LCDRDATA

How soon do you need him to go? My wife likes the look but isn't convinced yet about potential size. Price certainly seems reasonable. Thanks!

I'd say whatever you're doing, keep it up.

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It's happened to me twice, although they ended up cooking on the glass tank top vice the overflow. One was a chalk bass, the other a scissortail goby.

I've had scissortail gobies and chalk bass in the past and really liked the look of them. Lost to carpet surfing, though, so make sure they can't escapte

I currently have a glass top, and it's prevented a number of jumpers from departing my tank. Yet, a few have still managed to slip out the slot for the overflow etc. - over four years I've lost a chalk bass, scissortail goby, juvenile (~ 8") snowflake moray (different tank, similar setup), and possibly a couple other disappearences (we have three cats, so if they found them first I'd expect no evidence). About two weeks ago I found my leopard wrasse on the floor, but got him back in the tank apparently no worse for the wear. My top does cut the light down some. I thought about using white egg crate for a top instead, but that seemed to have the same light blockage as the glass. Now, I've got all the parts for a screen top, including clear mesh from Bulk Reef Supply. Then I'm going to use egg crate for the back slot (overflow, inlet, etc) but I figure that should be minimal. I wouldn't worry about significant light loss if using the clear mesh.

Did you have a price range in mind?

I don't know about the 2 bar or scribbled, but the gold spot - while admittedly a pretty fish - is supposed to get over a foot long, which I think is just too big for my tank. As best I can tell the algae is a mix of GHA and turf types, including bryopsis. The saga is on my thread that I put the link to in the original post.

My DT is a 75-gallon mixed reef. Current fish include 1 each leopard wrasse, Kole tang, engineeer goby, Randall's Shrimp goby; 2 each green chromis, yellow-tailed blue damsel, false percula clown. All fish resident at least a year and at or close to full adult size. I may also be adding 1-2 saltwater-adapted mollies. It has been suggested a rabbitfish (foxface or one-spot foxface) could help with my algae problem (see thread "GHA from H-E-double hockey sticks) but I wonder if there's really room in my tank for an additional fish that size. I suppose theoretically I could get one, let it do its thing and then remove it, but the idea of finding a new home and trying to catch it make that theory dubious in practice, at least in my mind. Especially since nothing else that is supposed to eat this stuff has touched it so far. Any thoughts/experience? THANKS!

If you go to ReefCentral's "The T5 Q&A Thread" you'll find more information than you can use. You are correct that ATIs have a better reputation than AquaticLife bulbs, although I saw something recently at Hellolights.com about a new line from AquaticLife.

Wow, what a deal - I SO wish I had the space for that bad boy!!

Knowing what kind of escape artists octopi are, if you've kept him for three months something about your set-up is definitely "correct."

I can't remember if it was Animal Planet/Discovery, but a year or so ago I stumbled across a similar special on dragons. In that one they took the approach of explicitly assuming they were real and then using science to explain the various characteristics found in dragon legends. The science fiction "hook" was the "discovery" of a frozen dragon body in a cave that had been buried in a glacier since the middle ages. It was a neat show, but much like the famous "War of the Worlds" radio broadcast, you would have had to be actively NOT paying attention to miss the fact it was a dramatization, not a documentary.

I don't recall seeing the "how" on WAMAS threads, but then again I haven't looked very hard. I know there are multiple ones at ReefCentral.com. The "why" is that the vinegar serves as a carbon source to promote the growth of certain bacteria in the water column. In growing, they consume nitrates and then get removed by your protein skimmer. People also dose vodka, ordinary table sugar, and Vitamin C to fill the same role. More recently, the move has been toward biopellets, but they all work in essentially the same manner. I've dosed sugar and Vitamin C; both helped bring down my nitrates but I got some other undesirable growths with the sugar that didn't happen with the Vitamin C. There's a long-standing thread on ReefCentral.com with more that you'll ever need to know on the subject. The downside I see to dosing vinegar vis-a-vis the others is the acidity; the Vitamin C thread uses a buffered pharmaceutical-grade type that is neutral.

