squiddly

It almost ripped the awning off my house but power still up (knocking wood).

Making progress towards eradication of the hair algae, and a bit with the cyanno, but the cyanno seems to be determined to come back and kick my butt. I've been plucking it out as much as I can, and maintaining water quality, but it seems very happy to stay. The new Tunze skimmer is kicking some serious butt, and even though the tank is low bio load, it's picking up a lot of icky stuff. Meantime, it looks like my Aquapod 24 may be having some "issues." The top of the tank (where the black rim is) seems to be leaking on both front corners. The white streaks of dried salt tell the tale. So, I have a question.... is it sensible to try to transfer everything into a new tank? If I do that, do I just put down the sand from the old tank, put in the rocks from the old tank, and the water and fish (and filtration and other equipment obviously)? Or do I have to go through the whole breaking in process with the water again? As always, your assistance is much appreciated. And now back to your overly hyped weather forecasts :-)

Media hype? Say it ain't SO! Back in another life, I was actually an on air weather dweeb, but it was NH so the "cold" part was almost always accurate. The big deal I've found here is the ease with which the power goes down. Sometimes it seems as if sneezing is enough to take things out in my neighborhood. I still say that my best investment to date was our propane generator. I'd love to have some solar panels as well, but haven't yet figured out how to do it. Anything (almost) to get away from VA Powerless. I still have a battery pump just in case. Last storm we blew and alternator on the generator on the last day of no power, and the battery pump came in handy, as did an inverter + Prius for the freezer.

Thanks Origami. It was really difficult for awhile there when I had to sell my 175 and stock that I'd brought up from teeny weeny fishies. Then I tried seahorses when I really didn't know what I was doing and lost them all which was another serious bummer. Having the little tank has been pretty good at easing that. The clowns and starry blennie have been around for awhile. The only iffy tank member is the BTA who is all compacted and squishy. I have no idea how to make him feel any better, and he's not falling apart or anything, and all the parameters are good, and I've cut down the time period when the lights are on, increased the water flow a bit. Hopefully he'll come out of it. I've had him about 3 years now I think, and the clowns just started hosting him. Not sure if that is the reason why he's not doing well, but that wouldn't really make much sense. Anyway, glad to be back and posting again. Things have changed quite a bit with lighting, so I should take a closer look and catch up a bit. Meantime, the tank is looking a bit cleaner today so I may be on the right track.

Naw, how could I forget you guys? Where else do people answer my silly questions?

Hi folks. Life has been crazy busy as usual for us here in Squiddly land. The Aquapod is still up and funning, and today I decided to do some cleaning, a bit of clean up crew restocking, and try to figure out why I was having so much trouble with red slime and green hair algae. So I went through my filtration system, pulling out the sponge in the back of the tank when there, to my great surprise, I saw where one of my clownfish had disappeared to. I can't say I shed too many tears when he disappeared since he attacked me constantly. I did feel bad for his mate though, and was even thinking about replacing him, but there was the little....darling He was alive and well and living in the filter compartment, sharing it with about a dozen brittle stars that I picked out and put back in the main tank before cleaning the sponge. My canister filter that I also use with this had quit dead, so replaced it with a small protein skimmer. Pulled out the old powerhead and replaced it with one I can more easily access with those magnet things so I don't have to go diving in the back to clean it out. Got new pads for the Magnavore. Replaced the heater because it was time. Reprogrammed the lights to be on for shorter times to try to cut down on the algae cruft. And took my water off to have a professional check it just in case my Salifert tests weren't doing the right thing. The tests were fine, so I'm thinking the lighting is the culprit. Once the algae issue is solved, I'll start putting some easier corals back in. The algae killed most of what I had, which was mostly zoas and a few polyps here and there. I have some star polyps left, the two clowns, a very sad looking BTA (which I hope comes back...he's all compacted and you can hardly see him) and a starry blennie. So hi again and I hope things are going well for everyone. Dah Squid

Ditto on the great speaker as well as informative. Gave me hope :-)

