Brian Ward

Buy an RO/DI unit. I have a Group Buy from AirWaterIce.com closing at Noon TODAY! 15% discount and free shipping if you're interested. The Typhoon III is probably what you're looking for. ~Brian

Did you try Home Depot? They have a fuse section.

yup, does it every time but it goes away after a few minutes. i just dealt with it. you can buy replacement fans to try if you want - check out www.nanotuners.com if you haven't found it already. ~Brian

so you're looking for about 250' of wire? i don't think i can help you out with quite that much. They sell wire in spools @ lowes and home depot, or you can check an industrial electric supply house, but that's probably not going to be cheaper. They make a paint-on product for below-grade electrical splices. You typically make the connection, tape the connection, paint this stuff on it, and then tape it again. I can't remember what the stuff is called, but you might look at using that method to seal up the connection.

Thanks... good find. I'm not sure they really go for $300-$400 new as he claims... ~Brian

Jason, how much do you want? I've got a couple boxes of 12-2 and 12-3 romex at my house that will probably work for you. ~Brian

It's not cheap anywhere - the price of copper is through the roof. You can try aluminum, it's a bit cheaper, just research the correct joining techniques - and never wire-nut aluminum to copper, that's a fire waiting to happen. (the people that worked on my old house were geniuses) ~Brian

So a few more decisions made: 1- I'll be sealing the wood with Sherwin-Willliams oil-based Tile-Clad Epoxy. This is on the recommendation of one of the owners at Scales. After checking out the datasheet, it's pretty bulletproof. If you want to check it out, here's a link: http://www.sherlink.com/sher-link/ImgServ?...r-link/temp/dp/ 2- Frag tank will be placed on the right side, lower cabinet and will be an AGA 29. I actually wanted a 20H, but Petco had the 29 - and that would work for me. This tank, as well as the MH light mounted above it will be on 30" slides for the occassionally necessary moving and maintenance. These are the slides I've chosen if you'd like to check it out: http://www.accuride.com/products/industria...;c=heavyduty_ie 3- QT tank will be a 50 breeder and will be placed under the 2 main front doors (directly under the display). I'm going with the larger QT in case I need to have multiple fish in there at once. I haven't decided on slides for this one, though it's a definitely possibility. There are a few engineering challenges to overcome due to placement, etc of this tank in order to place it on slides. I'm hoping to plumb the QT tank such that it can either be connected to the rest of the system or not. That will give me an extra 50 gal of total volume when I'm not in QT mode, as well as providing a spot to place fish that may be a problem, or just in the way while I do work in the tank. I'm thinking this will also be an excellent way to do water changes - isolate 50 gal in the qt, set the valves into bypass mode, change the water in this tank and reset the valves. Things are coming along. I hate painting so I'm not looking forward to doing the finishing work on the frame. I'll be out of town Saturday at the VT, ECU game - GO HOKIES! but the long weekend should hopefully allow me enough time to make some progress. ~Brian

In your QT tank, you'll want to provide those clowns with hiding spots - I've seen PVC fittings used effectively for this - a collection of elbows, tees, and unions 1 1/2" to 2".

OK... let's work with this. Are you trying to create a formation to force the clowns to a particular place in the tank? I know mine has a spot it likes, and she's much more active at feeding time but for the most part she stays in her spot in the back of the tank. I guess you probably are stuck with things being semi- 2-dimensional, so work with varying the heights across the width of the tank - and other than that keep most of the rock against the back glass. ~Brian

I had a purple dottyback that I had to get rid of because it was too aggressive for my 29 - it picked on everything except the clownfish. Kept my diamond goby pinned under a rock, and my yellow watchman was the only one that would stand up for itself - but I'm pretty sure the dottyback is what caused it to jump. I'm attributing at least 3 deaths in my tank to the dottyback - they aren't usually that aggressive, and you may have better luck with the bigger tank, but they have an extremely bold temperment and I had to tear the whole tank apart to get him out. Just a warning. You have to watch fish when you newly introduce them and be prepared to remove them if they aren't getting along after a couple days. For the blenny - you can go with Nori on a clip (buy it from Whole Foods, not the fish store) or you can go with various types of seaweed - again, on a veggie clip. ~Brian

