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We've also thought about going that route but haven't decided yet. Regardless, your best bet on that question is probably to check with the manufacturer of your specific HVAC unit (if it isn't on the unit itself or in a manual) to find out what the peak draw is. Beyond that you could certainly look at your electric bill to see what your average consumption is. Also, don't forget to take into consideration an estimate of how much you can cut back when you actually need to put it in service. Those figures should go a long way toward letting you size your requirements.

Our power was down for ~ 36 hours. In my 75-gal I ran a battery-powered air pump about 1/2 the time and ran an air pump from a computer UPS the rest of the time. About 12 hours of that time I also ran a Koralia 1 powerhead off the UPS. I ran another battery-powered air pump in my 30-gal cube almost the whole time; I "stole" it twice for about 30-60 minutes to run in my wife's 5-gal nano. As far as I can tell, we didn't lose anything (at least not yet - fingers crossed for delayed reaction). That being said, we bumped our insulation a good bit a few years ago, so have the room the tanks are in topped out at about 80 degrees; I suspect it would have gone a good deal higher today had power not come back, and we would have had no way to cool it further. So looking at getting some kind of generator or large-scale UPS for the future. My sympathies for others' losses. For what it's worth, my understanding for power outage prioritization is that tanks' needs are generally in the following order: 1) oxygen/aeration; 2) circulation; 3) temperature moderation. I also noticed that aeration with the standard (vice battery) air pump, the high volume of bubbles creates limited circulation of its own. For better or worse, large volumes of water require lots of energy to heat and/or cool - meaning that larger aquariums should be stable on their own for a period of time, but will likewise take time and effort to return to "normal" if they get too hot or cold.

On the bright side, it looks to be a healthy, attractive specimen. I'd be interested in a frag when you reach that point. While currently illegal, it would be nice if there could be some kind of certification or licensed arrangement whereby vetted individuals could keep these endangered corals. That's what zoos do with preserving endangered species, with great success.

Well, Momma must have been pregnant, because when I checked my frag tank this evening to see how the mollies were doing I saw about a dozen little bitty mollies in addition to the two I got the other day. I figure the babies should be able to hide in the chaeto ball so mom & dad don't eat them until I decide what I am going to do with them.

The Petco in Burke (Rolling Road) has a saltwater section that sometimes has decent buys on "basic" fish (damsels, blennies, clowns) and some inverts (snails, feather dusters, and such), although corals tend to be overpriced IMO. I have a pair of green chromis and an engineer goby in my main tank I got there, and they've done just fine (although I did start with three chromis). QT is always recommended, but that's not unique to Petco purchases.

Well, I went ahead and bit: my frag tank is now home to a pair of creamsicle lyretail mollies. Five hours of slow drip (really slow at first) in a jug in my sump to acclimate. They seem to be doing fine and have picked a little at some of the nuisance algae (although not the worst stuff, at least not yet). I also know I have one each male & female, so there's the possibility (or maybe probability) of babies in the future.

I got my first saltwater tank in 1987, a 25 gallon setup with an undergravel filter (my, how things have changed...) I remember that a couple of Black Lyretail Mollies were among our first fish. I don't remember them breeding in the saltwater tank (they did in the 30 gallon freshwater aquarium), but they did just fine for around a year and a half before the Air Force transferred me and we had to find them a new home - after converting them back to fresh water. I wonder if they'll eat GHA? - It may be time to try them again.

I could take the cowrie. Especially if it eats hair algae!

I was in a very similar position about a year ago. There's a long, detailed thread on this issue at reefcentral.com, PAR 38 LED Spotlights that I went over repeatedly. I was looking to light a 30 gallon cube and ended up going with a trio of BoostLED PAR 30 bulbs. Boost underdrives the LEDs to reduce heat and extend the life, and they offer a bunch of different color combinations. Besides Boost there are definitely a number of different possibilities out there (Orphek being one), which is both a blessing and a curse . Good luck!

