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astroboy

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Posts posted by astroboy

    pepper smell in water, OK to use?

    in General Discussion

    This past week I put some frogspawn frags in a 10 gallon filled with salt water that had sat in the barrel for a week. They look fine, so I guess the concentration of disgusting pepper is low enough for me to use it in my display tank.

     

    I was thinking yesterday about how I talked with Bob Fenner  about coral allelopathy after a WAMAS talk, and it occurred to me if corals could put up with each other's poisons more or less OK they shouldn't be put out by pepper smell. I'm very sorry to hear just now that he passed. He was the real deal. A gentleman and a scholar, those words describe him better than anything else. He'll be missed for a long long time by those who knew him and the reefing world in general. 

    pepper smell in water, OK to use?

    in General Discussion

    1 hour ago, BtmDweller said:

    My 50 gallon barrels had rotten olives sitting in them for a couple years. I cleaned them with bleach and rinsed thoroughly. I use bleach to wash filter socks as well. If I remember correctly there may have still been a faint odor when I had first used them. But very faint if at all.

    Sounds like we got our barrels from the same place. I don't want to even try to imagine what yours smelled like.

     

    I used bleach and even put in a gallon of muriatic acid and 10 gallons of water and let them sit on their side for a few weeks, helped a bit but not too much. 

    pepper smell in water, OK to use?

    in General Discussion

    A while ago I bought two 80 gallon food grade plastic barrels to mix and store water in. Unfortunately, they'd been used to ship peppers from Greece and the smell was enough to bring tears to your eyes if you're not a peppers fan. I left the barrels outside for a couple of years and now the smell is greatly reduced, still obvious but nothing overpowering at all.

     

    Does anyone have a guess as to whether they'd be safe to use now? 

    47 year old tank

    in General Discussion

    On 4/20/2020 at 1:05 PM, paul b said:

    WE had a "little" scare yesterday and this morning.  Yesterday my wife and I took a walk and about 5 minutes into the walk I started to get itchy.

    Like all over.  I felt like I had fire ants doing the macarana all over me and also in places I didn't know I had.   image.gif.9dce57b483bc5faf1378c58f6f0d7252.gif

     

    Of course we walk up to this couple that we always  wanted to make friends with and we were talking to them for like ten minutes.  I was dying to scratch

    "all over" but I didn't want these people to think I had cooties, amphipods or black ich. 

     

    The itchyness was unbearable and I know I was squirming so they may have thought I was a Mime, contortionist or Mick Jagger.

    I put one foot on top of the other like I was resting my leg, but I was trying to scratch between my toes.  It didn't work.

     

    Eventually we left them and I told my wife "We have to go home".

     

    She said Why!  Whats the matter?  Are you sick?   With this virus around everyone is paranoid.

     

    At home I told her what was going on and she insisted on inspecting me.  I had this rash all over my body.  I generally don't get rashes and I am not allergic to anything.  So she rubs this stuff on me which was probably meat tenderizer and the itching subsided a "little".

     

    I figured I would lay down.  Yesterday we put this new blanket on the bed, right out of the package.

    As I am laying there listening to Vintage Linda Ronstadt, I notice my tongue feels big.  I have a big mouth but my tongue usually stays the same size.

     

    My tongue was scraping against the teeth in back of my mouth and It seemed like I was having just a little trouble breathing.  Just a little, not enough for me to call a SWAT team or "The Good Doctor" or even "Doctor Who "  (it's an English thing, don't worry to much about it)

     

    Now my Girly man emotions  kick in and I am getting a touch worried.

     

    I make the mistake of telling my wife who immediately goes into panic mode and wanted to give me CPR and get out the paddles.

    She calls our Daughter in Vermont because her husband and Daughter have allergies to everything except air, and not all air.

     

    She tells me to take Bennedril.  All I have is our Grand Daughters Bennedril and she is 7. The largest does on the bottle was for a 10 year old so I take about two doses.

     

    In ten minutes I am as Loopy as the people on Circ De Solei .  I can't stand up so I go lay on the bed.

     

    My tongue gets bigger.  OOOOOooooooNNooooooo.  I'm gonna die and Humble won't be able to come here to take my fish.  But if he does he will quarantine them in tree stump remover and they will get nightmares.

     

    I look up symptoms of Corona Virus and a big tongue.  A rash are about the only things that the virus "doesn't " cause. 

