squiddly

They live in my overflow.

Uh... HOW BIG?!?!?!?! What am I ever going to do with him when he gets THAT BIG?

Seems a bit tough to do in an already established system....

Not good! Thanks! I hadn't even thought of that part. I'll just put it in the tank instaed.

I have an oceanic 180 and it has two overflows built into it. Is there any reason why I couldn't put excess macro algae from my fuge into the overflows to help control nitrates?

That'll depend on whether he cooperates, but I'll try. I'm still pretty awful at tank shots, which is strange because my underwater shots are much better. Go figure :-).

Very sorry for your losses and also glad it wasn't worse.

My condolences on your loss.

I have no idea. He was sold to me as a "jewel crab" NO! Don't eat my crabbie! I'm not so sure he'd be happy in a fuge. He seems to really enjoy crawling around the rocks and picking things off, as well as digging up the sand bed.

I'm so sorry for you guys who are still out. We came back up sometime around 11am. I've been running a 24 gallon aquapod with nothing in it cept a couple PVC pieces if anyone needs emergency housing. I haven't checked the water parameters in ages because there's nothing in it, but it's here if anyone needs it. I'm in Great Falls, VA.

Not a great picture, but here he is...

Since I only have a few softies, it hasn't been a reef issue, and most of my fish are pretty big, and he hasn't bothered the little inverts, so I am either pretty lucky or he just hasn't started yet. I'm not feeding anything different, so he's eating the food the others don't get to and whatever else he finds in the sand. He's really fun to watch. Of course I had no idea he'd turn into such a Goliath. I'll try to get a picture today while we wait for power to come back. We haven't turned the lights back on yet so pictures may not be very good.

Our power is still down. Luckily for us, we made the investment about 7 years ago for a mostly whole house generator. However, we still can't run everything, and we opt to shut down the lights and protein skimmer while we're down. If it lasts 24 hours, we'll put them on for short bursts. The Aquacontroller III decided to pop a breaker to the DC8 and it yelled at me this morning that things got a bit cool. It's a bit bothersome that it popped like that. However its back in and it only dropped to 77.9 which isn't horrible under the circumstances. Most of the house's AC will be down until we get power, but the room with the tank has AC so we'll likely be sleeping there tonight if things go on :-).

Now might be a really good time for some of our longstanding members to post about how we can keep our tanks going given that 250,000 people are out of power in VA alone. It might be really useful. I'm lucky in that our generator is running for the moment. What a mess out there!

No no no! I can't eat Popeye! He's too cool. Picture hopefully at some point after we're off generator and I can turn the lights back on the tank.

We seem to have had a spate of problems with overflow valves. Some work for a time, then fail, usually in "keep adding water" mode, making for a lovely clean up. Are there any REALLY GOOD ONES out there? I'd really like to have my auto top offs working again. Thanks!

He was tiny and cute, less than in inch wide, and he tapped the glass when I walked by his tank and stared at me. I figured he'd make a great small addition to my 180 so I took him home. Less than 6 months later, he is over 6 inches wide, 4 inches tall, and I'm having trouble keeping up with finding him shells. He picks up and moves my clam anywhere he wants, stirs up the sand like nobody's business, and gives me "oh wow, you're still alive?" purple lobster a run for his money. So, does anyone know where I can keep getting bigger and bigger shells for this behemoth? Will there come a point where he gets too big, and I have to find him a new home?

Unfortunately, yeah. Both me and hubby are out of work (him since November). Serious annoyance. Otherwise, I'd love to have maintenance done on the stuff and maybe have oh..CORALS? ;-)

Due to various medical issues, I've been very lax lately about taking care of my beloved tanks. Right now I have a 180 and a 40 running with "stuff" in them and a aquapod 24 with nada that I'm not sure what to do with yet. I've been so neglectful that the 40 was basically covered in hair algae and the 180 was looking quite sad. Thankfully, I haven't lost any critters. So, nitrate levels are high, scraping the glass has begun, stirring up the red slime and trying to vacuum it out has begun, and much other cleaning has commenced. As you can well imagine, I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed. Now that I'm feeling much better, I can devote some more time to my tanks, although not as much as I'd like. Does anyone have any ideas I can use to relatively quickly bring things back into sync? Right now my 180 contains 2 bubble anemones, one silly clam, a hermit I bought maybe 8 months ago that WAS an inch across that is now 7+ inches across who keeps moving the clam all over the place, a magnificent foxface, hippo tang, powder brown, pj cardinals, 4 clowns, various crabs and starfish, copper banded butterfly and a female blue throat trigger (if I can find her...she keeps winding up in the overflow). In the 40 I have 2 yashia gobis and a coral banded shrimp, and some spaghetti finger leathers. All ideas would be helpful. Water changes are possible, but very difficult for me to manage. Thanks!

I bought a Veg-O-Matic for my parrots. It works great :-).

You'll be quite unhappy with the quality of a disposable. They may have something you can rent at the facility where you're going diving. Intro (pre-certification) dives are generally no deeper than 30 feet (PADI doesn't allow you to go deeper than 40). Have a great time.

After about a year and 1/2, my aquapod 24 stand's top has warped considerably. Of course I could only see that after I drained the aquapod. We had already reinforced the pillar part of the stand, but had no idea that the top would warp that way. Just thought I'd let people know in case they wanted to consider alternatives. Luckily for me, I have a very handy hubby who is going to make a new top and replace it.

Congrats on your brood. I have no idea what I could have done. I had a UV sterilizer in the tank, I had a protein skimmer, I kept things very clean, I kept the temperature at 73 to delay bacterial growth, I fed frozen mysis soaked in vitamins, but the only one showing any type of difficulty was one who had internal gas bubble disease, which seemed to be doing well on diamox and antibiotics. Then another in the tank died suddenly, and the other one was lethargic, so I took the one remaining and decided to do prophylactic antibiotic dosing on her as well just to be sure she'd be ok. She was dead within 3 days. Then after 9 days of the 10 day treatment, the one with gas bubble disease suddenly died. She had been doing really well before then. I was doing 50% water changes with every dose, making sure the salinity was equal, kept the water temperatures equal, continued feeding throughout, etc. I just have no idea at all.