astroboy

I'm getting a reading of 9 ppm TDS for my RODI water. Just wondering, is this reasonable for Fairfax county water or is it time to switch out the media? Thanks!

I should have said I used bleach, not beach. It did some good, I'm wondering if there might be a better way...

I bought a couple of 58 gallon barrels on ebay for mixing and storing water. They're food grade and the insides are spotless. However, they contained yellow Greek peppers, whatever those are, and the smell is pretty strong. Does anyone have any ideas or recommendations on how to get the smell out? I filled them with water and put in a gallon of beach, waited for a week, and that helped but I wonder if there's a better way. Thanks, Mark

Thanks for the advice everyone. I think I'll have to break down eventually and get a new lighting system. I don't have the space to put in a strip of LED lights outside the fixture and inside is obviously too hot.

I don't have picks,but it's an old style fixture: the MH bulbs are in an a sheet metal housing, the bottom is clear plastic. I'd like to put the LED strips on the reflective surface on the top interior, but it gets pretty hot there, even with fans.

Does anyone have any experience in putting LED (actinic) strip lights into an MH fixture. I got a flexible LED strip and ended up attaching to a wood panel which I fastened to the top of the MH fixture. The wood started to char in pretty short order so that's one idea that doesn't work. The main question I have, does anyone know of an LED fixture that will stand the heat within an MH fixture? Thanks, Mark

Perhaps I should be more specific. I'm going to buy strip of LED lights and wrap them around a BRS charcoal canister; inside I'll have the cheato or calaupera. I think about 300 gallons per hour will flow through the canister. I said calaupera, but perhaps cheat would be better? Any advice would be appreciated greatly.

I'm setting up a new tank. The live rock from the old one has been in a holding tank for a couple of months and is covered with all sorts of algae. I can move the fish and corals to another temporary tank. I'd like to get rid of as much as the algae as possible and I'm not sure scrubbing will do the job. Does anyone know of an algicide that would work well? I'll be moving the rocks to a new tank with brand new water... Thanks, Mark

Does anyone have a handful or two of calaupera they'd be willing to part with? I live in Vienna, Thanks, Mark

I'm setting up a new 90 gallon tank and I had an idea for a sandless setup. Over the years, whenever I've had to tear down a tank, the sand always contained a lot of disgusting stuff, even when the sand bed had a depth of under one inch. This seems to me to indicate that even a little sand is an unavoidable nitrate sink, so I've decided just to not deal with it anymore. To avoid the accumulation of detritus I'm thinking about mounting the rocks on egg crate (styrene lighting panel) which would be supported by lengths of small diameter PVC pipe. I'd have small pumps at the bottom of the tank pushing water along the length of the pipes. This should push any detritus up into the water column where it would hopefully be removed by filter socks or the skimmer. Does anyone have any experience or opinions on such a set up? The only problem I can think of is that the bottom current and lack of sand might greatly reduce the population of amphipods and other small critters, but would this necessarily be a bad thing? Thanks!

Anyone know where to get a 90 gallon perfecto or a marine land tank in northern VA? Thanks!

I've read mixed reviews online about the quality of Deep Blue aquariums. Does anyone have an opinion? Also, I've read that the glass has a lower iron content so it's more transparent. Does anyone know if that's true? Thanks!

A few months ago when I was scrapping algae off my 90 gallon with a razor blade I made a deep cut in the sealant on one side, near the bottom. Nothing bad happened so I figured no harm done. Last week the tank started leaking; fortunately I was able to save everything, I have a 75 gallon tank for mixing salt water. I'm thinking about scraping off all the old sealant and resealing the tank. According to you tube, this can be done successfully. Does anyone have any thoughts on this, in particular, what sort of sealant to use? Thanks, Mark

FWIW, I was able to get rid of bryopsis by raising the Mg in my tank to about 1600. Seemed to lessen the growth of other algae to some degree also although perhaps that was just my imagination. No apparent ill effects on fish or corals.

