Matt LeBaron

Do a search for Upflow Algae Scrubber. Guy that has been pushing them heavily for several years sells them. I bought two to try out on my current setup. I have an algae scrubber a couple of years ago but had the same experience as Coral Hind so I eventually took it down but the upflow design seems to eliminate all of those problems.

Wow definately a scary story.

Your not the only one BaySailor, I miss the readings all the time because I get distracted and it auto shuts off. Usually some brief cursing ensues before retesting begins.

Just... wow that is going to be fantastic. Seriously envious of that setup.

How old is the live rock/substrate in your tank? I had some odd algae growth for a little while, even though my Phosphate was reading low. Just couldn't figure it out until I noticed that some new rock I added to the tank didn't have any of the hair algae growing on it. It then occured to me that the LR I have was the same stuff I used several years ago when I was running a much "dirtier" setup with a bunch of macro and no corals. Realized that with my new setup being much cleaner due to keeping corals that the LR was likely leeching Phosphate back into the water since it was so low in the water column now. I added a reactor with some GFO (about half what is actually recommended for a tank my size) and the hair algae has been slowly disappearing over the course of about 2-3 weeks without changing anything else and I'm actually feeding a bit more. Not sure how long before the LR leeches out all of the Phosphate it has been holding but I figure I'll just keep running a little bit of GFO.

I have to agree with MBVette here about the low range phosphate test. I mean it's always close but you do get different results. Last test I did I got 0.02 and then ran it again (I have a bit of algae growth that I'm trying to figure out) and got 0.04. I think at that low level little differences in how much regeant you get out of the package is the reason for the difference but again at that low level I don't really care so much that there is a difference, 0.02 and 0.04 are basically the same as far as my tank is concerned I think. I **REALLY** wish that Hanna would release liquid regeants like they have for their Alkalinity test or at least redesign the powder packets so it isn't so darn difficult to get everything out. While their Alk test is the easiest, greatest thing every as far as testing goes IMO. Having said all of that I still think the Hanna tests are the best out there by far. (I've heard bad things about the Calcium test) Even if there are some issues with them the accuracy is really just to much to pass up, at least for me. Especially for things like phosphate where a little can make a big difference.

You just need some plastic mesh to use a phosban reactor. They actually sell it as a kit but you can just go to Michaels or Jo-Anns, go to the knitting section and find some of the plastic mesh they have there (costs about 99 cents). Pull the foam out of the reactor and cut two plastic circles out of the knitting mesh the same size and replace the foam with them.

Great post, having kept seahorses for a number of years now the similarities made me smile a bit, seahorses have the same tendency to find the one thing in the entire tank they shouldn't like Mandarins seem to. The feeding method you have really is brilliant. Have you ever considered selling kits, plans, or something like that? There's a lot of talk about Mandarins that are eating frozen or what not but it really seems to be a rarity where you have developed an easy way to feed them healthy live food, which really seems like the better way to go.

Just as an FYI like Coralhind and OldReefer said; when I moved a bit over 4 months ago I bought a new 90G to move all of the stuff from my old 90G over to it. I left the old sand behind but moved all of the live rock with just a bit of the old live sand for seeding. Everything went fine, I had a very small algae outbreak as I was without my old DSB and my new DSB but mostly devoid of life due to being new but my live rock kept everything (even my SPS) happy. If you can move the liverock from your leaking tank to your new one, everything should be fine.

This is a shot of my tank after I moved, turtle grass has grown in a bit more since.

Corals grew fine at 76 for the entire year I've had them. Seahorses do better at lower temperatures, 75 would be ideal for them but I choose 76 as a slight compromise for the corals. I'll slowly start dosing alk and raise that a bit also. Nitrites are really low, only reason they are detectable at all is because I have one of the hanna photometer tests. Any normal test would read it as 0, which is basically effectively is at 0.023 ppm.

