astroboy

Hello, I just finished setting up a 90 gallon. I have 2 250W Hamilton 14K bulbs and two actinic T5's about four inches above the water surface. Since I'm renting, I really don't want to make holes in the ceiling to suspend the fixture above the tank. I have LPS (bubble, torches, frogspawn, fox, hammer, and wellsophyillia) in the bottom half of the tank. Is that too much light for them? Right now I have window screen material underneath the light fixture which cuts down the light intensity perhaps 30%. However, it seems to cut down on the 'ripple' effect you get with metal halides and I'd just as soon get rid of it at some point. I should add, all the corals were in a 29 gallon with 130W of compact fluorescent for two years, so I can well imagine it will take a while for them to get acclimated to the MH. Any thoughts on 1) will the LPS utlimately be OK in the lower half of the tank, and 2) how to go about acclimating? Thanks! Mark

I need a submerisible pump for water changes, to move water from from my basement mixing tank to the first floor. I've been using an Eheim 1260 but I need to use that pump as a return pump on my new tank. Does anyone have any recommendations for pump with a 12 foot+ head? Since I won't be using it often I'm looking more for low price rather and quiet & reliable. Thanks!

I recall Julian Sprung mentioning at a WAMAS meeting a year or two ago that he put old sand and alot of live rock from one tank into a new one, and the new one didn't cycle at all. Am I correct in that? I'm setting up a 90 gallon and for a number of reasons I'm hoping that with alot of live sand and more or less live rock from my 30 gallon I won't have to wait 90 days....

Ditto.

I'm setting up a 90 gallon and I have an old MH fixture that I'll be using for the next year, two 250 watt 14K bulbs, 2 T5 actinics. At this point I have only LPS corals which have been under 130 watts in a 29 gallon tank. I'm told the MH will probably be too bright. Since I'm renting the place I'm in knocking some holes in the walls or ceiling to raise the MHs isn't an option. Is there some reasonably easy way to run MH bulbs so that they're dimmer? I've read one can switch out ballasts, but that's more complicated than I want to get. Or, what would be a good way to shield the bulbs? I was thinking a couple thicknesses of glass might do the trick but I'm not sure how that would affect the color. Thanks, Mark

Thanks. I filled one of the new canisters with GFO without sponges and rinsed it a few times, and no pellets seemed to escape. So I'm guessing the sponges are for carbon only...

I need to buy some powerheads for a new tank and I was going to get a couple of maxi jets, which have worked OK for me in the past, but I read the online reviews and alot of people are making the claim that the newer maxijets, which are made in China, instead of Italy, are complete junk. A major problem is that the impeller blades break off after very little use, which obviously is an amazingly bad quality control issue. I was just wondering, does anyone in the club have any experience with the new maxi jets? Thanks, Mark

I have to move this summer, so I need to move my densely planted 29 gallon tank. I have an unused 55 gallon that I'd like to move the corals into. However, I'd like to use dead live rock for the 55 and just move a little of the live sand and a few pieces of live rock from the 29 into the 55. (I'm thinking about turning the 29 into a clown anenome tank). My worry is about cycling. Julian Sprung mentioned moving a tank with old sand and rock and it didn't cycle at all, which seems reasonable. However, the vast majority of stuff in my 55 will be dead, but with 17 corals and 6 small fish. I was thinking about running a hang on filter like a Penguin or Emperor off the 29 for a few weeks, and then running that on the 55 for a few weeks. Questions: 1) Will this work, does anyone have any thoughts? 2) Any ideas on how long it takes, say, a quart of live sand to populate say 10 quarts of sterile sand, so that it actually does some filtering? Thanks! Mark

I lived in Wisconsin when he was building this, and according to a reef hobbyist who knew him, the first time he set up a large tank he did all the wiring himself and burned down his house. However, his wife let him put a tank in the new house.

Hello, I bought one of the new BRS canisters for their carbon/GFO reactor. According to some reviews on the BRS site, you can run the BRS GFO without using sponges. Since I can't get the GFO to tumble with sponges, that's interesting. I've posted a question to the BRS site three times about this, but it doesn't show up. Is there anyone in WAMAS who knows if its possible to run the high density BRS GFO pellets in their reactor with the new canister without sponges? Thanx!

I have a 75 gallon I'll be taking down soon which has some scratches I'd like to buff or polish out, if that's possible. The scratches are deep enough that you can barely feel them with your fingernail, if you're careful. Does anyone have any experience or insight with this. Thanks, Mark

I might not have been clear on this: I had both pumps hooked up in series. When the 2500 was off, the Eheim pumped water like a champ. When the 2500 was on, and the Eheim was also on, the volume of flow dropped greatly. The second pump impeded flow very little when it was turned off.

Here are the results from the experiment: The first pump was the Eheim 1260, which fed into the Ocean Runner 2500 through a three foot hose. As it happened, the Eheim all by itself had enough power to pump water from the basement into the aquarium, when the 2500 was turned off. As soon as I turned on the 2500, the flow volume dropped dramatically, like, to 10% of what it was with the 2500 turned off. I tried it three or four times, same results each time. I would have thought there would have been at least a small improvement.... Apparently, there's some sort of back pressure thing going on. Perhaps the forced input from the Eheim made the impeller on the 2500 spin backwards. What I'm thinking is that with these pumps the impellers are going to spin at a certain rate, X, which is probably some multiple of 60 Hz. If there's a big head or some other impedance, I'm guessing the impellers still spin at the same rate, but the flow becomes sort of chaotic. Rather than all the water moving out of the pump, perhaps it just sort of sloshes around. After all, you can put your thumb over the output from a pump and it seems to still spin at the same rate. Perhaps someone out there knows what actually happens. Anyway, if the impeller is set to spin at a certain rate, when water is forced into it, the impeller might act as a brake, since its only going to spin at X revolutions per second, no matter what. Possibly, results would be different with the weaker pump feeding into the stronger pump. I'll set that up in a few days and see what happens.

