astroboy

I did this with my 29 and 75. Bought (online) 6 Silent Eagle 2000 computer fans. They sell for about $18 each, but they're extremely quiet.They also seeemed to cool the tank better than the half dozen other fans I tried; I suspect they have more laminar air flow which results in greater evaporation..... I glued a strip of wood along the back of the tank and attached them there with screws so that they were blowing straight down onto the water: 4 for the 75, 2 for the 29. I had it rigged so that they either came on when the lights did, or ran 24-7. They cool the light some, but the main thing is that they bring the temperature of the water down alot. Example: if the room temperature was around 83, the water temperature would be 79-81, even with all the lights and pumps going. Without the fans, the tank would be 88-90: bad news. Its a good idea to peel back the cover of the fan's workings and cover it with silicon to avoid corrosion. You'll want to have a reliable top off system since alot of water does get evaporated that way. I found that topping off with a diluted mix of kalkwasser really worked great. I never had any luck with one large fan blowing onto the lights or water or the sump. The key seemed to be a set of these silent Eagles spaced at even intervals along the back of the tank.

I agree with Dave's remarks, and would also add that old bulbs seemed to add to my problem. I had troubles with slim algae, and I think they were a result of inadequate skimming. I think all sorts of organics built up in my slime bed (4-6 inches), and even when I upgraded to better skimmers and a remote DSB the organics leaking out of the display sand bed was enough food to keep the slime algae going strong. I don't recommend antibiotics. I've used them and they're a temporary fix, at best, and years ago I lost some nice corals after one dose. Possibly coincidence. To be honest, the thing that I think works best, unless you're willing to wait a year for a better skimmer and an RSDB to kick in, is to siphon out all the old sand and rinse it until its clear. Let me make it clear, in my experience this works well to remove slime algae, but I could easily imagine it killing most of what's alive in one's tank. My point is that I think you'd need alot of water changes to remove slime algae, or else wait for a good number of months for a good skimmer and RSBD to kick in, if you're not willing to do a serious and dangerous cleaning of the sand bed (which I did, but I'm sure I was very lucky).

When I moved I set up an RSDB (29 gallon tank, RSDB: 5 gallon bucket with 18 inches of sand/mud, alot of flow over the top), and I've had zero nitrates, despite alot of corals and overfeeding the clowns. Based on a 75 I had with a DSB and RDSB, if you're underskimmed or whatever, you'll have alot of organics building up in the DSB which will take the RDSB perhaps a year to break down to the point where nitrates are zero. I recall Basser9 mentioning that he never does water changes,and has been running marine tanks for 20 years, and as I recall runs something like a 90 gallon with an RSDB with 16 inches in a 55 or 75 gallon tank. I must say, the notion of setting up a system that doesn't require water changes appeals to me. I'd sure like to hear more about Basser9's setup (hint hint) . Bottom line: I don't think I've ever heard anyone claim an RSDB did any harm (anyone??, Beuhler, Buehler?), and in my experience they seem to work quite well, especially if you start with a 'clean' sand bed in your display tank at the start.

My experience (FWIW): I had 75 gallon DSB heavily planted, running on a Precision Marine 50 for 18 months, then a Euroreef RS 80. Both inadequate skimmers for the tank, especially in retrospect. Things did pretty well, but I think I had alot of dissolved organics in the sandbed which resulted in alot of red slime algae on the sand. Nitrates were usually around 30. Got a used UV, and that certainly helped with water clarity, no question about that, and also possibly cut down on the recurrent slime alage a bit. Soon after the UV I set up a remote deep sand bed, which seemed to knock down the nitrate very gradually so possibly affected the slime alage too, which I'm sure at this point was feeding off all the organics that were leaching from the DSB. I had to move and tear down the tank before I was sure. I don't think the RSDB had completely kicked in (5 gallon bucket, about 18 inches of mud-sand). Bottom line: with inadequate skimming and nitrate removal, I think UV helped, without question made the water much much clearer. I can't tell there were any adverse effects, but I wasn't running an optimal tank so no doubt there was no shortage of bacteria of all sorts. I now have a 29 gallon, DSB with RDSB, not so heavily planted, running on the euroreef 80 (rated for 80 gallons for a moderate load, as I recall. I've read more than once on wamas threads that you should use a skimmer with double the nominal capacity of what you have. I humbly agree). No problems with slime aglae, although the activated carbon still leaves the water a little yellow, since I'm a slacker as regards water changes. Other than clarity I don't think the UV would help and I haven't bothered with it. As an aside, the RSBD really seems to work, nitrates have been zip for4-6 months now, although I think the overpowered skimmer also helps there. I guess if you had an optimal tank adding the UV *might* kill enough beneficial bacteria to be a problem, but that wouldn't affect an RSDB, which I recommend 100%. I can't imagine they do any harm anyway... If your tank is less than optimal, I think UV would be a definite asset, in my experience. The water will look better, anyway.

