rsarvis

Chip, can you elaborate on the risks? I've been eyeing getting some sort of auto-top-off float switch thingy, but haven't gotten around to doing it... would like to know as much as possible before getting one...

Total noob question but what're majanos?

Wow, that is bordering on inappropriate!!

Welcome! Sounds like a great set-up. That's a lot to put in in a month, so be careful of going too fast, but sounds like you're having fun and know what you're doing. Can't wait to see pics!

What a beautiful tank. Love all the blue and purples, esp. the blue carpet anem. Great job! What kind of lights do you have on that? Any chance I can get a frag of the blue tort (or whatever it is that's one of the really bright blue SPS)?

Yea, anemones are really fickle. Mine sometimes gets really long and skinny, like an unfolded turtleneck; sometimes is fully expanded and plump (surprising me how big it is); sometimes has really shrivelly and thin tentacles; sometimes has really plump tentacles (rarely has bubble-tip tentacles, though, even though it's a BTA.... hmmm); sometimes folds inward and gets really small. Appears to be normal, as it seems pretty happy in his little crevice.

I have the red stuff, too, but mine's never on my sand, only on particular rocks. Is it harmful to corals or clams if it starts getting near their fleshy parts? I have new bulbs coming, so I'll see if that's it. My guess is that for me it's the lights. I have no other nuisance algae at all. My phosphates read 0, but that could be misleading, as others have said; I might reinstitute use of a phosphate remover at some point, but not yet if I don't have to. But I do want to try the Mexican turbos. Anybody have a couple to sell?

I'll bet someone who knows the appropriate physics numbers could do some rough math estimates on how much energy it takes to heat 210g of water a certain number of degrees above ambient temp and keep it there for a month. Seems to me though that if your house has good insulation, it's conceivable that it's not as hard to keep the temperature at a certain level above the outside temperature as it is to keep 210g of uninsulated water a full 15 deg higher than the ambient temperature. You're in essence trying to heat your house via radiated heat from your tank. Anyway, my (albeit limited) experience with having to heat a full house (well, townhouse, but still much larger than the studio apartment I lived in previously!) suggests to me that Dec-Jan being a whole lot colder than Nov-Dec might well help cause such a large jump. I actually keep my thermostat during winter at 74 (I agree that seems high, but maybe the thermostat is off by a couple degrees; anything less and I feel cold; and my gf stays home a couple days a week, so we just keep it the same all day). Heating bills do get significantly higher in the cold-weather months (I think we also don't have good seals around the house's windows/doors). I don't know much about electricity and heaters, but I was a little concerned with putting the thermostat any lower than 70 when I went on vacation, because I didn't know if my two heaters (and I added a third smaller one I had on hand just in case) would be able to keep a 180g tank at 79 deg when the ambient temp was so cold. Just seemed like it'd be hard work for the heaters; even if they could do it, it seemed they'd be on 24-7.

Haven't you answered your own question? You used to use not so much electricity to warm your tank b/c your (gas-heated) ambient temperature was a lot warmer. Now, you use electricity to heat 210 gallons of water because you've cut back on the gas-heating of the ambient temperature. So the comparison of your total utility bills (gas + electric) answers which is more efficient/cheaper, no?

I have a 180g, 40g sump. I use a 20g trash bin full of saltwater (so about a 10% water change). OLD METHOD: I used to vacuum sand while doing water change, but that was laborious, it required me to turn off the return pump from the sump (and powerheads near the top of the tank, too), and it required another trash bin to siphon stuff into, draining down the water to a certain level, then adding the new water, then pumping out the nasty water and cleaning the nastified trash bin--i.e. at least tripling (if not more) the time it took me to do a water change. Plus, coralline doesn't do as well outside the water as people are saying corals generally do, so there'd be a die-off at the top of the back wall. Result--I didn't like doing water changes. NEW METHOD: Now, I don't bother with the sand-vacuuming at all. I start pumping the new water into the sump and after the water level rises a bit, I have a 20' tubing that I string from the tank itself to the kitchen sink drain--I just suck on it to start the gravity siphon. The pump and gravity siphon don't go at the same speed, so I always make sure to pay attention to the water level in the sump, but it's not that big a deal. And that's it, no need to turn off anything, only takes 10-15 minutes, plus another 5-10 to get tubing out and put it all away. Now, I actually WANT to do water changes, and that's probably the most important part of it all. Some people have auto-water-change systems, which is awesome. I don't really have the space for such a set-up, but I'm happy now that I have this streamlined process.

