DaveS

I'm getting my breeding efforts back up and running. Before I resume raising Chromis, I thought I would give clowns a try. They are supposed to be easier and grow faster. My clown pair can't seem to get things going after many years so I thought I would see if anyone here has breeding clowns and I could get a clutch of eggs. I guess a requirement is that they are laying eggs on a tile, small rock or other substrate that you could remove from the tank. Let me know if you have any that you're willing to part with. I'd be glad to give back a couple of babies if successful. Thanks.

Hah ok I guess I was looking at the wrong line on my receipt. Must have been the 30 roll pack of toilet paper or something...

Economic comparison... Muratic acid- 1 gallon $7 at Lowes. 1 oz (1/128th of a gallon) makes 1 gallon of solution that is 20x stronger/faster than vinegar Heinz White Vinegar- 1 gallon $15-$20 at Costco Yes muratic acid is more dangerous and should be handled with care. I wear the same gloves and protective eyewear with the acid as when I'm handling zoa and palys.

I would do 100% vinegar. It will do a good job of cleaning the calcium off too. Or, you could do a 1oz shot of muratic acid per gallon of water. According to a prior thread here, that's about 20x more acidic than pure vinegar.

Very interesting videos! This has got to be learned behavior. Neither lionfish nor groupers would normally ascend 60+ feet off a reef into open water like that- especially into a group of divers. Obviously the lionfish did it to get the heck away from the grouper and the grouper did it for lunch. My guess is that the dynamic is probably the result of divers spearing lionfish and feeding them to the groupers afterwards. Eventually the groupers figured out they are food and learned to kill them themselves. The second video is especially funny because: 1) some reefer thought he had a free addition to his FOWLER... 2) everyone was so delighted to see the grouper eat the lionfish that they started petting it like a dog afterwards... "Good boy! That's a good grouper...."

You want surge protection to your Apex! A UPS will probably suffice but don't forget to get an Ethernet surge protector of you are plugged in there. I had protection from power but didn't think about Ethernet. Blew the MOSFETs in my apex unit twice in one year. Neptune fixed it first time for free and changed me $160 the 2nd time. Once I figured out what was happening and got a protector, I haven't had any problems for the last 3 years.

For flow curves, don't forget it's not just the head height but also friction loss and bends in the pipe. Your 11' vertical head may very well equate to a 20' head flow curve after factoring in the rest.

Maybe it's just me or the angle but the stand supports look strange. Is the tank weight being supported by the 2x6 secured with those lag bolts?

The ratio will depend on your ice cube tray! You said you feed 3ml of RG Complete. So measure out how big the cubes are and then adjust the ratio so each cube contains 3ml of RG complete. I measured out my cube size just by filing the tray up and then pouring it into measuring cup. Also, make sure the cubes are somewhat big (like 1/2 a golf ball). I thought I would be smart and use really small ice cubes with this: http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/1/1/221599-mini-cube-ice-cube-trays-set-of-2.html But between the syrup like RG Complete and the saltwater diluent, the cubes won't be as solid from a normal freezer as freshwater ice. The cubes broke up in to tiny shards when I tried to get them out of the tray. It's better to get a flexible tray so you can pull the cubes out. Kinda like this: http://www.bedbathandbeyond.com/1/1/279307-lekue-slim-star-ice-cube-tray-green.html . I found one at Safeway that was rigid mostly except for a section of silicone on the bottom. was perfect for my needs.

Glad to see the Rots and RG Complete are working out for you. Couple of tips: 1) to check density, instead of looking at bottom of bucket, just look to the side, near the bottom. The detritus won't accumulate that high and it's close enough for eyeballing tint. 2) I used to siphon the detritus off the bottom into a 1G bucket. I would then let it settle and dump most of the 1G back in, leaving only the bottom part. 3) Don't worry that much about the detritus. Many just leave it for a long time. It contains cysts that will repopulate your culture if it ever crashes. 4) You should worry about leaving that bottle of RG Complete out overnight. I did that with a $40 bottle. If you don't want to go the premeasured ice cube route I mentioned, just split your bottle of RG complete with another container that stays in the fridge. This way you can contain your losses if you do leave things out after feeding.

