Gatortailale

The Marine Scene Newsletter ) Sales for the Weekend of April 20 & 21 # This Weeks News... What's New # What's On Sale # Did You Know? Hello to all! The Marine Scene is the Washington D.C. area's premier, saltwater-only retail store. Combined with Custom Aquarium Concepts, our design, installation, and maintenance division, we are the area's best full-service solution. Conveniently located off of the Dulles Toll Road in Herndon, Virginia, within a short driving distance from anywhere in the metro area. Thanks for reading and we hope to see you this weekend! ________________________ The Marine Scene What's New We have a new Purple Reef Glue and Reef Glue Gel on our shelves. The glue and gel is great for gluing coral frags to discs, plugs or live rock fragments to make it easy to place your new coral frag in your main system. The purple color of the glue will also help disguise the look of glue in your aquarium. For those of you who have the BioCube and AquaPod nano tanks, there are now specifically designed skimmers to fit each size. Sapphire Aquatics has designed skimmers for the BioCube 8, 14 and 29 gallon systems and the AquaPod 12 and 24 gallon systems. Each are designed to operate in their specific tank while still being able to close the stock lid. They are simple to install, just notch out a piece of the baffling. The only adjustment needed is to fine tune the height of the collection cup. After the break-in period, there should be no micro-bubbles released into the main tank due to the two separate bubble traps built into the skimmer. It is also virtually noiseless since the clean water return is below the water level which eliminates splashing inside the overflow and the air intake has a built in silencer! Newer fish arrived this week including a Dracula Goby, Orange Spotted Blenny, Steinitz' Goby and Scotts Fairy Wrasse! The Dracula Goby has a yellow face and white body marked with thin bright red vertical stripes in-between thicker dark red vertical stripes. Looks very similar to the Hi-Fin Red Banded Goby. They are classified as a shrimp goby so they should pair up nicely with a Pistol Shrimp. The Orange Spotted Blenny (aka Red Rockskipper) has a white body with orange and red spots along the length of its body. They feed primarily on algae and detritus, yet will occasionally nip at corals if underfed in an aquarium. They may jump out of an open tank so make sure to have a secure lid. The Steinitz' Goby is white with brown vertical bands along the length of their body. They are also spotted with small blue spots that intensify with their mood. They are a peaceful fish and may even pair up with a Pistol Shrimp. The Scott's Fairy Wrasse is a beautiful fish with green, red, blue and yellow colorations. They are a peaceful fish, very active and reef safe. Make sure you have a secure lid as this fish may jump out of an open tank. We also received more Green Chromis, Lawnmower Blennies, Yellow and Green Clown Gobies, small Hippo Tangs, a beautiful small Sailfin Tang, a Gold Spotted Rabbitfish, Coral Beauty Angels, Green Mandarin Dragonets, Six Line Wrasse, a Harlequin Tusk and many more! Our invert shipment this week included more of those neat Brittle Stars, Serpent Stars, Red Fromia Stars, beautiful larger Green Bubble Tip Anemones, amazing Rose Anemones, a Fire Anemone, Pom Pom/Boxing Crabs, Zebra Striped Turbo Snails, Peppermint Shrimp, White Condylactus Anemones, Flower Anemones, Urchins and lots more. Our new coral shipment included some beautiful Hairy Mushrooms, a large Acropora, a couple nice Galaxys, lots of Torchs and Frogspawns, Sun Corals, Ricordea, Bubbles, Maze Brains, Open Brains, Green Finger Leathers, Branching Green Briarium, Zoanthids, Mushrooms and more! Photos Link... What's On Sale Reef Crystals Sea Salt is 10% off. Reef Crystals is a great salt containing higher calcium, alkalinity and other trace elements for those of you who make your own saltwater at home. All Marc Weiss and Weiss Organics products are 10% off. These products are great for reef and fish-only tanks. Products include live sand boosters, live rock boosters, coralline algae boosters, coral foods and lots more great supplements to choose from to make your tank thrive. A large assortment of corals are on sale at 10% to 50% off. We carry a large assortment of corals from beginner to expert, and many of them are currently on sale! Did You Know? Did you know the term "frag" is used in our hobby to describe a smaller piece or cutting of a coral that is grown into a new colony? Many corals are quite easy to create frags from and is also a great way of preserving the reef. Small Polyp Stony corals (SPS) like the Acropora species are simply broken into smaller pieces, and the branches are glued to a small rock or plug and placed in the tank to grow. Given time, these "daughter colonies" will grow to rival the original coral in size. Soft corals like Leathers can be cut with a razor blade, and the branches attached or glued to rubble rocks in the same way. These softies grow quite fast, and many frags can be made in a relatively short time. The Marine Scene sells many different types of frags, captive raised and in-house fragged. We also sell glues, two-part epoxy's, plugs, discs and rubble rock to create your own frags. Ready to try fragging yourself? Ask one of our sales associates for help or more information! Marine Scene Links... # Main Website # Service and Maintenance # Our Story # Meet Us # Location and Hours # Now Available Email: staff@marinescene.com Phone: 703-689-2815 Website: http://www.marinescene.com

