xeon

I'm with Mike, "reef safe"... yes, "snail safe"... depends. IMO all hermit crabs can and will be opportunistic omnivores under the right circumstances. I don't care what color their legs are. I have a variety of snails in my tanks and zero hermits.

It would if you happened to be standing right there.... but that is 99.99% of the time not the case. If you overflowed your sump and didn't have enough water after power came back on... you could have a smoked return pump to add to a soaked floor. The hole drilled at water level simply breaks the syphon. Otherwise the water will drain down to the point where it does start to suck air. The key is the sooner the better... If you have an elbow over the edge of the tank with an outlet just two inches deep in the water... you are talking about 10 gallons or so in a 90 gallon tank. Now if you drill a hole at water level, the "run back" would be minimal, much less than 10 gallons. This is a real safety and easy disaster trick to use.

I use either White Vinegar or Muriatic Acid. You can get Muriatic Acid from a hardware store and it works faster. I'm sure you know what White Vinegar is, on the other hand Muriatic Acid is Hydrochloric Acid (HCL). Specifically it is a technical grade HCL, which is impure... but good enough for alot of mundane chores. It is also a very soluble substance, ie. it mixes well with water. If you want to try it, I use a 1:4 (acid:water) solution which is potent enough. Of course you want to be cautious if using it, i.e. prolonged contact with skin, splashing it in your eyes, mouth and so on.

A MAG 2 at what head loss... ie. how much vertical pumping is it going to do? My guess is it wouldn't be enough... so yes on the MAG5. Your overflow "flow" is a direct reaction to the flow coming back into the tank from the return pump. So if you are pumping 300gph back into the tank... you will see 300gph on the overflow. You also need to make sure your overflow is capable of handling the flow amount. You should also make sure the return pump chamber in your refuge is sufficient enough to allow for some variable water level fluctuations. I think the point they were getting at on getting glass cut is that you can get small pieces cut locally for cheap. Certainly much cheaper than the "refuge" kit on E-bay. BTW, I looked at it and it is acrylic they are sending as baffles. (I think) Even still, you can pick up scraps of acrylic locally if you wanted acrylic for some reason. The only reason/advantage I could see acrylic over glass in your application would be the ease of cutting teeth... which might help on a baffle to hold back macros.

FWIW, a 10 gallon can be a pain to drill, but not impossible. I had one drilled at TRT and it cracked, the thin glass is trickier than a large tank. Most glass shops will not drill aquariums because there is nothing on the backside... as my local shop told me, "lay a piece of glass on the table and I can drill holes in it all day long". So.... I looked at what I hand on hand and came up with something. I cut two pieces of drywall to fit on the inside panes of the 10 gallon tank. I then cut two short sections of 2x4's to wedge the two pieces against each side firmly. That give the otherwise pretty shaky glass some backbone. I didn't try it, but I probaby could have stood on the tank... maybe not.

I was a bit off.. maybe it has been longer than I thought that I read the "great worm story". I had saved it in my bookmarks and it was actually a Eunicid worm... not a "bristle worm". http://www.oregonreef.com/sub_worm.htm Something else came to me, I seem to remember reading a very nice artilce by Ron Shimek on worms we may encounter in general.... might be on Reefkeeping.com?

Well, if you are placing it below you tank.. then yes you need an overflow of some kind. You can either drill the display tank for an overflow or use an overflow box. Trying to match a pump to move water out and another to pump it back in... it just doesn't work. If you want to place the refuge above your tank, you would them pump water from the display tank to the refuge. You would want to drill the 10 gallon to gravity return to your display tank. So how and where do you propose to have the refuge?

Sorry to hear about that Garret. I know it is one of the first things I check when I get home... often with one eye closed as I get closer. Do you know what happened? ie. cracked tank, leaking corner seal?

I'm no worm expert, but in my reading there are thousand of worms of the "bristle variety". The general consesus is that when/if they get large it is best to remove them. In line with the crab theory, they can be opportunistic omnivores.... or worse... extreme predators. IMO, I'd try to remove it even though it doesn't appear to be trouble at the moment. BTW, I ran across a website recently with pictures of a 7' (yes foot) bristle worm. It had taken up camp in a 3/4" PVC structure to support the tank's rock work. As the page noted it was a tight fit inside the 3/4" PVC... yikes!

Mike, I don't know much about Mac's, so I don't know how much of what I do in Winders will translate. I use PhotoShop 7, but this is also what I did in ver. 6. Open the picture in PhotoShop. One thing I might do to reduce picture size is to crop it... if cropping makes sense. If you want the whole picture, skip this... Use the "dotted line" tool and select the area you want and choose crop from the image menu. Image is now cropped and either small enough or can be further down sized. This is how I resize the image. On the bar above the picture I "right-click" it and choose "image size". The pop up window among other things shows the heighth and width in pixels. You can then reduce the "width" pixel size to say 250. Make sure you have the options enabled to keep the proportions and resample the picture. Locking the proportions will change the other pixel size dimension on the fly. The options for this are also on the same window and should be on by default. The next file size saver is what format to save it in. Via the "save for web" you can save it as a jpeg or gif file. Both will save you file size over the picture you just got finished editing. A jpeg file can use various compressions to reduce the file size... it is also my favorite format for this type of application.

Personally I like BTA's, a Rose is even better. I have a regular BTA with a pair of clowns. It is truly a match made in heaven.

It's a long shot, but call Frank's Pet World if you haven't already. They are in town behind the Post Office on a side street. I got rid of one a while ago otherwise I would have given you the whole shebang(overflow box/j-tube/the works).

