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My Reef: Track Every Fish, Coral, Piece of Gear, and Dollar in One Place

June 12, 2026 · 7 min read

Reef keepers obsess over water chemistry — and rightly so. But a reef is more than eight numbers. It is a living collection of animals, a rack of equipment that keeps them alive, a dosing routine you have dialed in over months, and a surprising amount of money. Most reef apps treat all of that as an afterthought: a flat list you fill in once and never look at again.

My Reef is NextUpReef’s answer to that. It is the home base for everything in your tank that is not a test result — and it is built to stay useful, because it feeds your scores, your reminders, and the AI that actually knows your reef.

Livestock: every fish, coral, and invert, with real care data

Add a fish, coral, or invert and My Reef links it to catalog care data automatically — adult size, temperament, aggression, reef-safety, minimum tank size, placement, and flow needs. You are not just writing down a name; you are building a record the app can reason about.

For each animal you can track health status, the date you added it, and what you paid. Frag or split a colony and the lineage is preserved, so a single mother colony and its frags stay connected. Over time this becomes the most accurate inventory of your tank you will ever have — far better than a mental list or a note buried in your phone.

• Fish — with temperament and adult-size data so you know what will outgrow or bully the tank
• Corals — SPS, LPS, softies, and anemones, each with placement and flow guidance
• Inverts — cleanup crew, shrimp, snails, crabs, and more
• Health status, acquisition date, and cost per animal
• Frag and lineage tracking when you split a colony

Equipment and dosing: your whole setup, documented

My Reef holds your full hardware list — skimmer, return pump, powerheads, reactors, ATO, heater, and lighting — with brand, model, and the settings that matter, like flow rate. Your dosing products live here too, with the parameter they target, the daily amount, and the method (automated doser, manual, or reactor) so nothing gets confused.

This is not busywork. A documented setup is what lets the rest of the app give you good advice: the AI can reason about your flow and filtration, your reminders know what gear needs servicing, and you have an instant reference when something breaks at 11pm and you need the exact model number.

Monthly photo timeline: watch your reef grow

One photo per month per tank builds a growth timeline you can scroll back through. It is the single most satisfying feature in the app — watching a bare aquascape fill in over a year, or a single frag become a colony. It is also genuinely useful: a side-by-side of this month versus six months ago tells you more about coral health than any single parameter.

Investment tracking: what your reef actually costs

Reef keeping is expensive, and most of us would rather not know the total. My Reef tells you anyway — and it helps. Enter what you paid for livestock, equipment, and lighting, and the app totals your investment and breaks it down by category. You see at a glance where the money went, which is useful for insurance, for selling a system, or just for being honest with yourself.

The AI Stocking Advisor: built into your livestock list

Here is where My Reef pulls ahead of every other reef tracker. Your livestock list is not just storage — it feeds the AI Stocking Advisor. The Advisor reads everything in your tank against its care data and your tank size, then tells you whether your stock actually makes sense together.

It flags real conflicts — an aggressive fish that will harass tankmates, a predator that will eat your cleanup crew, a coral that needs more flow than you run — and warns you about bioload before it becomes a problem. When you are deciding what to add next, it suggests species that fit your tank and fill an actual gap. Other apps can hold a livestock list. NextUpReef tells you whether the list works.

Everything in My Reef also flows into your Reef Score and the rest of the app, so the time you spend documenting your tank pays off everywhere — better advice, smarter reminders, and a record you will be glad you kept.