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mogurnda

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Everything posted by mogurnda

  1. Welcome! Live in Silver spring, work in Rockville. Happy to see another reefer in the area.
  2. Will have to try that. Sorry about the hijack
  3. I am already getting texts and emails, just wondering whether she could figure out how to say it in plain English.
  4. This is potentially very cool. Is there any way to get her to translate: "Status: ON Statement: If Swx5_3 CLOSED Then ON" to "You have water on your office floor and you'd better get in the car now!"
  5. Great! I still have some corals for you when you're ready.
  6. Happy New Year, Scott! What's new with the tank?
  7. Hard to say from the photo. The first three candidates in my mind are ctenophores, vermetid mucus, or Bryopsis. Edit: or zooxanthellae, as Wheresthereef said.
  8. I had that problem every time I used one of the frozen food cube brands (formula 1?). Seems like they changed the formula, and added something that acted as a surfactant. Stopped buying it. Still get overflows every once in a while. I attribute it to something spawning, or maybe something dying in the rocks.
  9. Looks like you have hit the magic ratio of N, P and trace elements. My guess is that they are coming from food, even though there's not a lot going in. When I was optimizing conditions for growing macroalgae (I dose N, P, C, and traces), I would end up with phyto blooms when things started to go out of balance and macro growth slowed. A few things help: -The simplest is to use a skimmer. IME, a decent skimmer will pull enough out to keep the water clear. -Mechanical filtration (HOB or canister), with fine enough media to remove the algae, will do the trick as well. Occasional use of a diatom filter is also an option. Exporting the phyto with skimming or mechanical filtration also helps to remove the nutrients causing the problem. If you have the time and energy, you can use macroalgae growth to compete with the microalgae. I would use vinegar or vodka as a carbon source in order to shift the advantage to the macroalgae. Macros need more C and a lot less P than phyto. Stripping the water of a necessary nutrient should also take care of the problem. For example, phosphate is limiting, so using a phosban reactor to get P down to zero will starve the phyto. UV will clarify the water, but will not export nutrients, so the problem will still sit in the background. Filter feeders would be tricky. If the population gets high enough to clarify the water, they will probably crash due to starvation. There may be even better options, but the above is all based on the literature on algae culture and years of hard experience intentionally farming nuisance algae.
  10. Nope. They hung out on it, but never consumed any . I am trying a few more tricks.
  11. Here is a youngster cruising on the new algae. We'll know if they'll eat it by the weekend.
  12. Thanks Hilary! I took a quick look under the microscope, and it sure looks like Cladophora to me. I put a blob of it into a dish with some hatchlings, and we'll see.
  13. Thanks for the offer. Hair algae is usually Derbesia, and these guys don't seem to have any interest in it. I may try the C. racemosa at some point, but will continue the hunt for Cladophora. I thought the likelihood of finding Cladophora here was low, but am giving it a try.
  14. After spending way too much time developing stable Bryopsis cultures for the slugs, I now have big, fat, happy Elysia. Time to go after the next roadblock. Getting eggs to hatch, and the juveniles to settle is not a big deal, but getting them to start eating has been an obstacle. They crawl around on Bryopsis, but don't seem to be willing or able to eat it. Some other species of Elysia eat Cladophora as their first food, then switch to the adult diet later. I would love to try a batch of juveniles on Cladophora, but the collectors in the keys are out of action for the moment. Does anyone have any growing in a refugium or macro tank at the moment? I am trying Chaetomorpha, Caulerpa, and Codium, but am not particularly hopeful.
  15. I use a manifold from the return with a needle valve to regulate flow into the reactor. With the valve set for a slow drip, and the internal pH between 6.45 and 6.7, it has done the job for 10+ years without issues. Valve needs to be opened wide occasionally to flush it, but is otherwise trouble free and avoids having to tend another pump.
  16. Hard to say based on the photos. Could be any green filamentous algae, including Derbesia, Bryopsis, "Munter algae," small-bladed Caulerpa, or several others. For most people, the answer to "is it beneficial?" is a pretty definite no. What you do depends on the species, and the photos aren't helpful in that regard. Derbesia usually fades after a while. Bryopsis and Munter algae seem to thrive in fairly clean conditions, so may need more drastic methods. What are your water parameters (NO3, PO4, alkalinity) specifically? "Within acceptable levels" means a lot of things to a lot of people.
