astroboy

If it's legal, does anyone have a MACNA banquet pass they'd like to sell? Thanks, Mark

Hello, I'm sorry for what is probably a vague question. A couple days ago two of the four bulbs on my freshwater planted tank went out. Everything looks good so I'm pretty sure one of the two ballasts are bad. The ballast model is Yoneng A1-7, powers two T5 54 watt bulbs. It's a solid state electronic ballast, sells for $80 from marineandreef; can't find it anywhere else. The lighting fixture is a wavepoint. I'd like to replace the ballast with something a bit less pricey and better quality. It's three years old, I think it should have lasted longer than that. I've found plenty of ballasts for T5 bulbs, but they all have red and blue wires coming out of one end. The A1-7 has only two reds and a yellow. Can anyone tell me why it is that the A1-7 has no blue wires? What are the blue wires for? I kind of hate to start wiring stuff up and have it burn down the house when I plug it in. Thanks, Mark

Thanks everyone. I'll take it apart and if nothing is obviously wrong I'll swap out the ballast if it's not too expensive. This is sort of a high end light, about $250.

Hello all, I have a CF light over a freshwater planted tank in which two of the four bulbs are not lighting up. Does anyone know of a place that repairs aquarium lights near Vienna? Thanks!

Hello, I"m making a a magnetic algae class cleaner using some cheap and powerful rare earth magnets. I want to seal the part that will be in the aquarium with some sort of resin or epoxy so that the magnets don't corrode in the tank. Does anyone have an recommendations as to what a good resin or epoxy might be? Thanks, Mark

Nothing.

Hello, I posted the message below a few days ago about what I thought was an aggressive PBT nibbling on some other fish. However, the more I think about it the more I think that the PBT might not be the problem. The PBT never really acts aggressively towards anything in the tank. I recalled before I got the tangs the wrasse showed up once or twice with a small piece of tail missing. At the time, I didn't think anything of it, but now I wonder if perhaps a crab or starfish didn't hitchhike in somehow. I QT everything, but a tiny crab could have hitchhiked in of course. The clowns, which sleep in a huge bubble coral, are always 100% intact, so that might explain why the crab isn't dining on them. You'd think a PBT might nibble on a clown sometimes, if it's going after the wrasse too..... The PBT shows no damage, but perhaps it's too hard for the crab/starfish/?? to catch. However, both the yellow and hippo tangs have a lot of their tail and ventral and dorsal fins missing. Missing dorsal/ventral fins doesn't scream "PBT" to me. Any advice on how to catch the mystery guest, if there is one? Thanks, Mark -------------------------------------------------------------- I have a 90 gallon tank with a couple of clowns, a six line wrasse, a yellow tang, and a hippo tang. The tangs are all about 3 inches long with fins, and were all introduced into the tank at the same time a few months ago. Lately, the fins of the yellow tang have obviously been nibbled on. I haven't seen the powder blue tang acting aggressively, but I assume he's the bully. The wrasse and the hippo tang also show up with a piece of fin missing from time to time, no big deal, but I'm a little concerned about the yellow tang. I was wondering, would buying another yellow tang perhaps improve the situation, perhaps by dividing the powder blue's attention? Would it be likely to make it worse? As I understand it, yellow tangs are reasonably mellow, so having two in a 90 gallon, at least while they're still small, wouldn't be an issue. Is that correct? Would something like a scopas tang help? Any suggestions on what to do about the powder blue acting like a hoodlum would be appreciated....

Thanks everyone, Good advice! I'll think I'll put the PBT in the quarantine tank for a few weeks and then re-introduce it and hopefully that will return it to it's original laid-back state. The tangs are all less than three inches long, including the fins, so I can't imagine a 90 gallon is too small at this point. When they get bigger I'll just have to convince my wife that I need a bigger tank....

