Matt LeBaron

Fantastic tank. I love the before and afters.

This is really an awesome achievement and an example that everyone should strive towards. Thanks for posting this!

Watched an episode of this yesterday with my almost 2 year old. My wife found it and suggested it. She enjoyed it but we'll see if it becomes the favorite that Yo Gabba Gabba and Mickey Mouse Club House are.

That is so cool. I have a shrimp with a pair of mated gobies, I never thought about a pair of mated pistol shrimp. My guy digs my tank up a lot too but that's the main reason I got him. I have a deep sandbed and needed him to keep it mixed up, which he does a very good job of. I have all of my rock sitting on PVC framework so he can't topple any of it.

Very cute pipefish! Thanks for the video.

Very dependent on the species, as said above some fish live a long time others not so much and for many we don't really know for sure. I have a firefish that is coming on up 6 years old this summer and according to everything I can find online they should on live 3-4.

I've had bad experiences with Jagers, out of the three I've owned two have malfunctioned. One died outright and cost me a couple months or coral growth before I caught it (this prompted my purchase of a Reef Angel Unit) and another stopped reading temperature correctly. I kept using the second one for a while because I was controlling them with the Reef Angel by then but without that it would have tried to slowly cook my tank. Third one that I use in my mixing container and it is still working fine but I don't care so much what that one does. Having said that though the only type of heater that I have had over the years that didn't fail, malfunction, or start tossing current into the tank after a year or two were the Rena Stealth heaters. I used some of those for YEARS without any problems and I still have one that I use with my QT tank that is easily 5 years old at this point as it first saw duty in my freshwater tanks back then. Now granted it hasn't seen constant use over that time but it did get 2 years of solid use and then another 3 of occasional use in my QT. Unfortunately they stopped making those heaters. At this point I just replace my heaters every year. I use two for my setup so it costs me about $100 or so each year but with the number of SPS I have and the growth of all of them at this point it's a no brainer for me. So long story short, I'd recommend a controller and save yourself the heart ache.

Thanks for the post. I might check this out when I have a bit of extra cash. I'm traveling a bit now and being able to take a look at the tank when I'm away from home could be useful.

How do you dose the LaCl basser9? Just like a dosing pump? If a good system for this could be developed it seems to me that a commercial product would sell well. I wonder if anyone is working on that?

Keri O'Neil talked about using a lanthanum chloride reactor for her work during her presentation yesterday. She used a .5 micron filter to remove the white powder that is left after it reacts with the phosphate. Has anyone built a DIY reactor using a similar method? And what is the potential damage should the stuff escape into the tank? Seems like you could use a dual stage reactor, slowly pump in the LaCl3 at the pump, the first chamber is the mixing area and then have the .5 micron filter in the second chamber. Ms. O'Neil commented that the filter filled up quick but that was on her very large setup. I wonder how often those of us with much smaller tanks would have to change it? This just seems like a potentially much better solution to phosphate control than GFO. Curious if anyone has tried it?

Apparently Calypso (the sea turtle) really like to hang out on the bottom of the new Blacktip reef under a over hang and nap. You can usually find her in the underwater viewing area for the new exhibit on the left most window napping.

It is a bit of a drive but if you can make the drive it is entirely worth it. Pacific East Aquaculture is like Santa's workshop for anyone interested in corals.

Can't wait for this to be available!

Put me down for 2 boxes of RC please.

Glad to hear it is mostly working out for you. Thanks for the information.

I'll have to check them out, didn't even know they were there. Are they a new store? What do they stock as far as saltwater goes? Just fish or corals too?

What spectrum's are you looking to include?

I posted a build thread for a Rapidled Kit here if you're interested. I've been very happy with it.

Looking good so far and you're working quick. Makes me seem lazy for taking a couple of days to take down and redo my 20G frag tank when you build that stand out in a day.

Honestly with so many cheaper (good) options for LED lighting now the Radions just kind of seem like a waste of money. I could just about light my entire tank twice over for the price of one of these. Ecotech makes very nice high end equipment but I think they're going to start hurting in the years to come if they don't make some new really revolutionary items or lower their prices quite a bit.

Yeah House of Tropicals has a good freshwater selection but as astroboy said their saltwater selection has not been great over the past 3 years or so but I am seeing some signs of it improving a bit in the past couple months so we'll see if that is a fluke or if they are taking steps to improve.

Odd, is that the frag you got from me? If so that thing normally loves light, I always grew it near the top of my tank with my RapidLED kit running at 85%. What type of lights are you running?

Awesome, want one of those so badly but I just don't have the spare bioload right now. Makes me want to setup a new tank.

You can either just cut a hole in the netting for something that pops up or build the frame around something that is on the edge of the tank and would prevent the frame from sitting on the edge of the tank in a location. In my tank I have a hole cut in the netting so that the feeding tube for my seahorses fits through.

I'm currently in the process of emptying out my frag tank for a redesign, after I get that done I'll make some frags and be giving them out. There's a thread for purple cloves in the SWAP forum that I will contribute how ever many frags of it I can make. Some of it is current growing up the glass on the back of my tank so I think that will be easier to peel off and get attached to frags. Likely going to be a month or two though, still need to empty the frag tank, clean it out, get a new way to move water around it and put together a LED light for it. Thinking of seeing if I can find one of the Jebao 10's that should be out soon since the tank is just a 20G. Once that is all done I'll get frags made and make sure that the cloves are happy since attaching them to frag plugs can be difficult.