120 hours here. Like OldReefer, I thought I was prepared. 40 kw generator had been installed many years ago with regular maintenance and weekly exercise, powers the AC in the part of the house where the tank is, powers well pump, fridge, freezer, microwave, Internet, computers etc. No stove, oven, vacuum cleaners, washing machines or dryers :-). Power went down around 10pm Friday night, generator kicked on and i thought all was fine. Internet went down soon thereafter. Cell service and land lines were also down. 911 service and hospital telephones were down. Next day, the DH (Dear Husband) began checking oil on the generator, which was a very good thing as it was using a lot. Tried to get gas for the car, but forget it. We live off Georgetown Pike which was closed. Our normal route to the Tyson's area was also closed. Snaked around to try Reston - roads were closed there too. We gave up and went home. As the days wore on, it was possible to get food, gas and ice. Then on Wed. AM, the generator seized. The alternator had burned itself out. It was a holiday, so forget about finding the part that day. Auto shops were open, so a friend had the bright idea of using my Prius as a portable generator. I did some research via the iPad (thankfully there was enough signal, since the Internet was down) and it seemed feasible. He brought us an inverter, we plugged it in as recommended, and we had ourselves a small generator that ran the fridge, pumps, and some fans (thank goodness). Just as I'd filled a pan up with ice to put in front of the fan for the night, power came back 120 hours later, almost to the minute, on Wed. night. Fish were ok. Lights were out for much of the time to keep them cool and save power on the generator. The lights out didn't kill the red algae or green hair algae, however. Bah humbug. Anemone, zoanthids and polyps did ok. It's a 24 gallon tank, so it would have been relatively easy to keep cool with ice, unlike you guys with your huge tanks. What a nightmare. Sincere condolences to everyone who lost stuff from their tank.

Well and septic here too. The water is pretty awful. Agree that RO/DI media definitely get used pretty fast even with a whole house filter. Be careful about the whole house filters as well. Make sure that your engineering inspection report checks the filter carefully. We had to replace ours. Also, depending on the results and the hardness of the water, expect your plumbing to deteriorate rapidly going into the filter. Be aware that you don't always know when the whole house filter is acting badly, until your hair starts getting yucky and your taps have blue rings around them. That stuff eats copper piping. Re: salt water and septic, having had to replace my septic tank once, I'm careful about what goes in there. Luckily, I only have a 24 gallon tank, so there isn't much salt water to get rid of :-). Condolences to all who had power issues. We were out for 5 days but between a generator (until its alternator seized up) and a battery pump, the tank was fine.

Oh goody! Can I sell them for big bucks on ebay?

Anybody know what the second polyps things are?

I'd be really happy to find out what these things are

As an experiment, I am trying one of my own with no blocking on my servers or firewall. Worked fine, so you are right in that it must be some type of blocking on their side. I will look into that. Thanks very much for the information.

Yes, it's an extra series of steps to get my photos there, then bring them down to the board. Their privacy policy is better than most, I have nothing against them personally, it's just that I'd rather use what's easiest.

Thanks! Yep, that's what it looks like. Zoo Poo.

Any ideas why it won't let me use me.com? It's maddening. It also won't let me use kadoo.com

Can we use any other photo management sites besides photobucket to post to the forums? Testing to see if the photobucket one works:

I be a she, but that doesn't matter much to the zoa poo :-) Thanks to both of you for clearing up the confusion.

Much appreciated. I will get photobucket someday :-)

These guys are pretty new (got them at Frag Fest) and today was the first time I saw the worm thing. Of course, if it's zoa pooh, that might make some sense.

But why would the image tag work with a photobucket URL but not with other URLs? That doesn't make sense to me. Thanks for the tip, however.

Do zoanthids often have long tendrils like worms coming out of the eye? This was brown and not white. I have a kinda ok photo, but I'm having a rough time getting pictures to do the right thing without loading them to my gallery first. I have them on me.com but when I tried to use the "insert image" icon, and put in the correct URL I got "You are not allowed to use that image extension on this board." Feh. Zoa worm thing

That's almost exactly what I have in my tank on some live rock. I tried to add a picture of it, but when I use the IMG tag, it tells me I'm not allowed to use that tag on this board. Very confusing. My picture of it is also quite crappy but it looks the same as yours. I've been told they're hydroids or "something else." I'd like to know what they are too.

I would be REALLY happy to help beta test. In another life I was VP of engineering for a software development company. Here's what I would like to see in an app: Of course the regular water parameters that could be entered and graphed, but that's not everything I'd like. I would like to be able to upload various photos of the tank and its inhabitants that could be tagged with dates so one could quickly see the growth or decline of various creatures, possibly in conjunction with water parameters over time. I'd also like to see the ability to have notifications separate from your calendar the way that AquaPlanner has. The things I like about Aquaplanner are the ability to put in multiple tanks and multiple alerts, but the notes portion is very rudimentary. You can't upload photos, you can't add notes with dates prior to today's date, and you can't add water parameters in a coherent manner or graph them. So, if I had every little thing I'd ever want, it would be an automatic uploading of the parameters on an ACIII or Apex into some useful graphs, addition of water parameters you can't get from the controllers, ability to input and track various fish, corals, etc., with possible bio load calculations based on tank size, and perhaps even suggestions like "with this bio load, you need to do 20% water changes every 7 days to maintain peak efficiency" or whatever. I'd also add ease of emailing any pieces of the data or posting to sites like WAMAS when you need help. That's my dream app. I wish it would do water changes for me :-)

Very sorry for your losses. I hope you can find the cause.