DaveS

The Container Store will be your friend! It might be hot pink or something but they will likely have a container that fits your size restrictions. It won't be a cheap as what you get at HD but if it's the only option, it's better than nothing.

Hmm, I might disagree with Fab. It's been a few years since my thermodynamics class but while he is right about sucking causing laminar flow I don't think in general this is what you want (if I read the question correctly). GENERALLY if you are looking to reduce heat in a tank by using a fan to increase evaporation, I'd think you would want turbulent flow. Laminar flow, while providing faster movement of a layer of air, would have a smaller amount of "useful" air being exposed to the surface of the tank and therefore provide less evaporation/cooling. In other words, imagine you had a 1 inch thick layer of air flowing over the tank. In laminar flow, the entire inch would travel faster across the top but only the 10th of the inch closest to the water would interact and absorb/evaporate any water. The rest would just fly over. (Please keep in mind I'm just making up numbers to explain the point). If the flow was turbulent, the entire inch of air would be "swirling about" so to speak, and therefore all the molecules would be available to evaporate water- and therefore cool the tank. Now given the fact that it's a mostly enclosed hood, that could very well be different. It's just that Fab's last sentence really struck me by surprise given that he's talking about general circumstances. This isn't meant to be a flame or anything, just wanted to post my take on things and see if I'm totally off.

Now that I clearly have the "buying frags" thing down, I'm going to try for the "selling frags" part. I have a couple of things available. Let me know if you are interested. Below are pictures from the mother colonies. I'll frag them for those who want. I expect each frag to have ~10 polyps. I'd be willing to trade for something interesting too! Sorry I don't know the actual names of them. But they are pretty and grow well! Green Zoos Orange Zoos

Hi guys, Any thoughts on the gravity/drip dosers like this: http://www.marinedepot.com/md_viewItem.asp?idproduct=KM2513 I'm looking for an alternative to the 2 part stuff to keep my Calcium and Alk up and this seems to be a small step up from going in every day and adding stuff manually. What are everyone's thoughts on this? If you like it, what do you use in the mix? The Kent brand stuff? Yes I know it's not as good as a reactor/stirrer but I'm not sure I'm ready to go that route yet. They seem alot more complicated, expensive and gear intensive. I'm not sure my sump area is big enough for the extra equipment. I'm also thinking that instead of just dripping, I could Tee the output of this in with my auto-top off so that it gets dosed during top off but even if the container runs dry, there will still be fresh water going in and I don't have to worry about my water level going too low if I forget. Thoughts?

Bump... What no love?

I know this stuff gets debated all the time- if there's a good thread to read than please let me know. My tank is a 250G that is about 30" tall. I have a Aqua-medic Ocean Light 250W T5 Combo unit. It has 3 250W MH double ended lights and 4 39W T5s. Man does it put out a lot of heat! According to the manufacturer, the stock bulbs are: T5: 39W ocean blue- aquamedic p/n 77517 MH: 250W Aqualine Bushke 10,000 p/n 76250 I'm looking to replace the bulbs and wanted suggestions. I know there's a lot of personal preference to this and my current tastes seem to favor the Hamilton 14000K color. The current color I get with these 1 year old bulbs isn't bad but it's a little more white (though thankfully not yellow) than I'd like. I guess one question is that since I have the T5 Actinic fixtures already, should I got with something less blue in the MH and allow the T5s to provide that blue spectrum? Or should I get the Hamiltons and just leave the T5s off? Or...? I was reading a thread on RC about the Reef Optic bulbs. They sounded interesting but don't come as DE bulbs yet- anyone got more recent news on that? Oh yea I guess I should mention that growing pretty corals fast and saving a few bucks would be nice... Thanks for you help guys.

Wow, that's really cool. Not only does it solves the permanent gluing vs. sitting on sand bed issue but it allows for more dense coverage on the rocks and nice hanging type placements. Trying to figure out how to put the frags on the rocks so they stay balanced was what lead me to think about permanently mounting the corals in the first place. Now I just gotta look into when I'm going to re-aquascape. Anyone want to come help and give advice?