Yup, I have one I never used. I'll let you have it for the price I paid. No need to wait 2 months until Chad gets around to making more....

I user RG Complete: http://apbreed.com/product_rgcomplete.php $12-$35 a bottle depending on size. Lasts about 6+ months in the fridge.

I have photos here: http://wamas.org/forums/topic/64301-lemon-chromis-breeding-thread/ But I don't do they greenwater/phyto part any more. I just buy the live concentrate and feed that to the rots. Much easier! I need to order another bottle soon and S&H is really expensive so LMK if you want to do an order together. You can stop by and see the setup as part of that.

Congrats guys. If you don't want to raise them but can get them to lay on a tile I'd be interested in raising them.

Someone asked me about the various terms used for DI resin- cation, anion, mixed bed and separated. So I figured I would write up the description here to capture the information. Cation resin- a resin that absorbs positive ions Anion resin- a resin that absorbs negative ions Mixed-bed resin- a combination of cation and anion resin Separate- two distinct filters of DI resin where one filter has only cation resin and the other has only anion resin Mixed-bed resin is what most people get. If you look closely at your standard resin, you can notice two different colored beads. In general, the mixed bed is half of each type mixed together. Collectively the two resin types in the DI cartridge handle any impurities after your RO membrane to get zero TDS. However, some people have water that contains more impurities of one charge than another. When that is the case, you can have asymmetric resin exhaustion where one of the resin types gets exhausted up before another. This means when 1/2 of your mixed bed cartridge is spent (not top half vs. bottom half but cation vs. anion), some portion of the other half can be still good. Unfortunately, since the resin types are mixed together, you have to throw away the contents of the entire cartridge, losing some perfectly good resin. Spectrapure's SilicaBuster cartridge is one example of trying to address asymmetric resin exhaustion for people with high silca in their water. It basically has a 1/3-2/3 mixed bed composition where 2/3 of the resin is the type that absorbs silca. In my case described above, I probably go through anion resin 10x faster than cation (that's an estimate but not totally off). This means in a mixed bed setup, my anion would be exhausted while 90% of the cation is still good. Put another way, when the 50% of the cartridge that is anion was exhausted, only 5% of the cartridge that is cation was used up. I end up having to replace the entire cartridge with 45% of it was still good! Here's an indicator of my asymmetric resin exhaustion. My DI membrane puts out 2-3 TDS water that went into the mixed bed DI cartridge. When I had new mixed bed resin, the TDS would drop to zero (good!). But then after making a curiously small amount of 0 TDS water, TDS would start to creep up to 1 maybe 2 (but not the full amount that was coming out of the RO membrane). Basically everything would work as expected in the beginning. But after my anion would get exhausted, the TDS to go up since the negative ions were no longer getting absorbed. Since my cation was still good, it was still absorbing the positive ion which is why the TDS would not increase to the same as the RO output. Lastly we get to the separate bed resin. This is done by adding another stage to your RO/DI filter for a 2nd DI cartridge. With 2 DI stages, one cartridge contains only anion resin and the other cartridge contains only cation resin. When one type of resin is exhausted, you can simply replace only that type and keep running the other cartridge until it is actually exhausted. A separated bed simply minimizes waste by allowing for more precise control and replacement of ONLY exhausted resin. In my example, I will probably replace my anion resin 10x for everyone one time I replace my cation resin. That's a pretty big savings on cation resin! I guess some could also look at this as a way to generally change resin less frequently since you have 2x the amount of resin in your system. Since I've already written a book, I'll address Rob's question of why people are "obsessed" with 0 TDS water. I'm assuming the question is about 0 TDS vs. 1-2 TDS and not the general use of DI resin as a whole. Origami posted on this a while back but here's the quick version. Not all positive ions are the same and not all negative ions are the same. Some positive ions are MORE positive than others. So when the cation is fresh, it absorbs ALL positive ions. But once it gets exhausted, it does NOT stop absorbing positive ions. It actually continues to absorb the more positive ions and releases back the less positive ones it previously absorbed. That 1-2 TDS you see when the resin is exhausted are the weaker ions that were previously absorbed but now released back. The problem is, it's the weaker ions that are more problematic for our tank inhabitants. The same goes for the negative ions. So when your TDS is not 0, you are filtering out the moderately undesirable stuff but getting the worst stuff put back in your filtered water.

