Matt LeBaron

As to your biopellet question, 4 hours shouldn't be an issue, if you're ever concerned give them a good rinse and shake them a bit while doing it to get excess bacterial load off them and you should be good to go. They may take a few days to rebuild their bacterial coating but I've never had a problem with that. I've gone something like 18-24 hours without flow before and as long as they were still tumbling didn't worry about it.

What is this paper thing you speak of? How often does it require charging and is it a locked down format? I lose stuff in my fish room/workshop too easily, I record my reading on my iPad because I'm less likely to loose the $400 electronic than a piece of paper.

What is the life span of these nudibranch? I think that may be useful information for Daniel if he decides to either get rid of the piece or after dipping how long he needs to keep an eye out them. What you want to do is get three small buckets, some rubber/latex gloves, and Bayer Advanced "Complete Insect Killer". (Just their basic insect killer don't get any of the with Germ Killer or other varieties) The first bucket will be a mix of pre-mixed salt water and the Bayer insect killer at a ration of 10ml of Bayer to 1 cup of water or 4 ounces to 1 gallon of waterI believe. (***Someone please confirm this for me, it's been a while and I don't want to give out bad information***) The second and third buckets will just have pre-mixed salt water in them. (Remember to make sure all of this water is at the same temperature and salinity as your tank so you don't shock the coral) The coral will need to spend at least 5 minutes but no more than 10 in the first bucket with the bayer mixture. You should swish it around in here or use a turkey baster to flow on the coral to dislodge any nudibranches still attached. It should then be swished around the second bucket as a first rinse and then finally the last bucket as a last rinse. Make sure that your rinse the coral very well as you do not want any of the bayer making it into your display tank, that stuff kills invertebrates well and quickly and you don't want it in your tank. I usually change the latex gloves I have on after I tank it out of the first bucket with the bayer and put new ones on for the rinsing buckets. You can then place it back in your tank. Not sure how often you will need to do this, hopefully someone can chime in on the life cycle of these things or you can find how long it takes them to hatch from eggs but you'll likely need to do it daily or every other day until the problem is corrected. This is also what I would recommend doing for any new coral you add to your tank as a precaution to preventing infestations like this. Coral RX dip works also but you can spend $8 dollars for enough Bayer to last you years so it's the cheaper option.

I think the scientific and hobbyist communities will need to sort out the breeding of even difficult to breed fish sooner rather than later if we want to continue to keep some of these fish in the hobby. There is growing pressure to restrict wild collection of all types and I don't foresee that reversing itself in the future. Mortality rates from wild collection are just to high to be sustainable in the long term I think, especially as pollution continues to endanger the ecosystems that these fish live in. Wild collection for the hobby isn't generally the reason for declining fish populations but after their natural environments are badly damaged by the pollution pulling 100 fish out of those already damaged ecosystems so that 10 make it to the fish store and then if we're lucky 3-4 survive long term in captivity is not a sustainable model. Also in the very long term captive breeding of some fish may be the only thing that keeps them from going extinct unless the human race gets its crap together and stops trashing the planet. I think that if the breeding of fairy wrasses is ever figured out it will be a boon for the hobby as I think you will get a bunch of very interesting mixes similar to what has happened with clown fish in the past 10 years. Jawfish are awesome little guys but the DSB requirement is a turn off to most hobbyists, which is why demand is so thin for them.

Good advise from everyone above. To what Origami said once your tank is well established you will find you do not need to test as often unless you are trying to correct a parameter. Here's my example of parameter correction: So I recently checked my Alk after not doing so for *far* to long (learn a lesson from me) and found it to be very low, my SPS frags had turned into large colonies and were depleting my Alk at a much faster pace. (It was an "I'm an idiot, of course they are" moment for me but hindsight and all that) So I started manually dosing Alk and slowly increasing my automated dosing to where I am now very close to having my automated dosing back to the point where it is meeting my corals needs but I have done it slowly over weeks with testing daily to make sure I was not over correcting. Slow and steady, everything in this hobby needs to be slow and steady, my corals were not growing as quickly but were still more than healthy despite the low Alk because it declined slowly over time as they grew bigger but my dosing did not keep up. *Also want to note just for completeness that I have also been monitoring my Mag and Calc on a daily basis during this process because all three parameters are linked, I just can't increase the Alk without those other two parameters being monitored also.

