treesprite

Great looking tank! Did you get it some expensive chocolates and roses?

LOL. I wish he had invited me! I wish I had taken a picture while he was still laying on the rock, but the situation was too urgent for me to think about posting pictures on the internet. Next time I catch him that way, I will take pictures.

Is that like having a tank that is basically all mushrooms because the keeper got frustrated and gave up on trying to grow pretty colored sps corals? Or perhaps is too lazy to do water changes so decided to just grow mushrooms, xenia, and gsp, and just got a tang to keep the hair algae out of sight?

I turned the light on to look in my tank, and saw my striped blenny laying on his side on a little ledge on the liverock, all pale and limp. I used a grabber thing to lightly touch him thinking he might be dead, thinking I would have to grab the corpse out of the tank. For a fraction of a second he didn't move, so I really thought he was dead and all kinds of reef problem stuff starting rushing through my head. Then he moved real slow, and I thought although he is alive, he looks really sick. I went and got some frozen food to see what would happen. The little bugger perked up immediately and his color all came back. I didn't know that blennies sleep like that, and are slow to waking up, and that their colors fade (he is partly yellow, but had no yellow at all when I found him). Something I don't think to research when I get a new fish is the sleeping behavior, which isn't the most important thing, but it will keep me from freaking out if I know ahead of time that a fish sleeps as if it is dead (this fish is not new).

Lol. Thanks, Tom. My water seemed to look clearer within just a few of days of running the sterilizer. I have been feeling a lot lately like finally putting up the 120, but if I do, this sterilizer will be too small for it. I wonder if using this one and the 9 watt one together would work if I ever set up that big tank.

OMG I had no idea! I guess this is it!

That's what I was wondering. It seems to me that the only time a macro refugium ever made a real impact on my water quality, was when I had a 16g DIY AIO nano with 1/3rd of the tank sectioned off and completely packed with caulerpa. My conclusion is that if your macro area isn't at least 1/3 tank volume and isn't fully packed (if only 1/3), then having a macro-specific refugium is useless (of course refugiums can be useful for more than just growing macros).

I put it in the #1 sump with its own pump (tank tends to run cool, and I don't have electric bills to pay). The only place I could put it is on the end where the main return pump is, because the sump tank is wedged tight between the wall and the back of the tank stand and the other end of it is the end where the drain pipes and the overflow to #2 sump are. I had to wait for delivery of a flow meter to put on it, so I didn't have it set up and running until about 10 minutes ago. The smallest pump I had right on hand was a maxijet 1200, so I have a valve on the output and the flow meter is after the valve. I put an Eheim pre-filter on the intake so a bunch of gunk won't get in the sterilizer and meter. I figured I would be a little more serious with this sterilizer, so maybe it will actually do some good. I've got the flow rate at only 75, still need to do some more figuring for it. Now that I have used a flow meter for the first time having never seen one in operation, I think it's a really helpful and cool device, so I might make myself believe I need one for my main plumbing. The idea has kind of made the subject of plumbing more exciting.

Sorry, I have a feeling they came from me because I gave away a ton of them a while back. I think I did inform some people about their growth pattern. I don't have any of them now.

So now I have found my pump box and it says it is rated 1022, and there is a chart for head loss, so it looks like I'm probably only getting 700gph from it. It is a Quiet One pump. I am wondering if the 950gph Aqua Mag pump I bought but didn't use, would perform better even though it has a lower gph rating. Of course I just now this very second remembered that I have a bigger Quiet One pump from my old tank just sitting in with tank junk.... wondering if I should switch to that one since I've apparently got so much lost flow.

Well, I just now got home and the package was delivered at the door. They sent me an 18w sterilizer. I was certain I ordered the 36w, but according to the eBay thing, I paid for the 18w. Maybe I clicked the thing on the drop down option list. Is 18w going to work well for 75g of water? I could always replace the bulb in the old 9w one and use them both (I wonder if I could just connect them together if I use both).