Although it may well be too late, I know that one of the antidotes for cyanide poisoning is sodium thiosulfate, which is also the active ingredient in some dechlorination products. You could try adding that to the water in your QT. Beyond that, I don't know what else to suggest except prayer.

I've purchased my 48"/54W T-5s from Reefgeek.com, hellolights.com, and BRS and have never had a problem. I believe the first two offer group buys, and I know BRS does. Hellolights seems to have sale pricing a bit more often. Depending on where you look, you may see the 54W bulbs listed as 46.5" rather than 48" - don't worry, they are the same (the former doesn't include the length of the pins at either end). As far as spectrum goes, there's an ongoing T-5 Q&A thread on Reefcentral here that has all the information you'll ever need, and the main authors usually reply within a few hours. However, I would agree with earlier posts that you're going to need more than 4x54W on a 135 gallon tank if you want to keep stony corals.

I got the materials from BRS and I'm just about ready to build my screen top, but I am not sure what to do about the penetrations I need - HOB overflow, HOB 'fuge, return inlet, and power cords. The options seem to be to either build them so there is a "slot" behind them for the accessories or poke holes through the mesh. I think the best option might be to leave the slot - for simplicity and structural integrity - and use eggcrate with penetrations to cover that area. What do you think? Thanks.

Sorry to hear about that. According to my quidebook, though, my wife's little tank is an order of magnitude too small for a tusk fish, so I don't think that will be a problem.

Precisely, which is why I put quotes around "sure" in my original post. That was my experience as well, when we had some to work on the aiptasia in my 75-gal display tank. As we would like to see them, the "maybe" on the Peppermint was to address that. Ouch! SO, we seem to have +2 on the Skunk cleaner for visibility, +1/-1 on the Skunk Cleaner for behavior, and -1 on the Peppermint for visibility. The Fire Shrimp is an unknown quantity at this point, I guess. Thanks for your comments - anyone else out there have something to add?

My wife has a 5 gallon EcoPico with two Sexy Shrimp and a Rainford Goby. Besides another Sexy Shrimp, we want to add 1-2 lysmata species (Fire or Skunk Cleaner, maybe Peppermint) Shrimp and want to be "sure" they will get along. If we added two they would be different species. We'd also like to see them, which is why the Peppermint is listed last. Any recommendations? Thanks.

OK, I'm a little behind the power curve here, so let me try to respond to the several posts in sequence. OldReefer - I need to test my Mag again, but as much as I've been adding I have to believe it's somewhere north of 1700 by now, not that it's yet made a noticeable difference. I may try GFO if things don't start improving soon, I just don't have a very good mechanism to employ it and my fish budget is about maxed out. My pH has always been stable at ~ 8.3, so at least it shouldn't be an issue. The CO2 scrubber sounds interesting, and I may have some questions on that for you offline if I get a chance to (figuratively) catch my breath. firecrackerbob - Thanks for the suggestion, but we all like the various little critters than live in/on/under the substrate, so I don't think going bare bottom or FOWLR is a viable option. If the situation were a bit different it would certainly be worth thinking about. As to the chaeto, it's growing well, but for whatever reason it seems to be in a stalemate with the GHA (as opposed to out-competing it). Hopefully that will be more effective in the future since I recently doubled the size of my fuge (although it still isn't exactly a huge fuge - forgive the unintended rhyme ). Packman@90 - I've thought about an algae scrubber, even looked up a DIY design that someone's taken commercial. I may have to find that link again, but the recommended size for my setup (per the designer) would require another 4x54W T-5s to be replaced (if memory serves) quarterly. I know there are less expensive DIY solutions out there, but while I could probably handle them (and if not, I'm sure my wife could), I simply can't spare the necessary time [heavy sigh] in the near term. Hopefully my fuge will take up the slack once I knock this stuff back. But if you have any recommended URLs, I'd be glad to file them away for future reference. Xyrophobic - You're not hijacking, you're just sharing . If you haven't found your chaeto yet, I can probably spare some, as I need to prune some back to make room for better flow / new growth. I also added my second dose of AlgaeFix this morning, my biopellets are tumbling nicely, and my skimmer is producing a generous amount of foam (although not much skimmate). So with any luck, in another week or so I'll be seeing some changes. Nothing much yet, but that's hardly surprising. I think that about covers it for now, and it's past my bedtime [yawn]. Thanks again for all the good advice.