Hi Tom, It's a brand new battery. It should be 13.2 but I was thinking perhaps the probes on my voltmeter were a bit corroded. I was thinking the battery might be acting as a short, so to speak, but I put it on a trickle charger for an hour and it showed it to be completely charged up, so a short sort of thing shouldn't be a problem. Of course, batteries have an internal resistance, who knows how you'd measure that or even look it up, so that might be causing the upc to freak out. I'll hook it up again, now that it's fully charged. It's a bit frustrating, five years ago I bought a UPS on amazon completely out of the blue and it worked like a champ through a dozen power outages. Now, after I've done the math for the amount of power the necessary pumps will draw I can't get things to work. I bought a UPS online after the old one failed (bad battery) and ozone came out of it immediately. Since it was 'as is' I suspect it was fried beforehand. But this UPS is from a reputable computer geek shop in Falls Church, they claim it's good and I expect they're correct. I'm thinking of Kirchoff's Law from first year physics: internal resistance of the UPS charger and battery. It could be that the current is going in the wrong direction, so to speak. Too bad there aren't any electrical engineers in the club with an instant answer.

Hello, I'm at my wit's end. After five years the UPS I had hooked up to a marine battery for power failures died; I believe the battery went bad since I had it hooked up to a trickle charger. What I have now is an APC Back-UPS RS 1500 computer backup power supply, connected to Deka Marine Master 12V battery. Item 599947 Model 24M7 at Loews, 12 V, 1000 Amp. I removed the old battery and hooked up the wires to the marine battery. I have a 100W light bulb plugged into the power supply. The APC is plugged into a wall outlet. Here's what happens: -I turn on the ON button. On Line light button comes on and the 100W light comes on. A beeper beeps. -After a few seconds the 100W bulb goes off, so does the online light. Beeping stops. -A few seconds later, the 100W and beep come back on. The online light comes back on. The "onBattery", "Overload", and "Replace Battery" light all flash. This goes on for at least 10 minutes, when I turn the APC off. With the APC unplugged: -I turn on the on button. It beeps, one beep about every five seconds. That's it. After about a minute the beep stops. The battery shows 12.8V, of course, it could be nearly discharged for all I know. Does anyone have an idea of what the problem is? Could it be that the battery is completely flat and I need to charge it up with a trickle charger? Or, is the APC simply incompatible with the marine battery? Worst case: does anyone know of an electrician or computer shop near Vienna who could hook this thing up for me if I brought it into the shop? Thanks, Mark

$500 is about my upper limit, although I'm certainly not adverse to buying something used if someone knows of something really excellent for more than that. I'm kind of looking for a fixture that can set on top of my tank, as opposed to being suspended: landlord won't appreciate holes drilled in the ceiling.... Thanks.

I'm considering putting my 48" MH setup out to pasture. I'd like to get an LED setup. However, money is an issue. Does anyone have any advice on a good, relatively inexpensive fixture where its possible to change the color intensities ? Thanks, Mark

I have a backup power system that failed this morning when I turned off the power to do some work on my tank and I need some advice as to what failed. The system is a marine battery hooked up to a Black & Decker trickle charger and connected to a UPS. I've removed the original battery in the UPS and have soldered wires from the battery terminals to the leads inside the UPS. The system has worked fine for a few years. This morning I turned off the power to the tank and in a few seconds the UPS started beeping and I smelled ozone and the pumps hooked up to the UPS weren't turning over. The voltage on the battery, when everything was disconnected, was 12.9V as opposed to the 13.2 which I believe it should be. The water in one cell was a bit low, otherwise it looked OK. I've had it for about seven years so it certainly isn't new anymore. The trickle charger was outputting about .4V DC so I'm guessing that's a paperweight now. The ozone smell was coming from the UPS, so that's history. Evidently something failed and fried the UPS and trickle charger. My questions are: 1) Could that have been the battery? I suppose it's not impossible that the charge was run down to nothing and it acted as a short in some fashion which caused the UPS and trickle charger to fail. 2) Is 12.9V an indication it's time for the battery to go? If I don't have to replace the battery I'd just as soon save the money... 3) Any advice on a good UPS, something with a bad battery I can get for cheap on ebay? Thanks, Mark

Thanks very much, I appreciate the info!!! FWIW, the two discus I moved to the QT with the meds have much better color, although I'm not sure if they're eating yet. Hopefully things will turn out well.

