Origami

Jan, are you mixing up your salt water and aging it a day or two before putting it in your tank? Normally, freshly mixed stuff can be rather caustic and needs to air out a bit in order for it to stabilize.

LOL. "Let's get in the car, star. We're gonna take a little ride."

I did a search and came up with this piece of history. http://www.garf.org/news3p2.html Towards the end, you'll see that Thomas Vaughn successfully raised certain coral species in captivity as early as 1908. (I was surprised, too!) This is the guy you're probably thinking about, though: Lee Chin Eng. Here's something about him: http://www.garf.org/news6p3.shtml#REEF

Jan, that's definitely an asterina star. They multiply by fission and there have been inconsistent reports in the hobby over the years of them becoming predatory and eating corals and zoas. It's unclear to me if the source of the inconsistency is species related or if there are other triggers at work. Even within this forum, we've had people attest to their harmless nature only to report later on that they caught one causing damage. Personally, I remove them when I spot them rather than to risk an infestation and then having them turn on me!

Refractometer: Big thumbs up. pH meter: Mixed feelings on this. Titration test kits can give you pretty good results. A meter is most valuable to me only if you keep it calibrated and use it often.

A meter is nice, but I've found the automatic data logging capability of my Neptune Systems AC3 to be essential to stabilizing my system because it let me relate the readings to the scheduled events (lighting, top-off, etc.) that were going on in my system. You can get a decent handheld meter for about $100 new. An AC3 or an ACJR will set you back a little bit (to a lot - depending upon configuration) more but gives you much, much more visibility, capability, and control into and over your system in my opinion.

You probably need to update your pH range (79 is just a tad high ) Typical pH Range: 8.15 to 8.25 (0.10 pH units diurnal variation is typical, though the center point can slowly vary over weeks) Total system size: 180g display, 300 g total Kalk via ATO using a peristaltic pump (delivering at a rate of 1 liter per hour) (35 minutes on / 25 minutes off operating 24 hours a day, or 583 ml per hour of kalwasser), calcium reactor, fresh (outside) air intake on skimmer Reverse lighting on macroalgae fuge and on frag tank Lighting: 7 x 80W T5 + 1 x 160W VHO (720W total) over display, 2 x 250W MH (pendant) over frag tank

(musically) Celebrate good times, come on! Oh, let the good times roll.... I feel another sale coming on! LOL. Nice one, Johnny.

Temperature Range: 79 to 79.5 Have Chiller?: No Size of tank: 180 display / 300 in system Lighting (type and wattage): 7 x 80W T5 + 1 x 160W VHO over display (720W total); 2 x 250W MH over frag tank (reverse photo period) Predominant type of corals kept (LPS/SPS/equal): SPS My system is in my finished basement which helps me to avoid using a chiller. When I first got my AC3, the logging function helped me to determine that running the lighting over both the frag tank and display was causing wider temperature fluctuations (2-3 degrees per day worst case) than I desired. Putting the frag tank on a reverse photoperiod allowed me to stabilize the temperature as reported above.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29417678/ AP Wire, updated 7:48 p.m. ET, Thurs., Feb. 26, 2009 SANTA MONICA, Calif. - Staff at the Santa Monica Pier Aquarium say the trickster who flooded their offices with sea water was armed. Eight-armed, to be exact. They blame the soaking they discovered Tuesday morning on the aquarium's resident two-spotted octopus, a tiny female known for being curious and gregarious with visitors. The octopus apparently tugged on a valve and that allowed hundreds of gallons of water to overflow its tank. Aquarium spokeswoman Randi Parent says no sea life was harmed by the flood, but the brand new, ecologically designed floors might be damaged by the water.

Jan, you should start another thread with your questions. (Mixed water can last a while - especially in the dark as it will grow stuff if left in the light. I've kept water mixed up for months: Use a little, mix more in the same can, use more the next week, and so on.)

Not sure what the problem is but have you may want to consider some big water changes to get whatever's in there out of there.

I have an old no-name CPR-style (CS100-like) overflow with a 1" output that I'm not using. It's in Ashburn, however. I could even bring it by work in Herndon, tomorrow, if needed. You're welcome to use it. (BTW, it's got a 600 gph capacity.)

Bizarre! http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29392319/ "The malady afflicts at least 50,000 people a year worldwide

I just realized that you (amc23) said that you already had a lighting system with 2x250W MH + 4x54W T5. I misread that as a question between one or the other. In re-reading it, it looks like you have a pretty decent light already to get started with and that SPS is definitely within your reach.

Wow. Thanks. It's probably my longest, too.

Alex, where are you located anyway?