Lens size and quality are the #1 consideration. If you're going digital, the quality of the CCD (think digital version of film) is next. For tank shots, you'll definitely want to consider a tripod - you'll need a longer exposure time to avoid using the flash. This, unfortunately, will lead to blurring of things that are moving. The amount of blurring will depend on how fast the object is moving and how long your exposure is. You can reduce the expore time somewhat by increasing the sensitivity (ISO setting) but this increases the "graininess" of the picture. The other way to decrease your exposure time is to increase the physical size of the lens - this is what the digital SLR does for you, besides allowing you to swap out lenses to find the one that works perfectly for a given situation. If you need more information, feel free to PM me. All of that being said, here are the cameras I would consider with your given constraints: $288 @ J&R.com -> http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-cameras/ca...p;tag=pdtl-list http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-cameras/ko...p;tag=pdtl-list Look for a full-body camera with a large surface-area lens. Sony's Carl Zeiss lenses are really good if you an find a deal on one of their larger cameras.

Start with the CUC. They don't really interact with the fish. Any reason for snail-only? I've found that crabs - either hermit or emerald are much better at picking the algae off of rocks. I'd probably do the blenny next then the pair of clowns - careful with selection here, if you don't purchase a mated pair be sure one is a fair amount bigger than the other - the bigger will become the dominant female, the smaller the male, and add these together. basslet next - he's probably less aggressive than the wrasse wrasse last That's my guess, but IMO it's usually a crap-shoot. ~Brian

The other option is stuff my grandad always called plumbers dope - Otey brand, white cream in a tube. You spear it on the threads before putting the connections together - I always thought it worked better than teflon tape. ~Brian

Having a subpanel installed can be pricey - new main panel for the house typically runs about $1000, I'd figure no less than $500 for the subpanel, and that's probably not going to include materials. I just put up a subpanel, pulling 6-3 wire (for 50A circuit) to the panel at $2.40/ft plus $20 for the panel, plus the cost of breakers. I have done extensive electrical work in the past so if you want help, I could possibly be bribed over for frags, cash and/or labor assistance on my build. DISCLAIMER: I am NOT a licensed electrician. Any assistance I provide is just that, assistance. I can provide my knowledge of electrical circuit design, and my limited knowledge of the electrical code, but don't sue me if something goes wrong. This is friendly help and advice only. Sorry for the doom and gloom, but I'm not game for torts between fish nerds ~Brian

Wow, it must be pretty bad if you're up at 3 in the morning worrying about it! My suggestion would be to take a look at new tank pictures either from here or reefcentral or nano-reef to pull a few ideas - the size of the model isn't that important, you just want some thematic ideas. Neither of these are great, but you can take away positives and negatives from them: http://img212.imageshack.us/my.php?image=img2333bs6.jpg http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthre...mp;pagenumber=5 You probably want to look at doing piles of rocks, some higher than others, some closer to the front, some piles allowing lots of space in the front. The "bridge" example in the first piture is pretty common, though I don't generally like it. You can create a cove in the middle or on one of the ends. Mostly you want to avoid the big pile of rocks look - so vary the heights and depths, provide plenty of swimming room for the fish as well as hiding places - let them be able to get behind the rock structure in places as well as swimming in front of it (this is the varied depth idea). Think about placing corals on the rocks, you'll want to provide some areas to attach them easily. If you want to post some pics, at the very least I can try to provide some suggestions on where to move things. ~Brian

OK, for those that are interested, I did a little research and it seems that Arc-Fault or AFCI breakers are available only in 15A and 20A varieties. They are designed to protect mainly the wires directly connected to that branch of the circuit (wires in the wall) and provide some, although less protection to wires and devices connected to the circuit. The situation it is designed for is where you have hung a picture and the nail/screw grazed the insulation, or in older houses where the insulation is worn. The breaker then monitors the current flow through the branch and when it becomes unusual - i.e. there's probably an arc somewhere - it trips, killing power to the branch. As of January 1, 2002, all new installations in the U.S. require AFCI breakers for bedrooms - in Vermont they have gone a step further and required it for all residential circuits. Also, these generally cannot be used in combination with GFCI components unless they are specifically labeled for combination use. So... considering how most of my components will be connected, and the higher need for GFCI protection, the AFCI breaker does not seem to have been designed with this purpose in mind.