So to anyone reading this let me give two pieces of good advice so that you hopefully do not repeat the two mistakes I made. 1) Check your equipment regularly, even though it may seem to be working, make sure it is. 2) Calibrate your equipment regularly. So one of my heaters stopped working at some point recently and my refractometer was a bit off. This became an issue after I did about a 1/4 water change on my 90G tank last week. The replacement water I used had a salinity of about 37-39ppt if I had to guess because my refractometer was reading high and since it was such a large water change the single remaining heater was not able to compensate for the room temperature water change water. This resulted in a bit of a salinity shift in the tank and a bit of a temperature dip for a day or two until I noticed that my tank was a 2 degrees colder than it should have been, prompting me to check the heaters. So a number of my SPS corals have browned or started to bleach. I've lost one frag entirely, it went over the course of almost three days.(That frag was in my DT, luckily my frag tank, while plumbed into my DT seemed to have weathered everything without a problem, I assume because the salinity and temp change were very slow for it) My biggest concern right now is what I should/can do to try and assist some of these SPS's in recovering? Same light, less light, shorter duration, more feeding, less feeding, or just hope and pray? I have a green slimer acro that has totally browned and is not showing any polyp extension. I have one monti that is bleaching a bit at the tips and another monti that *may* be bleaching, it's growing edge is normally white so I'm not 100% sure but it's over all color is a bit off so I don't think it's super happy. Everything else in the tank is fine, including my seahorses, fish, and soft corals like pallys and zoa's. I've got a new heater and I am going to start to slowly get the salinity back to where it should be but it's only at 35-36ppt right now so still is a relatively normal range, I normally keep it around 33-34ppt. Current tank parameters below: Phosphate: 0.07ppm and 0 on another test Nitrite: 0.023ppm Nitrate: <5 (Test basically reads 0) PH 8.2 Calcium: 420 Alk: 6.5 Temp: 76 (where I normally keep it at) Thanks for any advice or assistance, I got my first SPS's about a year ago to give them a go and had really excellent luck with them until this happened. The whole mess prompted me to order a controller to so I can avoid this disaster in the future.

I'd suggest buying tickets online ahead of time if you can. During holidays the lines can be very long and they tend to sell out fairly easily. (They only allow X number of people in at a time.) Another benefit of ordering your tickets online ahead of time is that you can use the Will Call booth that almost never has a line or the automated machines next to it. (Will Call booth is behind the normal ticket windows) My wife and I have a membership since we tend to go a number of times a year and the cost of membership is the same as going to the Baltimore Aquarium twice and you also get access to the DC Aquarium.

In my opinion: Technically, no you could do without one, using canister filters and hanging stuff in the tank itself. In reality, you need one, seriously you really really really do. My first saltwater tank was a 55G that I converted over from a freshwater tank and it was not drilled. I used a canister filter to keep media in and had stuff hanging in the tank itself, which took away from the look of it but also made it so doing any work on the tank was a HUGE undertaking. I spent easily 3-4 times more time working on that tank than I do my 90G now that has a large sump on it. Again in my opinion, if you do not have room for a sump for whatever reason get one of the tanks that basically has a sump built into the back of the tank. The RedSea takes (forgetting their name) have this I believe and several nano tanks use this design.

You know I bought one of those portals about a year ago and just haven't had an opportunity to use it. Might be time to pull it out!

I know multiple defrots and freezes will slowly ruin food but has there ever been any research into how quickly it happens? You figure for a normal tank you could put a weeks worth of food in for 6 defrosts/refreezes. People with seahorses would have a lot more, at least double that if not triple, so that could play a large part in how one of these systems are designed. Also how long can food sit defrosted before it begins to rot? Like I said I'm more interested in a daily feeding system that something that could feed for an entire week (although I would kill for that kind of system too) but I'm thinking of a system that I could place froze food into in the morning and potentially have it feed multiple times over the course of the day. My concern is how long I could let the food defrost for before it might begin to spoil. Also are there any controllable valves that are relatively cheap? Like a solinoid big enough for a small power head to attach to? I was thinking that you could develop something very similar to what Schdini has but put multiple levels in the box in the freezer. First feeding could flow water through on the lowest level, then the second could flow from the next level up and so on. That way there would be no defrosting of anything you weren't going to feed. For this to work without having a bunch of different pumps though would be if you could have some type of controllable valve that you could make send water to where it needed to go. *Edit* In thinking about it; buying a couple of the tiny rio pumps that they use on little fountains are likely cheaper than finding a number of solenoids at a decent price and the pumps are so tiny you could basically just stack them on each other and zip tie the tubes from them together to the freezer.