I use mostly flake, but occasionally add frozen commercial preparations (rinse first to reduce phosphate impact), pellets, and frozen home made foods. I've not bought stuff from Whole Foods, but if it's on the counter, it's probably alright. I'll tell you, though, I was once in an Asian grocery (right next to Marine Scene as it were) and found that they had 1 pound bags of mixed seafood. It had fish, shrimp, squid, mussels, crab ... a bunch of stuff. I wound up buying a couple of bags of it and using it as the base for some home made fish food using basic recipes that can be found here and in other forums. I have an Eheim feeder that I picked up from BRK. I've been very happy with it whenever I've used it. I only use it if I'm going to be away for 3 or 4 days or longer. For shorter trips, I just feed a little more heavily a day or two before, and resume feeding upon my return. Look out. It's easy to overfeed. I would not feed more than the fish will consume in 3-5 minutes. If at the shorter end of this time, you might want to feed them twice an hour or more apart. This is just an opinion. Watch your water quality and algae situation - that's where overfeeding will show itself. Unless you have much in the way of corals or shell-producing organisms, you may not have much of a need to dose if you're performing regular water changes. Kalkwasser is a balanced additive. That is, it delivers a balanced amount of calcium and alkalinity (carbonate/bicarbonate) to your system. These are required for the formation of calcium carbonate skeletons in corals and other invertebrates. Measure and track your alkalinity over several weeks and you'll see whether or not your additions are in line with, fall short of, or are in excess of consumption. This will change over time as you get more in your tank. If you find yourself falling short of matching demand, alternatives include running all of your top off through a kalk stirrer, dosing two-part, and running a calcium reactor. There are other approaches less used in this country (the Balling method), too. There are brands and non-brands that can give you good performance. If you want to get something prepackaged, drop dschflier a PM and see where you can pick up some of his kalk. He's a local guy just now expanding his business. There are other options that you can research. You can use a create a slurry and just pour it into a high flow area every morning (I've never tried it but overheard Anthony Calfo describe this method as simple and more than adequate); you can manually dose more slowly; you can use a drip doser; you can use a peristaltic pump; or, you can dose it as part of an automatic top off system, running all your top off water through a kalk stirrer, for example. There are many ways of getting it into your system. Be careful, kalk is caustic and kalk overdoses happen. Before you start dosing kalk, make sure that you understand the risks and at least give some thought to mitigating the risk of an overdose. (An overdose is something like accidentally dumping a quart of kalk into your system over a couple of hours when you'd intended to dose that amount over months of time. This scenario is more likely when something goes awry in an automated system.) Most of us don't dose iodine at all. If you're performing regular water changes, you are in all likelihood just fine. As a general rule, if you're going to dose anything, you need to test for it. The best advice to start with is, if you haven't already, join WAMAS as a paid member. It will be the best $20 you'll ever spend in this hobby as you'll make it up in your first buy of equipment or frags from some member. The second piece of advice is read, read, read! There's a lot of science in this hobby. Get a handle on water chemistry, important parameters, and the biology of the organisms that you want to keep. Get an understanding of the equipment options that support maintaining water quality, water chemistry, temperature and lighting. Don't expect lighting and water quality maintenance to be cheap. Expensive mistakes can be made if you don't match your needs to your purchase. (It's easy to buy something that's cheap and undersized in an effort to save money, only to find that a few weeks later you're needing to upgrade the equipment.) Another piece of advice is to get to know your system. If you watch it every day, you'll begin to notice the changes. Sometimes the changes are good (such as growth), sometimes you'll see things that are indicators that something is out of sorts (retracted polyps, tissue death, algal blooms, etc.). If you "listen" carefully, you're tank will "talk" to you. When I started out, I tested way too much (at least once a day) and tested about everything that I could measure. You'll find that once you're in tune with your system, you'll test far less. As for lighting, both T5's and MH lighting are options. How deep is your tank? That will at least provide some indicator of whether 250's are going to be adequate (you'll also have to consider what you want to grow). Make sure that you consider heat loading your system with your lights. 4x54 T5 lighting might be a bit undersized for SPS. I'll leave it at that for now. I'm sure you'll get lots of feedback on your questions. Again, though, the BEST FIRST ADVICE is to join WAMAS. I'll guarantee you, it's an investment that you won't regret.

Does it behave the same way with warm water, Steve?

You become an engineer. My wife would kill me, that's what. Let's be cheap about it and assume it's 0.20 per foot. That's a little more than a half-million dollars in tubing and not quite 12 tons of aragonite sand. Group buy?

Yes. I physically hooked my two subsystems (the display and the fish room) together but with the valves between them closed. Then, I opened the valves just a little bit to allow the water in the two systems to begin to slowly mix. In essence, it was just a large scale acclimation. It was important for me, however, to get salinity, temperature and pH matched as closely as possible before I began that process.

You would need slow flow through the tubing for it to work as an 'effective' denitrator since these denitrator designs work by creating an anaerobic area deep inside the tubing. Without that flow, I think, diffusion is the only action that you would have to move nitrates into the anaerobic zone and this diffusion would be extremely slow. Without that flow, you've only got the surface area of the tubing in contact with what is essentially static water. Let's compare that surface area with sand in a deep sand bed which also acts by diffusion. Doing a little math: Assuming that your air line is the standard 1/4 inch stuff that has a 4 mm inside diameter and that this surface area is essentially smooth. The surface area inside 100 meters of the tubing is pi*4 mm * 100,000 mm = 400,000 square mm. Let's assume that half of this area is anaerobic (it's probably less than that, but I'm just simplifying). So, 200,000 square mm is anaerobic (where denitrifying action can occur). Let's now assume that you have a grain of aragonite sand (density 2.83 grams / cubic centimeter) and that it's a cube shape, 1 mm per side. The six faces of that sand, assuming that they're smooth give you 6 square mm of surface area for bacteria. Thus, it takes 200,000 / 6, or 33,333 grains of sand (or less than 100 grams dry ... about 5.5 cubic inches) to give you the same surface area that is available in the 100 meters of tubing. Again, this is for the pure diffusion case. As you can see, it looks like it's not a very good trade volume-wise.

As long as you've aged or aerated your new water for a day or so (so it's not so caustic), Forrest, I think you'll be fine. See if you can't match your pH, temperature, and salinity between the two before you tie them together so you don't knock the fauna for a loop, triggering a cycle. That's a bit of extra margin that should make this go quickly. Here's another approach that I used: When I tied my recently set-up 180 to my sump system which has about another 120 gallons in it, I opened ball valves between the two bodies of water so that i had an acclimation time that lasted several hours.

Not sure what you mean. 14K bulbs will give you some moderate "pop" to your colors as it will help some of the colors in some corals to fluoresce.

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