Hello, I have a 90 gallon tank with a couple of clowns, a six line wrasse, a yellow tang, and a hippo tang. The tangs are all about 3 inches long with fins, and were all introduced into the tank at the same time a few months ago. Lately, the fins of the yellow tang have obviously been nibbled on. I haven't seen the powder blue tang acting aggressively, but I assume he's the bully. The wrasse and the hippo tang also show up with a piece of fin missing from time to time, no big deal, but I'm a little concerned about the yellow tang. I was wondering, would buying another yellow tang perhaps improve the situation, perhaps by dividing the powder blue's attention? Would it be likely to make it worse? As I understand it, yellow tangs are reasonably mellow, so having two in a 90 gallon, at least while they're still small, wouldn't be an issue. Is that correct? Would something like a scopas tang help? Any suggestions on what to do about the powder blue acting like a hoodlum would be appreciated.... Thanks, Mark

I'm setting up a quarantine tank, fish only, I won't ever be putting corals or inverts into it. Does anyone have recommendations on prophylactic meds? Thanks.

Hello, I bought a sea hare, about four inches long, to get rid of my hair algae, three weeks ago. The problem is that it just crawls around on the sand bed, ignoring the hair algae feast on the rocks. Some of the hair algae is growing on the branches of torch or frogspawn corals, but I would have thought that a sea hare would be able to climb to those. I think it's been a week since it polished off all the algae within reach from the sand bed. Does anyone know, is the animal just not hungry enough do any climbing, or are some sear hairs strictly sad bed types?

I'e had some long term troubles with hair algae, probably feeding off live rock that I had in another tank, and set dry for a couple of years and which I never cleaned off, since my water parameters are good. I run GFO, chaeto in the sump, new bulbs, nitrates and phosphates read zero. Of course, that might be because the hair algae grabs them up, but I have only one fish so I feed very little. I use a good RO/DI setup for water, been using Instant Ocean for this tank, which has been set up for seven months. The salinity is usually a bit low about 33ppm. I'll be upping that to 35 with a massive water changed this weekend. I'm not sure if slightly low salinity might be a problem for sea hares. Alkalinity is usually about 5-6 dkh, I have trouble keeping it where I'd like it to be. pH ranges from 8.3 during the day to perhaps 8.0 or 7.9 at night. I figure my best chance is to get a sea hare to eat all the hair algae so that the waste products can be removed by skimming and an experimental remote DSB (uses rock wool, got the design from a guy who breeds freshwater angels. His water has 10ppm NO3 out of the well, has N03= 2ppm once its gone through the DSB. There's a PhD dissertation on this. But that's a topic for another pose). But the sea hares keep dying after a few days, even with the acclimation times running from one to six hours. The tank has 2-2.5 inches of fine grained aragonite (more or less mud) on the bottom, and I do see some dark zones against the glass which I'm told are anoxic, and generally contain hydrogen sulfide. I'm wondering if the sea hairs are burrowing into these pockets and getting poisoned. They live long enough to make it back to the surface if that's what's happening. Corals don't appear to be stressed at all. I"m going to do a 90% water change this weekend (I've done this before, successfully). I'm wondering if it would be a good idea to take a few powerheads and really stir up the sand bed as I'm siphoning the water out, and also siphon out enough sand so that I have maybe an inch on the bottom, little enough that no anoxic zones can form. I would have thought that wouldn't happen with a two inch sand bed, but there you go. My question is, are these hydrogen sulfide pockets likely to be a problem? Do anyone have advice on what eats hair algae? I'm running a Grey Seas skimmer rated for a 300 gallon tank on my 90 and it's great at sucking bad stuff out, so I think once the algae is eaten it will be history. Thanks