     

    So We call my Doctor on the slim chance that he can see me.  Here in New York nothing is open, you can't even open a clam.

     

    But the nurse, who I know answered and she said, as long as you don't have Corona Virus symptoms, the Doctor will see you.

    Of course If I had Corona Virus symptoms the doctor won't see me and I will have to go to a fortune teller or Lady GaGa concert.

     

    I go there and the guy immediately sees the rash, takes blood, looks in my mouth, listens to my heart and lungs and doesn't have the slightest idea what is wrong with me but says he is getting a lot of patients now that have this from eating meat.

     

    (I have learned that unless you have an arrow sticking out of your head or a crow bar stuck in your nether regions, they won't really know what the diagnosis is)

     

    I almost never eat meat and didn't eat any in a week or so.  He gives me a prescription for Prednisone.

     

    Meantime Our Daughter is freeking out because she doesn't want me to go out of the house.  It would be hard for the doctor to take blood through my computer screen unless I got really close to it and maybe stuck a USB cable in my arm.

     

    So, I am still alive but the Bennedril is still making me walk like Uncle Festus from the Adams Family.

     

    We think we figured it out.  The new blanket my wife put on the bed was the only thing different we did.  It was probably made in China and soaked in Anthrax before they sent it here.  We bought it last year and one of my hobbies is removing those tags that say "Don't remove under penalty of the law"

    So I am not sure where it came from.  If I find somehow that it is from China, I will donate it to the Chinese President image.gif.86f0a7a2bf8606c1d05fb12f22fa024b.gif

    For the last couple weeks I've had a low grade itch over my whole body. Don't have any allergies that I know of. Anyway, I got some Nizoral shampoo (dandruff killer) and put it all over my body for about 5 minutes, relief was immediate. Repeated for two more days. Itch all gone. Worth a try, I suppose. 

     

    culturing daphnia

    in General Discussion

    I've had a couple cultures of daphnia running for a couple of months but without great success, doing the lighting, water changes with old aquarium water, feeding with yeast/spirula etc. so I don't think those are the problem. In the tubs there's a fair amount of grey-greenish algae, not a solid mass but very fragile filaments. I can't find an answer anywhere: is it a good idea to siphon this stuff out. Some reading I've done seems to say that's where the daphnia eggs are laid.

     

    Thanks.

     

    Mark

    MH ballast compatibility

    in General Discussion

    11 hours ago, sethsolomon said:

    you could just wire in an external ballast.  CoralVue make a pretty good 250w plus ballast

    I'd prefer to swap out ballasts in the existing housing, partly for reasons of space and also because I don't trust myself 100% on wiring. I'd just like to pop something in of about the same size with the same color wires.

     

    Thanks,

     

    Mark

    MH ballast compatibility

    in General Discussion

    Hello,

     

    I have an ancient Hamilton Technologies lighting fixture on one of the 250W MH electronic ballasts has gone bad. It can be found at marinedepot at the link below, but it seems to be no longer for sale. (Sorry, I tried to upload the webpage image but it wouldn't work).

     

    https://www.marinedepot.com/lighting_metal_halide_icecap_250_ballast_information-ap.html

     

    Does anyone with a knowledge about ballast think whether this would be a suitable replacement? Or if anyone has a good idea for a replacement I'd appreciate it. I need something along the dimensions of the ballast in the link below. 

     

    https://www.lightingsupply.com/universal-1110-246c-tc.aspx?gclid=CjwKCAiA66_xBRBhEiwAhrMuLUWy7T0RPH3vJN4JtJ3fW9krqOvCAM8tevfRh1uYhIUu79lCw8p5QBoCTgEQAvD_BwE

     

    The bulbs I have are 250W 14000K Metal Halide Bulb - Hamilton, Mogul Base.

     

    TIA,

     

    Mark

     

     

     

    icecap.pdf new_ballast.pdf

    47 year old tank

    in General Discussion

    On 11/24/2019 at 1:29 PM, paul b said:

    Just finished my "Money Machine"

     

    Not really Steam Punk so I am not sure what it is.

     

    I think Money Machine is called the Federal Reserve. 

     

    The electric steam punk is a true work of art.

