jaddc

Culturing phytoplankton and copepods is technically easy. Research groups have been doing this for decades. Heck Brewing beer is easy with Mr. Beer. If you want to start a culture for yourself, then just grow phytoplankton -- plenty of vids on YouTube. Then feed the phytoplankton to your copepod starter culture (again vids on YouTube). The problem is scale. How does one make enough beer, liquor, wine to meet demand? Dump more money and get bigger and bigger vats. Then you need a controlled environment to store all that. My wife grew large amounts of copepods in grad school for oceanography. You have to baby the culture. It is not technically difficult, but if you don't split the culture, feed the culture or whisper sweet nothing's to the culture you can easily end up with gallons of fetid water.

Awesome! Let me know how that works out!

I get what you are saying Rob. But, if you clean a modest portion of of the sand at a time (say once every month), then the flora and fauna in the remaining, uncleaned, sand will multiply and repopulate the "clean" sand. That extra population growth will consume even more excess nutrients, right? My point is that as long as one is methodical and does not aggressively clean, the critical biodiversity will remain intact. No snails? Because of the possibility of jamming pumps?

I would approach it like cleaning sand. Wouldn't completely clean it out in one go, but I would vacuum a third or half at a time to preserve the cryptic organisms that Rob rightly points out. While you want diversity, you don't want a nitrate factory either. Maybe add a crab or carnivorous snails. Just to make sure that the detritus is processed a few times.

Step 1: stop adding nutrients into the tank. Feed fish even less than you do now. Until you get the growth under control consider feeding them every other day. I think we all tend to over feed. It's not a problem...until you have algae covering everything. Step 2: starve the algae. Lights can be turned off for a few days. Maybe two days off, one day on. Algae are more sensitive to lack of PAR because they grow so fast and are opportunistic. Step 3: remove nutrients. Like jimmy said change gfo and consider an algae scrubber which moves the algae from your DT to a screen that is easy to scrub. Keep scrubbing rock. If it comes back, scrub it again. Keep pulling the weed until it stops coming back. Double your frequency of water changes. Getting rid of an outbreak takes effort and patience.

There may salt creep in there, so it may not come off easily.

I would take the lid off first. The hinges have 4 plastic screws holding it in place. I believe (its been a while) that you can access them with the lid closed. Once it is off, you can undue the clear plastic lens cover which has a ton of screws.

Great speaker. it was impressive that everyone went the extra mile to set up the WebX. That takes a bit of effort and I appreciate that effort, rather than just cancel the speaker portion of the meeting.

Very cool. How much total DNA did you extract?

That is right. Hawaii is concerned about two things. The depletion of its reefs by collecting - so you can't collect for your own tank and you certainly cannot export it for sale. They are also worried about having non-indigenous coral introduced into the ecosystem. So LPS and SPS cannot be imported. So that pretty much means no hard coral in the tank. You can have soft coral though. And, of course, fish-only system are fine. That said I'm sure there are work-arounds if you pay enough money and get a permit.

I do have one... and I don't get any work done.

Jim is right on. And I agree -- I rather look at a Xenia carpet than bare rock. I have a ton of pulsing Xenia in my tank. Every month or so I take tweezers and scissors (I got cheapo surgical grade from eBay -- prolly failed QC and someone is making a buck) and prune my tank. It keeps my show coral clear and it exports nutrients. At the same time, I also cut mushrooms and sometimes Zoas to free up a spot. I turn off all pumps (to prevent the cuts from sailing away from you) I take the tweezers and disturb the Xenia to make them retract a bit, which makes it easier to get the stalk. I grab the stalk with my tweezers and then use them as a guide for the scissors (in between the rock and tweezers). A sure cut and the Xenia is in my tweezers. I get my tank clear in like 15 minutes. They grow back in a couple of weeks. If I want the Xenia gone from an area, I first stuck back the stalk as above. Then I work my tweezers under the flesh and wiggle it around. The flesh will come free with patience. The Xenia don't hurt other coral, so I base my decision on aesthetics and the ability for other coral to get light. HTH Jeff

+1

Oh yeah. You'll be fine.

That will work. The tank would be cycled from the start if you grab rubble and or sand from the ocean.

If you don't mind hauling the water -- go for it. My marine biologist wife recommends that you filter it (floss works) or else it will be full of particulates and thus nutrients for nuisance algae. Don't harvest from anywhere you that wouldn't eat the shellfish. While you are at it, grab some sand. Dig down to get some clean up crew.

+1

The 5 gal wc is not overkill and 5 gals is a convenient size. But since I do the WCs, I only add 2 part to the tank if necessary. One tip for you -- you can get some loc-line to stick the returns further out from the wall. That way you'll have more control of where the flow goes. Pics are looking good!

Ask away -- no probs. I use the stock pumps, which should be a quiet hum. I never thought they were very powerful, so I tried an MJ1200. It could of just been me but it was so loud that I had to take it out and put the stock pump back in. But I wanted more flow so I now use the Vortech MP10. Its pricey but nice. I don't think I do anything special. I added the fish over time so the bacteria can adjust. I keep up with weekly 5 gallon water changes. I detached the lid which make life so much easier. I suspend my LEDs from the ceiling over the tank. It took over a year to get the tank like that so my main ingredient is patience.

Sorry to hear this -- I know it is incredibly frustrating. If it makes you feel any better, my fish LOVE your food. If I give them anything else they turn their fins up at it.

Do people have issues with noise by using the MJ 1200 instead of the stock return pumps?

Welcome to the JBJ club. :-) FWIW I tossed the stock JBJ nano skimmer and went with a AquaMaxx HOB-1. Love it. Pulls out a lot of gunk and allows me to carbon dose. Check out my pics and vids in the link below for my 28 jbj setup.

You sterilized the tank -- did you also sterilize the plumbing and filtration that also contact the water?

Aquatic animals can tolerate cool temperatures better then higher temps. Anything >70 degrees should be tolerated. Trouble comes in summer when the water can get really hot without A/C or a chiller.

Yeah -- you should have probably waited to seed the pods first THEN buy the mandarin. But what is done is done. It will get very expensive with the Tigger Pods. Plus you want diversity in amphipods and copepods for health. Reefs2go continually offer incredible deals on Pods (especially on eBay under the seller name pods2go -- 250 pods for $10 + free shipping). I've seen a pack of 1000 for $30. They are good quality amphipods and benthic copepods, and my mandarin (well, all my fish) love them. If I were in your situation, I'd buy 1000 to seed. And then I'd buy another 500 every couple of weeks until the tank is seeded. They are good at hiding so they got established pretty quickly. Make sure you have some phytoplankton in the food for the pods to eat (they do eat left over food and detritus, but phytoplankton is a good addition for the pods and coral too). DT's is one of the best. How do you know your tank is maintaining the population? Well, if you lift out a small piece of rubble, there should be some pods running around the bottom and they scatter when the light hits them. That was my plan and my green spotted Mandarin is a fatty and going on 2 years old (in the tank). My goby also eats brine and mysis, but the food needs to be right in front of his face.