I haven't gone to LEDs yet; as a general principal, though, I think "you get what you pay for" is generally true only to a point, and I suspect the Radions may be beyond that point. I also know Hellolights.com recently had the AIs on sale, although that may not still be the case. As far as skimmers go, I don't presume to be an expert, but some time back the speaker at one of the WAMAS meetings discussed some academic research on skimmers that, if memory serves, essentially concluded that holding other factors constant there wasn't a significant difference between them -- at least the ones they tested. So it would seem that the difference between a $500 unit and a $1500 unit is most likely $1000 and perhaps bells & whistles. Doing a quick look elsewhere online I found a Bubble Magus at BRS, a Reef Octopus Extreme at Marine Depot and a CS2 'Black Pearl' at Avast Marine Works that are all well short of your $1200 target and would seem to be more than capable of handling your tank. I don't have any personal experience with any of these, so take this for what it's worth, but at least the first two have 5-Star customer reviews on the respective websites. Good luck again!

When I've experimented, the light loss with white egg crate is about the same as my glass top, so while it is reducing light it isn't necessarily catastrophic. My suggestion would be to stick with the egg crate for the curved section and make your screen top rectangular. Also, while the 1/4 inch bird netting will work, if you can wait a few days Bulk Reef Supply carries three different sizes of clear screen netting that you may find preferable to the bird netting. Good luck however you go with it.

Well, as I'm just about to add the last dose of the Algaefix Marine I thought I should go back and find this thread to update. Sadly, there's no real change, except perhaps for the worse. My mag is at ~1800 and has been for a couple of months; the biopellets are tumbling nicely and slowly disappearing but not visibly doing much else. I tested my param.s Sunday after the power came back on: nitrates & phosphate both show 0, but this stuff won't die. The chaeto in my 'fuge is likewise losing the battle (i.e. being outcompeted by the GHA) and I need more; I may take the 'fuge light off the timer and run it 24/7. I turned the lights off for four days and the only difference I could see was major receding on my blue/green acan colony. It made no noticeable difference to the algae. I acclimated a pair of lyretail mollies to salt water with an eye to putting them in my DT - they're reported to eat algae and are pretty, besides -- but although they've eaten some of the film algae in my QT, when I put a piece with the stuff I'm fighting in with them as far as I can tell neither of then will touch it, either.

I also have a 75 gallon setup, although I sounds like I have more rock in the display than you. In terms of more free-swimming fish, I also have a Kole tang and can endorse those as a good choice. I also have a Leopard Wrasse -- which are usually considered one of the more difficult choices -- and normally I would have ruled it out. However, in this case it came from another reefer who was breaking down his tank and I could confirm ate prepared foods, and I'm very glad I have it. He was also a she when I got him. I also have a pair (started out as a trio) of green chromis, and 2-3 of these or blue chromis would give you additional color and activity. You might want to look into an Orchid Dottyback (Pseudochromis fridmani) or Midas Blenny. Another possibility would be a Milletseed Butterflyfish (Chaetodon milliaris) or Pyramid Butterflyfish (Hemitaurichthys polylepis). With the exception of the Leopard Wrasse, none of these have any particular feeding requirements and (as best I can tell) ought to get along with the rest of your crew.

Well, I had a detailed post almost ready to send and accidentally blew it all away - and I don't have time to re-write it now. In the meantime, anyone have spare chaeto? I need to replenish/replace what I have for my various tanks. Thanks!

FYI, I just found that Consumer Reports is testing generators as we speak (see news item here) and according to the article should have results sometime later this month. They also have a generator buying guide on their website. If you're looking for a generator it may be worth waiting to see what the results are before committing.

Consumer Reports is testing generators as we speak (see news item here) and according to the article should have results sometime this month. They also have a generator buying guide on their website. I hope that helps. Now that I've found it, I'll cross-post the information on one of the other relevant threads also.

I have a Marineland HOT Magnum 250 (information here and here) on my 30 gallon cube - mainly softies and an adult snowflake moray. In conjunction with a 2-gallon HOB 'fuge and a Tom Aquatics surface skimmer it seems to pretty much do the job. It has good flexibility in terms of what media you put in it. I don't know that it does a lot of biological (vice mechanical) filtration, but that's what the 'fuge and ~50 pounds of live rock & live sand are for.

While I generally go with flakes for that role, I've used the Ocean Nutrition Formula Two pellets as well as the sera marin granules (the little yellow bottles that periodically get handed out at WAMAS meetings). Both were, like you describe, additions to the once-a-day frozen, and all my fish (and some LPS, for that matter) seemed to like them just fine. I think the Ocean Nutrition Formula One and Prime Reef come in a pelleted form as well.