  17. In my experience, there have been a few causes. Bad ballast or bad powerhead (like Matt) come to mind. If you have salt crust in a fan, that could be causing a shunt that the GFI is picking up. If you are using an Apex, shouldn't it tell you when the power goes off? I would be hesitant to blame the GFI until you are sure you don't have a short somewhere. I would also expect the timing to be more random if the GFI were to blame.
  18. I thought I was the only one who was queasy about thought encouraging people to go into debt to buy expensive toys for a hobby.
  19. Oy. Sounds like an amazing experience, but that it is a long time on the road.
  20. I use a hunk of old wetsuit or ensolite (from an old backpacking sleeping pad) for in-tank noise reduction. Mouse pads for external.
  21. Hi Jessica, A couple of notes from an algae farmer. First, phosphates themselves will not kill an invertebrate that is eating algae. All plants take up carbon, nitrogen and phosphorous in varying amounts to build their tissues and generate their collection of biochemicals. A plant in a phosphate rich environment will only take up the phosphate it needs. Any more than that, it will leave outside. Each species of aquatic plant thrives in a specific environment. In my experience, Derbesia (the usual "hair algae") tends to thrive when nitrogen and phosporous are both elevated. If the balance shifts toward PO4, you see more cyanobacteria, and Bryopsis seems happiest with plenty of N, and low P (but not zero). Iron and trace elements are additional variables. If something is killing your grazing invertebrates, I suspect they are either choking on defensive chemicals produced by the hair algae, or they are starving because they will not eat the stuff. All of the common nuisance algae produce secondary metabolites to discourage grazing, and each grazer picks and chooses depending on its feeding apparatus and metabolism. Another issue, when things get really bad, is hypoxia in dead spots. I actually managed to cure a hydroid infestation when hair algae overgrew and suffocated them during a bad swing many years ago. With regard to PO4 killing your invertebrates, it would be helpful to know specifically which invertebrates are dying, and what the actual water conditions are. In a coral reef tank, 1 ppm PO4 is excessive, but I have snails, crabs, slugs, and shrimp thriving at that level. I will have to check my notes, but I think the level in the slug system went even higher while I was away this summer, and none of the invertebrates even blinked.
  22. I have a group of 4 coral beauties in a reef tank. They harassed the Pocillopora so badly that it only survives in the overflow. They seem to ignore the Acropora, Stylopora, LPS, and softies, or at least give them enough peace to grow. YMMV.
  23. What are you trying to fix? Your tank is beautiful, so what are you trying to do differently? Are you fighting outbreaks of nuisance algae? Are your corals not thriving the way you want? To me, the Triton method looks like a lot of micromanagement and expense. As far as the method goes, I am interested in periodically getting a periodic detailed rundown of my parameters, but have some doubts otherwise. Keep in mind that I literally grow nuisance algae as part of my job, and think a lot about the growth conditions and chemical ecology of macroalgae and grazers. I algae, and believe that every reef system will benefit from a refugium, but some of the Triton system theory seems pretty hand-wavy. I think the concept of growing algae for nutrient export, but never harvesting, is magic thinking. If you sit down and do the math of how much algae growth is needed to reduce the nitrogen in a (for example) 50 gallon system by 1 ppm, you'll see that it's a lot. I have worked through this more than once, and now will have to find my calculations when I am not supposed to be working on something else. Basically, it would fill sizable refugium to bursting relatively quickly. If the algae are dying back, then what about the N, P, and defensive compounds that will be released from the dead algae? Caulerpa and Halimeda (two genera that Joe highlighted in his talk) both produce toxins that are strong enough to deter most generalist grazers, so I do not imagine they will make coral happy. As far as the benefits from sugars and/or amino acids released by dying algae, he showed no data one way or the other. My view is that their system works, but, like many of the methods we have seen over the years, probably not for all the reasons they think.
  24. Sweet site. Had not visited before, so thanks for the heads up.
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