Merrifield Nursery in Dunn Loring generally has mag flakes from Dead Sea Works, which according to WAMAS discussions are pure MgCl. I've used it for six months now with no problems at all.

My ten year old (Kevin) and eight year old (Kyle) both said they "enjoyed your talk and learned alot!" Their actual words! Exactly what i would say too! Thanks!

FWIW, two years ago over the holidays I was gone for 10 days and turned the heat in the house down to 50. I forgot that I had unplugged the heater. When I got back the tank temperature was about 55 and I imagine had been there for at least a week. However, nearly everything survived. I was careful to bring the tank up to 80 degrees over a few days. On the other hand, with the same tank I lost power for 12 hours one day while I was at work, and the pH dropped from 8.1 to the low 7's, presumably due to the buildup of CO2 in the water. I'm sure depletion of oxygen was a major factor also. I lost 4-5 corals and most of my inverts. So, based on my experience, (which I realize might not be applicable to all situations!) I think flow is the main thing with a power outage if you have to choose between that and temperature. During another power outage which lasted four days, (during which everything went into coolers to a house which still had heat), I noticed that the same tank (75 gallons) lost between 5-7 degrees per day; the house temperature went down to 40 within the first 24 hours. The tank eventually bottomed out at 40, and a dwarf angel that I wasn't able to get out of the tank survived and lived for another couple years until it was eaten by an overgrown crab. So... it takes a day or two for a sizeable tank to really cool alot. Having said all this, I now have a power inverter and a car battery.... and no power outage yet.

Over one Christmas I was gone for 10 days, turned the heat in the house down to 55, and forgot that I had unplugged the heater. Except for one torch, everything surprised pretty much intact, including fish. I had sarcophytons, torches, bubbles, shrooms, a scolymia, and a few sps. I did lose a couple more corals within the next four weeks, very likely as a result of the cold. But still, not nearly as bad as I would have thought. Just my experience. Possibly you're in better shape than you think as regards cold. My guess is that your big worry will be pH, due to accumulation of CO2 (not to mention depletion of O2) in the water. I had the power go out once for 12 hours when I was away and lost alot of inverts and a couple of corals, and expected every living thing to die. It was a heavily populated tank. I think the pH had gone from about 8.1 to the low 7's in that time. Mark

I used to run two Precision Marine HOTs, supposedly OK to up a 50 gallon tank, on a heavily populated 29 gallon. The total volume of skimmate seemed to be the same using just one or both. I think what was happening was that that particular model would remove bad stuff in the water down to a concentration of X, after which it wouldn't pull any more out. At that point, using two or three skimmers wouldn't have made any difference. I had some so-so problems with water quality even with two skimmers. Possibly, with better skimmers, the concentration would go from X with one skimmer, to X/2 with two..... I think one would be much better off with one superior skimmer, rather than two or three so-so skimmers.

Greetings all, In a cluster of duncans, I lost about half the heads. New tissue is growing into the dead heads and in a few weeks I expect each head in the cluster will have a live duncan growing in it. On another cluster I lost everything, and since there's no living duncans in physical contact with it it's remained dead. I was wondering if I'd have any luck snipping off a half or a third of a live duncan and attaching it to the dead cluster. Does anyone have any experience whether the tissue would survive and grow? Thanks, Mark

Mark Quigley (astroboy) mfquigley moneymoney 2403 Drexel St. Vienna, VA 221880 703 876 6296 (this contact info is new)]\ mfquigley@wisc.edu (same as before) Kevin Quigley Kyle Quigley (both are grade school students). 2403 Drexel St. Vienna, VA 22180 703-876-6296 m2k2r2quigley@yahoo.com (email shoulfd be the same as before) Haven't gotten the cards yet, no rush. The boys really enjoy the meetings, and not just because of the schnaks!

See my take on microbubbles, (for what its worth) on the microbubbles thread. My be nonsense or coincidence, but it worked for me...

