treesprite

Works great, thanks for the advice Tom!

Wish I could get a half price yellow zebramosa!

I got mine for free at the WAMAS sponsored MACNA. Had to carry it on the metro to get home, which was a huge PITA. Be aware that Liferock color will change to brown if you use certain methods to treat the rock. Things like vinegar and peroxide will take away the pretty artificially-applied color, though it will color up once it is in the tank for a while. It won't break as easily as liverock from the ocean. I've had some really nice but old pieces of liverock break a number of times, ruining their aesthetic usefulness. Liferock has never broken on me except from very aggressive purposeful chiselling of surface spots to get off some mushrooms.

I think some fish are like typhoid Mary. They carry the disease but do not themselves get sick, at least not unless stressed. It has been years since I saw ich in any tank of mine, but the last couple times I just maintained a good routine and the fish recovered on their own. I qt new fish, but stopped doing it with copper probably a decade ago due to the inherent problems with use of copper, especially for certain kinds of fish. I guess if a fish came in to me with ich, I would use a treatment, but seeing the fish doesn't have signs of disease is another reason to buy from a LFS when possible.

Nice. Also I like your log walls.

Great idea, I'll give it a try.

Whatever you do, make sure you don't let a pet pee in it (or the sump).

The hole is precisely at but above the waterline.

Btmdweller, thank you. I wish I could come out there, but it's too far for as busy as I am. Wildcrazyjoker81, thanks for the information! I'm actually not particularly fond of pinks and purples, I guess I just didn't realize what exactly I was ordering. Those bulbs probably were used less than the other. I have a decent led fixture I could use for a while, but would still have to supplement it with something because it isn't enough for this size of a tank (it was given to me with the 50 I was using, which is only a 30" tank). I actually had trouble adjusting it with the dials and burned corals, then I didn't trust it and stopped using it.

The siphon-break hole in my Sea Swirl output is too high, so a stream of water is kind of spurting out above the surface of the water, causing spray and bubbles, and making the only water noise I can hear (because of better overflow setup - I'm so happy!). It wasn't too high in use in the 50g, because that tank had the water level scarily close to the top of the rim. I didn't want the water that high in this tank for which I had the option of putting my overflow lower, so my water level is just above the bottom of the trim so I can't see it, but there is an inch of room so water isn't going to go on the floor if a snail sits over a single gap between 2 overflow teeth. So, what do I do about it? I have enough space in the sump to take up what looks like would be about 5g of back-siphon water should I decide to block that little hole. There isn't really anywhere else to drill a hole lower, since that would just be where the water comes out. I don't feel like putting a longer fitting on the SS just to be able to drill a little back siphon hole a quarter of an inch lower.

Main question is: is changing blues/purples/pinks after a given time as crucial as whites/daylights? It has been almost 3 years since I had a 48" tank running. I need to put bulbs in an 8 bulb fixture. Can't really afford new bulbs right now. I found 24 bulbs between 3 fixtures and a box of random bulbs in the junk room (all different brands), and tested them all. I don't know how long they were used, so I had to judge by the color when lit. I'm tossing at least 11 of them - 10 are yellow-looking daylights, and the 11th was crazily close to red when lit. That leaves me with 13 bulbs, only 2 of which are daylights. The rest are blues, purples, and one pink. There are 3 blues and one 10k in a fixture from which I can't remove the shield so the bulbs are staying there, but it's okay since I'm using that fixture until my Tek light is up (those bulbs are the only ones that I know for a certain were only used a few months). The bulbs I put in the Tek light are 4 blues, 2 purples, a pink, and one questionable 10k. There is a 3rd purple with no purpose. There are actually 2 more bulbs (making 26 bulbs not 24) which I found after I tested and sorted the others, but I'm not going to bother with them right now, I'm tired of playing with bulbs (one is in a single-bulb fixture in the junk room, the other was in a corner behind some other junk all by itself and I have no idea what it was doing there or for how long). I really can't be buying new bulbs right now. I've helped other people recently to the point of being temporarily broke myself, so there won't be any new bulbs until probably January. I did want to go heavy on actinics, but I think having only one day is kind of over-doing the idea. I am really hoping that the useful life of blues and purples can actually be longer than daylights - I'm just thinking, with as little as I know about light, that even if the spectrum is shifted, it might make the actinics less blue but at least won't make them yellow and red (I admit it, I am really ignorant about light stuff). Any thoughts on this would be appreciated! BTW, does anyone know if HD or MOMs take this type of bulb?