Man, that's annoying! My closest places are probably a 20-minute drive, which wouldn't be so bad if I had other business to do in Lorton and/or Fairfax...

I'm replacing some 39" T5 bulbs. They're long and really skinny. How is it best to dispose of them?

Beautiful stand!! I have a 180 and wish I had a taller stand, not to mention such a pretty one. Looking forward to seeing your progress.

I tried that, but no luck. I think it's fried.

Thank you all for your comments; it's all very educational. What YBeNormal said --about stray voltage being caused by a defective pump-- makes me think it was probably the powerhead that I found wasn't working. I'll take all your guys' advice and try to make my set-up safer. One has a GFI. I actually hadn't heard/read about grounding one's tank. I'll definitely do that. Have a good link to read?

no hum, no anything

One of the outlets does, the other doesn't. I thought about installing one about 9 months ago, when I was first starting out, but ended up not doing it. Probably should do that, huh? Will suck, though, if it flips when I'm not home for a long stretch of time.

Thought I'd share this story, just to remind people to be careful. We have a lot of electricity going through devices submerged in saltwater.... I got an electrical shock today while sticking my hand in the back of the tank. I'm still not sure why it happened, but I was reaching over a corner of the light fixture (near where the cords attach, in fact) and into the tank to try to brush off some junk on a powerhead when I felt a zap in my arm. Scared the bejesus out of me, though all major bodily and brain functions appear to be in working order. I turned off the entire power strip that controls the lights and other things in that corner of the tank. I actually then got another much smaller shock not too long after that, while reaching for another powerhead, which I thought was weird, b/c the second shock also felt like it came right where my upper arm was touching the light fixture, but the light fixture was off. What might that have been? Does that maybe have anything to do with "stray voltage" that I've heard mentioned? It makes me realize that I'd probably been feeling very small shocks previously where my arm touched a corner of the light fixture; I'd feel a little p#*!k-like feeling, but then figured maybe an arm-hair got caught. But I doubt that's what was actually happening. Well, anyway, I've decided that anytime I do anything other than minor repositioning in the front of the tank, I'm going to turn most everything off. I don't know enough to know when I'm doing something remotely dangerous, so I'll just be overly careful.

When a powerhead stops working, is it too dangerous to try to fix it if that requires opening up the internals to see what's wrong? Don't want to electrocute myself in the future. (See my other post today...) I cleaned it out, so it's not stuck on something externally. As best I can tell, it's something internal or electrical, but I'm not expert. Any suggestions?

I'd join. BTW, I can't stop watching the intro video. Vince is hilarious!!

I ordered a light fixture from them a year ago, but nixed the transaction b/c the supplier was on back-order for a month and I found a barely used fixture on here. But the guy was apologetic and, as someone else has said, very professional and customer-oriented about it. At least at the time, the site seemed to focus on more high-end stuff, and had competitive prices, as far as I could tell. I'm checking out those LED lights; it's exciting to see prices coming down on those, albeit slowly. Can't wait until they're accessible to more of us...

Maybe change to new lights has something to do with it? I.e., change in the spectrum created opportunistic algae bloom? I've also been told to decrease light duration, at least for the brightest (all-bulbs-on) portion of my lighting regime, which lasted 8 hours; but if you'd done that for two years without problem, then that's not the main issue. You can't get at the detritus under the red algae when you're siphoning? Or are you saying that it's on/in the sand bed and you don't want to disturb the sandbed? I think limited siphoning of the sand is okay, as long as you don't stir up a lot of stuff into the water column. If you do small amounts of sand at a time, and siphon most of the stuff coming out of the sand, I'd think you'd be okay.

[Please, no need to re-hash the debate on whether Al Gore's hot-air bloviations are responsible for global warming....just posting this in case anyone is interested in attending. More generally, see here for more free museum stuff...] Panel Discussion - In Hot Water: What

Hey cool. Good luck with that. Let me know if you end up working there; I'll come in and say hello. I love just a ways down the road.

Also noticed some people are getting them on the saltwaterfish.com group buy that's going on right now. you could jump in on that, too. But with the free offers, why bother, I guess...