kmitch

Johnny, Any pistol shrimp/ goby pairs? If so, hold one for me, I'll come by tomorrow (since you guys are closed today... lame ) Kristen

Johnny you think one of those tangs would fix my algae problems? haha!

I just got home from there.... loaded up on some goodies at a great price. If you want stuff, jump now because it was packed in there tonight!

If you find someone lemme know. I have tons of Sand Tiger Shark's teeth from my days teach scuba in Morehead City, NC. I'd find them on teh wrecks, throw teh teeth down my wetsuit and dig em out on the boat (which always was a bit of a show...)

like using super glue? I've never done this nor read a thread about doing so, although I admit I hate the look of the disks! Linky/more info? Thanks

You get it from Marine Depot? Lemme know how it works. EZcompany has the same skimmer on her solana and seems to love it, I just hate the price!

How is that deltec working for you?

If I stick my ear next to the Vortech I can hear it, otherwise the sound of my AC and just normal life drowns it out. Very quite, much more so than many maxi's

Tunze is used and I have a buddy on another forum who might trade it out for me for a remora. The mod to make remora's quiet is really easy. If you lift up the skimmer cup you see in the body the white screw (air intake) and where the water injector is.... take a wet paper towel and fold it into a a square that covers the entire inside of that compartment. It does not affect performance and actually removes alot of waste (when you change the towel every few weeks you'll see its brown) and it silences the remora. Fastest and free-est mod ever! In my rear chambers I have some filter floss, carbon, purigen, and some spare LR pieces (plus heater skimmer etc) K

Yeah I have eyed those babies... had great success with all the remoras I had... figrued out the mods to make them silent and effective! I have a $100 rent.com credit card coming my way though....

My skimmer problem is that I cannot get it tuned properly. It'll skim dry for 2 hours and I'll come back later to it overflowing with water. Haven't found the sweet spot where I get the right combo of everything! Its been running for awhile now with mixed results, about ready to chuck it in favor of something else like a remora

Wow I've neglected my thread! The tank, however is doing wonderful. I'll just let the pics talk. These are in order of events, so the ones on top are oldest, on bottom are newest... The larger (and presumably female) clown with her eyebrows The pair. You can really see the size difference in them. The eyebrows again: And the true naked clown New pics and New Vortech! woohoo! My actually naked - naked clown FTS pre- vortech..... ewww look at all that equipment in there! To the rescue! FTS with the MP20. Notice I've gotten a few new SPS pieces! :o One of the coolest fish I've ever owned! The veryyyy cool blue/purple/red coral that was tough to pronounce its name. In the LPS family, very pretty. Mr. Coral said he'd never seen anything like it (he has frags of this left still) Closeup of the same piece I finally own acans! :happydance: Green slimer Bright blue and green SPS.... can't remember the names! argh Token FTS Ok so the short of what the tank is up to.... Decided to attempt dosing vodka, did alot of reading on the subject and have been doing careful water tests since i started. Thus far (and I am only 5 days in) no changes in nitrates. I've been having some trouble getting the Tunze Nano Doc 9002 skimmer to work well for me, its actually really ticking me off. Everything seems to be doing well, I plan on now giving the stocking a break (unless i find something amazing/a yasha goby/ am given frags) to let things grow and the tank settle down because I did put alot in there since its been setup. I promise to be better and not neglect my tank thread again! Sorry WAMAS-ers!

No but it is a very wide flow which is what makes it so effective- you should see when I fed my tank and that stuff gets blown around, makes for good fun for the cats watching the fish chase the food.

Well I stand corrected, Johnny says that Blue Ribbon Koi is actually a vendor for these awesome pumps and he's running the MP40 right now. Gotta say, I've never been happier with a $300 purchase! Good water flow, imo, is just as important as lights for corals, and we spend well over $300 on our lights!