Here's a pretty silly question but everyone here is nice so.... What do you guys ultimately do with your frags? I got a 250 gal tank with fish and lots of rock. It's my one and only tank. Over the last few months, with the help of lots of WAMAS members, I've collected a bunch of really nice frags. I even learned to glue them onto plugs and discs and they seem to be taking hold nicely growing on the sand floor of my tank where I put them. So the silly questions is- what next? I can see where some people might just let them keep growing them in the sand and others have those cool egg crate racks mounted on the back wall (anyone have an extra to sell or help me make one?) but as nice as they are, both of these seem to be temporary measures to me. Even a frag tank (wish I had the space for one) is a really neat thing but still seems like an interim location (maybe I'm wrong). I sure some people collect/raise a large variety of corals purely to grow and frag them but is that a large percentage of the people out there? My guess is those are the people with frag tanks but how many have JUST a frag tank. I guess I'm asking the obvious in that sooner or later do people permanently mount/glue the frag to a rock? If so, how is that done, break the coral off the plug/disc? Try to hide the plug/disc? What kind of considerations do people have as far as where to permanently affix the coral? Seems like one drawback to this is that if you and to re-aquascape your tank, your options become limited. Am I wrong? Can some of you experienced members out there provide some guidance? As you can tell, I'm kinda at a loss for what to do next. I got lots of neat stuff and now the next meeting is coming in only 2 weeks. There's so many cool frags available and I only have so much sand space left! What should I do?! Thanks.

Hi there, Anyone have suggestions and advice on removing scratches from an acrylic tank? If there's a way to remove them without having to tear down the tank that would be great! Thanks all.

Yea kinda but not exactly. The first 2 came with the system. I bought 2 and then a few others came via the RMA process. But yes, I'm getting close to tossing these guys. I like the "idea" of the SCWD since it's self powered and fairly cheap. I'd prefer something that does not require yet another pump or power head. Anyone got a thread that gets into the the details of the Ocean Motions and Wavyseas products and how they work? thanks everyone for the help!

Yea I saw that my pump is probably pushing more than the rated GPH of the device. But I also figured that since the output was getting T-ed immediately that each unit was seeing more like 750 GPH (not to mention the 5'-6' head on the pump. I do have ball valves after the T for each output (going to the SCWD) so I could turn down the flow on one side. That would just in theory increase the flow to the other side though and/or generally decrease the flow in the tank which I'd prefer not to do. So is my assumption wrong that by having the T, the GPH to each SCWD brings it to within it's operating range?

Just wondering if anyone out there uses SCWDs and gets the chattering they produce. I'm not sure if there is something wrong with my setup or if it's some design limitation of the SCWDs. I get this with multiple units and they chatter consistently at the same point in their rotation. Well each unit does it at a different spot but it's the same spot for that unit. Background: I got a Blue-line Model 70 pump (I think these are the ones that changed their name to Pan World). I think it pushes about 1500 GPH. The output is T-ed to 2 SCWDs and there's probably a 5 foot head on the output before it get to the top of my tank. When I got the tank, the SCWDs were quiet. One of them stopped switching (little spiral thingy broke off) so I bought 2 more (a replacement and a spare). I put the new one in and it chattered. I swapped it out with the spare and it also chattered. After going through a couple more I finally found 1 that didn't chatter (actually it did but eventually stopped). Well the little spiral thingy in that one broke off too so now I'm trying to put in another and they all make that annoying noise. Any ideas? What are some other good options to generate flow variation? I'm not crazy about power heads so one of those power strips with automated on/off isn't my first preference. Thanks everyone!

Hey guys, Any idea what this is? It's pink and changes from about 0.5"-2" in length. Some kind of worm? It's not all that fast/active. It's still in about the same spot as when I first uncovered it last night.

Ok so I was looking around at some of the cleaning crews offered online. Petsolutions has a sand sifting crew for 180G where they include 36 Trochus Snails and 84 Cerith Snails in the crew. For the algae cleaning pack they recommend 90 Margarita snails in addition to 90 Zebra and 45 Scarlet hermits. No I'm guessing you wouldn't get need as many of each species if you got both cleaning packs but nonetheless, man that seems like alot of snails and hermits!! I don't have nearly that many for my 250 and it already seems like the tank is mostly a snail/hermit habitat. Is this more about them trying to sell stuff or are these numbers reasonable estimates?

