reefkeeperrob

I made a special trip out to Manassas from the Arlington area to check out Aquatic Obsession. I've been out of the hobby for a couple of years and I'm looking to get a tank again and wanted to check out any new businesses. I honestly don't think I saw even 1 sick looking fish at Aquatic Obsession. Everything was very healthy and I was very impressed. They had a pair of very nice looking juvenile Black Clowns for 34.99 each which is $10 less than I've ever seen them anywhere. I asked them about it and they said that was correct and they try to keep their prices low. I'll be headed back once I get a system setup.

The weirdest thing happened. Not longer than 30 minutes after I took the pictures 2 nights ago the purple was gone, no where to be seen and the shrimp was acting normal again. I don't see an exoskeleton anywhere either and I looked all over and under the small amount of live rock that I have. I've never seen such a change for the positive so fast when things look that bad.

The shrimp has zero interest in feeding tonight. It just looks stressed out. I looked at it closer. It looks like the tentacles have turned purple and there is some kind of cloudy fuzz growing on them. Doesn't look like this is going to turn out good. Wonder what happened to it?

Hopefully you're right and it will be ok. I'm also hoping when it sheds the algae will not grow back because it's rather unappealing. I don't know why the only place I see this algae is on the shrimp. Just going to have to wait and see what happens I guess. Another note, I drip acclimated it for about an hour.

I just bought this shrimp a week or two ago. It seemed perfectly healthy when I bought it and did well in my tank until all of a sudden I notice that instead of it's tentacles looking semi-rigid and white they now look fatter, limp, and purple. The purple seems to be fuzzy purple stuff growing on top of the tentacles. I don't have any experience with these shrimp. When I feed my tank Mysis Shrimp it doesn't seem to be able to get any food at all so I target feed it about a 4mm x 4mm chunk of frozen shrimp which I bought from the grocery store. Ever since I put it in the tank it's basically been inactive except when I feed the tank and then it gets pretty excited swimming around the tank. Is this normal? I just tested all my parameters: Ammonia - 0; Nitrite - 0; Nitrate - 0; KH - 8dkh; PH - 8.4; Calcium - 340. Snails, crabs, and fish seem perfectly healthy. Has any one heard of this? I called the LFS I bought it from and they had never heard of anything like this.

I picked up a couple of 150 gallon boxes of CrystalSea Salt from Fins and Feathers. It's 30 dollars a box. When The Aquarium Company in Reston was open that's what they were using. F&F says it's good. Not to hijack the thread but is there any reason not to buy this product?

I've tried the blenny and the seahare. I have several types of HA growing unfortunately and they don't touch any of it. Maybe some have had better luck than I. I have also tried raising mag to 1600 and alk to 13dkh I believe it was. Nothing helped. I have never heard of raising the calcium, that's a new one. My top off water comes from an RO system from my LFS. Many have advised me my problem is most likely due to my water source. I've recently installed a 5 stage RO/DI system from Bulk Reef. I plan on doing several large water changes initially and then in the future 20% changes every week and all top off water obviously coming from my new RO/DI system. I'll let you know how it goes.

I also had a mag which I found much too loud being that my tank is in my bedroom. I immediately replaced that with a RIO because I couldn't deal with the noise and I'm actually quite happy with it. I think some people give them a bad rap but I've had it for a year now with no problems. I don't think there is such a thing as dead silent as people claim when the pump is in a bedroom when you're trying to sleep but it's pretty quiet. Some people claim Tunze pumps are dead silent. I would say the RIO operates at about the same volume as my Tunze on my skimmer. I use a pad under the pump as well.

khalid, I'm sitting in class now so I can't measure the height of the water. It's not important to me personally. I just set the bubbles to break about an inch below the base of the collection cup when I start it up. Just out of curiosity what is the picture of?

I'm really happy with my I-Tech 100 as well. I bought it to replace my noisy sicce powered Octo Extreme 200 about 5 month ago. I'm also running the Tunze. I don't know if it's standard equipment now or not. I was one of the first ones to get the Tunze. I would consider the I-Tech basically plug and play and it works awesome, I can barely hear it in my dead silent bedroom. With the Octo I was always screwing with it trying to make it work right. I can't remember the name of the guy that constructs/sells them but he was really helpful as well.

I too once had zero Chaeto growth. I finally gave up on it and got rid of it and the light I was using to grow it. About a month later I decided I wanted it again. When I went to replace the Chaeto and the light I found out a few things. Chaeto comes in many varieties and this thin hair like Chaeto I have now grows like crazy. The initial Chaeto I had was the thickness of spaghetti and didn't grow at all. There was another element I changed though. I now use a 5000k 23w fluorescent Home Depot flood light and it puts out an impressive amount light. The first time around I was using a light that was similar in appearance but I believe around 15w or so and 6500k. When I got into the Chaeto thing the second time I had planned on using two of those to see if that would help but I stumbled upon this higher wattage 23w lamp when I was at Home Depot. This light puts out a lot of light and I'm getting great growth. Hope some of this helps.