Matt LeBaron

I see my Gobies all of the time. They're always sticking out of one of the entrances that the shrimp has made. Sometimes finding which entrance they are using is tough but they're usually there somewhere. They also come out when it's food time.

Yeah just give the Shrimp some time to start building a home and they'll come together.

DD has kept Red Spot Cardinals to the point where they have bred. (Go a google search for Red Spot Cardinal Breeding, about the only useful articles mentioning much on it are in reference to DD) So while SA does look like a good company, with a good philosophy and excellent practices I don't necessarily think that they have found some magic bullet to keeping this species. The results DD got with their Red Spots was from feeding 10 times a day with a wide variety of foods. Most hobbyists are unable to replicate that type of care schedule so until we know more about the Red Spot Cardinal fish or develop new techniques to care for them they should be (in my opinion) left to experts; who are willing to put a lot of effort and long years of experience into caring for them. Saying just order them from SA and everything will be fine seems to be unrealistic to me.

Took a look at the SA webpage, looks like a good company but I see *nothing* that would make me think that Red Spots from them would be any hardier than from anyone else. If you can provide some information beyond what I am able to read on their webpage please do. Further education that could lead to successfully keeping these fish would greatly benefit the community. Seahorses used to be considered much the same until we learned how to care for them.

I've been using a Reef Angel for about 3 months now. I've been very happy with it. I control my MP40 with it and as of today my new LED fixtures. I also run dosing pumps and two Koralia pumps. I even built a feeder for my seahorses that it controls. I've liked it a lot but it is not plug and play, you have to spend a bit of time getting it setup how you want it. Having said that though it is FAR more flexible than any other controller on the market. There are also controller apps for IOS/Andriod and your computer.

And a cheap voltmeter is about $10 at Home Depot or Lowes, likely less if you have a Harbor Freight near you.

I doubt the ones from Sustainable Aquatics are any hardier than the ones anywhere else unless Sustainable Aquatics has some special shipping method that no one else knows about.

That is part of the problem, the ones from Divers Den are I believe tank reared but still ship badly. I can't imagine how Divers Den has them on such a regular basis otherwise.

They're redoing their saltwater fish section right now so that may improve once they're done. Their coral selection is very hit or miss, I've gone in sometimes and see some really great pieces for good prices and gone in others and wondered who would pay what they are asking for some of the stuff. Having said that I got a large colony of pipe organ coral from them for like $50 a while back, was a steal.

I tried to keep these for about 2 years, rather unsuccessfully. First, they are jumpers. You need some kind of cover on your tank and a good one, they'll find any hole they can. Second, they do better with multiple feedings, I was better able to do this since I have seahorses and feed twice a day anyhow. Third, they ship poorly. I got two shipments from Dr. Fosters and Smith Divers Den and each time lost 1-2 within a day or two, I have to assume to stress. Everything I read about them before hand has commented on a similar issue. Divers Den have to have the best shipping pratices I've seen also. In my case I slowly lost them to some preventable and some unpreventable ways and came to the conclusion that it wasn't fair to try and keep them any longer. I lost some mysteriously, they just dissappeared entirely, no corpse at all that I could find and I pulled my tank apart the second time it happened. I also lost two to jumping, like I said if there is a way they seem to find it out of the tank. I lost three of my last four when I moved about 7 months ago. Dr. Foster and Smith can care for them well enough to breed so they obviously know what to do but I have not seen anywhere that they have really talked about or outlined how they do it. I consider myself at least a fair caretaker of my live stock as I've cared for seahorses for the past 4 years and done it well enough that they have bred fairly often over that time but Red Spot Cardinals are just out of my ability right now and there is very little information on their care out there.

Had this same issue with an Acan vs a birdsnest. Leave the stung stem alone, it will regrow eventually once it is left alone. I broke off part of my birdsnest that had been killed but left another part because it was hard to reach. The part I left eventually regrew, making me regret breaking off the other.

Looking sweet!

Not sure if this will work for your new house setup but I use two large brute trash cans that have the little dolly on the bottom. I use one for waste water and then mix salt water in the other. I just wheel them to where I need them. Drain water into the waste water can, wheel it off, wheel up the new mixed one and pump the new water in. I have a fish room but my house has a septic system so I can't pour my waste water down the drain. I just roll the trash can full of waste water to my backdoor and pump it out under my wood pile where no grass grows anyhow. Brute Trashcan Dolly

Yeah the Kent RX-P stuff likely had more to do with with his demise than the ich did. Terrible stuff, after doing some research on it I should never have bought it, honestly the stuff shouldn't even be on the market.