This is all great info. Here's what I'm going to do and some follow up questions: 1) I'll reduce my lighting period. On thought tho, doesn't every place on the planet get an average of 12 hour so sunlight a day? Why would it be "better" to have a shorter period? I guess there's the dusk/dawn time but still, I would think something close to 12 would be appropriate. 2) I'll clean the sand some during the next water change. That hasn't been done since I owned it and probably wasn't done before then either. 3) Cleaning crew- yes I haven't replaced any of the losses there. I estimate that I have about 15 snails of various varieties and about 20 hermits. I also have a sand sifting star, 3 emerald crabs, a fire shrimp and maybe a pistol shrimp. Do you guys think I need more? 4) Water flow- The PVC outputs are hooked up to two SCWDs (1 for each pair of outputs on a side) and I agree that most of the flow is going across the top and then down the front or side panes. I could look into redirecting the output downward more or move the power heads down as suggested. Some questions that comes to mind are: a) aside from the bottom rear of the tank, I would think that the current flow direction provides a good amount of churn. Again, it's mostly directed from top back to the top front pane and down to the bottom from there. I see a decent amount of movement whenver I place soft corals on the sand bed in the front. From there I can't tell exactly where the water flows but it would appear to be on to the rocks that are a little further back. Yes this does cause debris to settle at the bottom rear of the tank (a place I can get to for cleanup). I guess what I'm asking is what the desired flow like? Just current everywhere- like a big blender keeping all the particles in suspension? b) the current flow patter seems to allow me to have places of higher to lower flow. This allows my zoos and other corals to have slower movement which seems to make them happier. Again, I'm just wondering what the desired arrangement should be to allow different types of coral to grow and still get the detritus out.

Ok, let me try to get all this info: Calcium- about 320 but raised these last few days to 400 KH- 8dKh Nitrate- 0 Phosphate- 0 Test kit is Aquarium Pharmaceuticals PH- 8.0 using an older SeaChem dry reagent kit Additives- Purple Up, Combi-San and Tropic Marin Bio calcium. I try to do it weekly but in reality is slightly less often than that. Filtration- got a skimmer in the sump and a UV light. The brands are unknown. Nothing else is in the sump except a foam block to help reduce noise. Water changes are once a month, about 30-35 gallons with Tropic Marin salt. I don't know anything about the temp of the bulbs but my guess is that they are the stock bulbs that came with the Aqua Medic fixture. I don't see any kind of UV filters over the lights. There are glass panes over the MH bulbs and some plastic "strips" over the T5's. I know that the calcium is low and that doesn't help. However that doesn't quite explain that coraline does grow, just on the under side of rocks. In addition, corals below the tope 1/3 of the tank seem to do ok. They don't grow fast but they don't die either. Hope this additional info helps. Thanks again!

