cabrego

I ended up going to Grand Market tonight and boy was that store interesting! Lots of live foods! They had live crab, crawfish, talapia, lobster and more. Tons of seafood. Pretty neat store, we will definitely go back for some king crab legs. They also had LOTS of NORI to choose from. Some of the nori was seasoned so I stayed away from that, I just picked up the smallest pack of nori (only had roasted) I could find, it was around 2 dollars and came with around 4 times the amount you get at the pet store for 8 dollars. They also carried larger packs for around 12 dollars, they had 4 different color package 'types' to choose from. From the best me and my wife could tell, there was no indication what the difference was. We did notice that 2 packs had the same nutritional facts, while one of the others had significantly more vitamin a and b. I will probably go back and pick that one up too. I didn't pick it up because I wasn't sure if roasted NORI was OK, so far from what I read online it is.

Sounds good lets do it.

Thanks for the tips. I know exactly where that shopping center is. Great to know!

Yeah I figured that much, I was hoping to get a store name/street name. Thanks,

Hi all, Wondering if anyone knows of a local source (NOVA area) that sells Nori/seaweed at a cheaper price than buying at the pet stores. Thanks,

thanks for the info, i will have to look into what springfield is using...

It seems like there should be documentation about this issue on vendor's websites selling RODI units. This is the first time I have really noticed a possible new requirement for filtering my water. I thought the 5 standard stages were sufficient in all cases. Why don't the catalytic carbon blocks come standard?

good deal-which kit did you go with? I really like that company, I've ordered two and installed two of the deluxe kits.

That was awesome!

I am not sure how blue you are looking to go but that sounds like it would be very blue, it is preference thing this point..I don't see why you can't do it. You may consider acclimating the corals to the new light though...

Thanks for all of the interesting insight! It sounds like I have 2 additional dosing pumps now, that is good news!

Thanks for the info Tom. Has anyone closely studied the role of CO2 conentrations as a function of coral growth rates? I generally try to increase areation to avoid the build up of C02 to minimize PH swings. It look like there is really a balance interms of what is an optimal CO2 concentration in our tank's water. Any insight on that subjet?

Thanks for that piece of information-it is very helpful. In the past everytime my calcium has been on the low side (360 or so) my kalk has been around 7 or so. At the time I was having hardware issues with my Kalk reactor so it was not operating correctly. I have fixed that issue, so hopefully I will be able to better monitor my alk and calcium. I did manually up my calcium and I put my kalk reactor back online. Last time I checked (a few days ago) my alk was at 11 and my calcium was at 420) that is when I dialed back the Kalk output. I will definately do some more tests soon!

I am already topping off with saturated kalk 24/7 via my float switches. It turns out topping off with 100% saturated kalk is generating to much alkalintiy for my tank so I actually have a line T'd off my kalk RODI feed line and into the sump with a ball valve for control. I also have ball valves on the Kalk output line, this allows me to some what control the mixture of Kalk and RODI that I am topping off with. I know that 100% kalk top off 24/7 is too much because after a couple of days with this method my Alk jumped from about 9 to 11! So I have dialed back the alk and will just continue to tweak until I find a sweet spot.

I am actually dosing Kalk with my Kalk reactor. My tentative plan is to continue to dose Kalk, and use my doser for calcium, Mg, and one other thing (not sure what it is yet). Of course if I find that the Kalk reactor is sufficiently dosing calcium and alk, I will have an extra dosing pump for something else. I am open to any suggestions as I am new to automated dosing. Based on my previous experience with my kalk reactor I felt that it was not keeping up with my tank's calcium needs- I will be monitoring calcium much closer to understand what my tank's needs really are.

Looks very cool! Nice to know there are other options !

Just a shameless excitement thread! I hope it works well. I will be dosing calcium and Mg with this. My alk is being dosed with my Kalk reactor, any recommendations on what to dose with the third pump? I am thinking either vodka or maybe some kind of trace element..it is out for delivery!