I recently purchased a Vortech MP20 Wavemaker pump, and after alot of the hype I'd seen, I thought I would give it a review. I decided to buy the MP20 to go in my 34 gal solana tank for several reasons: 1. Unlike Tunze's etc, it does not require an external controller 2. The price is right 3. I'd seen some great reviews before 4. Great customer service 5. Pump is relatively small compared to Tunze's etc that would do the same thing. 6. Fully controllable, better than just timers and a few MJ's 7. The pump is external, so no heat exchange into the tank For size comparison you can see it next to a thing of tape. After receiving it I had a similar issue that I had seen other people have, the cords had pulled out of the controller and needed to be re-inserted. The instructions were very easy to read and the whole thing took about 20 mins to install, and thats because I played around awhile! After installing I played with the various modes, finding I preferred reef crest mode (which is random and simulates reef conditions) until I made it into a continuous wave pattern, where you can see the waves moving the water back and forth. It's very cool seeing everything sway back and forth like it is right now. In just the last day I've seen better polyp extension than I've seen thus far from my SPS pieces. I also have found the temp in my tank dropped 2 degrees in the first day without all those Koralia's and MJ's making heat! No complaints, its very quiet, very effective, probably one of the best purchases I've made in awhile! It's absolutely amazing how much stuff gets kicked up when you put in a new pump and it starts blowing around stuff you've never seen in the tank! Video's to come! Sadly no one that I know of in DC carries these pumps-- I've talked to Ozzy at BRK and Sean at Aquarium Co about them so who knows

Well sad news-- this morning I did a fish head count and it wasnt good. After a two hr acclimation 3 of the 4 died last night. Thats a big time pisser....... One of them had what looked like an infection on a wound last night that I realized only after he was in the tank. I guess since these guys are so fragile they didnt take well to the whole deal. They had gone from the shops QT tanks to the display tanks to my tank in about 4 hours....... On a brighter note the SPS all seem pretty happy this morning. Water tests this morning showed a slight spike but with 3 dead fish and a ton of new coral I rather expected that. James I might hold off until I see what everything does-- but I will still take you up on the offer at some point!

So one of the shops nearby, The Aquarium Company, had a special party get together tonight..... I feel like I robbed them.... For $150 I got: - 10 SPS frags - 4 Blue Cardinals - 10 snails (nass and margarita) - 1 red chalice frag - Reef putty (the good stuff) - 2 things of frozen food I didnt plan on adding the SPS this soon, but at $5 a frag I figured what the heck we'll give her a run. I went with some of the hardier SPS. So far everything acclimated well but we'll see tomorrow what kind of polyp extension I get. I've got some teaser pictures from just after acclimation, and fish pics will come after my fish decide to be more outgoing! FTS: Red Chalice: Un-Identified SPS frag (ideas?) Another teaser frag (unknown?) I will post more pics in the morning when everything wakes up and opens up for me!

Ohh i love the look of birdsnest! Yes please! I really want just one school of fish, I've done the "traditional" gobies thing and want something a little further from the mark, hence my thought of a school of a damsel fish. I might have to check out the Glass Cardinals at Aquarium Co tonite for their super party (planning on being there-- hope to meet some of you guys) Of course I'll also be at the meeting tomorrow night!

FINALLY! I got a picture of the tank I am actually happy about. Let's not discuss how many electrons I inconvenienced by taking a billion pictures to get this one, but it was worth it! So I am starting to really lean towards doing a school of green chromis in this tank-- like 5 of them or so?

So I re-aquascaped (again) today after finding a few more good pieces of LR that had more flat parts for frags. I think I might finally be happy with it! Not the best picture ever, but the rock work is stacked in such a way that theres alot of small caves, swim thrus etc for fishes. These are some nice pieces of LR with some good stuff growing on them, I am excited about having that few extra pounds. Sadly that picture really doesn't convey the aquascape! Also got the start of my CUC-- an emerald crab, 5 red hermits, and 5 astrea snails. I'll add more as I see the need and eventually get some Nass. snails, etc.

Phillip has some really nice stuff in stock and told me he's expecting a big coral shipment end of this week to include some SPS

Did I do better cnote? lol With such a small tank its tough making alot of neat shapes like that one guy did-- not alot of room to work with!

I have some demo shots i'll post when I get home. I usually hold the lens pretty close to the camera but you have to play with it depending on the focal range of your particular camera. Works with point n shoot and SLR cameras alike. I've found that it works best if you dont zoom too far in on your subject and let the magnification lens do the work-- you'll get a wider image in focus.

Well I took some various pieces of advice and re-aquascaped. The new layout is more realistic looking and has more flat spots for coral. Was assembled using 2pt epoxy, putty and some patience! Saw the start of the diatom bloom today as well. Nitrates have gone down a touch otherwise its all holding constant. Pics of the 'scape: (water still cloudy from kicking it up) You can see theres some flat pieces on top now where some SPS can grow out nicely K