     

     

    On 11/24/2019 at 1:29 PM, paul b said:

     

    005%202_zpsemnbrgrh.jpg

     

    008_zpsmwo4p86t.jpg

     

    where to get MH/T5 fixture repaired?

    in General Discussion

    Hi Tom,

     

    I think the ballast is a transformer. I might even have swapped out a ballast on it ten years ago, or else it was another light. I'll take the thing apart this weekend. Actually, I'll have to check whether the bulb fixture has any voltage first, I suppose. I'm always  a little paranoid about working on electrical stuff. If I burned the house down my wife would ruin my whole day!

     

    Mark

    solenoid to avoid abrupt powerhead starts?

    in General Discussion

    I'm using a Wavemaster with four Koralia circulation pumps. The Koralias are almost entirely silent, except when the Wavemaster turns them on, at which point you can hear a distinct click. To me, that means that the propellers are getting a rude awakening:  the voltage across the Koralia has gone from zero to 12V, or whatever, in an 'instant',, so the magnet that turns the propellor is experiencing a current in it that goes from zero to X in an 'instant'. I suspect, aside from wear and tear  on the propellor, this allows tends to demagnetize the magnet, or otherwise mess with the microscopic magnetic domains.

     

    I've replaced more than one solenoid in a car starter motor which exists solely to prevent this zero to sixty in a microsecond effect: the solenoid forces the current to increase gradually, so to speak, which I assume is a good thing since otherwise the solenoid wouldn't be engineered it. 

     

    Anyway, I was wondering if anyone had ever come across a device, something like a small solenoid that would plug into the Wavemaster outlet, which the powerhead would plug into. 

     

    You'd avoid the click and the corresponding strain on the impeller magnet so it seems like a good idea. Are there any EEs out there with some insights into this? Would the solenoid have to be too big or too expensive?

    Anyone have experience with RectorSeal?

    in General Discussion

    I'm out of the usual coral epoxy, which I've never been all that happy with anyway. I did a google search on "best epoxy for coral'  and a lot of people claimed RectorSeal EP-200 was their favorite. It's available at Home Depot. 

     

    Does anyone have any experience with this stuff? Will it kill everything in your tank as it cures?

     

    Thanks

    red sea wave master advice: marine vs. reef

    in General Discussion

    I bought four hydor koralia evolution 1500 powerbeads for my 90 gallon reef tank and while I've been pleased with the improvement, over 4 maxi jet 1200s, some of my LPS are not as open as they used to be. I had to move the contents of the tank recently when my old 90 sprung a leak, I had the corals and fish in a 75 where I fed everything very very sparingly for two months. As a result, a lot of the corals (elegance, hammer, frogspawn) lost a good deal of their mass. I realize it will take them a while to bounce back. However, I suspect the current is too much since the LPS in the corners have opened up a good deal more than the ones more exposed to flow. None of the powerbeads is aimed directly at the corals.....  I have a Red Sea Wavemaster randomizing the flow. Does anyone have any insights in the difference between reef vs. fish only settings, and/or the gentle/rolling/turbulent settings? I've read the blurb the manufacturer puts out a few times but it's a bit vague. 

     

    The hydor powerbeads are rated at 1500 gph, assuming they're off half the time for a 90 gallon tank that's 30X turnover per hour, ignoring the return pump from the sump which I estimate at 300 gph. Is that too much for LPS? 

     

    I realize this is sort of a unanswerable question, in the end, all that matter is how the corals look, but as I said, I'm not sure of the difference between marine and reef modes and I was wondering if anyone has any insights.

     

    Thanks,

     

    Mark

     

    Expired Salifert Test Kit

    in General Discussion

    My experience with expired test kits in general, including Salifert, is that they give a *much* lower NO3 reading than what the reality, like 25-50% less, I suspect depending on how long past the expiration date you're using it. Not really sure about other measurements....

    optimal rate of flow thru UV sterlizer

    in General Discussion

    After Bob Fenner's good talk last week I decided to dig up my old UV sterilizer and use it again on my 90 gallon setup. I was wondering, what is a reasonable flow thru a UV sterilizer? Mine is 24 inches long with a 24 watt blub. Anyone have a ballpark figure on a good GPH rate?

     

    Thanks!
     

    tds for local RODI water

    in General Discussion

    HI Tom,

     

    From the drip tube I'm getting 3ppm; I seem to dimly recall that when I first got the RODI system it was 1... Anyway, I'll monitor it and if it starts to increase I'll know it's time to replace the filters and media,

     

    Thanks,

     

    Mark

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