In my experience tangs can be very tough to acclimate. I have been successful at keeping my two (knock on wood) for about a year now. I have a PB and Yellow in my 90g. The yellow was knocking on deaths door, partly due to my QT process (I let ammonia build up in the qt). But she made an amazing recovery. What are your water paramters? I have also found that my tangs not only eat algea but love pellets too. However, if I go more than 2 days without algae feeding I notice skin slight discoloration and signs of ich/bumps begin to appear. So their immune system can be very sensitive. I also found it took time for my tangs to readily and excitedly munch on alage, which adds more challenge to the general problem. Assuming your water parameters are good I thing the best thing you can do is ensure his condition does not get worse and feed him what ever he is willing to eat, you need to ensure they accept food. You may also consider planning for a QT. I had a scopas too that did very well and never skipped a beat during acclimation, I tend regard those as more hardy tangs.

I am not sure about the webcam but if you wan't a wireless connection to your AC JR you will need at least the 3 pieces of hardware I mentioned in the first post. I purchased all of them yesterday for around 70 dollars shipped. I

My comp is always on so ist is no big deal for me. I also like the idea of controlling from any place with a connection. Zoo curious what the AC3 can do that thus cant

Greetings! While doing research last night I stumbled upon some interesting information. It turns out the AC JR has the capability to be hooked up to your home's WiFi via the serial port and a Blue tooth adapter! This is great news for me since I was starting to run out of neat stuff to do with my fish tank! It looks like the total cost so far is in the neighborhood of about 70 dollars to make the conversion. From what I have read about it, most of the users are pretty happy with the software that has been developed. Here is a link to the software http://sites.google.com/site/acserial2web/Home There are a few hardware options, the bottom line with hardware is that you need the serial cord to the AC JR. If you want wireless you will also need a Serial Bluetooth adaptor , and a bluetooth dongle for your computer. Pretty cool and a seems like a great alternative for those that don't have the fancier aquacontrollers. :clap:

Not sure what to think about the Moly but the Mg does seem high. IO usually tests around 1300 or so, so I am not sure how you could get higher than that without some serious dosing, not to mention that even if you were dosing I would expect the Mg to drop with your Ca and Alk. Since both of those appear to be a tad low, it is really odd that Mg is as high as it is, assuming you are not dosing Mg. Silicates can be a problem, I have a test kit for Mg and Silica if you want a second opinion. I recommend double checking some of those numbers just to be sure you understand what the report says. How do they test your water?

No Problem, let me know if you want to test your meter, I have plenty of 1 ppm standard...

woops accidently hit enter while typing, that is annoying! Can one of the mods put an S in front of 'tandards' Thanks,

Hi all, Today I received my Hanna Phosphate Colorimeter test kit from MarineDepot.com. The kit was 39.99, it came with 5 or 6 reagents, and was shipped promptly. I also ordered an additional 25 reagents for 8.99. I also ordered a 1ppm phosphate standard from Hach.com, they shipped fedex very quickly too. Kudos to the vendors for quick shipping! Overall I felt that the meter was relatively easy to use. I think reading up on the meter ahead of time and learning a few tricks to help run my test efficiently helped some. All water volume measurements were made with a 5 ml syringe. I found it a little difficult to ensure that the syringe was free from all air bubbles but overall I felt my measurements were accurate enough for this test to be meaningful. Getting the reagent in the vial is a little tricky and is probably the most cumbersome part of each test. I also did not realize that the test actually takes 3 minutes to conduct. The meter begins a 3 min countdown during its interpretation of the color of the liquid in the vial. I will cut to the chase and give you the results from the 3 tests I ran today: Test 1: 10 ml of Tank water read 0 ppm. Test 2: 10 ml of Hach 1 ppm standard read .99 ppm. Test 3: 5 ml of Hach 1 ppm + 5 ml of RODI read .50 ppm. A big kudos to Hanna, it looks like this meter is doing it's job pretty well as far as I can tell! :clap: