SeanCallan

CHUBAKAH is in the market for a new tank and I believe he has contacted a couple of manufacturers. You may want to shoot him a PM and ask him for some info, hes a nice enough guy, praise NeoZeo and you'll win his heart

There are a couple threads in the vendor section of the forums that list recommended vendors as well as those you should avoid.

How are their prices?

You can add a nozzle to the end of the pump to spread out the flow so it's less direct. It's pretty common in nano cubes, jump over to nano reefs and have a look around. Something might work for you

Rapid decreases in nutrients can cause an assortment of issues with corals. Thats why Zeovit and those other systems start out slow, if you pull all the nutrients out too quickly you can have color and tissue loss on corals. I could be mistaken but why not be safe and do things gradually to avoid any problems?

I'd like to have a custom 10g fresh SW mixing unit built. I've got some designs in mind and I would even do the work myself but in the long run I think it would be cheaper to have an experienced individual do the work. Are there any small time operations around this area that could use some potential business? Edit: I know I can do this with a trash can but all of my tank equipment is visible in my living room and I'd rather pay to have it look nice. Just my preference.

A vaccum would be nice, but why spend the money? I'm always cautious making dramatic changes to salt water tanks. I'm not sure whether there would be any changes in water chemistry if you were to remove that amount of detritus suddenly in one go. The safest and cheapest solution would be to siphon out the stuff over the course of a couple of daily water changes. That way you're removing the detritus and other particulate matter in the water column and replenishing trace elements all without buying any new equipment.

I actually liked your original rock work better to be honest. But I would remove a lot of the frags on the sandbed to make it seem less cluttered.

Do you still have ORA frags in stock? How much are they?

To each his own

From my experiences I find that the best results come from topping off my system to where it should be, siphoning out all the bad stuff I want, and then adding new fresh (and new) salt water. If you add your new salt water in before you do the water change you're not going to get the full advantage of the water change. The nutrients and bacteria will be in lower concentrations and you won't be able to remove as much as before. You can always stir up the detritus around the siphon to maximize removal

Really neat site I came across today! http://www.abelic.net/

I found with my tank that I could get nutrients down really low if I did daily water changes. There are a couple threads on RC about the benefits. One of the chemists over there reported seeing years worth of growth in SPS in a matter of months with daily water changes. You're not only removing a bunch of the nutrients but you're adding back in on the trace elements and minerals. Some people over there say that if you're consistent in your daily water changes that you can eliminate the need for a skimmer all together. Another thing you may want to look into is dosing a carbon source (vodka, vinegar, and sugar). Possibly a combination of all three since they affect different strains in the water column. On RC theres a thread about someone testing out the various combinations, may be worth looking into. I'm looking into one of those GroTech dosing pumps so I can use it to dose NeoZeo and to do a 1 gallon automatic water change a day.

I'm using a Tunze 9010 right now and as I get ready to invest in the NeoZeo method I want to have a good skimmer on board. I've heard good things about the Tunze 9010 but the first people runnning SPS tanks on RC with them eventually replaced them with better skimmers. The price tag and the reviews for the Warner Marine skimmers is promising. But has anyone seen them or used one? The other option is a BubbleKing Mini 180 sometime next year. Opinions? Suggestions?

Definitely! I'd love to get a mini-colony of this if someone is selling it.

Wow that's a total bummer. I figured a seasoned person like Steve wouldn't have handled the bulb, but that doesn't mean someone else on the distributors side didn't. I'll have to check out his thread.

Were you able to get a new replacement bulb? I know that finger prints on a MH bulb can cause it to explode in the fixture.

http://www.wamas.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=26262

Work related. Steve owns one of the bulbs, why exactly would he not be a good person to talk to? I guess you would suggest we call Calfo himself and request an unbiased opinion of his bulbs? Or maybe we can call IceCap and ask them for an unbiased review.

