Gatortailale

1) Sorry to hear about your thoughts on your experience. As posted above, you can always talk to John B. - the owner about the service you got. 2) Unfortunately, despite our best efforts, critters in our tanks die. Hopefully you were learn a few things from this forum to help you improve the care you give your tank. 3) Not to go down the road of defending the shop, but I did see this in one of your other posts My understanding is that a Valenti puffer is very agressive toward inverts. Here is a quote from a puffer on liveaquaria And - my reading is that you only have a 12 gallon tank. The 8 puffers listed on liveaquaria all required a 30 gall to 100 gallon size tank, depending on fish. So just my guess, but it is also possible that the puffer killed your shrimp. Again, don't mean to pick on you - we all were new to this at one point and have a learning curve to get over. However, it appears that your fish selection -puffer- in a 12 gallon, may not be the best plan since they will kill inverts - especially if puffer only getting 3 mysis a day to eat. Good luck in the future.

good thing you have gone to SECORE and know a thing or two about spawn events. who did you initiate by making them drink some of your tank water

what camera and lens? look good to me.

and one of his is for me as protection money now that he is a famous speaker, see theimac.org speaker list

I have to work out the details with other officers - but Kevin Kohen (Live Aquaria) said he was willing to come down and speak to the club. He gave a great talk on fish and coral disease at ncpars meeting.

Also with personal hat on Reef Central Fish Disease forum Marine Depot Diseash/health forum Wetwebmedial disease pages After hearing Kevin Kohen of Liveaquaria talk at NCPARS meeting, fish disease needs to be ID correctly or you can do more harm than good with some treatments.

Not sure what bulb spectrum you have on the T-5 frag tank - BUT 20K halides will give off blue spectrum and may inturn make the coral appear more "Green" than it really is. Common for corals to have differenct color under different lamp specturm and why most if not all coral sellers post disclaimer about corals pics shot under X bulb and may not look same in your tank under Y bulb on Z ballast. IF you put it up high in your frag tank under T-5 - you are running risk of bleaching it due to sudden change from 20 halides to T-5. Best to put on bottom of frag tank for week, then slowly each next week raise it up some and make it a month process to get it higher. If the dead area upsets you, you can frag it and start a new piece and hope it doesn't bleach or die any more.

see HERE for latest news on speakers, times, raffle prize details ....

metcury

erik the tollman of wamas

It's hard to tell from your photo of light fixture with lamps on whether you have the glass shields installed. IF NOT - then you may be exposing your corals to UV rays that the glass is designed to shield because DE HQI bulbs do not have built in uv shield glass like mogul lamps. Depending on how recent your photo is, probably not cause since appears other corals are okay. no sign of acro-eating flatworms? Could be bleaching on side/bottom because that area of coral is shaded from growth above.

Congrats on camera purchase Ken Rockwell's D 80 User Guide -also link to pdf printable version. I tend to use the P setting and tripod for full tank shots. individual shots of tank I either use tripod or hold camera - then just take lots and hope some come out in focus. Depending on glass of your tank, you can get more of a angled shot with some distortion. I leave flash off and room dark except for tank. As for actinic shots or adjusting white balance, you'll need to talk to chris aka 143gadgets on making those adjustments to get good pics.

i defer to mike (ousnake) and other experts on spawning as for babies - usually if you make polyps retract, you can see the tiny little heads forming on side of skeleton about size of pin head. Some folks snip those off and glue to plug and grow out frags that way.

water temp is something that can cause bleaching and same goes for lights. Need more details on tank temp and calcium, alk & ph. Also type of lighting equipment, photo period, location of corals to powerhead.

I believe the D40 is DX format for auto focus - meaning there is no drive pin - it's all digital connection that body tells lens how to focus. IF you want to use your old lenes that are "auto" focus, then you need to get a Nikon body that has a drive pin - like D 70, D 80, D 100, D 200, D 300 series - You will have to read specs - but my understanding is the D 40 and 40x do NOT have the drive pin - Main reason I got the refurbished D 70s was it had the drive pin IF I ever wanted to get used nikon lens. COSTS - you 143gads can tell you more on the "speeds" of lens - but you can get a 1.8 50mm lens for $109 + shipp here: http://www.adorama.com/NK5018AFDU.html I spent the mega extra on a 18-200 VR and love it for good all around lens of wide to decent zoom. My 50mm is nice as well, but I rarely use it cause I like ability to adjust zoom with the 18-200. Most nikon body for DSLR going to be $499 and up - unless you find a factory refurb. I got my D70s refurb. for $525+ ship. Taken over 5,000 shots and no problems. for one with drive pin - get the D 80 new for $729 (or less). I love the .3 second from slep to taking photo and the D70 has a great flash sync speed and good shutter speed specs and the noted drive pin option above. But as mentioned by me a few times in posts in this forum - look at Ken Rockwell's pages - he explains specs of nikon and canon in easy to understand details and tells his opinion on how good or bad they are. He has done tests of DSLR vs. point & shoot and said pic same, but if you want speed and bring certain aspects of phot to life, then get dslr. See $150 vs $5000 camera test : http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/150-vs-500...llar-camera.htm and the why your wife wants you to buy a fancy camera: http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/wife.htm in the end, its the person taking the photos, not the camera that matters ....... but a good one helps a lot

my post from camera package deal thread - see post o

1) looks like your have/ willing to spend up to $1000 on a camera combo based on your citing a ebay package of $930 2) check out kenrockwell.com - he does lots of reviews on cannon & nikon stuff -143gadgets turned me on to this website. see his page here for recommendations: http://www.kenrockwell.com/tech/recommended-cameras.htm You can take the extra loot and either buy a nice 18-200 VR lens - I have one and love it. Or spend less and get a 18-55 lens and the 55-200 vr lens. Or I'll make you a good deal on a lightly used 70-300 vr nikon lens. 3) Make sure you are buying USA warranty goods. There are a lot of grey market stuff out there as Ybenormal points out. cannon & nikon both good - but before you buy a package with like 4 -5 lenes, you should play with them at a local shop or borrow if you can from members here - or read what a pro like rockwell says about lens. canon reviews http://www.kenrockwell.com/canon/index.htm nikon reviews http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/index.htm I got a nikon d70s refurbished from adorama and over 5,000 pics and works fine. I got the mac camera extended warranty for like $35 bucks. - I posted somewhere on this forum about camera I got. Adorama called me after order to verify shipping addy and that I made order

looks like some shops will let anyone work for them. we all know its for his fish-bagging skills and not his ability with a camera.

try Dan at grey seas. He uses them on skimmers. May have extra in stock.

Bump Sanjay told me they have something like 115 registered people coming to trade/swap/sell corals. Should be lots of frags. Sanjay said the drive down from State College took him about 3:15.