Thanks! This should be just what I need. This is the reason I'm looking for a low-volume pump: I went to a meeting of the Capital Cichlid Association and an angelfish breeder gave a talk on the genetics of angelfish and in passing talked a bit about how he'd developed a nitrate remover, based on some sewage treatments that have been around for quite a quite. His water is from a well, even after RO nitrates are still 10, which is too high for breeding, apparently, so he developed a version of the de-nitrator that was good for his 3000 gallon set up. Nitrates in are 10+ ppm, nitrates out are 0-2. None of the freshwater people were that interested but the few reef tankers there were talking with him for an hour afterwards. Basically, it's a remote deep sand bed, but instead of sand he uses rockwool (more surface area). Water is pumped at a slow rate in to the bottom of the container, overflow goes over the top (at least in a sump). The trick, according to him, is that 1) the flow rate has to be such that the water in the RDSB takes 6-8 hours to turn over. If it's faster, the bacteria don't have to 'eat' the nitrates to get oxygen. The second point is that you need a carbon source (vodka, sugar water) for the chemical reactions to go forwards. For freshwater types, the amount of carbon is important since an excess is really bad news, for saltwater aquariums excess carbon gets turned in to bacteria which your protein skimmer removes so that shouldn't be such a worry. At least that's the theory. His point was that with a five gallon bucket RSBD, which will have about 4 gallons of useable nitrate to nitrogen gas conversion volume, you're producing about 12-14 gallons of zero nitrate water every day. For a 90 gallon tank that should result in near-zero nitrates. He was aware of people actually using sand in RSBD, but he felt the water flow/turnover is likely so low that it doesn't make a difference, especially since all the RSBD designs I know of just have water flowing across the top of the sand. His name is Doug Gosnell. I'm getting links from him which I'll post. I'm going to set up a version of his denitrator and see how things pan out.

Does anyone know of fairly reliable and inexpensive pump that moves 1-2 GPH? Thanks, Mark

I glued mine to a flat rock which I buried under the sand: nice and stable platform. Oddly enough, it's a bit off the and but that doesn't seem to bother it. Although I don't recommend doing that experiment.

I've been in PVAS for a year and I had that distinct impression, that there's no decent store in NoVa. No one in that club seems to buy anything from an LFS; certain members run small hobby-businesses out of their basements and that's about it. You can get some pretty nice fish that way, though, for cheap. There were a few places buy they've all shut down in the past few years. I suppose it's hard to make a profit when high-ticket freshwater fish are rather rare. I've been to alot of PVAS club auctions and seen fish I"d use for bait go for alot of money. On the other hand, when I see an expensive coral or marine fish it's a real looker. I guess the only person who will write a big check for a freshwater fish is a hobbyist who's basically a zoologist. There nearest place I know of is House of Tropicals south of Baltimore which is OK for freshwater. Six or seven years ago you could pick up a nice coral there from time to time but based on my visits over the past 3-4 years their saltwater section has really gone downhill.

Does anyone know of a decent freshwater fish store in NoVA? Thanks!

I do all that. I have an Avast skimmer rated for 300 gallons on a 90 gallon tank, switch out the GFO once a month lately, carbon every two weeks. Fuge has a remote DSB and cheato. Brighter lights might help with the chaeto. I don't have any fish in the tank so the food input is minimal... The only thing I can think of is that the tank has been set up for only four months, using live rock and sand from a 29 gallon I had had set up for three years (never with any hair algae problems...). I also used "live" rock from a 75 gallon I had had, which crashed when I unsuccessfully tried to move it to a different house. I put that rock into a cooler for three years and reused it in the current set up four months ago. It seemed to be clean but I wonder if there wasn't still some residue on in that the hair algae is feasting on. That's the only thing I can think of, anyway, that is causing this problem. I didn't move corals into the tank until it had cycled for six weeks, if it even cycled at all. Ammonia and nitirites were always zero.