I'm sure everyone will have more or better links - here are a few I have looked at so far and found helpful. http://www.dpreview.com/ http://www.ximinasphotography.com/lessons/index.html

not to shabby. No more weekend bender look! Put the camera in tank and take photo of room so we can see inside of dan's work Dan, your next customer is dbartco

Speaking as a member (removes officer hat - to give my personal review) I hit BRK today and I also give it two very big thumbs up for stock and customer service. My daughter loved the cowfish as well and had a blast looking at all the livestock. Wife was happy too because she could look at plants at same time.

Sorry, doug's wife talked to mine and now I got a honey-do list as well

Got GAS = Grey-seas Aquatics Skimmer

Yup - small text noting it was lost under pic of imperator so I bumped it down few rows. My 5th would be Potters wrasse, but haven't had chance to take pic of it yet. Need to talk 143 to come out and do shoot some day.

If I have to pick one then would have to be my Idol because very few people have kept them with success. I got mine Jan 21 or 23, 2006. 2nd would be this (Rhomboid Golden Fairy Wrasse) 3rd would be Imperator 4th is Mystery in first pic.

Thanks Sugar, JMS & others. It's hard for me to say what I think is the "key" to success. What I have learned in this hobby since I started in Sept. 2000 is that you need to keep paramaters as constant as possible and try to keep water as clean as possible. But when it comes to testing, I don't do it that often & when I do, I only test alk & calcium weekly, but I do check PH several times a day with monitor. I also look over the tank and corals daily to see how the look. Off top of my head, I will say that these are some of the "keys" for my success: - I try to do a 32g water change every 7-10 days - I use spectrapure basic mechanical float to keep salinity constant (in sump) [used over 5 years on 1st tank with 0 failure] - I got a big skimmer that is easy to clean and care for :D I clean collection cup ever 2-3 days and empty 5+ cups of waste every time. - I run a 40w current USA UV light 24/7. - I use kalk stirrer and feed it with dosing pump so I can control amount of kalk added rather than connect to top-off. I have read too many posts about people having top-off dosed 5+ gallons of kalk and nuke their tank. - I run a calcium reactor - feed daily - usually 2-3 times a day + add nori sheets [one feeding of pellets and one of frozen brine & mysis; some days flake as well] - I use carbon and change every 3-4 weeks. - run about 3/4 cup rowa phos ban media and change every 4-6 weeks. Idol success - Not sure other than I try to feed a lot and keep water quality as best I can. With the help of dbartco, I tried to create lots of caves and hiding space in rocks and b/w rocks and back of tank. At night, the tangs and angels each have their home spot to go when tank is dark - same goes for all other smaller fish.

Time: 4-7 PM

Few shots from this weekend (nikon 995 in point-n-shoot mode) Right Center Left

NOTE: Updated schedule and 3rd speaker added. See latest news here cmas-md.org 8:00-9:00 Registration / Sign In 9:00-9:15 Opening Comments & Club Business 9:30-11:00 Daphne Fautin (Anemones & Clownfish) 11:00-12:30 Jake Adams (Water Flow) 12:30-1:30 Lunch / Vendor Hour 1:30-2:30 Frank Burr (Quarantine) 2:30-3:30 Social Hour / Raffle Tix / Vendors 3:30-4:30 Raffle 4:30-5:00 Cleanup! Everybody OUT ** tentative schedule subject to change**

this has already been posted in conservation corner. Please feel free to discuss there.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070407/sc_af...aF8np6Dex0DW7oF

Chip and I both use this current usa model http://www.marinedepot.com/aquarium_uv_ult...mma.asp?CartId= Model 1403; 40W; inlet/outlet =2" Slip; Max GPH flow = 2880gph I have 2 manderins in my tank + 3 wrasse, no ill effects on pods - pods likely to get hurt by your return pump as they are by uv.