Thanks, Tom. The 1200 is not including head pressure. It's straight up about 2 feet then into a Sea Swirl. The Sea Swirl probably takes a lot away because of the bend and the pipe size changes. The tank only has one hole in it, and when I got it, I wasn't up to drilling it, so I'm really limited.

It has been many years since I used a uv sterilizer, and I was only using it on QT tanks (it was only 9w). I want to see if using UV on this current system will have any benefit, so I bought an inexpensive one that is 36 watts. The total system volume is about 75 gallons. Along with needing to know the best flow rate, I need to figure out which sump to put it in since those have different flow rates (I didn't have enough space for a bigger sump, so I have an arrangement of two smaller ones). Sump #1 is a 15gH raised a little off the ground behind the tank. It is a full tank of water. It has the main return pump in it which I think is rated 1200gph which feeds the DT with a Sea Swirl return. It overflows to Sump #2. Sump #2 is inside of the stand. It is a half-filled 20gH which maintains a level of about 10g of water, contains the protein skimmer and ATO sensor. The #2 return pump goes back to Sump#1, and I think the pump is rated 500gph. I probably should use a smaller return pump but wasn't too concerned about it since the returning to the other sump (instead of display) makes me think it has a bit or a recirculating effect (maybe I have no clue what I'm talking about, so feel free to correct me if you think it will help me). Advice/suggestions are greatly appreciated.

Thanks for the replies. I really wish I had the means to do reef tank chemistry experiments. Maybe one day when I hit the lottery I can buy all the super high tech stuff and answer my own questions with detailed scientific data. After all, having a reef tank (drilling glass, building stands, plumbing, etc) is not nearly nerdy enough. Ever since I got into reef tanking, I have really regretted having changed my college major from biochem to social work just because I didn't like taking higher math and non-organic chemistry.

I have assumed that since some corals consume actual pieces of food and also expel things, as well as any slime coming off on any kind of coral, would contain nutrients.

I am wondering if having an excess of LPS in such a small space would contribute more to water quality issues than a couple of small fish. I went through a second round of giving away a bunch of it, and was thinking maybe after getting rid of this bunch it will be easier to control water parameters. I came home after the meeting up, and it is clear that I still have too much for this 50g tank. I had wanted to make an ascending spiral of the pg hammer in the 120g which is why I was sort of hording it for such a long time, and haven't gotten my brain to put itself in the 50g tank mode knowing the 120 is going to stay empty (the colony kept breaking because it was too big). The candy cane broke a bunch of times, and it just grows fast even when it doesn't look happy. The sandbed was perforated by the stems of LPS corals, and because I had nowhere else to put them (not to mention being covered by pieces of pavona because that stuff is so delicate it breaks at a glance). I only have 2 little fish in the tank, a striped blenny and an orchid dottyback. They both eat pods, so I am feeding less than I would other types of fish, so I couldn't figure out why I was having nutrient type issues. I have wanted to get more fish (ones that will eat pods if I don't add food every day), but was afraid of making water quality more difficult to control. Now I am thinking all those large-polyp LPS probably were excreting more waste into the water than the fish. So, I am going to wait a while, probably get rid of a few more pieces of it, then re-evaluate the ability to maintain parameters with more fish added to the tank. I really don't want to give up any more of these corals, but I know I'm not setting up the bigger tank any time soon, so I need to stop hoarding. I have no space for SPS corals because of these LPS colonies taking up all the space. Any comments and information will be appreciated.

I don't see a link to switch between full page view and mobile view. I have a phablet for a phone, so I often use full mode, but the site looks like it is only letting me use an automatic mobile version.

I put a bag of Kent phosphate sponge (which is a ceramic media) in my sump yesterday, and I guess I didn't rinse it well enough, because today there are a lot of little dust sort of particles in the water. (I took the bag out, since it isn't supposed to be in more than a day or two at a time; there were little particles on my hands from it, which helped confirm identification of what is in the water). I am wondering if it will just settle on its own and would be safe enough for me to let that happen, or if for some reason I need to get it out of there faster than it can get itself out. I have my drain pipe going into a filter sock.