I think some of the export issues that have arisen in the past 5-10 years have brought the issue of captive bred vs wild caught to the forefront of the conversation for salt water aquarists, which I think is a good thing. There are *a lot* more captive bred fish now than there were even 2-3 years ago and we seem to be on a really solid trajectory right now as far as increasing that number even further as we develop a better understanding of the breeding and raising of the salt water fish. I truly hope that in the nearish future the salt water side becomes like the fresh water side where virtually everything is captive bred. That will just be better all around IMO as it results in healthier fish better suited to captivity with less of an impact on the wild populations. I agree with the original post on most thing except the one about not caring where the live stock comes from with the caveats that it is done in a way friendly to the animal and the environment. Honestly captive bred fish are just healthier and better suited to captivity. This goes back to a point I made in Origami's original thread is that our ability to care for sick fish is currently abysmal, we're diagnosing by sight (so you better hope it is something you can see) and a good source of treatment information is next to impossible to find without serious extensive research. Given all that I think the best way to reduce fish mortality in the hobby is for captive bred fish that are less likely to get sick and better suited to captive life to be the norm. I recently lost my last Pajama Cardinal after 6 years so I have been looking for new fish to live in my 90G with my FoxFace and Chromi (Yes one, you can buy as many as you like, you'll end up with one eventually which is why I am never buying these again) and have decided that I am sticking to captive bred fish going forward. My first addition currently in QT is a captive bred Orchid Dotty back, they're eating well and after 2 days have started associating me with dinner time and now comes up to the front of the tank when they see me standing there.

Thanks for posting this, good set of laughs this morning.

Really? How are they offering the service? Select a fish they'll QT it for you or are they selecting some fish to QT and then offering them for sale?

Divers Den is the online option, they QT and while I still QT when I order from them it's more to make sure they are eating well than worrying they may be sick. I still keep them in QT for at least two weeks though but have never had a Divers Den fish show any signs of illness.

Reef Crystals but I really wish it didn't have that clay decaker they put in it, not the worst thing in the world to clean out my 35G brute trash can like once every 6 months to a year but I don't think I could ever setup a sealed container water change system with it because I don't know how I could get that stuff off the inside walls if I couldn't go at it with a scrub brush.

This hit home with me a couple months ago when a LFS that I follow on social media kept popping up in my feed with exactly what their weekly shipment of live stock was. I was surprised at how much stock they were getting in weekly and obviously selling because they were just getting in more each week. It clicked with me that if people were actually keeping their fish alive for years like I do there is just no way they could move that many fish each week. It was more than a bit of a disturbing revelation for me and while in the past I tried to purchase captive bred where I could (keeping seahorses for 10 years had already ingrained that in me a bit) I am really now basically looking at captive bred exclusively. And I think with many of the successes over the past 5 years in breeding this is something that aquarists can larger get away with fairly easily now. I was excited to see that multiple sources are breeding Pajama cardinals now and the captive bred section over at Live Aquaria is fairly impressive now. I don't forsee a black list or anything like that happening, unless available treatment for our aquatic buddies increases significantly (see my post above) but I think it is both possible that in the next 10-20 years our hobby could be entirely captive bred both on the fish and coral side of things. And honestly that may not be a bad thing.

You can also probably tell the the difference by the mucus that green slimer puts out when it's cut or bothered. That thing is *very* well named.

A QT tank costs less than $100, look for a sale at PetSmart or Petco where they have a "complete" 10G kit usually for like $50-60, that has everything you need, basic filter, heater, light, and tank. Get some PVC pipe from Home Depot/Lowes and cut it into like 6 inch sections to provides places for fish to hide in, a $10 timer to turn the lights on and off when you want, and your ready. Add salt water and do small water changes to suck up any left over food each day and if you really want to go all out buy on of those in tank ammonia testers that you stick on the side of the tank to make sure the water quality stays good. It is a bit of extra work though because without the established bacteria your main tank has ammonia and Nitrates can become a problem without frequent water changes but you can even mitigate that a bit by leaving a sponge in your sump for a few weeks and putting it in the QT when you get a fish. Just remember to throw it away afterwards and get a new sponge as that one could then be a carrier for any disease the fish may have had but that like a $3-4 cost.

The more the dog example is used the less I like it when compared to purchasing fish. When you buy or adopt a dog or puppy you take it to the vet to get checked out, regardless of the source, puppy mill, breeder, shelter, whatever. You take the animal to a professional who will examine it and determine a treatment regime for it should it have any illnesses. What is the equivalent for fish? A QT where you generally have to guess at what may be wrong unless it is some super obvious illness and try and treat with medication that may sort of work? Those two options don't even seem remotely equivalent in the least. I have had what I consider a fairly good record with treating sick fish but most of my success has been through an incredible amount of "research" and an incredible amount of preparedness by keeping something like $100 worth of medications on hand, most of which goes bad from lack of use in a few years. I mean how is a hobbyist supposed to tell a gram positive bacterial infection apart from a gram negative one? Even being aware of the difference is not something that is easy to find, let alone making the determination between the two. I think a lot of people don't QT because they don't feel there is any value in it, if their fish gets sick they don't feel like they will be able to do anything about it without a degree in marine biology and even then maybe not. I think the hobby needs to do something about that honestly. If you have a moment go check out www.searhorse.org and take a look at their Library. That Library is the reason that I still keep seahoses today because it lays out 99% of the diseases you may encounter with Seahorses, what can be the cause, and what you need to do to treat them. I've taken a seahorse to a vet (finding one that would even take a look was a chore unto itself) so that I could get a prescription for Diamox for gas bubble disease, I knew what I needed to treat my seahorse but only because of the library at that website. Stevie went on to live a long 7+ year life after that. If we want the aquarium trade to function like the dog trade there need to be equivalent options. There are always going to be people were the price is all they care about but I think there is a significant portion of people out there who would pay more for fish and/or use QT more often if they felt there was something they could do besides cross their fingers about getting a healthy fish. Heck even the best thing to feed our fish is still up in the air, LRS frozen is what I use because the fish love it and it seems to keep them very healthy, most other peoples experience with it matches mine so it is becoming very popular but even that is a shot gun method at nutrition, we keep fish from all different parts of the world and areas of the oceans in our tanks but have a generally poor understanding of their nutrition requirements, there's no such guessing for dogs.