I have a hair algae problem and in the past month I've bought three sea hares to deal with it, and all have died within 24 hours. I acclimated for 1 hour, 2 hours, and then five hours, made no difference. My water parameters are good. However, a few years back to kill off bryopsis I upped my Mg to 1650 and since it worked great and the corals and fish didn't seem to mind a bit, I've kept it there since. Does anyone know if that level of Mg would be toxic to sea hares? There's a vague remark on wetwebmedia that high Mg might be toxic to snails, and so it's possible sea hares might have trouble. Now that I think of it, of, say, a dozen snails I buy, two die within a few days and six die within a month or two, leaving just a few survivors that live for at least a year.

I have a hair algae problem. Can anyone tell where where to buy sea hares or lettuce nudibranches locally? Or online? If anyone has a suggestion as to what critter I might buy to eat this stuff I'd appreciate it. I'm running GFO, have done big water changes, have brand new MH/actinic lights that I run 6 hours max, and have no fish, so very little feeding. An Avast skimmer which sucks up alot of junk. Chaeto in the sump. Mg is at 1600. This is a pretty new tank, up and running for four months. I've put a black sheet over the tank for 5 days at a time and the darkness does knock the algae down to some degree but it keeps coming back better and stronger than before. I'm pretty much at my wit's end.... Thanks, Mark

I'm not sure if this has any bearing or not, but it's an interesting story that I think raises some interesting points, so please bear with me. When I moved this summer I took the rock out of my 29 gallon, leaving three clowns and a six line wrasse and corals in the tank. Had 2-3" of sand (mud) which I left undisturbed. Everything did fine during the two months I set up my 90 gallon. So, I moved corals and fish (and a big wad of chaeto) to the 90, where they did very well. A few weeks later I bought a really nice looking powder blue tang from a very reputable source, and put it and a few corals from another good source in the 29 (using it as a QT), which still had the sand in it. I had left the protein skimmer running and aside from some hair algae things seemed to be OK. The corals did fine but in 24-36 hours the PBT had a bumpy skin with very small white spots, smaller than any ich white spots I've ever seen. After three days the spots and bumps went away and the fish looked and acted like a champ, but a week later they returned and the PBT died within 12 hours. The store I bought it from said they'd had the PBT for at least three weeks and it had been 100% healthy and I'm sure that was the absolute truth. I figured that the PBT had picked up some disease that had been latent in the 29 for two years, although 24-36 hours didn't seem like a very long time for anything (ich, velvet, brooklynella) to appear, nor did the really small white spots, followed by a mucus like slime right at the end, really look like those diseases. Bob Fenner does mention some parasite often seen in tangs that lurks in tanks which can hang around for years, but which usually isn't lethal or even really serious, but does show up within a day or so. I can't recall what it's called. I thought that might be it. Still, you'd think a 2 year old disease-free display tank would be a decent QT..... Anyway, I figured the PBT had been infected from something latent in the 29 and was now in the 90, so I decided to let the 90 lie fallow for a couple of months. Of course, it's possible the PBT picked up something in 24 hours from the corals I'd bought, but that's a really short time and I've talked to some knowledgeable LSH owners who have told me that it's rather unusual for fish diseases to be found in exclusively coral tanks. Of course, there might be other LFS owners who would disagree with this, and neither of the owners I talked to claimed this was gospel, so please don't read anything deep into that statement!!!! All I'm saying is that I figured my PBT was infected by my QT ex-display tank and not by the corals I bought (so quickly). So, I managed to catch the clowns and put them back into the 29 which had been their home two weeks before, and in 24 hours they had swollen cloudy eyes and were covered with slime, and all died overnight. Rather sad, since I'd had them for two years. I hope they didn't suffer too much. On the other hand, the six line wrasse I couldn't catch so I had to leave it in the 90. After 10 days I devised a fish trap and caught it and put it into a sterile tank. It looked (and still looks, two weeks later) as healthy as a horse, even though I had moved the corals from the 29 QT into the 90 during the week the PBT had been looking good. So, it would seem that 1) there was something in the 29 that killed the PBT and clowns, even though it had been a good display tank for two years, and 2) no diseases were carried by the corals I bought (or else the wrasse would have been infected). It's possible the PBT was a carrier and got sick from the stress of a new tank, but then the 'germs' would have been on the corals I transferred to the 90 when it looked OK. This all sounds like Koch's Postulates on pathology, which is the only thing I recall from high school biology. Possibly the wrasse has some immunity, but when you add it all up I don't think a disease was the problem. Steve and Vince from Quantum Reefs told me some time ago that PBTs exposed to low pH (say, 7,8-9, I think ) will exhibit bumps with very small white spot, which I had completeIy forgotten, otherwise, perhaps I would have avoided this whole sad scenario. I suppose that's a result of some sort of osmotic skin trauma, but that's just an ignorant guess. It sure sounds like that's what my PBT had, anyway. You would think that clowns would be more resistant to just about everything than a PBT, but something in the 29 killed them. The only thing I can think of is that some sort of pathogen or toxin really ramped up with the low pH (or vice versa) and killed both the clowns and PBT. What it could have been, I have no idea. It seems strange that a tank where clowns had done well for two years could have turned toxic somehow in 2-3 weeks, (but didn't hurt the corals, apparently) but that appears to have been the case. Possibly, the rather deep (and old) sand bed had a sulfur dioxide burp, but it seems like that would have killed the corals. It's all a bit of a mystery. Unfortunately, during the move I lost my pH meter so I don't know what the pH in the QT or display tanks was. All I can say is that the corals looked pretty good, so my guess is that it couldn't have been much under 7.6-8, say. So, does anyone have any experiences or insights into what might have happened? As I said, it would seem that conventional illnesses, such as ich, velvet, or brooklynella, were at work. Is it possible that a tank from which rock, fish, corals and chaeto have been removed would be so unstabilzed in some way that it would be lethal to a hardy species like clowns? My point, after this long winded discussion, is that the problem that lutz123 saw with his clowns sounds alot like what killed mine. I think my experiences have (probably) ruled out ich/velvet/brooklynella infection, but it seems possible that bad pH (??), which might well occur in a small tank and which might have occurred in my 29, in the absence of fish, corals/chaeto, might give rise to pathogens or toxins which are really bad news for fish, but not necessarily for corals.