Mine read zeros, but only when I have zero phosphates. I've had good luck with the BRS GFO reactor. I suppose you could take a *tiny* bit of plant fertilizer and mix it into a gallon of water and see what reading you get. Plant fertilizers always have some amount of phosphate. Not sure if NoVA tap water has phosphate or not. Might be worth a try. But perhaps I misunderstood your post. I get all zeros when my phosphates are good, so it's possible you have less than measurable phosphates. When you say you don't get any reading, do you mean all zeros, or nothin'? Anyway, I've been quite pleased with my Hannas, both for phosphate and KH.

I'll probably end up doing that. Although, just to see what happens I'll probably hook them up in series first. The pumps aren't identical of course, but I imagine the impeller rotation rates are the same, or multiples of 60Hz, so things might work. It will be an interesting way to spend a Saturday evening.

Thanks, but this is going to be a one time thing. If hooking the pumps up in series doesn't work I'll just make the kids tote buckets up the stairs. That's why I had them, to support my hobby

I need to do a massive water change on a 90 gallon freshwater tank. The RO/DI water is in the basement and the top of the aquarium is maybe 15 feet higher. I have an Eheim 1260, which is listed as having a max head of 12 feet, so I doubt it will pump water from the basement into the aquarium. I also have an Ocean Runner 2500. I was thinking about hooking those up in series, with the output from the first being connected to the input of the second. I'm thinking that if the pressure from the first pump is X, and the second pump is Y, then putting them in series should give a net pressure of something like X+Y. Has anyone ever done something like this? Seems like it should work but I thought I'd ask rather than destroy the impellers or some other unforeseen consequence. Thanks! Mark

Alot of people have posted that elevating Mg to 1500-1600 works well against bryopsis, which is my experience. I've had it at that level for two years with no ill effects on corals or fish. I think I go that way rather than take a chance with biopellets. My problem with bio-pellets is that if water flow stops within a day or two you have a really toxic soup in the reactor: the pellets are great food for bacteria. I nearly lost my entire tank when I left my reactor off for two days and started it up without thinking. In my opinion bio pellets are a disaster waiting to happen, even though they apparently do alot of good for some systems.

If your pellets aren't tumbling, it might not be a trivial problem. I used BRS bio-pellets for a while. They seemed to work OK, but I'm not sure they were any improvement over an occasional vodka dosing (which can be dangerous, of course). For a reason I don't recall I turned off the pump to the reactor and forgot about it for three days, at which time I turned it on again. Within a few minutes all the fish in my tank were on the bottom, gasping. All the corals were closed up. Fortunately, I had enough water on hand for a 90% water change, and I was on had to see the problems as soon they happened. Everything but a couple of the fish pulled through. What had happened was that the reactor had basically fermented for those three days, and what went into the tank contained hydrogen sulfide (to judge from the smell) or some other toxin. If you do a search, you'll see I'm not the only WAMAS member who's had this happen. If the flow in your reactor is so low, or so impeded that the pellets aren't tumbling, my guess is that you're on the edge of a situation where the flow could easily stop. If it starts again, you could be looking at the bullet I dodged. My advice, frankly, is to get rid of the biopellets. The good they do doesn't outweigh the possible harm.

Well, I tried removing the aragonite with a 10:1 dilution of muriatic acid: Good news: it removed the aragonite grains very quickly. Bad news: it also eroded the Eheim Substrat Pro filter media. Apparently whatever holds the substrate balls together is also dissolved by strong acid. If I have left the balls in the acid mix overnight I'm sure they would have disintegrated completely.

A while ago I had Eheim Substrat (balls made of sintered glass) at the top of a remote deep sand bed. After a discussion on WAMAS where the consensus was that the balls, or any sort of bio ball, would tend to act as a nitrate trap I removed them. Now, I'm setting up a freshwater planted tank for which the substrat balls would be very good to have for filtering. However, all the little crevices have tiny particles of sand in them, than no matter how much I rinse or scrub, still wind up on the bottom of the filter. This is bad, since I need soft water and dissolving aragonite will be a disaster. I was thinking about putting the balls in a muriatic acid bath for a bit. Does anyone know if that would be sufficient to dissolve the aragonite grains? Thanks!

I'm currently using a new deep cycle marine battery (12 volts) for a backup power source. I was recently given a used car battery (also 12 volts) which is at least three years old and turned over the car's starter motor easilyso I figure it's probably in OK but not great shape. I was thinking of hooking them up in parallel since that would give me more power storage, so to speak. However, I'm wondering if this is a good idea. The internal resistances of the batteries are likely quite different, and I'm wondering if that would result in the battery with the higher internal resistance being run down. In practice, if both batteries had exactly the same potential (12 volts) then I don't believe there would be any current flow between them, but of course there is likely a small difference. What I don't want to do is wreck the good battery by hooking it up to the old battery, which might act as a short of sorts, which would run down the good battery, thereby shortening its life and probably not giving me any more capacity. Any advice would be greatly appreciated! Thanks, Mark

Sounds much more coherent than some humans at some parties when I was in college. /Just what I've heard. //I myself never went to such venues of debauchery, of course.

I've had good luck with the BRS reactor with the high density GFO. Phosphates unmeasurable with it. .06-.09 without it.