_ Volume 1,2,3 (Nilsen and Fossa), _Aquarium Corals_ (Borneman) and Steinkorallen Im Aquarium Band 1 (Knop). Steve has also given presentations to Macna VII in Louisville (Stony Corals), Macna X in Long Beach (Sponges), Macna XIV in Dallas (Sea Squirts and Tri-Zonal Filtration) and WMC 1999 in Vancouver (Environmental Gradient Filtration). The company, Reeffarmers, is owned and run by Steve. This company grows common and extremely rare stony corals for the retail market. Consultation has been provided by the company to exporters shipping corals from wild habitats. About 8 species of corals have sexually spawned in the authors captive reefs. Steve also helped start the Scleractinian Stony Coral Challenge Series that was run threw the Breeder's Registry. Consultation has been provided to Ecosystems Aquarium the inventors of a mud and macro-algae based filtration system. This consultation concerned the application of the system to support Reef Building Stony Corals. Steve also manages the web site reeffarmers.com, which is a reef farmers web network. This network helps farmers distribute their products into a national market. Current interest include captive scleractinian stony coral research, natural filtration methods, environmental gradients within tropical reef platforms, sponge research, ascidian research, bivalve research, zonal filtration research and propagating captive grown corals, sponges and ascidians via fragmentation, budding or sexual reproduction. Presentations have been given to various local clubs and associations located throughout North America. Steve has written four books concerning Reef Building Stony Corals, Living Sponges, The Sea Squirts and an original Environmental Gradient captive filtration method. These books are self-published through DE Publishing. The company DE is conducting second phase research concerning a zonal based natural method to maintain coral reef organisms within captive aquariums. Steve is currently conducting further research for a second volume in the CMAT book series. That book will formally define a zonal based reef modelling theorem.
