FishWife

That's EXACTLY what I suggested to Scott this AM! What could I ask for a 4-bulb 250w fixture (early model of the Aqua Medic Ocean Light Sexy Series, 72

So, today is "light issues" day. When we hung the lights (a 4 250w halide fixture that came with our tank) last night, we realized that things are going to heat up quickly in our tank (and that ballasts are LOUD and HEAVY monsters!). We're considering heat issues, but also light. We were blessed with four 20,000 k bulbs... but, being new to halides, we're now trying to understand if we need a T-5 array for blue lights before and after halides have done their thing. If this is true... what spectrums would compliment what we have?

When we hung the lights for our 175g bowfront (a 4 250w halide fixture that came with our tank) last night, we realized that things are going to heat up quickly in our tank (and that ballasts are LOUD and HEAVY monsters!). We have the luxury of having most of our equipment behind a wall in our mudroom, that backs to our display room. The display room is small: picture the front office of a typical newer colonial home in MD. The room is about 10' X 10' with one AC/Heat vent in the room. We think that once those halides are on for hours/day, that room (especially in summer) will heat up pretty quickly. The mud room is even smaller, and opens to our garage. Solutions we're considering: 1. Put an inexpensive window AC unit into the mudroom, mounted in the wall above the door to the garage and venting to the garage. Cool that room way down, and as water comes through the mudroom, it will be chilled and filtered at the same time. 2. Buy a chiller. (Power usage? Expensive? Plumbing?) 3. Install small fans behind the tank to vent into the mudroom (noisy?) and then another, larger fan to vent from the mudroom to the garage. 4. Other ideas/concerns we haven't thought of? Thanks in advance, as always!

We're working along on our new 175g bowfront. We hung the lights last night and are hoping for our first freshwater test of the new plumbing tomorrow night! When we hung the lights (a 4 250w halide fixture that came with our tank) last night, we realized that things are going to heat up quickly in our tank (and that ballasts are LOUD and HEAVY monsters!). Question, therefore, for those of you who have them: 1. What are the pro's of chillers? (What brand is good?) 2. What are their con's? 3. How much power do they generally use? As much as our halide fixture, or more like a pump? 4. Can you plumb them using drilled returns, or do they need another pump to operate? While we're on this one, what kind of volume do you put through them?

Yes, we have an HOB filter running on copperband and a cannister filter on the fish tank. Our skimmer is on the coral/live rock system. ___________________________________________ Good thought, Chip, on putting in some water from the coral system to "freshen up" the fish tanks... though, we need to dilute that to 1.009 for the next few days, I guess... I don't think the tests are contaminated, Dave, since each test is comprised of little packets of chemicals that are made of foil and that we have to cut open, but they are old, so that could be it. We've determined to bite the bullet and settle down into steady, large water changes. We're over the two-week mark for hyposalinity treatment now, so we're bringing up three of the fish to 1.020 so we can take them to the LFS and get them off our hands for 1/3 value store credit. Just getting the Vlamingi tang out of our bioload will ease things significantly, we think. Thanks for all your replies!

As you may know, we've been struggling with holding tanks and, since Christmas, ich. As a result, on Christmas day, we did fresh water dips of all fish, and then moved them to in a 55g tank and 45g tank closed system with a skimmer, and immediately added copper, while moving all of our corals to a different tank, circulating with our bath tub of live rock with no filtration. After we added the copper, I read about hyposalinity treatment, so we decided to go that way instead. We stopped adding copper, figuring it would diminish with the water changes we'd need to make. We were careful not to get any copper water into the coral system... that's not where this story is headed. The new fish tanks were bare bottomed. For the first three to four days, we also did substantial (30%) water changes, slowly lowering the sg to 1.009. After that, we have been doing regular siphoning. we siphoned out 5% of the water while getting out the detritus (and, we hope, ich parasites) and replenished with new water. On Friday, our purple tang started swimming upside down. I suspected ammonia and we did a test. Here's where we are stumped. It's a 15 minute wait-and-see test after all regents are added. The test scale goes from light yellow to dark, warm green (not a blue green). Within a minute of the second regent being added, the test water turned green, then darker, blue green... like forest green. THEN, by 15 minutes and beyond, it was midnight blue. Naturally, we were alarmed after the first minute. We did a complete change of water over the next six hours, and separated the sick purple tang and our copperband (who still has stubborn ich parasites on her body) into a second, unconnected tank with a hob filter. The only filtration on the new 55g fish tank (with 6 large fish in it, plus a clown and a damsel). WE DID NOT RINSE the tank that had had copper, but we did use paper towel on it: it was dry. By Friday, we had only two thirds of each tank filled because we were out of mixed, warm salt water. On Friday night and on Saturday, we brought those tanks up to full: so we added 1/3 of the tank's volume to each, with clean salt water. We use an RO/DI unit for all this. Now... we tested this morning for ammonia; the one with six fish, within one minute of the second regent being added, began to turn a DARK blue; nothing like the yellow to green scale that the. On the tank with two fish (miracle of miracles, by the way, the purple tang has recovered nicely. He is swimming upright and taking nourishment! ), unconnected to the other, the test turned to a green that, while dark, was more consistent with the color scale for the test. Sorry for all the detail, but here are our real questions: 1. Does copper in the water/tank affect ammonia tests: could it explain the blueness of the test water? 2. If so, how do we accurately determine our ammonia levels, given the residual presence of copper? 3. If now, how in the world do we keep up with these ammonia levels? For now, we've just done a 70% water change... sigh. And the new tank is progressing