Hey Undercover, Didn't mean to be as gruff as I was (although details of this reply may come off the same). As Bandit point out, things get out of hand at times with posts. I'm not trying to be mean, just trying to get to all the facts so I can make informed judgment on how to value your opinion. Since you are new to the club, and have limited posting reputation and I don't know your hobby experience, I was trying to find out more about you so I can make and informed choice on how to value your opinion of the store. In the past we have had people post their views on the store only to get an entirely different story posted either by the store, or one of its employees, or I get a PM from store describing their side of the story - but they didn't post response because the store didn't want to start any problems. So I'm just trying to learn the exact details of events. A lot of the details of your 1st post gave me the appearance that you are on new side to the hobby simply by the fact that you purchased the corals without a good inspection and/or sounded to me like you were more excited about the color of it than to look it over for health. No harm, we all have been there when were new. Again, I was just trying to get out all the facts so I can make an informed judgment on how to value your review. As for posting that your water parameters are fine/perfect - well most vets in the club will ask you for more details than the simple perfect answer. We like to know brand of test kit used and actual #'s. Most of us use Salifert brand as a more trusted reliable brand. Also, water quality has a lot to do with coral health. I have seen first hand and read many a post where people get a healthy looking coral and put in their tank and either over night or in a few days it dies. In my opinion a lot of the reason for death has to do to the fact that the persons alkalinity was way low. If you don't believe me on this, ask flowerseller about this low alk theory. As for me asking about purchase date: Well, I'm trying to learn how long you had the coral and when you first saw signs of problem. You don't say in your post that the coral died. You still didn't say when you purchased it other than to send me off to RC to search your history [which turns out to be Feb. 19 of your post]. Now that I searched, I also see that it wasn't until March 1 that you made a post there that your 1st piece of sps is dying. Not being mean, but these are the facts and I still don't know (since photo attached to your first post on RC does not show base/ detail of coral as you posted here) whether your coral was ill at time of purchase. I have to take your word for it - and you didn't say when the photo in this post was taken. Finally, it's hard to tell from photos here whether there was RTN on Feb 21, but you do say in post there is. So to sum up, basic point of my post is/was to learn more about the exact details of when you spotted RTN on the coral and to try to figure out if it was in fact that way at time of purchase or if the coral started to RTN shortly after being put in your tank. Sorry to grill you, but when someone posts about their experience with a vendor, I just want to make sure all the facts are out so the readers are properly informed. On a positive note, if you make the social on April 28, I'll bring you a frag of Orange branching montipora digita to add to your collection of captive frags.

I run it 24/7/365. Been using it for a year - no negative results. Only positive - healthy fish and clear water. After talking with a good friend and fellow club member who has had a successful tank for over 10+ years and runs a 40w 24/7, I took his advice and all I can say is my new system sure is chipper. cons - just like anything else in this hobby, their are those that say it can be done, and those that say it can't - (barebottom vs. DSB) . . . list goes on and on.

I'm sorry you had bad experience. I don't mean to be rude, but it seems like the best lesson you learned is to inspect the corals you buy much more closely next time so you as the consumer are aware of what you are getting. To me it also sounds a lot like you failed to inspect it until you left the store. Based on the amount of RTN in the attached photo, it looks rather obvious and should of been spotted in store. Then again, you don't supply purchase date and/or date photo was taken so we have to take your word that the coral had signs of RTN at time of purchase. While most big-box electronic stores will honor returns, it is a lot harder for a livestock vendor to take something back - especially once you put in your tank. They can't control your water quality (not saying yours is bad). As for recordia, they are in the Disc Anemone family and do have a foot similar to BTA and other anemones they use to attach to rock. It's possible the stress of being bagged caused it to release its hold on rock. Hard to fault a store on a $10 frag that falls off the rock or plug. Not trying to defend MS, just trying to learn more about you, your tank, and your experience in the hobby so I can decide how to value your review since you only have 7 posts on wamas forums (including 3 in vendor experience). please provide more info.

So what kind of lighting is it? (MH/T-5/VHO).

Any update? Hope you are on road to recovery. guess you need gear next time you do something like that with a way to breath fresh air. PS: Sprung talked about someone else doing something similar (breathing toxic zoa vapors) - we got it on tape. Just will take dbartco a few weeks to month to convert tape to DVD.

You are free to spend money as you wish. I'm not promoting anyone, but ... Whispers rumor: I've asked BRK to see if they can come up with special on 200g box of IO for social.

I think if you get a nice heavy duty stryofoam box, you should be able to use this and pack them in your checked luggage. I know Delta let us do that when we came back from MACNA Houston. I would have them use 3 bags on each coral and then put all small bags in a large clear garbage bag or 2 to try to contain any leaks. Having external box with live animals on it would help and an invoice of contents on top of styro (inside cardboard box) may help as well for TSA screen. Good luck

BRK has the Maximas if your looking for them. Here is news about other clams provided by our Winter speaker - Barry at Clams Direct.