astroboy

Redid the move from SW to FW, pH monitor was off by 2, perhaps it's just my probe or meter but I thought I'd mention it.

Is it just me? I calibrated my pinpoint pH meter two days ago, read 8.2 in the reef tank which is within .1 of what it had read before (for weeks). I moved it to a 60 gallon barrel in which I mixed RODI water (ppm=0) with Equilibrium (3dkH) and seachem acid & alkalinity buffer to get a pH of 7.1, as measured by the pinpoint monitor. Left it there for a day, moved it to the reef tank, and now it measures 9.5. I had added some BRS soda ash to up alkalinity a bit, and that has raised pH from about 8 to 8.5, but 9.5?? Since this has happened twice, and since everything the reef tank looks fine, I'm guessing the monitor is at fault. I'm wondering if this a 'normal' occurrence in switching for SW to FW and back, or perhaps my probe is bad, or some other problem specific to my monitor.... Some online comments say you can do the switch, others say there's a chance there could be issues but no reasonable explanation why. Anyway, has someone else experienced this? Second point, this is more of a FW observation, about three years ago Fairfax county starting putting chloramine in the water. I figured that like chlorine it would evaporate but it seems like it hangs around more or less forever. I would top off my FW tanks with tap water and it never did any harm, I thought, but then I started losing fish here and there. Hence the move to RODI with Equilibrium. I also lost two elegances I had for years when my RODI went to 7ppm (undetected). I think now that was due to chloramine slipping thru the RODI process as opposed to a less than optimal RODI itself. BRS has a discussion on this. I did use Prime last year for a water change on my daphnia colony which was wiped out the next day. Prime is supposed to remove chloramines but I suspect that's not entirely true, even though my el cheapo test kits claimed no chlorine/chloramine. Just thought I'd mention it in case anyone is not aware of the switch to chloramine.

Thanks! I'm just wonder if someone could say "I've had 100 cherubs and never had any problems". I've had a few dwarf angels that are supposed to be 50-50 but they've all been good citizens. Anyway, if I do get a cherub I'll keep it in QT for a month with some expendables and see if they end up as lunch.

Thanks. I moved it a few days ago, hopefully that will work.

I've got two fox corals I've had for six or eight months. Recently, a hammer coral has grown enough that it's sometimes in contact with one of them which is looking pretty bad: the whole coral is dying off, not just the side near the hammer. The other, which is out of range of anything is, is more or less OK. I've had problems with alkalinity which I'm fixing which perhaps contributes. Anyway, does anyone know anything about hammer vs. fox allelopathy? Thanx! Mark

I'm thinking about getting a cherub angel (again) had one 15 years ago, stunning fish, and it never picked at corals (LPS) at all. I'm wondering if anyone in the club has any first hand experience about it *really* being reef safe or not... I'm not sure I trust everything I read on the internet but I've always gotten good information from WAMAS members! Just in passing, around that time my house lost power for four days during winter and aquarium temps got down to 49 degrees for 24 hours. I was able to move all the corals to a warm house when the tank started to cool but I couldn't snag the cherub. But it lived for at least six months afterwards with no ill effects that I could tell until a brittle star had half of it for lunch (unpleasant surprise). So, apparently at least some tropical marine fish will tolerate those temps for a short time, FWIW. Thanks to WAMAS I've since built a back up power system which has worked great. Thanks, Mark

Thanks. I hadn't seen anything online one way or the other....

Anyone have experience with this? I have a 90 gallon, the present lemon peel is quite peaceable and has no taste for corals. I'd like to add another...

This is excellent information, thanks!

I'm wondering if chloramine might be causing problems I've had over the past 2-3 years and am wondering if anyone has any insights. On the Vienna town website it says they, and Fairfax county, normally use chloramine in their water as opposed to chlorine. Not sure when this happened but I found out about it only a few weeks ago, prior to that I assumed they used chlorine. As we all know you can evaporate chlorine out easily the reading I've done says that the only ways to deal with chloramine are RO/DI or tap water conditioners that will take it out specifically. It seems unlikely to me that chloramine would last more than a week or two in circulated water but I can't find any reliable information. Does anyone know? I keep daphnia for food, which are extremely sensitive to chemicals. The one time I used tap water conditioner (and let it sit for two days) the entire colony died within hours. Just to avoid hassle I'd prefer to use water exposed to air and circulated for a few days, but my daphnia colonies have never done well and other than possible overfeeding I wonder if remaining chloramines are a problem. I often use used aquarium water which seems OK, but the colonies still don't seem to do that great. I have a 90 gallon freshwater tank planted mainly with amazon swords. Despite root tabs and CO2 and good lighting they decline over time. I do frequent water changes. Chloramines? I also can't keep angelfish alive although everything else does fine. I have good filtration, sump and all that. As regards saltwater, two years ago I slowly lost alot of corals I'd had for years. I think the MH lighting I had had become defective and things did do a bit better with the the LED replacement but some corals have still done badly. Water parameters are OK. I had elegance corals for five years (they were part of the die-off, but did great before that) and the newest one I got, tank raised, after two months is now showing strain. Long story short, I put in new 1 mm carbon blocks, 5 mm sediment filter, RO/DI media, made few hundred gallons of RODI, and my in line TDS meter shows 2 ppm now. Input TDS is about 175. Seems like things should last alot longer than that. Sediment filter looks almost brand new.I have been using just well-packed cat ion resin which I now understand is less than optimal and perhaps explains the bad TDS even though only a tiny amount has changed color. Could it be that chloramines are getting thru? This weekend I'll be switching to cation-anion-mixed bed deionization resin which is supposed to be superior. Anyone have any experience with it?

I'd like to buy a few handfuls of cheato, is anyone going to bring any to the meeting?

Hi Dave, I'd like to sell a skimmer and a sump. Are there any steps to take before hand, or do I just show up with price tag, so to speak?

Well, I soaked the whole thing in CLR for 16 hours after which it worked just fine. I'm sort of surprised since it looked clean before the first soak (1 hour) and even cleaner, if that was possible afterwards. Very strange. There must have been some buildup of something that was hard to see with the naked eye.

I've had it for seven months worked fine until this evening. The impeller and interior of the pump are clean, impeller turns nicely, this still happened after a soak in bleach and then CLR. Same thing happens when the float switch is turned off, or when it's turned on and the float is in the "keep pumping" position. I hooked it up to a different Octo controller and the same thing happens. This second controller came with a VarioS-2S skimmer pump. Does anyone know if the different VarioS pumps use the same controller? They look the same but on the back they have a number: C 066404 for the VarioS 6, and C069200 for the VarioS-2S. Not sure if this is a model number or just some sort of serial number.... I also switched out all the cables from the two controllers/pumps. No difference, a few turnovers and that's it. One thing. It turns over (and then stops) when I plug the power cable into the controller. If I turn on the on/off button nothing happens regardless of the cables & controllers I'm using. I do see a spark when I plug the power cable into the controller and offhand I would think that was a problem but the pump still fails with the second controller, with no spark. Perhaps the jack on the first isn't working so well. All this seems to indicate the pump itself is at fault but I can't think of what kind of hardware (solenoid & rotor?) would turn over a few times and then stop, when everything is clean. Sometimes it turns over a few times more than others but for never more than a second or two. Any ideas of what the problem could be? I'm really puzzled here.