First thing I saw this morning was my purple tang looking REALLY sick. It was bobbing near the surface and turning belly up. For some reason that we don't yet understand, amonia was OFF the charts. They are in a two tank holding set-up and in hyposalinity for ich, so no rock, but we had the skimmer on them and were siphoning. I think that in the last two days, after we got the salinity down via water changes, we just siphoned and forgot amonia. :( Daily water changes will now commence for the duration, and we are hoping to bring our new tank on line by next weekend, if all goes well (phew!) which will mean that we can move corals and inverts in there at least, even though the fish still have a few weeks to go before they are safe. ANYWAYS, We spent four hours redoing all the water this morning, moving fish from tanks to buckets to tanks again, acclimating each time, etc. In the end the purple tang can swim for a bit right side up and has even begun eating. My question is this: has ANYONE ever had a fish live after it had started going belly up, or is this fishy done for, do you think?

You guys are great. THANKS!!! Time to go and read up while waiting for the ball to drop!

These are kind of newbie questions; first some background: Our pH was around 8.0 steadily (via pH monitor info) before we dismantled it. We were running lights on a sump on reverse photosynthesis theory. We were also running a calcium reactor then... We broke down that tank and set up our holding tanks for temp. use and the pH is down to around 7.5-8 during the day (info from said probe, which needs to stay wet) using the same water, but obviously not a complete system, and no calc reactor inline. Here are my questions. 1. What do we use to RAISE pH, generally speaking? We've never figured that out. 2. What does pH do? 3. How much does pH matter to corals? And, is there a difference in it mattering to SPS, LPS, or softies? 4. How much does it matter to my BTA? Happy New Year to everyone who sees this, and TIA for responses!

Thanks; that article was helpful! One week down; so far, haven't lost anyone... knock wood!

Hey, Dan... GREAT looking stuff. Question about the heaters and UV: are all those plumbed into one unit each? And, do you drop that heating unit into a sump, or does water flow thru it and heat? Inquiring minds want to know...

So, if one of my QT'd fish (the butterfly, of course) has white spots that aren't going away... whether they disappear or she dies... when does my countdown begin for "safe"? Is it from disappearance of outbreak or from appearance of same? We are running a UV on the QT tank system, and a skimmer, and have dipped said CB twice, but she's still infested. The tanks are bare of all other life: no rocks; mugs instead for hiding, some PVC and EggCrate, and the pumps. All other fish that were infested show NO signs. Would it help to add copper to hyposalinity, I wonder, to help the CB kick it?

LOL, Chip! (I just didn't want anyone to think Scott didn't HAVE a fix! Whether it works or not -- we'll see!) We are NOT handy enough to build a wooden replacement, so we're trying to make this "canopy" work for us. All I really NEED is the ability to swing it up for feeding. Scott's ingenious (imho) fix... Uncemented, it bowed a *little.* Cemented, it's rigid and light! Then, we need to hinge it to the wall... using the bracket/strips we hope, and T's attached to those ends you see... and a hollow PVC that will swing like a hinge. The PVC frame will rest ON the brackets, and the light fixture can hang FROM them. But, we're concerned about head room. It's about 10" all told to play with. So, we also need figure out if we can suspend the light from the PVC without melting it. Anyone know? Do these lights generate heat from on top, or mostly down into the tank? ALSO: Does anyone know how far above the plastic struts that cross the top of the Oceanic tank we can safely hang 4 250 halides and not melt them??? They do not hang DIRECTLY over the struts; these do not trisect the tank evenly. They form a larger midsection, with two smaller sections, one to each side of the center section. Thus, the two middle lights MOSTLY hang over water. Their EDGES hang over the plastic support struts. The two lights on the side hang dead center over the two side openings. SO, the question is: how far up do they need to be. And, while I'm on this, has anyone ever shielded them with something reflective, like aluminum foil or mirrors? I'm thinking that if I could reflect light, it might deflect heat too... TIA! Tisk. You shouldn't steal. This thread (and club) are all about sharing! So, borrow away! We REALLY liked how it worked for our bowfront 80: See other tank build thread

We do have a couple of engineering hurtles to cross yet... The first is our canopy. It isn't one, really. It's a shield that blocks the halide fixture so you're not blinded, but gee! I'm only 5' 2" and I can barely reach my hand over the edge of this tank to feed. Since I'm the main caretaker of the animals, I've been concerned about needing to REMOVE this canopy whenever I need to feed. It adds a good 10" to the height of the tank. It LOOKS good... here's someone else's picture of how it looks when in use... But it's completely flimsy plastic. It sits on the tank rim... here are a few shots from on top to show the problem... And then this GREAT light strip (halide) which we got essentially free (tank, stand, lights, canopy for $700 all told--did I mention a deal we couldn't refuse?) needs to be suspended above the tank somehow... Enter our idea: see if you think this will work: We have, in our display tank viewing room (quaintly called the grotto by Scott) strip/bracket bookshelves that look like this: We wonder if we can use longer brackets and strips to hang the light out over the tank, and then make a rigid PVC skeleton to hinge the canopy to the wall? Here are the bracket/strip combo: we think four will do it. And, in the next post, I'll put up pictures of Scott's ingenious PVC skeleton inside the canopy.