Check with Steveoutlaw, he just ordered one of those Calfo bulbs, they're supposed to be good (but I believe they're not wide spread so that information may not be accurate). With the WAMAS discount I think they're ~$40. I'm using the megachrome 13K which I actually really like. I've seen some people compare it to the Phoenix. You can see some pictures of my tank on the build thread but they were taken with my iphone so they aren't a great representation. Off Topic: My technical team is joining solutions under a new MD. They mentioned that "actions" had been taken against Tim, apparently he screwed a few people after I left.

I just did some quick searches on factors of evaporation and heat and surface area are two of the larger contributing factors. Air concentration is another one which would result from blowing air across the surface of the tank, back-to-front, etc. My plan isn't to blow air across the water but rather at an angle slightly greater than 45 to cool the water. The objective is to cool the first 2-3 inches of the water column at a constant rate to inhibit evaporation. Edit: I'm not trying to prevent evaporation 100%, I know that's not possible, but I would like to decrease it to the best of my abilities.

Interesting indeed! I only made my observation based on the algae present in the first picture that is not apparent in the second 2.

I'm not sure how a fan cooling the water surface is going to increase the evaporation. The water evaporates as the heat increases. You have much higher evaporation when you're boiling water then you do if you leave room temperature water out on the counter. Just look outside, there are puddles of water still standing from a rain a few days ago. If it was warmer outside they would have long since evaporated. Cooling the air causes it to condense and fall rather then fine vapors which will rise. A humidifier heats the water and a dehumidifier cools the water with coils causing it to condense. I'm not trying to suggest that you are wrong, but that the basics I learned in my environmental biology courses suggest otherwise. If anyone has any material on the subject I would love to read through it. I don't plan to dose Kalk on this system at any time unless I find a fool proof method of doing it that entirely eliminates the chances of an overdose. I know too many people who have ruined amazing systems with Kalk and too many that are outspoken against it. The rock came straight out of Steve's established tank and went into mine. It was there for roughly 2 weeks before I added anything. I've been doing 2-5 gallon water changes daily with vodka. I measured everything before I made any additions. I measured Friday morning, evening, and Saturday morning. The result from all of them was that the levels were low enough to not even make it onto the charts. I'm using Salifert kits. There were a couple of hermit hitchhikers and the SPS on the rock when I put it into the tank. The sand was not live. I'm not really worried about a cycle to be honest, the color of the SPS have already brightened up in the system and the polyp extension is fantastic. The purple monti that was rather brown when it made it into my tank turned a really nice vibrant purple in about 5 days. Usually I don't take risks in this hobby since there are little creature lives on the line so I ran my decision by a number of seasoned reefers I know on RC. They were all satisfied that if a cycle had occurred it was probably no more than a day or so. The daily water changes and vodka dosing may have facilitated that. I also ran my decision by Sean before I purchased the little guys at his shop on Saturday. Acclimation was 2 hours for everything.

I've gone ahead with my tank while I wait for the resolution. I wanted to update you guys with some pictures. Dosing 3/4ml of Vodka a day in my 2 gallon water changes. I've been slowly increasing my dosage to 1ml, I want to avoid an overdose so I prefer the make small increases so I can find the sweet spot. I'm skimming off a lot of dark thick stuff so I'm really happy. My evaporation is out of this world and I've really got to get some fans to cut down on it. The tank stays right at 80.6 in the afternoon and goes down to 79.4 in the evenings. I'm hoping a fan will eliminate the 1 gallon (and often times more) evaporation. Stock right now: 1 Copperbanded 2 Female Lyretails (one is turning male) 1 Skunk cleaner 3 Peppermints 3 Turbo snails 10 Margarita snails 10 red leg hermits Approximately 90 pounds of cured LR from Steveoutlaws which had a couple of SPS left on it. After the new year I'm going to look into possibly running the NeoZeo method with a GroTech doser to simplify it.

Looking good! Looks like you managed to bring down your nutrients as well which would have had an impact on the growth of SPS since they tend to thrive in low nutrient environments.