Yes, you can't mess with the WAF (wife acceptance factor).

Beautiful!

Good luck with the new pump. I hope that solves the problem.

When I took down my 50g a few days ago, I discovered unquestionable evidence that a cat was peeing in the sump (one of the 2 sumps was behind the tank, because the stand is too small inside for anything bigger than a 20). There will be two small sumps under the stand for the 75, closed in and not accessible to any cat, so hopefully the new tank will not get messed up like the old one.

Maybe you have a nerve problem, carpal tunnel or something that would cause a tingling feeling when hand/wrist is used in certain positions (another thing that happens to me).

Yeah, I can't see those pipes ever coming apart. I don't want a leak that I can't get completely sealed. Regarding pipes coming apart or joints leaking, is there less pressure in a horizontal run part of a return, or a vertical lift, or are they the same?

Oh, you have it split between two overflows. I almost forgot some tanks have those kinds of overflows.

Looks like you only have two drains, while a Bean Animal is 3 drains.

Here's an example of how things don't go right for me. I'm right now in the middle of painting the back of the tank, but I need to let the coat dry. Well, looking at the tank from the front, there is a big area and a few streaks that look faded out. I cleaned the glass before painting, but there must have been some kind of residue (I'm certain it isn't inside the tank). I can't take off the paint and start over, so the tank will always look that way. It will be harder to see once I put more rock in the tank, but I'll know it's like this (still gotta scrub most of my rock from the 50g, but I have other rock that was in another tank of just rocks, which was soaked in peroxide for a few months before I changed the water and put rock from my sump in it to seed it back into being liverock again several weeks ago). (Yes, it is crazy waiting until now to paint. I was going to just put some black backing on it because I have a whole roll of it, but I couldn't find it and the can of paint in the junk room was yelling "choose me, choose me"). Now double this. I went to do another coat and dropped the lid from the paint on the carpet (it hit a step stool, hence went that far). Thankfully it landed on the back and just a dot of paint got on a plastic container. On a better note, I actually think the faded area is decreasing as the paint dries.... time will tell.

BTW, when I tested with the pump which I just turned off a few minutes ago, there was no leaking from that joint, but there was a leak in a joint that I thought was well fitted and glued (I have an empty 10g on the floor behind the tank, so no water on the floor). I guess I will have to re-do that joint too.

It isn't a standard lease arrangement. I don't want to cause any worries for the owner, and I don't want to cause a disaster as I'm really afraid I would do. I need to construct something not ugly to keep the cat from going behind the tank, so maybe I can incorporate a light holder somehow. When I took down my 50, I found very obvious evidence that a cat was peeing in the sump, which explains most of what was going on with that tank. This 75 is about 18" from the wall.

It is a horizontal pipe on one side of a SCWD, on the SCWD end (the other side is a horizontal elbow). It isn't on my main pump, it's a mini CL with a non-drilled intake (a pipe with a couple hundred holes in it, painted black). I just have to stick a plug in the return to turn it off, then cut/splice the pipe, but have to go to the hardware store for the connector and the adapter that I ruined. I'm just too tired from spending the last 4 days just working on switching tanks (in my PJs the whole time, haven't gone out, got dehydrated and forgot to eat most of the time... you know how this hobby can be). I tested it out with the pump I need to sell. (FYI, I have my main return on a Sea Swirl, so I needed to use my return holes for something. It is actually a convenient situation, because I wanted flow down low in the tank and can't do that with an open loop return.)

I think the owner wouldn't really want me to try hanging from the ceiling, certain enough that I ended up not actually asking her. I also am afraid I'll drop the fixture on the tank, because that is how my luck is.

Looking for opinions about my conclusion. The PVC cement set the pipe and fittings together before I could push the pipe all the way into the fitting and twist it (it's 3/4" pipe). The pipe is in the fitting maybe a half inch. I imagine it is never going to separate, and I used enough cement that it was dripping off, but still I am worried about a leak because of the short connection without the twist. I put silicone around it, thinking any leak is going to be minor enough that the silicone will stop it. Do you think I'm underestimating Murphy, or that this will be okay? The pipe was already hard plumbed on the other end, so replacing the entire thing is impossible and cut-and-splice is a big pita in such a tight spot (location and plumbing-wise).