mogurnda
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Posts posted by mogurnda
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What a fantastic use of resources! Good job.
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Dave, if you have the slug teeth and want instant access, bring them by the Lab and we can take some images (although I imagine you have access to some nice ones at NIH!).
I will need to sneak up on them some early morning.
I am at UMd now, but they have some pretty nice facilities in College Park. Still, it's hard to convince them to let me use it without coughing up money.
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Great images, Dave. I always enjoyed working with the EM, because you can just keep turning the magnification higher and higher, and you keep seeing more stuff. At some point, I need EM of the teeth of an unidentified (to me) slug species.
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Curious whether you guys are referencing the older style, cheap cardboard-boxed kits or the newer Red Sea Pro line? The older kits sucked. The newer kits have been as accurate as my Salifert kits in the last 12-18 months of my using them.
Old ones. They were so bad, I swore I would not waste more money on Red Sea products. Looking at the prices of the Pro line, I don't see a reason to shift from Salifert.
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Both suck for various reasons in my opinion.
Stick with Salifert and you can't go wrong. I've been using them for nearly 20 years....
+1. I keep trying other brands of kits, but always go back to Salifert. Generally easy to use and read. Never tried Hanna, but my experience with Red Sea has been uniformly negative.
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That's tricky. Hopefully, the seams will not have been damaged at those points. If it were me, I would cake silicone there. I would also test fill it for a few weeks after the silicone has set.
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As if things were not bad enough for T. gigas, the reduced supply of elephant ivory has driven the Chinese market to using giant clam shells for decorative objects. The link is a summary, but the full article is a good read for anyone who has access to the journal. Not only are the harvesters overfishing the clams, but they are tearing up the reef to do it.
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Dang! It's a sick feeling when you hear the crack.
Razor blades and alcohol. You could use micro-fine sandpaper on the edges.
What she said. Elbow grease and attention to detail.
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One thing that seems to make a huge difference is sewage. So many islands, including many of the Florida Keys, use septic systems. That makes little sense when you live on a limestone island with porous rock. Nitrogen and phosphorous move rapidly into the ocean. One of the things the Dutch government did when Bonaire went back to being part of the Netherlands was to install a proper sewage treatment system. We have been amazed at how much better the reefs look after a few years, especially the Acropora. The reefs are subject to many insults, as people have described above, but the nutrients from untreated sewage can have a large impact.
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Excellent.
Time to figure out what to post to get this thread locked
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I had a wacky project one time dealing with UPS's and learned one interesting fact: Typical computer UPS's are NOT designed to provide power over a long time. Their circuity and batteries can't handle the heat, discharge characteristics and other issues that occur over a longer time period. Computer UPS's are only designed to provide power for 10-20 minutes- long enough to shut down a computer. By buying a bigger UPS with more battery juice, you are getting a UPS that is intended to keep a bigger computer running for the same 10-20 minutes, not a smaller computer running longer.
Anyways, sorry to derail this thread. I just thought it would be useful things for people to keep in mind as they ponder options.
Had not considered that. Excellent info, and definitely not a derailment.
Fired up the generator this morning. Works great, but I hope I don't need to use it.
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Thanks for the offers, Scott and Alan. I guess it's moot at this point.
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Hi All,
I would really like to give some Ochtodes and various corals away at the meeting, but I need to work that day. Would anyone be willing to carry them to the meeting? I can drop the box by your place, with everything labeled for the new owners.
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let me know what your guys experience with this, good/bad? just figured Id share.
Nice looking setup.
My experience is more like Squishie's. My anemone is dinner plate size or bigger (depends on mood), and has only split once in about 8 years. At that time it was massively stressed due to partial system failure while I was away. It produced about four progeny, the last of which finally got re-homed last night. Now I am back to just one (yaay!).
From what I have seen and read, there seem to be at least two kinds of BTA, one that gets really big, and another that splits often and makes big colonies. People who keep multiple kinds of BTAs will probably have something more intelligent to say about that.
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Welcome. Let's see some pics
What he said.
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I have re-used sand quite a few times. If it's still live, I give a thorough rinse with clean SW to get rid of debris. I always expect some sort of algae bloom whenever a tank is disrupted and gets out of equilibrium, and keeping the sand does not seem to make a difference one way or the other.