I've thought about hexamita..... However, none of the dead fish or the thin ones showed any signs of 'holes', they just looked starved. I didn't see any feces at all, I expect because they hadn't been eating for some time before I realized there was something wrong. They were pretty well hidden in the weeds..... Do you know how to get metronidazole? Seems like you need a prescription from a vet. I used to live in Bowie and needed an antibiotic for an elegance coral and the vets, or at least their receptionists, treated me like I was a lunatic. Apparently none of them had reef tanks, otherwise they'd have known dropping a few bills on fish or coral medication is (hopefully) money well spent.

Hello, I believe a few people in WAMAS keep discus... I have a 90 gallon heavily planted tank, lots of light and CO2, mostly Amazon swords. A few small corys, three medium sized angles, four pearl gouramis. Temp is 82, pH is around 7, TDS about 125. I do a 90% water change once a month, use RO/DI with a supplement the name of which I forget now so that it's not pure RO/DI. Everyone plays well together, everything is doing great except some of the discus. I got six 2.5 inch discus about four months ago and for three months things were great. At that time two discus occupied the front of the tank and the other four stayed back in the plants. I never saw any fighting but I guess somehow the pecking order was established. A couple weeks ago one discus died, and a few days ago another one died. Both emaciated. The remaining two are looking rather dark and thin so I moved them to QT tank today and am dosing them with sulfa and furan. Since the two dominant discus look absolutely healthy I'm guessing that it's not water quality or environment per se that is affecting the others. I've read that for a 90 gallon you want at least eight discus so that the pecking order isn't so rigid. Any thoughts? As with a lot of aquarium stuff, I've read a lot of conflicting opinions online.... Thanks, Mark

Excellent meeting. Thanks to our WAMAS officers who go to such trouble to make this such a great club. And to our sponsors for their generosity and their great knowledge and advice. One nice thing about the WAMAS sponsors, when I go into their stores I know I'm going to get good information even if it loses them a sale (although in the long run, at least in my case, it evens out) . I appreciate that. Really great, really interesting to hear about the science project. Amazing stuff.

Yeah, the pumps started pumping on their own while I was fooling with things in and behind the tank. I didn't realize they were off. Lost a powder blue tang I'd had for three years. Interestingly, the corals came through it like champs. That's one reason I keep enough salt water on hand for a 100% change. Not a good thing to do, I'm sure, but better than doing nothing when things blow up.

Thanks very much for the info, but the bulbs are just a few months old and are LEDs, so I don't think 'decay' is a factor. Although, I had been using compact fluorescents up until 4-5 months ago. I would have thought the change in lighting would have had a more immediate effect... Just from eyeballing, I'd say the brightness is pretty close and it worked well in the past. The gravel was in the tank for three years, very low fish population, I rinsed it all out when I moved six months ago, which I'm sure killed a lot of good bacteria, but for the first couple of months I had a very low fish population with that in mind. This diatom thing is rather low grade but it happened only within the last few weeks, more or less literally overnight. I'm pretty sure none of my kids dumped a handful of fish food in the tank..... I'm wondering if the substrat balls aren't the problem. Five or six years ago I had them in my saltwater tank but after reading alot of WAMAS posts I decided that likely they were just nitrate sinks, at least in a saltwater tank. To clean them off I put them in CLR and they dissolved like sugar in water, almost..... Big surprise. I would have though they were inert, being glass, as I understand it. That didn't stop me from buying a new batch for the freshwater tank. My big question: I wonder if at some point once enough organic matter accumulates in/on glass balls they don't start to slowly dissolve, something like tooth decay. Bacteria forming an acid film on the surface, something like that .