Big Country

Anybody use the Nitrile gloves from Harbor Freight? I was working with rock and corals a couple days ago and now have what looks like a blister on one of my fingers, nothing in it, just swelled up locally it seems. I expect that I had a small cut and a frogspawn stung me when I was moving it.

Yeah, I always wonder if I'm forgetting something. My wife has just recently become interested in helping me maintain the tank so she's coming to her first meeting today also.

Haven't had time to try yet, just need to figure out which cord going into the ballast controls this fixture so I don't fry myself...lol. Sounds like it may work, the XM's have a longer nipple on the bottom so it very well could have pushed the center piece in on that on if I screwed the light in a little much

Yes, Tony is from CMAS. His screename on CMAS is Tony, he lives on the lower side of Baltimore in Halethorpe, MD

I run the Sunlight Supply 250w Bluewave M80 HQI ballasts for my MH's. Just replaced the bulbs and one of my fixtures will not fire a brand new Radium 20K, they are working fine in all the other identical fixtures. It's not the bulb, I installed it in another reflector and it fired right up. I put a old XM 10K bulb into the fixture and it fires right up. Every time I put a new or used Radium in the one fixture it won't fire, always worked before. Why would it fire a XM 10K but not a Radium 20K?

Sweet stuff there Johnny.

Guess I need to ask the bar if they have Wi-Fi so I can get some stuff

Lowes has a much larger selection of plumbing parts in your area than the HD's do although you with the diameter you are looking for HD might work also. With the smaller 1/2" and 3/4" stuff Lowes is definately better. You might try the fish store, think it is called Aquatic Obsession or something like that, it's on 355 up in Urbana, MD they have a back room full of plumbing parts. If you want to go visit a great shop that has plenty of plumbing parts go to BRK.

I've fed mine jans food, cyclopeeze and prime reef flakes. Mine won't touch pellet food even the small sara ones

That would be tough to get it from Tony since he doesn't use the RS Coral PRO unless he's changed salts with the new 300DD. He's the one that put me onto the Red Sea Salt.

Red Sea Salt and Red Sea Coral Pro are not the same salt, Coral Pro has much higher levels for Ca, Mg and Alk than the Red Sea Salt. I use the regular Red Sea Salt, it mixes up fairly quickly and has levels of Alk, Calc and Mg that work for me. My corals are looking better than they ever did with IO so I can't argue. There is something to be said for putting a 1/2 cup per gallon of salt into the water and having it test at 1.025-1.026 every time instead of the 1.021 that IO gave me . There are LFS that carry the Coral Pro but none in the area, that I know of, that carry the regular Red Sea Salt so to get it you have to order it from a LFS, order it online or go to That Fish Place.

Incredible corals had some different ones the other day, I got a nice group of red with white stripes

Since your tank is already used to the Red Sea Salts why not use the regular formulation instead of the Coral Pro? It mixes up to a Alk of 7.7dkh

I got stung years ago by a hammer coral on a cut on my hand, very swollen and sore for a few days but I got over it.

I'm not holding my breath, figure I've already got alot out of them with free shipping on 2 buckets of salt. Lady FedEx driver said she's used to delivering buckets and boxes of salt since she has 3 reefers on her route...lol.

I emailed them and sent a picture, I didn't lose much salt so I wasn't worried about it but wanted to show them what FedEx did. I also told them that the buckets are thinner walled than the IO buckets and the BRS shipped the Red Sea buckets packaged in a tight fitting box to protect them. They said they would forward my email to their shipping department.

Will check on the vertex pellets, I'm pretty much running the recommended dosage of one cup per 50 gallons for the pellets so I have somewhere around 5 cups in there although it is a little low right now. I dose 2 capfuls of MB7 into the sump twice a week.

They repackaged it in a large box. Somehow the bag held with a big point of the broken bucket poking a hole in it.

Got a bucket of salt delivered from FedEx today, the bucket was totally destroyed. Luckily it's Red Sea Salt and there is a inner bag to hold the salt so I didn't lose much, would have been a real mess with IO or RC

Which biopellets do you use? Do you just add pellets to the reactor as they melt away or are you supposed to replace them all every so often? I have mostly BRS biopellets in my reactor and still have a bryopsis issue, also have some warner ecobak pellets in there also. If there is a different brand that works better I'd sure like to know because I haven't seen much difference in my tank since starting biopellets unless I just don't know what to look for or what to expect, maybe I expected too much. I still have to regularly clean my glass on an almost daily basis.

Shimp don't do so well in my tank with my Wrasse population although I have seen one peppermint in there lately. I've been catching any hermits I've seen in the display and putting them in the frag tank or into the sump. I think my wrasse's have pretty much killed the nassarius and cerith snails

The last couple of times that I've put Nassarius in my tank I don't see very many left, not alot of cerith's either, I just don't think they do well for the most part. Maybe the tonga nassarius which are larger and more expensive do better I don't know. I have good luck with Astrae and Nerite.

Yes, just put the pump in the bottom of the sump, just make sure you put it in a place where it won't be in alot of bubbles. It may move a little bit with the flow going thru the sump but will be fine. I would put the MJ1200 alongside the return pump and put the return from the reactor into the first chamber where water comes down from the tank. One thing I did with my MR5 was on the output which is straight up on mine, it was creating a kink in the tubing so I put a 45dg SCH40 fitting over the tubing to help keep it from kinking.

Water input goes into the center hole of the reactor so it goes to the bottom and flows up in the reactor. For carbon put the media plate on the bottom, sponge, carbon, sponge, media plate. Put the lower media plate above the output holes in the bottom of the center tube.

I ran two 20A circuits for my tank. Put 6 plug in's attached to each circuit, wired the first pair of plugs direct to the circuit, put the GFCI on the center outlets and then another set after. I keep my return pump, ground wire and a power head on the unprotected circuits just so I have flow if the GFCI trips which it has a couple of times