It says "except fish". Maybe they got a bigger tank or the fish died after the pictures were taken.

I was the lucky on to have the winning ticket for the IO. I had been thinking all week that I should go buy some, but your generosity and some good luck, have save me the trouble.

I enjoyed the meeting today. Thank you to our officers, sponsors, speaker Bob Fenner, and everyone who attended. I had not been planning on getting an anemone any time in probably forever, because the last ones ended up big messes in power heads (it was several years ago). However, after hearing the lecture from Bob, I feel kind of like I might change my mind, and maybe get one in a few months or sometime in the next year. I especially was interested in the subject of the acclimation to tanks that have other livestock which release chemicals in the water.

I am not sure what to do about the light. I have a nano LED light on it, but I'm worried that it is too much light for the tall plants. The tall ones with the pink and the shorter ones that are green but look more like succulents, are both types of pickleweed (also known as grass wort; I can't remember the scientific name). One in the back is sea oats. There are a couple stalks of grass I'm not sure which type, and the short plant I can't figure out. That's all there is. The pickleweed which contains potash used to be used in the making pf glass, and also they store fresh water to balance out the salt.

I was trying to find out what these plants are. There is one that I can't find listed anywhere so far; it is basically some regular looking plant leaves right at the ground, no stems or stalks. I actually know nothing about this stuff. So apparently, what I want is a salt Marsh type of environment with plants that are halophytic. Halophytic plants are able to live in salty wet soil. Mangrove is a halophytic plant. I have to research it some more. I also need to find out what kinds of small animals live in salt marshes (some crabs and shrimp apparently do, and some fishes go into salt marshes to lay eggs). It's okay if I sound stupid, because at this point I don't know what I am doing, and would like to learn more.

I put the stuff in an empty 10g for now. If the plants don't die and start growing more, I might do something not so ghetto. The water had SG of 1.020. I'm not sure what it is now, because I've been making it rain probably with more water than needed for top off. I brought home about half a gallon of water, added a couple of cups of new mix diluted a little. There are no animals, so I'm not too concerned with the salt being lower, as long as it doesn't go higher. Sometimes I splash a little of the saltwater on the edge of the soil/slope where I have a bit of the grass that is in water at high tide. The other plants are behind that, not getting saltwater on them. I went out at low tide to get some soil, because the crabs don't live were the tide can reach them. I didnt want to dig holes, so mostly I just got surface stuff. I also took a little soil from around the plants when I took them, as was necessary and couldn't be avoided. The crabs don't live at the bases of plants either. I haven't seen any crabs or any other kind of moving crittee in either the soil or the water, fortunately (was worried about them dying if I took them). I had some old sand that had been washed and dried out like 3 years ago, in a plastic bag in a drawer, enough to put about 1 inch in the bottom before I put soil in. Other than what washed down into the water over just sand, the soil is just on one end. The water area is only about 3 inches deep. I put some shells from the beach on the little slope to keep soil in place.

Can the plants that grow along the shore that are submerged at high tides but all exposed at low, live in a captive tank, like maybe a saltwater terrarium? This is the first time I have been in Delaware since I was a teenager, when my grandparents had a place on the lagoon here. I was walking along the edge of the water, wondering what the weird looking bugs were... at first I thought they were ants because they are so tiny. Then I saw bigger ones realized that I was probably crushing hundreds of baby crabs under my feet. Anyway, there are some nice plants at edge of the water that I was thinking perhaps I could acclimate and keep in a terrarium (not put in my reef tank, not looking for unexpected problems). I wish I had brought test kits, but I had no intention of bringing wild temperate animals home, and had not even considered the idea of plants. I have a few pico-sizedtanks that are brand new (tell kind you put plants in growing out of the bag, with a little fountain-yype pump setup behind a barrier). Not to mention 2 unused 10s, a 16 bow that just has rocks in it, a 20h that just has rocks in it, and a 12g Aquapod (not to mention the 120g sitting empty, but I'm not making a terrarium out of that!)