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It takes a special (weird) type of person to keep at this for a large number of years.I think it's also unusual for someone to have a lifestyle stable enough to keep the same tank for that many years. I had my first SW tank in 1984, but life got in the way:
8 moves from 1986 to 2000, in 4 states
No time 1986 to 2000 (grad school to the end of 2nd postdoc)
No money 1986 to 2000 (same reasons).
I always kept at least one FW tank, but SW had to wait for marriage, money, and mortgage.
What I see when people leave is usually a change in lifestyle.
-Kids arrive, and priorities change
-Moving
-Divorce
-Too much travel for work
-Lost income
I am lucky that I have had the time and resources to automate as much as I can, so that the tank will watch itself when I am buried by work or out of the country. I am even more lucky to have a wife who does not divorce me when a derecho sweeps through when I am off the grid in Baja .
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Never rinsed. Seems like a waste. The sponges agree with me.
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I suppose it means I should get psychological help, but my first thought was "Mmmm, pretty. I wonder if the palys in my tank could sustain them."
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I don't check no3 or po4 ever so I can't comment on that.
However, I do believe that lighting plays a big role in sps coloring. I've been running led, t5, and mh simultaneously in my frag tanks in the last 4+ months. All the corals share the same water so that eliminates water quality out of the equation. I've noticed the same corals color up differently under each light. Some corals look better under certain lighting. Some look like poo.
But speaking of opinions, I'm of one that every single tank is different, and what works for you may not work for the next guy or gal in line, there are to many variables. Do what works for you. If that means having a reverse under gravel filter, then so be it!
I don't believe you should chase numbers, but I do believe you should track them. Keep in mind, the only thing I test for is salinity when I make up a batch of salt, but I'm also prepared for the fact that my nano may crash this afternoon, or end up being a 40 year old tank like Pauls (I just want to be able to go around in 39 years and say "who has a 40 year old nano, raise your hand!)What they said.
I am not really sure where one crosses the line from "clean" to "dirty." I have always fed my tank with a shovel, and have learned that, when things get out of whack, you can still get heavy SPS growth with NO3 up to about 50, as long as there is adequate light and stable Ca and HCO3. However, (again, my experience only) growth comes to a screaming halt when PO4 gets anywhere near 1 ppm. Usually, my heavy growths of sponge and macroalgae keep NO3 and PO4 below measurable levels, and I don't see a lot of difference in growth or color between "somewhat dirty" and "clean".
Light seems to have more of an impact. When I shifted from halides to LED a while ago, growth slowed considerably, but almost all the SPS showed more interesting colors. The growth may also be slowed somewhat by the fact that I added a small school of coral beauties at about the same time I changed to LEDs. PE is minimal on some of the corals because of the angels' occasional nipping, but I like the fish too much to even think about getting rid of them. It turns out corals can survive and grow just fine when their polyps are retracted a lot of the time.
Chasing numbers and micromanaging seems like a bit of a fool's errand. My goal is a stable, manageable system that looks like a real reef. I have seen a lot of members come and go on this forum, and it seems as though the ones who follow the Big Trends the most closely tend to have the shortest half lives.
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Love the gorgs and the fat turtle! I can't wait to be back in warm water.
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Thanks for posting. I always wondered if this was a real problem.
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I know they're supposed to be the same effect, but I like dosing sodium carbonate instead of sodium bicarbonate. I imagine that my corals do better and the pH is a little higher. Also it's easier for me to get the carbonate to dissolve in DI water than it is to get the bicarbonate. Do people dose bicarbonate because you can buy it at a grocery store instead of from a reef store?
Bicarbonate is cheap, and my pH is high enough already (8.3 to 8.4), so I do not want it to go any higher. This is for the macroalgae tanks, which consume CO2 and carbonate pretty rapidly (use a Ca reactor on the reef). I used Arm&Hammer for the last batch because that's what was sitting around.
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Just looked into my jug, and it's clear. Used Arm&Hammer this time, though, not BRS. Maybe the food grade stuff can't have impurities. I can't imagine it having much effect.
My DIY down draft skimmer is old enough to drink
in General Discussion
Dang, Chip, you must have been 4 or 5 years old at the time. Did you have an adult help you build it?