Well, there's so much junk in my sump a picture might be worth one word, instead of a thousand. Let me explain more clearly. The RS 80 has an output pipe, which you're supposed to cut to be above the water line of the sump. As I understand it, from the euroreef website, if the opening of the output pipe is below the level of the sump water a back pressure builds up, since the outgoing bubbles/water have to force they way to the surface making adjusting the level of the foam within the skimmer alot more finicky. If you cut the output pipe so that its an inch above the sump water level, you get noise from dripping. I have four small children, I don't need any more noise. So I cut the end of the output pipe at about 45 degrees, so that one edge is below the level of the sump,and one edge is a couple inches higher. The water tends to run down the "deep" end into the sump water with alot less noise. Conversely, there's a large part of the opening exposed to the air above the sump: hence no back pressure. Problem is, still alot of microbubbles, enough to be a pain. I actually did two things, only the first of which I mentioned in the earlier post, since I think the second is small change. 1: I put a plastic cylindrical container (ie, tupperware or a truncated peanut butter jar) so that the output tube emptied into it, rather that directly into the sump. (As things stand now, is sitting on to of the pump, with no apparent ill effects). The top of the plastic PB jar is around half an inch above the level of the sump water. It seems to be that all the bubbles from the output pipe, which are mostly from the foam inside the skimmer,"pop" in the PB jar. By the time the water has overflowed into the sump, all the "carbonation" if you will, has worked its way out. Sounds too good to be true, but by gosh it seems to work. 2: I was getting alot of racket from the two Maxi jet 1200s that returned the water from the sump to the main tank, and also pumped water thru the GFO and activated carbon BRK reactors I have (which I highly recommend). I took some of that black/gray plastic foam used for packing computer stuff and enclosed both maxi jets in it using cable ties. The reduction in noise was *amazing*. (Not sure why, the pumps and impellors were both brand new with hardly any vibration, but oh well...) In addition, for the sump return pump I superglued a quarter inch thick slice of foam rubber to the end of the covering foam, not directly to the pump intake. The basic idea is that the maxi jet was covered in foam rubber: nothing airtight by any means, but enough so that 95%of it was covered. That was mainly to cut down on vibration noise being transferred to the sump, that is, no hard plastic was in contact with the sump walls. Of course, this 95 % coverage also covered up the pump intake (sort of), but let me emphasize: there was a half inch gap between the intake and the foam rubble. There were enough openings for water to be sucked in by the pump: I was just trying to cushion the pump from the sump sides and bottom. I did experiment a bit and here's what I think: 1) the flow from the output pipe into the container eliminates 90% of the bubbles, or at least has the effect that the water isn't so saturated with air that bubbles form via cavitation in the turn Maxi jet pump. 2) The 95% coverage from the foam rubble definitely doesn't significantly reduce the water going into the maxi jet. However the foam probably does collect a few more bubbles, but I'm guessing here, really. I haven't tried taking the foam off to see what will happen, although the bubbles were greatly reduced by the PB jar, prior to me adding the foam. So, the bottom line is, trim the output from the RS-80 at a diagonal so part of it is open to air, second, have it empty into a small reservoir again, so that part of the diagonal is open to air, and see what happens. The resivoir should be an inch, perhaps, above the sump water level. As a second step, cover all the pumps in the sump with foam rubber, leaving some "breathing space". It will cut down on vribration noise anyway. Does it help help with bubbles, yeah probably a little bit, and cable ties and foam rubble are cheap so its worth a try. Any questions, send me a email: mfquigley@wisc.edu or call at 703 876 6296. It would be nice to find a cheap way to get rid of this mcrobubble problem. I'd be really interested to see if anything you tried worked... Mark

Hello all, I'd been having trouble with a nuisance-level amount of microbubbles for as long as I've had my set up. Their source in the main tank is the return from the sump (not surprisingly). I sealed all connections to make sure that wasn't the problem, no luck. Finally, just as an experiment, I directed the outflow from my in sump skimmer (RS-80) into a cylindrical plastic container with the edge half an inch above the water level in the sump. The output from the RS-80 is supposed to be above the water level in the sump: I have my output pipe cut off at an angle so that part of the opening is above the water level, thereby avoiding a sort of back pressure in the output which make the skimmer alot more finicky to adjust. (Due to something like surface tension, the output water sticks to the end of the pipe that is below the sump water level, reducing the noise a bit). So, the basic setup is that the output empties into the plastic container, where it overflows into the sump. The output pipe is cut an at angle, so there's 'open air' at the end, even though the water level in the container is a bit higher than the sump. The microbubbles went away. My guess is that they tend to disperse in the plastic container, so when the water reaches the sump (and return pump) it has a greatly reduced number of bubbles, or perhaps perhaps it's just quite so aerated, thereby avoiding cavitation bubbles in the pump return water to the main tank. Anyway, for my particular set up it worked great, your mileage may vary.... It's a simple thing to try, anyway.