Nice thanks for the post schudini! My next aquarium purchase is likely to be a controller so maybe once that is done I'll build a system like that.

If you really need brine shrimp I can start culturing some for you. I have a bunch of green water that I could use to raise them to adults. You can also buy them at House of Tropicals for dirt cheap, assuming they still have them behind the counter there. Any particular reason you need them?

They are a little bit ugly but I have to be honest, the ugliness kind of appeals to me. Not so concerned with nipping aggressiveness as feeding aggressiveness. I from time to time have had problems with the red spot cardinals raiding the seahorse food dish, which is more of a concern. Thinking of making a trip up to That Pet Place in PA in the next couple of weeks, they have a number of different cardinal fish there. May pick some up after I've had the chance to observe them.

Hopefully no one minds me resurrecting this thread but I went looking for the same answer and Google found this thread (and very little else). My little Firefish, Vince is a bit over 4 years old now. I was wondering this afternoon how long they live since he was the very first fish I got back when I started with a 55G. He's still in good health as far as I can tell dispite some injuries over the past 2 years from trying to hide with my gobies and pistol shrimp. The Pistol Shrimp doesn't appreciate it and you can hear him snapping at poor little Vince and he usually has some fin damage or minor wounds afterwards. He always healed up without a problem though. I recently lost one of my first seahorses to as far as I can tell old age, Theoria was just short of 4 years old and didn't show any signs of illness other than slowing down a bit before she passed so it's gotten me thinking about how long some of my original inhabitants will live. My first three non invert inhabitants were Theoria (female seahorse), Stevie (male seahorse), and Vince (Firefish). Stevie is still doing well but he seems to be getting a bit snile in his later years as he still knows the clear plastic tube means food but has gotten that it comes out of the bottom of the tube not the side or top.

Are Pajama cardinals a good peaceful schooling fish? I've tried my luck with Red Spot Cardinals and either something in my tank loves to eat them or they're magical because they just slowly disappear without a trace and I'm looking for some peaceful fish that can co-exist with my seahorses.

Not advocating spending money for no reason but I've learned over the years that spending a bit more to do it right the first time will save you time and money in the long run. I think this fits into that category, I'd rather spend the extra $10 and skip a trip to Chipolte than risk serious problems down the road.

Could that system suck up PE Mysis though? That's the real issue I need to figure out how to over come. I'm not really looking for something that can feed the mysis without any intervention from me. I'd be happy if I could dump some frozen mysis in a container when I leave for work at 4am, have it fed to the tank at like 10-11am and then when I get home later put more frozen in and have it fed an hour or two later.

So I've been thinking recently about some way to build an automatic feeder than can handle frozen food. The reason, is that I have seahorses that need to eat twice a day, because of this and my work schedule my tank lights come on at 6:30am and turn off at 7:00pm, I only run some of my LEDS this entire time but regardless it's both longer than I would like to run them and not my ideal time to have the lights in the tank on. (I'd like a 11am to 9pm schedule more) My seahorses eat frozen mysis, so I'd like to have some way to just drop frozen mysis in something when I leave for work in the morning and then have them put into the tank at a specific time after defrosting. I've thought something like a large dosing pump if something like that exists might work because it wouldn't burn the motor out if it ran out of fluid to move, so I could put the frozen mysis in a small container with tank water and have the pump just pump everything into the seahorses tank. Problem here is that I don't know if a pump capable of that exists. The only thing I was thinking was some kind of container that could be opened eletronically to basically dump the contents in. Before I put to much thought/effort into this though I thought I would ask if anyone has tried anything like this before or has thought of something I am missing. Thanks,

This 1000 times. I'd have a lot of extra money and time if I had this piece of advice when I was starting out.