astroboy

I had a problem with low salinity which origami helped me with, as I recall. It was a few years back, I can't recall what I had for breakfast. Basically, with cooler water, you get a higher salinity reading with a refractor for X amount of salt. This is because the index of refraction for cooler (or hot) water changes significantly with temperature. My water was at about 50 degrees (mixing it in a shed outside) and my accurately calibrated refractometer showed 35ppt, after four days of agitating and aerating. I'd put the water in 7 gallon plastic jugs and heat it to 80 degrees when I did water changes. But,at that point the refractor showed maybe 30 ppt, if that much. I waited a couple of minutes for the water on the refractor meter to reach the same temp as the refractometer, it was a good measurement. For an accurate measurement of salinity with a refractometer, you need both the water and the refractometer to be pretty close to the temperature of your tank. Even mixing in my basement, which is about 65 degrees, I get a big change in salinity reading, maybe 32 vs 35 ppt. I don't recall. For hydrometers, I'm not sure what the effect would be since I'm not sure how much the density of water changes with temperature. However, since index of refraction is basically a measure of density of electrons in a liquid (so I'm told) I'm betting even a hydrometer would give bogus results in cold water. You'd also have to deal with the contraction of the glass at cold temps, another questionable quantity.

I've been topping off with kalkwasser for a few years with pretty good results. This is a dumb question. A white sludge accumulates in the bottom of the top off tank. Do I need to add more kalk mix powder, or will the stuff in the bottom go into solution? Is is inert? Thanks, Mark

Any thoughts on running GFO to remove phosphate, and vodka dosing at the same time? The GFO is supposed to remove phosphate, whereas, as I understand it, carbon dosing increases the number of bacteria that eat nitrates and phosphates which end up in your skimmer. I was wondering, if there were no phosphates, then perhaps carbon dosing wouldn't work so well.... I've been doing both for a couple of years now, and I'm still having an algae problem. I'll have to move this summer. When I set up tank again I'm going to have maybe a half inch of sand just for aesthetics. I'm sure my sand is the problem, stir it up and you get a lot of gunk going up in the water. I get an immediate increase in algae when I do that. I've been toying with the idea of buying a diatom filter and keeping the sand stirred up continuously until no more gunk is visible. However, that won't remove the nitrates etc already in the system.

Thanks, this is really excellent information. I'll probably skip the antibiotics since the fish I got is eating like a pig in the QT and looks great....

Thanks. This is good information! Mark

paul b, on 27 Jan 2014 - 6:35 PM, said: I am on my 5th or 6th diatom filter as I have been using them for almost 50 years and my reef would not have stayed alive if it were not for a diatom filter. The one I am using now is a compiliation of the parts from all of them as they are not built very well and corrode fast with salt water. I've been thinking about getting a diatom filter, since I have a sand bed that's full of disgusting junk: the idea is so siphon out as much sand as I can, and clean the tank by using powerbeads to stir up what's left and remove the bad stuff with a diatom filter. Probably do the same for the sand and put a minimal amount back. But I have a couple of questions. 1) Why do you say your reef would not have stayed alive without one? 2) Do you run it 24-7 or an hour a day or something like that? 3) I've read that fish (and corals too, I suppose) can't survive in a tank where a diatom filter runs continuously for a long time. I think the basic idea is that all the bacteria are filtered out and the water becomes something like RO/DI water. Any thoughts on that? Thanks, Mark

I'm planning on buying some fish in a couple of weeks, and I have tetracycline and sulfa drugs left over from a freshwater QT I used as a prophyladtic. They certainly didn't do the freshwater fish any harm, but I've never heard of anyone using them for a saltwater fish quarantine. Does anyone have any experience or thoughts on using these? Or have recommendation for other prophylactic treatments? Thanks!

Thanks for the info. Do you know of any sites with good explanations for a DIY? I appreciate it! Mark

I have a planted freshwater tank; twice I've lost all my (few and inexpensive) fish because of end of tank dumping. Currently I'm using a Milwaukee MA957 regulator. Since it's apparent I"m never going to monitor the pressure in the CO2 bottle to avoid dumping, does anyone have any recommendations for a dual state reg? It's my understanding that a dual stage reg will prevent end of tank dumping. Thanks, Mark

It's a standard 29. Probably commercial, as opposed to DIY.

I'm setting up a 29 gallon tank, planning on having an anemone and clowns. I have everything I need from earlier tanks but the lights. Any suggestions on what a good LED make or wattage would be? Thanks!

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.