Happyfeet

For me personally, I just decided to support the local guys. The brick and mortar stores can't be easy to maintain and there isn't anything I liked more than making the rounds on a Saturday and seeing what was in what was new and having a chat with the guys. I'd kill for a BRK out where I am. I've also never had a fish die as a result of getting it from the local guys.

For reference, I have a 28 Biocube and I couldn't imagine only having the Jr with 4 plugs. Even with a relatively small system there are a lot of things you want to have checks on and you want to be able to control for ease of use and peace of mind. However it can be as simple as controlling your heaters, it just depends on what you want to do...

Hey guys! Thanks for the info and all the suggestions and warnings! Hey Hey, Yeah, I realized I wasn't doing what I wanted to do with my life. Conservation work was great and all, but the working with Congress was really wearing on me. I packed up and moved out to Idaho to do conservation out here away from the politics. Now I run the monitoring and evaluation program for 3 National Fish Hatcheries raising steelhead, Chinook salmon, and coho salmon. I'm also working with 2 tribal nations conserving pacific lamprey and building a baseline mussel index for the state. Been much happier out here!

Hi guys, long time no see. I'm looking for recommendations on where to buy fish online. I've never done it and honestly I don't know what sites are reputable. I've always bought my fish from the local stores, but since I've moved out to Idaho there just isn't anywhere within 8 hours that even sells saltwater fish! Hit me up with suggestions! I'm looking to acquire a couple more fish. Thanks!

Chemiclean has always worked for me. I have some if you want it.

Hour to an hour and a half should have been enough time... though that is a pretty large bump in specific gravity. Did you measure the specific gravity after your acclimated to see where it was prior to placing the shrimp in the tank? Was the container in the sump in the water? biggest problem when drip acclimating is the temp change. I acclimate for a shorter amount of time because I've found the temp change to be much worse than the slight chemical changes in each tank. Dripping over an 1 and a half could have caused the temp in the container to drop significantly. Shrimp when they are stressed, like to molt, is it possible all you are seeing is the shed carapace and not the actual shrimp?

Will it remain that way?

It's not the size of WAMAS, but how we use it that matters.

I'm suprised your Cobalt MJ1200 raises the temp that much. Mine actually lowered the temp, I figured there was less friction in the MJ1200 as opposed to the MJ1200. Origami is right on the money though, conservation of energy. Whats wrong with 7-8 in Alkalinity? I keep mine at 8, I find I have better colors, better growth, and less unexplained coral deaths when the alkalinity isn't really high.

Isaac get rid of them. I've just learned to live with BCP. My doctor told me it would be hard, but thanks to burnitol, I'm living a productive life. I'm able to plant frags and watch them grow. Before burnitol I suffered from BCP, now BCP doesn't keep me down. Side effects include, Smothered coral loss of porous surface headaches hand cramps seeing purple and wet hand syndrome If thoughts of harming your tank arise please stop taking burnitol and consult your doctor.

The amount of money being spent in the gulf to monitor the impacts is astounding and a large portion of it is BP money too! But yes there are a lot of studies being done on that very question in one form or another. In Louisiana it's especially hard to answer because the natural progression is this sort of waxing and waning of islands as the Mississippi river meanders, except human activity has prevented the Mississippi from meandering. The Mississippi River as it flows into the Gulf deposits sediments at the mouth of the river and eventually dams itself up, so much so that it flows over its banks and creates a new mouth. The dammed up section creates new islands, which over time erode away as the cycle repeats. So there is this weird situation where we are trying to preserve an ecosystem that naturally wants to fade away, because the thing that breathes life into it, isn't, or at least isn't being allowed to. Billions of dollars are at stake to figure out the question of, what allows an island to recover when other islands would have faded. If the answer isn't found the vast majority of those islands will be gone and billion dollar industries will be impacted, shrimp, oysters, and crab just to list a few.

Because the island was located at the mouth of Barataria Bay currents generally push water up into the bay and past the island, wave action would push the oil over the boom in periods of high wave action, such as before and during a storm. Since the current and wind was almost always pushing in a single direction the oil almost always would be pushed onto the island or around the island and pool inside the booming on the other side. The booming did a good job of flattening the water inside the booming and generally the oil couldn't escape from inside. On rare occasions the wave action was so intense that oil did go back and fourth over the booming. There was also another situation where a hurricane hit and tore the booming apart. The interesting thing about the hurricane was afterwards the oil was no where to be found, the water was still more turbid than normal, but all the floating oil slicks where gone. (We later found it washed most of it up and into the grasses or back out into the gulf.) I follow your logic on the booming, but but it did indeed keep out the majority of the oil. The oil traveled around in slicks and would break apart as they got into the bays. So long as the wave action wasn't too bad the boom would prevent all of the oil from getting in. When wave action was really bad it prevented the majority from getting it, but did lock in the portion that did get through. I wouldn't consider it completely counterproductive as it would have been much worse with out it. This island weathered the oil MUCH better than some of the other islands. This is another island close by which didn't have the hard boom (There simply wasn't enough to protect everything). We decided to see if a soft boom would be enough to stop some of the oil coming in. It wasn't Here you can see how the booming was set up. Bamboo poles where cut to length and then inserted into the mud. Absorbant booming was then wrapped around it where they were tied together. This kept the booming from washing to shore or washing back into the bay. It turned out the bamboo sticks couldn't withstand storms. Everytime where was a storm the boom was pushed over the sticks and up onto the shore. It was largely an exercise in futility. Soft booming was was replaced everytime it got washed up on shore in an effort to mitigate some of the oil. It was decided booming should be left on shore for 1 of 2 reasons. Not enough manpower to replace hundreds of miles of booming and remove hundreds of miles of booming. Also, the booming on shore may prevent oil from going further on shore (it didn't to any great note) The island the above pictures are from was diminished in size from roughly 1000 square yards down to 500 square yards in under a year. Well I'm no expert on crude oil, but I would have thought the oil itself would have slowed the erosion, by kind of acting as a glue. I wouldn't be surprised if your hypothesis proved to be correct as the oil weathered in the water and separated out. I think it's likely due to the mangroves being unable to handle the large amount of oil and dying off. We had calculated that 90% of the mangroves would die, but the surviving few would be enough to hold the island together as grass colonized it.It's my understanding grass was planted on the island to speed this up (I can't find any FWS projects where this is true), but it appears it did little to slow the erosion. I talked with a contact at the Audubon society and he said that this year its been noticed some of the returning pelicans, now that the island is gone, have been nesting at another island just north of this one. They have plans to try and create and improve possible sites for them as well.

