marinebiologist

glass cages can do anythign you want but they are not local so you would have to pay shipping http://glasscages.com/

I used to use the Kent Marine Proscraper balde for acriylic. They are the red ones. They do the job just takes a little more time and effort then cleaning glass.

A mix of pumps and construction materials boost the price. That and some people love thier stuff too much that they think its gold when it does the same job as a skimmer 1/4 the price.

Very good book. I own the first ed.

I second your review. I got a overflow from them for my 120 and love it. Great construction and always nice just to have a small box overflow insted of a pvc 90 or something that takes up 1/4 of your tank with lost space. Great stuff and highly recomended.

I had a similar issue and ended up crawling under the portion of my house trenching out a good 1 foot wide by 1 foot deep area and poured a concreete footer from which i used bricks to block up and support the joists. Before I did this my tank had a little bounce in it as I walked across the room but after there is no movement at all. And this is in an old house built 1909 with full cut timber joists. It was a pain in the rear to do but better safe than sorry. Took me maybe 3 days time at 4 hours a sitting to do all the work.

have you started dosing with anything new? Different type of salt or new type of foods? I have found in the past some times when i dosed with certain additives it caused my skimmer to micro bubble like H-E-double hockey sticks. As for a good skimmer for a 120 depends on if you are looking for in sump or external. ASM makes a great skimmer for the cost.

If you want it gone the easiest and cheapest way to do it is to black out the tank. You need to remove all light sources from entering the tank so if it is in a room you can block windowns and all great if not wrap the tank in something to block the light from getting in. Leave it blacked out for 3 days and then on the 3rd day turn on your lights and all and go to town pulling out all the algae you can and do a ~20% water change that night and a ~10% water change 2 days later. This will reduce the hair algae greatly. And if it does not totally wipe it out you can repeat the procedure ~2 weeks later. Your corals will all do fine with out the light for a few days but the hair algae does not fair so well and will die off. But note that if you have a refugium you want to leave that light on as not to kill your good macro algae you just want to block out the light in your main tank. Just my 2cents. Its what i always do when i have a red diatom bloom or a hair algae problem and it works great and best of all no wasted money on all the chemical treatments.

For those interested in reality of currents on the reef here is an interesting scientifice paper that analyzes Tidal and subtidal flow patterns on a tropical continental shelf semi‐insulated by coral reefs. http://www.agu.org/journals/jc/jc1009/2010JC006168/2010JC006168.pdf

Thanks Reefoholic, I figured i would share a little tidal information since that is actually my job to directly study and analyze the tides and their effects on the ocean. I tried not to bore everyone to death and put it short and sweet.

yes there are currents out there but that would require not using a night mode. If you wanted to replicate the tides you would have to specify the tidal cycle of the independent reef you are trying to mimic and then you would have to determin if the tidal cycle is Diurnal or Semi-diurnal. And since there is no way to mimic the tidal flow in a closed system of a tank no matter how you play with the pump it will not mymic this. About the only thing you could possibly do is slow the flow down to mimic slack tide. Other wise there is no tidal effect able to be created with the pump. As for the Night time I do not see a purpose the ocean never rests. it is in constant motion and is effected primarly by the Moon (~2.5 times greater effect on tides) than the sun. Because though the sun is of a much greater mass the proximity to earth of causes there to be a much larger effect of the moon than the sun on the tidal currents and movements in the ocean. So with that being said a night mode reflects that there is effects caused by the Sun. Which should not matter to the system. So if there was an attempt to create a near realistic effects you would need to mymic the short term lunar cycle (29.53 days) and the long term Metonic cycle (6940 days). Where you would have to select the ocean and Lattitude of the reef you are mymicing to get the tidal current intensity alterations through the day. So basically there is no one that is going to be willing to program a pump with this level of harmonic cycles. So for that reason I just keep my pump running full force day and night. And as for changes in flow that is why there are different cycles in the pump and it mymics surging and pulsing of the ocean. And if you want to know any more about the fun of tides you can always check out NOAA's site http://www.tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/ there is lots of good info on tides and tidal currents there.

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Toss him in the sump. If you fear the size he can do the cleaning down below

Coral!!!!!!! Heck with the fish. I love my tangs but i would go strait coral in a heart beat.

I believe you mean Faux News! Yea i do not believe a word that comes from them. Unless it is useless infromation like where starsmucks is getting their new order of coffee from or that Paris hilton did it again. It is a shame but like Grave said comming from China there is not a big market for fish exports from their teratorial waters. And if the shipper was worth anything the fish would have been packed correct to be able to stand a few day delay.