As far as the orginal topic post, I don't believe you can have "too much" biological filtration. My understanding of how this works is that the bacteria levels will adjust themselves as the necessary chemicals are available for processing - think darwinian survival of the fittest. If you introduce too much bacteria, the ones not able to gain enough chemicals to keep going will die off, providing ammonia, etc for the other bacteria. As more chemical is available and the bacteria reproduce, there will be an increase the total bacteria population. This is why you don't want to introduce too many fish into your tank at once - the bacteria will not be able to keep up with processing the chemicals produced by the fish since it takes time for them to reproduce. ~Brian EDIT: There will be a maximum bacteria population your setup can handle - that is where the 1.5 lbs/gal rule came from. That's approximately the amount of rock required to support the bacteria population required for the fish that size tank can "handle". There are other devices such as skimmers and whatnot that will help remove toxins, allowing you to increase the bioload of the tank while not increasing the amount of rock for the bacteria to live in.

Don't confuse total turnover with movement through the filter. You need approx 10x turnover through your filter, the water through the fuge you generally want to move slower - allowing the plant material to metabolize the chemicals. You create the additional turnover through the use of closed loops and circulation pumps (tunze turbelle 6101 is a popular model). For an SPS-dominated tank, 50x turnover isn't unheard of - you also want to create varying currents in the tank. corals seem to like this since it mimics the shallow waters they typically inhabit. ~Brian

Hmm... I actually don't know here. My original plan was to do multiple GFCI breakers for exactly this reason. The reason I switched is 15A breakers are $60 each and the 50A GFCI breaker is about $150, so there was a little savings there - but that may not be worthwhile. As far as breakers vs outlets, my thought was to do breakers in order to provide more available outlets, all GFCI protected. This design was before I decided to purchase a controller, which may make the issue moot. I'm still planning to have a fair amount of equipment not on the controller - integrating a qt and frag tank. I'll have to look at the cost, but I think the GFCI breakers give me more flexibility, and I want to have switch controls in various places, and the breakers would provide GFCI protection to the switches as well - in case they were splashed - correct? I hadn't thought about the Arc-Fault issue. Maybe I should use a 50A Arc-Fault breaker in the main panel and a series of 15A GFCI breakers in the sub-panel? I'm at the limits of my electrical knowledge at this point, but definitely want to learn about proper design here. Insight?

Construction this weekend went fairly slow. I found a minor problem with the second part of my cabinet frame (mostly a fit issue) so I have to rebuild that. I'm ready to begin running the electrical, but I guess I need to seal the 2x4s first (I hate painting). I have some polyurethane I was planning to use, but someone suggested I go with a Sherwin-Williams 2-part epoxy. Any opinions on polyurethane vs the epoxy vs leaving the wood bare? Next question is that I'm not planning to enclose the wall studs behind or floor joists above the tank. If sealing the wood is necessary for the frame, would it also be necessary for these other wood pieces? Or does it have to do with the load-bearing nature of the stand frame? Oh, the floor joists are about 100 yrs old, too - they are 2-bys that are actually 2" wide! As far as controllers, looks like the AC3 is the winner, probably with a DC8 socket block and the AquaSurf circulation pump controller. Are there ever any good deals on these, or is it just easier and more reliable to buy retail from the vendor? Also, does anyone monitor ORP? Do you find this useful? Only other question would be is it worth the extra money to go to the lab grade probes?

Wow, my aunt lives in Stevensville and even that's too far for me to go on any regular basis. Looks like about 1 1/2 - 2 hrs from DC. Looks like a pretty cool place though. And 10% discount with free lunch for club trips: "We also offer a program for Reef Clubs to come for a day and enjoy lunch on us and a 10% discount for the club members on corals, clams, and fish (sale items excluded)." I guess it isn't really that much farther from me than BRK ... ~Brian

I'm thinking about the qt but I can't decide where to put it. I want to find a spot in the stand to mount it, similar to the frag tank and I'll want to have it 30+" long since I know I'm going to need to qt tangs. Just not sure where to put it yet. Space seems to be filling quickly :( ~Brian

I usually sell a few games - the way some of the tickets sell it's hard for me to justify going to the game. Miami about 2 years ago we got about $1500 for our block of 4 tickets! I'm pretty sure I'm skipping Ohio, W&M, and UNC this year. I'll definitely post up here when I know for sure I have some to get rid of. Oh, I have a pair and I'm usually looking for someone to go to the games with me - friends have wives and girlfriends that are way too into Hokie football to for either of them to go without the other :( EDIT: oh, CpE grad - it's half an EE ~Brian