I have a pair of Precision Marine hang on skimmers. They're rated for 50 gallons. I live in Vienna. Give me a call at 703-876-6296. Mark

What does Jos say about salt brands? I'd be really interested to hear.... I've also wondered about doing water changes. There's someone in WAMAS whose had a marine tank for a decade or two, whose name I can't recall and whose posts I can't find, who seems quite knowledgeable and claims that with a remote deep sand bed and a little vodka water changes aren't necessary, as long as you put in a few common sense additives such as kalkwasser, etc. Activated carbon removes alot of the organics and the alleopaths (or whatever the slime the corals secrete is called) and skimming and the RDSB remove the rest. Trace minerals that are depleted are replaced by the dissolving of the sand bed over time. By not doing water changes you avoid the accumulation of heavy metals. It would be interesting to hear Jos's rationale about not doing water changes..... The notion of having a system that's well tuned enough that you don't have to replace 10% of it each week has a real appeal to me. By the way, does anyone know where Larry who used to work at Roozen's is now? My impression is that the place was better kept when he was there. I don't think one person (Jos) can keep such a large system running at 100% and you'd have to look long and hard to find someone with Larry's experience and knowledge, IMO.

Just to clarify.... You're saying eight T5 bulbs would be OK for LPS? I've read warnings here and there (not on WAMAS, though, and mostly from 3-4 years ago) that its pretty easy to fry your LPS with T5s. I'm not sure I believe that, since you don't hear about people zapping their LPS (except maybe mushrooms) with metal halides, which are quite a bit brighter, so I wonder if 8x54= 432 watts of T5 would be over the top. Conversely, would 4 or 6 T5 bulbs be enough to color up the acros (located at the top of the tank?). I realize that comparing the wattage of T5s to MH or NO is like comparing apples and oranges. Unfortunately, I haven't come across any calculations or measurements that show the relation. Hence my post, hoping that people with experience have some ideas of what's OK. As an aside, I have a couple clusters of duncans which I moved near the top of the tank (360W compact fluorescents, 75 gallons), and they just don't like to open up very much. I had them at the bottom of a 29 gallon with 160W CF, and they seemed only more or less OK. The current in both tanks where they were was at best moderate: torches/bubbles next door did great. Does anyone know, am I giving the duncans too much light? As I recall, one cluster grew like weeds when it was exposed to direct sunlight for a couple hours a day. I always thought that duncans were pretty hardy, and my other corals are doing fine, so I wonder if I'm overlooking something.... Is the current that a torch would be OK with be too much for duncans? Last of all, why the Tek? Just general quality? Does anyone have any opinions on Catalina aquarium retrofits? I've found their quality to be reasonable, a decent bang for the bulb, especially if you put silicone over all the connections between the wiring... Which perhaps is to 'darn with faint praise' as Shakespeare would put it... Thanks in advance for the help!! Mark

I'm upgrading my 75 to a 90. Currently I have 360W of compact fluorescents and while the sps have survived OK, they haven't grown all that fast and are all a brownish color. I'm thinking about doing a retrofit to: 4 or 6 T5 bulbs, and 2 T12 actinics. I've read on another thread that I can't locate now that T12s were better as regards actinic lighting than T5s. Does anyone have any experience or opinions on this? Also, would I be better off with 4 or 6 T5s? I don't want to bake the LPS and shrooms I have. If I used 2 T12s for actinic, would I still want to have a couple of the T5s be actinic? Thanks! Mark

I'm upgrading my 75 to a 90. Currently I have 360W of compact fluorescents and while the sps have survived OK, they haven't grown all that fast and are all a brownish color. I'm thinking about doing a retrofit to: 4 or 6 T5 bulbs, and 2 T12 actinics. I've read on another thread that I can't locate now that T12s were better as regards actinic lighting than T5s. Does anyone have any experience or opinions on this? Also, would I be better off with 4 or 6 T5s? I don't want to bake the LPS and shrooms I have. If I used 2 T12s for actinic, would I still want to have a couple of the T5s be actinic? Thanks! Mark

