dave w

Coral Hind and Piper27 (and my other WAMAS friends), Sorry it's been so long since I checked in. Around January a couple of friends who are commercial beekeepers convinced me to become one. I wanted to continue with fish breeding at the same time as beekeeping, but found that I am best when I be single minded with one business, not two. And beekeeping took up all my time for the past 6 months, along with my regular job and being a dad. I hope to have time to get back to fish breeding sometime soon, but I really don't know when that will happen. I'm only up to 200 beehives and you need to get at least 500 to be a serious beekeeper. That could be a few years. Also, I was getting tired of re-inventing the wheel so many times. My advice to anyone building a large system is to be prepared to build many things from scratch because the tank size precludes many "off the shelf" solutions. It was exhausting. Winter heating and summer cooling of a greenhouse are still problems that I haven't fully solved yet, and there's not much stability in a system without good water temps. My geothermal cooling isn't hooked up and my solar hot water collector isn't past the framing stage. Just too many other things to do. Thanks to all for your encouragement and I hope to reciprocate with some fish news in the next year or so. But for a while, the tank continues to grow lots of nice algae and nothing else. I hope to get back in the hobby again soon.

Are they Bangaii, or another type?

Great looking build. I especially like the way your red pvc runs around the back wall to the sump. white pvc there would have looked tacky. I also like the way you tiled your basement floor so there won't be spill issues in the long term. Very smart.

That's a great looking stand and tank. Very clean look. No wonder your wife said yes.

I'm sure he had a happy life in your tank, and much longer than it would have been in the wild. And that makes you a great fishkeeper.

We could always do what the Japanese do. Find one rock above sea level and build a concrete mountain around it so we can claim more sea ownership. Why stop there, just hook a buoy to the point closest to the surface, and claim ownership.

Home Depot has the stuff for around $15 per sheet. The sheets are roughly 2' x 4'.

Josh, I agree that the owner of Quantum Reefs is a good guy and it was very nice of him to let you come in after hours. Keep having fun with the hobby.

Josh, everyone here is happy to help you. We have all been through a dozen tanks and want to share our experiences with others. We don't want them to repeat our mistakes and kill a lot of fish by learning the hard way. Please be open to the help everyone wants to give you. Sometimes we may sound too abrupt or harsh, but it is with good intent. If you don't like the tone of a member, just brush it off and keep reading and asking more questions. I think you'll enjoy your time here.

I've never been lucky enough to have anyone let me in their store after closing. If I tried, they'd probably call the cops on me.

The thing I like about small tanks is that you can get right up on a colorful little animal and watch it in detail. That's fascinating. In a big tank that's hard to do.

Six gallons!!! Can I make some playful jokes at you?? Does the six gallon volume include the volume of your pipes and tubes, (i.e. did you start out with 2 gallons)? Are you sure two clowns can fit in 6 gallons? Oh, yeah... you said you've got a very small hole at the top, so you'll be okay there. Why not just use your 6 gallon tank as a quarantine tank for your 65? One neon goby at a time. What do you use for topoff, A shot glass? Are you going to add two part by the drop? Oh, no, you can just do a 100% daily water change. It'll cost about 50 cents. In addition to the clowns, I'd think you could add enough invertebrates to double the bio load. Like maybe half a dozen rotifers. OK, this is getting a little silly and not so funny. I just have a hard time imagining what it takes to maintain a 6 gallon tank. Good luck, I'm sure it will turn out to be beautiful. All this was meant tongue in cheek, please don't take it wrong.

Inversely proportional? The more expensive the clown, the stupider?

To poke fun at the writer, I'd just like to see what the "special machines" are that take the stress off the fish!

Those are beautiful, fat fish. You should be a proud daddy.

Walt, that is a beautiful little queen angel. I don't follow "Game of Thrones", so I'm probably the only person in Western Civilization that doesn't know who queen khaleesi is.

Thanks everyone, for the good advice. I'm doing my best to cool the tank but in our current heat wave the temps have gone up to 82. It may be a week before they drop back.

The zoas are on half a dozen rocks set up 6-12" from each other and they got a Bayer dip upon introduction. They could still be irritated by pests but I haven't seen any. I think other causes are probably more likely. But I could be wrong. Keep up the ideas and I'll keep on the lookout to see if they have pests.

At the end of June I got several hundred polyps of African blue zoas and put them in a dimly lit area of the the 4,000 gallon tank. After 26 days they still haven't opened. Salinity has been steady at 1.023, nitrates are 2.5, copper is zero. Temp steady around 81F. Water flow around them is very good, probably a foot per second. The water is on the clean side but there is also a fair amount of film from dead diatoms on much of the rockwork and bottom. The tank has only been cycled for a few months. The film of dead diatoms could be the cause, yet it hasn't caused nitrates to rise. A water change is out of the question, too much volume. I will probably put in a carbon filter just as a precaution. I think the odds of chemical warfare are low, there are only 10 gorgos and 5 sponges in 4,000 gallons and the tank has 1,000 pounds of rock. The rock had been stored outside and there were some dead walnut leaves in it, so there's a small possibility that there was some contamination. Although walnut has toxic compounds (juglans) I think that possibility is very small, the rock was well washed and two months of microalgae probably absorbed most toxins. Because the tank is in sunlight it caused the first couple of months to be "pea soup" green from microalgae, but the gorgos and sponges cleared that up so much that one of the sponges recently turned grey, perhaps from lack of food, and I threw it away. Now a second sponge is showing light grey around its surface. A month ago I put an 80% shade cloth over the greenhouse to control temperature, so it is dimly lit. The system I bought the zoas from had big temperature and nitrate spikes from a failed chiller, so the zoas came in quite stressed, but 3 weeks should have been ample recovery time. And I think African zoas tend to be hardier than others. The gorgos show no signs of stress. Any help would be appreciated. Dave

+2 on Zygote, but few things are easier to do yourself than PVC.

Did your gorgonians come in, and how do they look?

+1 for the carbon. Use it everywhere. Also, your system is capable of being run as three separate systems, I'd split the systems apart and do a total water change on one to see if that helps. These are just guesses, of course. Another guess is that something died and released toxins. Do you have any softies? Toadstools? Sea Cucumbers?

I didn't see where you indicate what type of drain goes from your tank to the sump. Hopefully they are overflow drains. It should be obvious that any drain that doesn't have a siphon break should not go underwater in your sump. But any surface drain/weir/overflow automatically has this siphon break and will not cause you any drain problems.

I think your scrubber looks great. With a little experimentation you should be able to keep down any splashing or salt creep. Here's a crazy idea -- why not put two screens there and let capillary action keep water supplied to both of them. Every 7 days clean one off, but the second should have sufficient algae growth for high nutrient removal. True that the back screen would not have as much light as the front one, but that should only be the case for the final few days of the 14 day growth period if the front screen has the heaviest algae. Otherwise the back screen will mostly have enough light. Just a crazy idea for you to consider or throw away.

Hello Shawn, I lived in Molasses for many years. Welcome. When I was new I also had trouble posting pictures but people here will help you figure it out.