Adding a sea hare was the second "new" herbivore I tried. The first was a lawnmower blenny. He did fine in QT, but for whatever reason my Kole tang took an instant and intense dislike to it and chased it mercilessly whenever it ventured out of one small corner of the tank. I thought about trying to remove it and put it back in QT until I could find it a new home, but it disappeared by the next time I got home from work. My best guess it that the tang chased it out of the tank (difficult, but not impossible) and one of our cats disposed of the evidence. After that, I got the sea hare, and it doesn't touch the stuff either.

Well, two days of darkness doesn't seem to have made any difference, except perhaps for confused fish. I got my bottle of Algaefix Marine today and put the first dose in tonight. I'll post what happens - my fingers are crossed.

I'm not certain that it's bryopsis, but around half the patches get the nice fern-like branching look when they grow out. I didn't mention it previously, but I also have a tuxedo urchin (and a pincushion urchin) and they don't eat this stuff either. I have had them for some time and didn't add them in an attempt to control this stuff, which is why I didn't mention them in the first place. You recommend squirting the bryopsis with magnesium; how concentrated a solution were you using, and how do you avoid damaging the coral it's growing in/on? For example, a lot of this stuff is coming up between the polyps on several of my zoas, xenia, etc. or growing on my GSP, torch, acro, and so on. I'm using the Brightwell Magnesion-P, so I can mix the powder to whatever concentration I want so long as it will disolve. Thanks!

I've been waging a battle for a couple of months now with some seemingly indestructable GHA/bryopsis , and at best it's a draw. I have tried water changes, upgrading my fuge/chaeto, raising my mag to 1600+, changing out half my lights (which were due), running carbon and phosguard, pulling it out by hand, etc. I've also added at least four species of snails, a sea hare, emerald crabs, and scarlet hermits - nobody will eat this stuff. My Kole tang picks at it occasionally but that's about it. I have seen foxface rabbitfish recommended, but I don't have the room in the tank for one and at the point I question whether it would just turn up its nose like everything else has. Over the weekend I have gotten my new biopellet reactor running properly, but I know that takes some time. The only other thing I can think of is turning off the lights to try and slow the growth until the biopellets kick in. My real question is, how long is that safe (given that all the corals are photosynthetic as well)? Any other ideas? I'm completely open to suggestion -- this stuff is taking over my tank, and I really don't want to admit being outsmarted by a plant .

There's a long-standing T5 thread on ReefCentral (the most recent split is already over 30 pages) here. I looked over roughly the last 10 pages; most of the situations were for T5s on their own. There was one case that combined T5s with 14k MH and the recommended bulb combination was 3xATI Blue Plus and 1xATI Purple Plus. The standalone combinations were as follows: - 2xATI Blue Plus, 1xATI Purple Plus, 1xATI Coral Plus - 3xBlue Plus, 1xGE6500k OR Giesman Midday OR ATI Aquablue Special - 3xBlue Plus, 1xPurple Plus OR KZ Fiji Purple - 2xBlue Plus, 1xPurple Plus, 1xKZ New Generation OR ATI Aquablue Special With a 90 gallon I'm assuming the T5s you're looking for are 48"/54W. Where are you located? I'm in the middle of replacing my T5s (48"/54W) and have most of the bulb types in the combinations above (some unused, some being replaced). If you are reasonably close we might be able to do some experimentation to see what you like.