Unfortunately he didn't make it, I think that Kent crap just stressed him out to much. The other Cardinal in the tank with him has not shown any signs of ich though and the 14 day treatment for the cupramine is just about up. Will do a water change and add copper absorbing media this weekend and then it's just a wait and see game for a couple more weeks to make sure he stays healthy. *Again if you are reading this thread, this is why you should QT. I cannot even imagine how bad this would have been in my display tank.*

This thread got me thinking so I grabbed my multimeter, checked and found about 35V in my tank, mostly it's 1-3 from a bunch of different stuff but my PH probe is bleeding in 10V, I can't imagine this is normal. Any thoughts on if that seems right? I think I'll be grabbing a grounding probe tomorrow.

Check out ReefAngel if you don't mind doing a bit of programming. Cheaper than everything else on the market and if you're willing to put in some time programming, you can do some very cool things with it. Works well out of the box also. http://www.reefangel.com/

I asked about specs on the D120's earlier but we unfortunately do not have them to know what may need to be done to DIY them into being controllable. ReefBreeders has hinted that they might be able to modify one for you to be controllable but honestly even if they are able to do it relatively cheaply, ($60-$80) the price then starts to get to the point where there are other options that might be better.

Monkiboy is working with the company now on that but no real details right now.

You might want to check out the Reef Angel forums. Reef Angel has a conductivity module expansion and some of the folks over there may have some experience using and maintaining it. I haven't really looked into it though.

He should be fine. I bred freshwater gourmai's years ago and they would go weeks basically without eating while they defended and took care of their bubblenests, they came out of it fine. Nature makes them to survive it.

So scratch what I posted originally. Did a bit of searching and found this article: http://www.tfhmagazine.com/saltwater-reef/feature-articles/breeding-the-pajama-cardinalfish.htm Seems like that is a fairly good account of how to go about raising them if you want. Will be tougher since apparently unlike banggai, pajamas have a larval stage.

Any chance of getting the info the current drivers they use in the D120's? If we had the specifications so we knew whether the existing drivers were D or P type and the output voltage and amp it would make it easier to me (and likely other people) to make a decision as even if the separate group buy falls through we would have the information to do a bit of DIY and still make them controllable. Depending on the type of controller people have it may be as simple as disconnecting the wires from the dimming knobs on top and running them to their controller.

Less than a week to go now. Any update on the dimmable drivers for the D120's?

Still waiting to see what the dimmer options end up being for the latest Evergrow Group buy but still doing some research on putting together my own DIY LED setup. Looking at RapidLED right now because their solderless option seems like the way I would like to go as it will allow me to make changes to the fixture easily without having to pull the soldering iron out every time. Only issue is that they don't have much in the way of dimmable drivers, it's basically the meanwell ELN-60-48P (which can run about 14 LED's) or the meanwellHLG-185-42B (which runs 60+ LEDs in strings). I'm looking for something that could run 20-30 LED's so that I can minimize the number of controllable channels and plugs I'm going to need. www.ledgroupbuy.com has the inventronics 100w driver that runs at 1400ma, which could do around 20 of the XT-E and/or XP-G Cree LEDS(both have a max current of 1500ma) and then the inventronics 75w - 700ma driver that can run near 30 of the XP-E Cree LEDS (max current 700ma). Has anyone used these drivers or have any recommendations on other drivers I could use to run two LED strings, one of ~24 Royal Blue XT-E and one of ~24 XP-G Cool Whites? This also brings up another question I have, while the XP-G have a max current of 1500ma, I see most setups grouping them with XP-E's and just running both at 700ma, is there a reason for only pushing the XP-G's half of what they could handle or is it usually just a convience thing to run them with the XP-E's so that your white and red/green/UV LEDS are all on the same driver? The PWM dimming expansion for my Reef Angel gives me 6 controllable channels so I'd like to use one to run my blues, one for my white, one for red, one for green, one for UV, and one for moonlights. I'd have to buy another dimming expansion if I have to use two drivers each for my blues and whites. I may just consolidate the red, green, and UV onto on driver anyhow since I don't think there will be a lot of reason to adjust each of them individually but I'd still like to minimize channels and plugs as much as possible. Thanks for any advice or assistance.