Not for me. Many of my fish over the years have come from Divers Den, which is generally more expensive but all of the fish have been disease free due to their QT process., of course I still QT’ed them myself but none ever showed signs of disease and came well fed. I would happily and have repeatedly In the past paid more for fish I know are coming from a vendor that I know cares well for their live stock. Having said that I have seen very few LFS’s that care for their live stock in a way that would make me want to pay more. Keeping my live stock alive for their full normal life span or longer is very important to me,

People need to keep in mind that LA and Diver's Den are extremely different. Divers Den has a whole QT process that their fish go through, which is why they are a bit more expensive and a WYSIWYG type of sale. LA is just a normal online fish seller. I've never had an issue with Diver's Den but I still usually QT my purchases from them regardless but at the same time none of those fish have ever showed an illness but that's just my experience.

A bag of amphipods from HoT? When did they start selling those? They always have brine shrimp and I've seen the serve yourself copipods dispenser there but never amphipods.

It's interesting but it I don't see how it would be practical in open water. Seems to me that there are hundreds of different ways that it would be damaged fairly quickly over time. The science of it is impressive though.

I've had bubble algae in my tank since I first started almost 10 years ago because I started off with Florida aquacultured rock that was covered in all kinds of stuff. I've only had it reach a point were I was very concerned once and while emerald crabs helped, keeping my nutrients low was the true solution. I still find the occasional bubble algae here and there but it's like any other algae, it needs nutrients to grow. You'll never truly get rid of it but you can keep it under control, IMO.

Did you check your salinity after the change and then the next day? Not sure how much of your water volume you changed but if there was undissolved salt and it was enough of your total water volume you probably ended up shocking your corals twice, once during the change when the mix was still fairly caustic and then again as the salt fully dissolved changing the salinity of your tank a bit unexpectedly. No one really understand STN or RTN well at all but keeping any change to our tanks gradual seems to be the best way to avoid it.

I wish I could edit my initial post because Ronl is 100% correct. My math was very wrong and on top of that I did not see that they were offering the 7 pound bags, the e-mail I got did not provide links to them and I did not scroll down far enough on their new additives page to see all of the 7 pound bags. If a mod could add some disclaimer like" The math in this post in incorrect, please read Ronl's response" I would appreciate it. ("Matt's an idiot, please ignore this post" would also be acceptable) Alright crisis averted, I can continue to be lazy and mindlessly order my supplies from BRS. The small price increase is not a big deal, although I really do like their gallon jugs better than the bags because I can stake the jugs. Origami's posts about where to buy in bulk are also good, for me it's worth the little bit of extra money I spend through BRS for it to be simple and come from a trusted source.

So BulkReefSupply (BRS) is apparently discontinuing their old additives that they sold in bulk for newer prepackaged ones. Unfortunately, I just did some calculations on what you get for the price you pay and it's not good. For example, a 1 gallon container of Calcium Chloride used to cost $14 and at 2.5 cups per gallon of water for their recommended mix it would basically basically cost you $2.19 per gallon of mix. The new prepackaged container for mixing 1 gallon is $7. The price breakdown is similar for the other half of the 2 part dosing mix and their MAG mix. I'm going to have to start buying from F&S (More expensive but still cheaper than BRS now) or find some other source. I looked on Amazon a bit but I am seriously leery of randomly purchasing from Amazon for things that are going into my tank. Anyone else have a good source for bulk 2 part (with Mag)? I've been buying from BRS for like 6 or 7+ years now, really bummed out they did this. Figured I would let others know and at the same time maybe find some other options for those of us that normally bought our 2 part from BRS.

Glad things are going well.

3rd/4thing the Peppermint shrimp, plus Peppermint shrimp are a lot of fun to watch IMO. I never had a huge issue with Aptasia but I haven't seen any since getting two peppermint shrimp like 18 months ago.

Total depends on your rock work. The gyre will strip the flesh off any coral directly in the path of its flow. It pushes water in a long thin line, it works very well but your tank needs to be setup to allow for a gyre to develop for it to really work properly, which means no rocks/corals in the path that it will be pushing. MP40 has a more traditional flow pattern that you can't put anything directly in front of but when I had a gyre I had Acro 2 feet away from it that would not grow above the line of water it pushed because it was so strong. My rock work was just not suited to the Gyre and rather than redesign the entire tank I just got an MP40. The Gyre moved an impressive amount of water though.