Ok guys, here's my whole story. I bought a house and moved into it last August. It had a beautiful 250G reef that was built into the wall above the bar. I used to be REALLY big into aquariums back in the early 80s, kept salt systems back in the dark ages and always wanted to get into reef systems. Naturally the house was a perfect fit for me and I was looking forward to taking over the tank. Literally 3 days after our move, the tank crashed. The chiller fan seized up and basically heated the tank to 90 deg F. Most of the fish and corals died but a few survived. Shortly after the tank crashed and a few big water changes, things sorta stabilized. The hair algae went crazy for a couple of months but that is now under control. The zoos survived and also grew really well during that time. The coraline algae was also good. I just kept the lights on about 6-8 hours a day, feeding lightly waiting a bit for things to stabilize. After a couple of months, things seemed stable. But just before I was about to add stock, seemingly overnight (ok, it was a few days but short nonetheless) the hair algae disappeared to be replaced by a slightly hairy brown algae that tends to coats the walls (not corals like the hair algae) as well as the appearance of some diatom spots. I replaced the DI cartridge, added an inline TDS meter and my makeup water is showing 1-2 but the brown algae is still there. What I'm also noticing these days is that the coraline algae is not growing much (see qualifier below), the zoos are not growing much and most of the corals I add in the upper 1/3 of the tank don't do very well. I had a nice pink monti cap frag that basically bleached out after a couple of days as well as a pulsing xenia frag that melted. As far as coraline algae, it does grow but mostly on the underside of the rocks. Most of the corals and rubble are white on the top side. If I turn one over, I see nice purple algae there. I add Purple Up as well as calcium. It used to grow alot on the walls. There is one section of growth on the middle right side but that is left over from a really thick section. I don't really see any new coraline growth. I just did some tests and the CA was a little low but ok, Nitrates, Phosphate and Alkalinity were all within normal ranges. The last few weeks I have also noticed that red slime algae is starting to grow and get worse. So my specific questions (other than why can't my tank look as nice as everyone else's here) are: 1) Is there something wrong with my lighting? Too bright, too long, too old bulbs? I have an Aqua Medic T5/MH combo that has 3 x 250W MH and 4 x39W T5 bulbs. I keep the MHs on for about 12 hours a day and the T5s on for about an hour before the MH till an hour after. I wonder if it's too intense given that corals that don't like being in the top 1/3 of the tank as well as the coraline that doesn't grow on the top surfaces like it used to but does on the underside. If not too bright, maybe the spectrum is off? Between the brown algae and red slime as well as low Nitrate level, I'm wondering if the bulbs need changing. My guess is that the lights are over a year old by now. Also, if it helps, the brown algae tends to grow more on the wall section where my output flow is pointing to. 2) If it's a light spectrum thing, is there a way to diagnose this besides changing the bulbs? What's this PAR meter I hear about and can it help? 3) Aside from lighting, I got a ton of what I think are tube worms on the rocks. See picture for clarification. Some rocks are pretty out of control being just gigantic spike balls preventing other corals from growing on them. Any way to get rid of them? For reference, I've uploaded a photo of my tank. Please keep in mind that I have been taking the long road nursing the tank back from it's crash and I know it's got a long way to go still so go easy on me. The previous owner had a lot of money but no time and the reef was just eye candy that they had serviced weekly. Naturally they have no useful information about the tank other than "make sure you feed the fish once a day." The servicing group more or less said "yea it's all good to go, you just need to drop in $2k worth of coral and you'll be fine." Needless to say, I'm taking a slightly different route. Let me know if the image is too small and I can try to figure out how to get the 2MB one loaded.

Anyone have a good place to get replacement bulbs? How about a group buy??

Now that's a great idea. Who's interested?

This sounds like it's along the lines of what I'm looking for. Something simple/cheap. I just want something to assist with being able to view things from above the tank when cleaning it and take a few simple pics for documenting growth. If I want true gallery quality photos, I'd go with an underwater setup or something fancy. My tank is in the wall and only accessible from behind. Since the back is black acrylic, my options for seeing what I'm cleaning are limited... A pic of how your or any similar gadget is set up would be great!

Ok, this is the beginning of several noob questions so please forgive me... What do you guys use to view and take pics of your tank from the top down? At the LFS I've seen a acrylic trough like thingy floating in the tank. Is that something you can buy or have to make? Know anyone selling or making them? Once I get this answered, I can figure out a decent way to take pics to ask my other noob questions..

Well I should mention it's a double pack for that price but yes, it's still pretty expensive. I'll refrain from naming names.... Is there any interest in a group order now? I'm willing to help make it happen!

I'm new so please forgive me if this topic has been discussed before. I don't know what everyone else feeds but I tend to go with the frozen stuff (SF Saltwater Multipack to be specific) and the DT Phytoplankton. As you guys probably know, the LFS are pretty expensive but the flat rate shipping costs in going with the online guys takes away any savings when buying individually. So I was wondering if what everyone else does. I'm seeing the frozen stuff I use go for $6/pack (vs. $17 at the LFS) and I'm seeing the DT's go for $35/30oz (vs. $50). Another problem is that I don't see anyone carry both product lines for around that price. Anyways, if anyone has suggestions for a good play to buy or is interested in putting in a group order together for any of this, just let me know. Thanks!

I'm really new here and like all the frag trading that seems to go on. I've already contacted a few people about getting some stuff at Sunday's meeting and I'm psyched about making additions to my pretty bare tank. It's a big tank so if anyone has extra frags they are willing to donate to a new guy with a limited budget, they would be greatly appreciated. Just look for the guy who seems overwhelmed by his first meeting. Really excited about meeting everyone Sunday!