Hello all. I've had an acropora for four to six months now, under CF lights but growing at a decent rate, as are other acros in the tank. Water parameters are OK, haven't done anything that would stress the corals lately. Just in the last few days I noticed the tissue had died on a few of the arms, leaving the white skeleton, and was advancing 2-3 mm/day. From the reading I've done, seems to be white plague or white band disease, possibly caused by bacteria. I tried a dig in a solution of 40 drops of lugols/gallon for 15 minutes. Just wondering if anyone has had any experience with this? Does it work? Would I be better off to just remove the acro from the tank, rather than try to cure it? What are the chances of other acro being infected... Thanx!

A long time ago I saw an aquarium stand with a "modern cherry" finish which looked really nice. I'm moving, so I'm taking this chance to move from a 75 to a 90 gallon tank, and I might as well change the stand also. Does anyone know where I might find a stand with a modern cherry or cherry finish, or what LFS might be able to order one? Thanks!

Look up the resistance of your fans. If you're hooking more than three or four in parallel you'll almost certainly need an adapter that will supply around .8-1 amp in current for them to run at full speed, otherwise they might just barely turn over. You'll likely need to order such an adapter online but they run only about $20. I've been quite pleased with Sharkoon 2000 Silent Eagle fans. They're for computers (80 mm in diameter, I think there's a 120 mm model), but I have six wired in parallel on my 75 (360 watts of CF lights and the usual number of pumps in the sump) and they'll easily cool the water to about 2-3 degrees below the room temperature. Without them, the tank runs 5-7 degrees above the room temperature (over say a 70-82 degree range) which turned out to be an expensive lesson on what my corals would tolerate. They don't move alot of air compared to many other fans, but they're *extremely* quiet and effective. I think their design results in air flow that is either more turbulent (or laminar?) than conventional fans, so even though the amount of air moved is less it seems to cool the water more efficiently. I tried using conventional computer fans and an AC fan from Radio Shack, and there's just no comparison in either noise or cooling effect. Sharkoon all the way, say I. Arrgghh. I run the fans so that they blow directly down onto the water. In the original setup they were about an inch below the bulbs and an inch above the water. Because of "bounce back" (ground effect? any aerodynamic engineers reading this?) from the water and hood the air flow was weaker than it should have been. I changed things so that the space between the fans and water/bulbs was about 2.5 inches and it works great now.

Saw this on cmas-md.org. Not many decent stores on the east side of DC. Got a couple of really nice torches from them a few months back for alot less than they were worth. Nice people, no complaints at all. Sorry to see them go. SCALES Tropical Fish Warehouse will be closing its doors at the end of the month. The principals have decided to close the retail front and focus on our service and custom installation activities. Everything has got to go! All retail goods and livestock are 50% off. All store fixtures, tanks, equipment, etc. are for sale. There's a lot of stuff here to be sold! See the web for details. We have a ton of tanks and other equipment that would be great for display systems, breeding/propagation systems, sumps, refugia and much more. Sincere thanks to everyone who has supported us over the years and we hope you can come by and take advantage of our liquidation to further your own pursuit in the hobby. http://www.scales-tfw.com

When it was in the 90s a couple weeks ago my tank reached 93 degrees. Lost a real cutie of a hammer I'd had for three years which had grown from four heads to about 30, but no other casualties. Except, one set of duncan heads has bleached itself. The other duncans in the group have retained their color and are well extended, this one set is a light greenish-white and not well extended at all. As I said, its been something like two weeks and the heads are still alive, but so far don't really seem to be improving. I feed once a week with Coral Frenzy and since the meltdown fed once with bits of raw scallop which it seemed to take OK but didn't seem to help either.... Do anyone have any advice: 1- How hardy are duncans, what are the chances the heads will come back? 2- Is there anything I can do (other than water quality and temperature) that will help? Will feeding them help? Thanks! Mark

I've asked around about this but haven't been able to locate such a thing. I'm looking for a gizmo that has one inlet (110V) and two 110V outlets. One outlet would be connected to my heater, and one to the fans that cool my tank. What I would like is that when the heater is running, the fans turn off. When the heater turns off, the fans turn on...... Does anyone know if such a thing exists, or if a DIY exists to built it yourself? Thanks in advance.....