hissing type of noise - I guess that depends on the volume of the hissing. Mine makes a slight hissing, but that's because water is passing through a membrane at a high pressure. Now if it's hissing loudly and spraying/leaking water then you may have an issue. If you have any question about its performance simply run it for 10 minutes, then for another 10 minutes measure exactly how much water it puts out. Then you can simply multiply the amount you got by 6, and then by 24 (x*6)24=y So long as y is +-10g of the 150 you are in the ball park. Make sure before you do this calculation that the pressure is at the advised pressure, otherwise you will have you adjust your expectation. Generally you would expect 1 gallon per 10 minutes. If you aren't getting the correct output with the correct pressure then something might be wrong. I have mine set up in my basement with a drain in case anything happens and it gets stuck on. You shouldn't have to worry about water temp so long as you are using unheated water. Once you draw the water out of the pipe, you will be getting ground cooled water and it will be the perfect temp. I've never used tap water with a Top Off so I can't say with any certainty what the issue is. I think you are probably pretty close in your assumption though.

I'm going to start off with a little background information on myself and my connection to Cat Island. I think many people who know me know I work for U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a Biologist. In 2010 I was tapped to help with the Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and I was sent to Louisiana. I was tasked with protecting Barataria Bay's critical habitats. Critical habitats being locations of significant ecological importance. In this instance it was mostly Rookeries because it was nesting season and I never identified any live T&E species. In my area Cat Island was identified as a significant Brown Pelican rookery with various other seabirds nesting on the island as well (terns mostly). So I ended up spending the majority of my 3 months on Cat Island. Here as some pictures of Cat Island when I first arrived. This image is of the North facing side of Cat Island, the bare ground is where the oil washed up on shore. Treatment was quite literally to blast it off with water and skim it out of the water. This isn't my call and I still don't think it was the best approach. Everywhere the oil touched eroded away within 2 months, Protective hard booming was placed around the island in an attempt to keep more oil from contacting the island. This proved to be largely ineffective as wave action pushed oil over the booming, but it did slow the advance. In an effort to further mitigate the oil, oil absorbent boom was placed outside the hard boom to soak oil that collected. This was replaced every couple days, when we could get BP workers out to our site. You can see all the oil caked on the boat and booming. Here is a picture of me modeling all the protective gear I had to wear in 115 degree weather. This isn't on Cat Island. Generally what we did was monitor the islands, and assess damages. Then we would direct clean up crews to the most critical areas. It worked a lot like triage. In the end our assessment was we would loose half of Cat Island to oil related vegetative die off and subsequent erosion. Over the past 5 years I've monitored my old island out of curiosity. As expected half of the island died off and eroded into Barataria Bay over 2 and a half years. However, something tragic and unexpected happened. The die off continued. The erosion continued. Over the next 2 years I watched at Cat island shrank from 400 square yards down to 200, then down to 100, now it's down to 10 square yards when the tide is low and 0 when the tide is high. Cat Island is no longer a thriving rookery home to hundreds of Brown Pelicans. Today Cat Island is a sandbar that is only above water for a couple hours each day. The truly tragic part is Brown Pelicans every year, return to this sandbar where they were born. They don't find a suitable nesting site so instead of flying off to find a new site, they just don't nest. They probably wont nest ever again. (Last two photos aren't mine, they are Nat Geos, but of the Cat Island) This is a sobering reminder of the damage done and continuing to be done by the oil spill.

I wanted to let everyone know about a pretty cool campaign, which spawned out of a campaign I used to work with. The campaign is lead by the Reef Environmental Education Foundation (REEF), called “Don’t Release Me”. It is aimed at educating pet owners to prevent the release of non-native pets in an effort to prevent potentially invasive species from ever establishing themselves. We know from our experiences with Pythons and Lionfish it can very easily happen, it just requires a mating pair to find each other. What really caught my eye and the reason I’m posting this is their plans for retailers. REEF is creating bags with “DON’T RELEASE ME” and their website printed on the bags. They are hoping to get these bags down to the same cost, if not cheaper, than the bags pet stores currently use in an effort to raise awareness in new buyers. I've attached pictures of the bags below. I thought it was a cool campaign lead by a really cool organization and thought I’d share with everyone. If anyone has questions, feel free to ask me, or you can contact the organization at lad@dontreleaseme.org http://www.dontreleaseme.org/ REEF.org