treesprite

does anyone know if the ones being sold in the store are captive bred? Years ago I met a woman who has some kind of environmental scientist who was helping to breed them to re-populate because they were becoming an endangered species

now I'm also in the market for nano fish. Stupid damsel... I'm going to all this trouble to build him his own home and he went carpet surfing :( poor thing

I'm worried about an angel picking at things. About 3 years ago I got a flame angel, found out they might pick at corals, and because I always intended to put corals in there, I took it back. Should have kept it and waited until now to give it up.

interesting analogy

chromis and clowns are damsels, but get separated out from the damsel group as a whole due to more unique characteristics

The point is, the only mistake I really take ownership of is that of not seeking out many different sources of information. The rest are due to following instructions from mistakes other people made. Every time I see someone join WAMAS who is a very-beginner I think about how smart they are to do it. I use a computer every day, and often spend hours researching all kinds of interesting and often meaningless subjects just for fun, and yet did not research the hobby because I had no reason to suspect that the information I had was not always the best - THAT was stupid! Oh, I forgot to add.... . Not a man, dear, not a man.

I have had SW for 11 years and have finally figured out the things I was doing wrong only because of advice that I followed from limited sources. These are big mistakes made due to listening to advice from limited sources - I wish I had known of and joined a club all these years ago! A=Advice M=Mistake C=Changes you've made A: You only need to test pH, amonia, and nitrIte (note the capital I) M: I wasn't testing for nitrate, which subsequently ended up being high for probably many years. C. Now I am testing for nitrate. A. The best substrate is crushed coral. M: I used CC which turned out to be a major nitrate factory, and since I was told I didn't need to test for nitrate, I had no clue. C. When I DID learn what I was supposed to be doing, and knew having the CC was causing a problem, I removed it. A. Change 1/3 water 1x a month. M: My opinion, which is based on the nitrate problem which I didn't know I was having (because of above bad advice), and the fact that the nitrate caused my tank to suffer all manner of problems with alga and cyano, is that 1x a month is NOT enough. C. I am now doing weekly water changes. A. Salt should be between 1.017 and 1.020. M. Well, fortunately I wasn't keeping anything that the low salinity would kill. C: Now maintaining 1.025. A: Arrow crabs are non-aggressive. M: Putting the creature in my tank only to find it in the process of eating my fish. C. Not putting things in the tank without first studying them. So, anyone else care to share?

its more like "residue" - the rubbery traces are gone. This is like a kind of slippery residue. I wonder if rubbing salt on those areas would get rid of it (some spots are in the tank and some on the outside... I was a little too messy with silicone getting on my hands).

who is it that had the baby cardinals in his tank a while back? I think last time an update was posted, there was just one still observed.

Didn't know that about mexican turbos, but I've had them in my tank for a very long time without problems. As far as fish knocking snails off, my female clown knocks the large ones off the walls all the time, but they can right themselves easily. She doesn't bother the astreas.

I personally would go for the clowns first. They are in general hardy fish. Hold off for a while on the nem.

it passed the leak test, yay so, how do I get off the silcone residue that I managed to get on various parts of the glass?

Honestly in my personal opinion, it's too soon to put fish in the tank becuase it's only been up less than a week.

the mex turbos are amazing the way they go through stuff

Several suggestions to think about. Thanks. I too have the little white mini starfish that aren't serpent stars - those I know never get bigger, and they don't particularly interest me. I think a lot of people have them. Aren't asterinas a type that bothers corals? How do we know if they are asterinas or just some other little white starfish?

geez, I was mixing up people and posters!

If these do get bigger and yours doesn't get bigger, I'll give you one.

I've had it for several years, and it's not very powerful given the movement. I was actually thinking about putting it in the nano, because the regular powerhead I would be using is maybe too strong. I'll have to follow how you put the SCWD into practice.

Tracy, I thought you already have a blenny of some sort... isn't it "Spot" or something?

Kind of hard to catch anything in the dark. The only thing I can think of is to take one of the rocks out of the tank and put it in the nano until the things move to a different rock. The problem is that they are only in the big rocks that have big holes, the only one convenient to remove is the clown cave roof, and I would have to take it to my job where the nano will be, then back home again.

I don't think these are going to stay so little. They used to be really hard to see with thread-thin arms that seemed like a solid color, and now they are clearly banded and have arms that are 1" to 2" long (which makes the stars 2" to 4" in size). I should clarify that there were caulerpa hitchikers, not liverock hitchhikers. The woman in the shop where I got the caulerpa had asked me if I minded that there was baby starfish in it.

I just want to put a couple in the nano, which should be up and running this weekend. If they turn out to be full-sized stars, they won't all fit in a 45 gallon tank and then for real I'll have to get rid of some.

So does it work by the water or is it something that has to be plugged in? I have a powerhead with an output that goes back and forth... I think that works by the water going through it. Does the SCWD work that way?

So far at any given time, the number of little hitchhiker serpent stars I can see is at least 15! They started out very hard to see, but now they are too big to retract their arms into the holes in the LR, so I'm thinking maybe a way to get them out. Any suggestions for how to lure out small serpent stars? I want to put a couple in the nano until or unless they get too big for it. Do the ones with brown-banded legs get bigger than a few inches? They look like this but really small: http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_Di...cfm?pCatId=1742

I think the phrase is "being a responsible hobbyist".