Yup, I did a test batch and the recharged resin works just fine. Some nasty chemicals involved but can be effective if done in large batches. I have some ideas on modifications to the process (and equipment) which will hopefully make things go easier. Stay tuned!

My how they have grown!

Thanks, glad you enjoyed it.

If you use DI resin to make 0 TDS water, you may have read about various things that impact resin longevity. One of the things people mention is CO2. While you might find high CO2 water anywhere, it tends to be especially prevalent for those who use well water around here. This CO2 effect can generally be detected in the form of acidic water which goes back towards neutral after it has been left to sit out for a while in a well ventilated area. The problem is, most people are unlikely to aerate their water before pushing it through an RO/DI system. As such, many people end up going through DI resin faster than necessary. For those on well water, you can add a whole house neutralizer system inline with the whole house water softener. I mention more about in this thread but basically neutralizes the CO2 with calcite (think kinda like a CA reactor). I am on a well and have been spending some time doing research on this issue (along with other RODI related topics) as my DI resin never seems to last very long. Life is busy and I have a hard keeping my neutralizer filled so there are times when I push CO2 acidic water through my RODI and wanted to get a sense for how big an issue this really is. So I ran a little test recently. 1) I put in a split bed DI system where I have the cation separated from the anion. The mixed bed DI resin that most people use is generally a 50/50 of cation/anion. The anion is what gets expended by the CO2 and if you go through anion faster, you end up throwing away perfectly good cation resin when your TDS starts to creep up and you have to replace the resin. 2) with my whole house neutralizer empty (for a long time!), I made 30 gallons of 0 TDS water 3) I refilled the whole house neutralizer and waited a few days for all the previously stored water to be used up. I could tell when I was on "neutralized water" as the water softener really kicks in. 4) I then made another 30 gallons of 0 TDS water. I used the exact same container so the amount of water made was consistent between the 2 batches. Here is a picture of anion consumption between the 2 batches based on color changing resin. I added the red/black marks based on my eyeballing of the color delineation point to help highlight the difference. As you can see, the same amount of filtered water would consume about twice the amount resin if it wasn't neutralized. Granted, this isn't the most scientifically rigorous experiment but I think it does paint a pretty compelling argument that pH neutralized (CO2 removed) water can make a big difference in resin longevity. If you consider the fact that a typical mixed bed resin consists of only 50% anion, in a similar 10" cartridge as the one shown, I estimate that all the anion for a typical mixed bed setup would be consumed after ~150 gallons of filtered water. Replacing resin that frequently gets expensive! I should note that while I got color changing resin in this instance, I generally don't like spending extra money for it as the color change isn't reliable. Like my toothbrush, DI resin still has some decent life in it after the color change. I normally use a TDS meter to tell me when the resin is really expended. Hopefully some people will find this post useful as they try to optimize their RO/DI system.

Found this old photo of my DIY trap.

Is porosity a major issue? I would think you would have some "regular" rocks to handle the biological needs. The cerameco stuff we did a GB buy on a while back looked a lot like the stuff my 10 year old daughter comes home with from birthday parties at Color Me Mine...

For one of the best build threads ever: http://wamas.org/forums/topic/18747-dandy7200s-400g-sps-tank/page-2?do=findComment&comment=164509

3 boxes IO in Tyson's please.

Don't worry, the first time for mom, dad and you will be full of learning mistakes. It was good that you went throught the motions so you know more now. 2 suggestions 1) there's a guy that makes larval traps that you stick on the tank glass and has a little light and very light suction to collect the larvae. I bought one before I was able to get mine to lay on a tile. But I never used it so if you want it before my guys figured out the tile. I'd be happy to part with it. Much better than the midnight flashlight process. Just wake up next day and work is done. 2) skip the green water and get some concentrate. http://apbreed.com/products.php Makes doing rots much easier as they don't pollute as much and are one less thing in the food chain to crash. Shipping is kinda expensive since its fedex from CA. I need another bottle soon so if you want, we could do an order together and save on shipping.

Couldn't hurt. Just keep an eye on the ammonia level.