Howard, I sent you an e-mail to this effect, but... I still found the pictures interesting after watching the show on Discovery last night. It was specifically on deep water inhabitants, some of those in the pictures. So hoax or not, cool pictures!

From my reading on clownfish, mixing two species in a 75 gallon in most cases would not work due to spacing. Adding a third Maroon in most cases would not work. Maroons are also classified as the most agressive of the clownfish family. If the current pair has been in the tank for years, as I think you stated, most likely you have a female. Adding a new large Maroon, quite possibly a female, would be a recipe for disaster. If they have been in this state for a long time(years), they might be especially intolerant to any new Maroons or other clowns. As Mike noted above, there are sometimes exceptions to the "rules". For the most part, clownfish do not co-exist well with other clown species. More than two of the same species can be problematic too. This is due to the strongest need in the animal kingdom.... to procreate. Aside from all of this, you seem to have a full tank as is. How is the Mandarin? I would worry about mixing a sixline and mandarin in a 75 gallon tank... which is what I have. I also have a very fat and happy Mandarin. In fact I'd like to have a pair of Mandarin's, but I am gun shy to try it.

Bob et al, Not trying to rain on any parades, but I thought it prudent to share my experience with Chocoloate Chip starfish. They not only may predate on snails, but they also can and will eat soft corals. In my hobby infancy I bought one to appease the "get a star fish" divas of the household. Buying it was neither calculated or planned... a no no. It didn't take me long to figure out it wasn't cut out for my tank. It was given a one way ticket to my refuge and back to a local pet shop. On a slightly interesting note, I did enjoy watching it capture snails.

I'll keep my answer short... Reefer Rocks. ???

This should fix the link Steve http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-11/GR/index.htm I just changed the case of "GR" in the link... otherwise it gives you an emoticon... kinda quirky. Thanks for the links.

Lee, It is a slow process presently. For one I am experimenting with how hardcore I want to go with grit, since I will have to work it back down. I didn't have much time to tinker with it today. The LPS are doing great, in fact my tank has never looked better. You know Bek just loves those "wavy things". Phil, The orbital is sounding good. My Dremel and flex shaft are getting it done... I will say it again, it is slow work. If the orbital would do the trick, I might pick up a 10 gallon tank to house the critters for a few hours. In fact that sounds like an ideal situation. What specifically do you mean by #2? Also, did the #2 leave a smooth, scratch free finish? Also, what kind of pad did you use... wool, terry cloth? Sorry about the zillion questions, I'm going at this kind of like I would detail one of my cars... with care. In fact the rubbing compound is more agressive than I would like. The other thing I have, which I normally use when detailing my car headlights isn't agressive enough.

I had my sister watch my son while we traveled over the holidays. He is autistic and does not travel well these days. She's great with him, but her children are just bad news. Anyway, my sister's daugther did a real number on the 12" cube tank I built for my daughter in addition to other things around the house... which I won't mention to keep me on topic. She went nuts with the Super Nano-Nimble. It's easy to figure how the inside got sand on it... but the outside is another thing. The acrylic is scratched all over the place.... both inside and out. It is going to be a slow process and after about four hours of work... I'm not even finished with one of the outside panes. Some of the outside scratches can be caught with a finger nail. I don't even want to think about the inside. The tank just really started to get going. Presently, I am working the not-so-deep scratches with a mild abrasive polish and the deeper ones I am starting with a rubbing compound. I was doing it all by hand... but it would take me years to finish it like that. I graduated to my Dremel after about an hour of elbow grease. I'm glad the tank isn't any larger... that's for sure. Today I might experiment with some 1500 and 2000 wet/dry paper on some scraps. This is going to take some time to bring it back around. So I should be a real expert on acrylic tank scratch removal before long.

Just got back in town and the tanks are still up and alive... anyway: I'd be glad to help if I can. The only "local" store I know of is in Warrenton. It is under new ownership in the last year and the fish aren't as scary as they used to be. Corals I would not recommend. Truthfully, I have never bought anything there yet, the drive to N. VA is worth it IMO. My in-laws live in Amissville.... but I won't hold it against your family Howard.

Actually, I built the main box and started on the skimmer cup... but otherwise I have not had time to work on it. I stopped to think over a few ideas. My plans and pieces have been sitting on top of a filing cabinet in my basement untouched for a few weeks now. Maybe sometime over the holiday or sometime in January.

I think four weeks is a good number if you don't see anything to worry about. Here's a nice article I have bookmarked on quarantining. http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-10/sp/feature/index.htm

Sure you can, but you would definitely want an RO-DI. I would imagine like a lot of undesirables, rejection rate isn't 100% under even ideal RO-DI circumstances for copper. So whatever percentage of copper that may be in the water, my guess is you would be removing in the high 90th percentile. For all intents and purposes this in most cases would yield an "undetectable" amout of copper.... ie. not enough for you to worry about. I would make sure I kept my membrane in good order though. Have you ever had your tap water tested?

I'd go with a Powder Blue for looks, it's also my favorite tang. I've seen a few tanks with all three living peaceably.

A cooler with some packing such as newspaper should be fine I would think for several hours in your car. Being hunting season, disposable and reusable pocket/boot warmers are in Wal-Marts, Target and so forth if you are still worried. That is also depending on how cool it is. I haven't seen the extended weather report, but today and last night weren't exactly artic conditions. Don't forget to show your WAMAS card for your discount.