I misspoke. I agree that it would be a bad idea to have any upward pressure on the bottom pane of glass...

I'll bet WAMAS members who know about these things will ask who's the manufacturer of the tank. Also, do you have the tank sitting on a sheet of styrofoam or wall insulation, something that will compress a bit under alot of weight? Most experienced aquarists would tell you that in the long run even a top quality tank sitting on an uneven surface will spring (a catastrophic) leak at the worst possible time. Having a tank on a styrofoam or some other compressible surface avoids that. Also, tends to reduce the noise from pumps or fans a bit....

I bought a powder blue tang a couple of weeks ago from a reputable source who claimed they had the fish in their tanks for three weeks and it looked great the whole time. When I bought it, it did look fine and I've had excellent luck with this source before, for corals and fish. I put it into a quarantine tank, which used to be my display tank so it has about two inches of substrate in it and a few chunks of live rock and a a few snails. My point is that the QT is hardly a sterile box, but I did have clowns and six line wrasses in it for over a year without any signs of trouble. After 36 hours the tang had a bumpy skin and very small white dots. In my experience, the dots were much smaller than what one normally sees with ich. After 48 hours, the dots and bumps went away, and the fish looked great, but they returned five days later and the fish was dead within a day. My question is, was it possible that the fish got infected with ich (or velvet?) from my QT? As I understand it, it wouldn't be possible for either disease to show up in less than two days after the fish was initially infected. I'm guessing that the fish was infected when I bought it but was doing OK, and the stress of moving caused the infection to break out. Still, that would mean that the stress kicked the somewhat dormant ich or velvet into the stage where it enters the trophont stage almost overnight.... Is that possible? Any recommendations on how long I should let the QT lie fallow, assuming the disease actually was ich or velvet? Thanks