AlanM

Yes, if it's plugged in you should see that switch one is "closed" on the Apex web page. If you blow in it you should see it as "open" on the web interface, which would mean the water level was high enough. So you should configure the EB8 outlet that the ATO pump plugs in to with some statements like: Fallback Off Set Off If Switch1 Closed Then On If Time 09:00 to 08:00 Then Off This sets the outlet to off if the EB8 loses contact with the brain box. It sets it to default to Off when it's flipped to Auto mode. It sets it to switch to On when Switch1 is closed, but only if the time is between 8am and 9am so that if something goes crazy it doesn't just run all day long and fill your tank with fresh water. Caveat: I'm not a total Apex expert, but I think the above code will work.

I was just there last week. Thought about getting some of the green and red looking algae stuff rolling in the surf with some sand in a bucket to bring home to see if it was full of pods and such, but wasn't sure how safe it was. You're confident in the water quality off Long Island. I tried looking up info about the Delaware beaches, but couldn't find any.

Wow, it's really awesome looking. I kind of can't wait to see it in the tank with water and lights. I have to say, it looks way better than what is on their website.

And why does no one have consideration for people like me and Isaac who are trying to resist putting things in our tank for two more months. So many Labor Day sales.

Can someone please volunteer to go to NY to get some of Paul's extra bucket of rocks. I'd enjoy some of his rock with bio-diversity from the stone ages of reefing! I'd put it in my tank and name it Mount Baldy!

Just thought I'd post a graph that I found interesting demonstrating the effect of inside air on pH. It's my anniversary coming up, and my mom sent me a box of Kansas City Steaks. They were packed with a pile of dry ice. I opened the box inside and dropped the dry ice in the sink at 5:30 and amused the kids by filling it with water. I let probably 2 pounds of it evaporate inside. Here was the result on my pH as measured by Apex and still dropping. My alkalinity is fairly high at 11, by the way, but pH is heading down towards 7.75.

One thing I learned. You can order Dr Tim's from Amazon, but then they ship it however and they have been storing it somewhere in unknown temps. If you order from Dr Tim he takes some care with shipping it. No idea if it makes a difference or if the whole thing is total snake oil, but my tank is cycled. I added MB7 all along too, but I'm even more suspicious that it's nothing more than an ammonia source.

Im in the same boat, but starting with nearly totally dry rock instead of live rock like yhsublime. I did add dr tims because of this. Also, I am a month ahead of yhsublime July 23. Trying to not add fish until about the same time as him, though. Got three snails and three conch, but may give two of the conch out to folks. They are cool, but seem hungry to me.

Good gravy. I have no idea how this is going to play out, but it sounds crazy and fun.

Seems like you could almost make it as porous as you wanted depending on the resolution of the printer. If you're spitting individual 1mm grains down, for instance, that's a lotta surface area.

He does great work. It's not just owning a CNC machine, it's knowing how to use it and doing nice design as well.

Cerameco. Really cool stuff and pretty unique in this country, it seems. Their website has closeups of the porosity. Other stuff used to come from Germany, aquaroche, I think, but import was tough.

Cutting that stuff is awful too. I ended up using tinsnips because everything else got dull immediately from the fiberglass in it.

I think it's really cool too. Seems like you if you're planning lots of stony coral, you're growing your own rock right there. The coral will eventually fill in the open space, and in the meantime the fish will like the extra room. This should be plenty of structure to secure frags to for growing out. If you go bare bottom, though, and have so little total volume of rock it seems like you're really limiting the surface area in your tank for the biofilm of nitrifying bacteria to grow. I know this clay is porous, and I know you're getting those sintered plates in the sump which has lots of surface area, but I don't understand how the water will keep passing through there once it fills with biofilm too. Sand would give you lots of surface area around the grains.

Just to update this. The new power adapter which is 1A rather than 0.5A does the trick. Thanks for sending it out, Avast! I should actually say, it did the trick. I tested it to see that it worked, then as I was trying to secure it to the wall on an extension cord a bit better (the cord is shorter than the old one, so it didn't reach all the way from the EB8), I dropped it in the saltwater in the sump. Doh. I pulled it out, shook it off, opened it up, sloshed it around in RO/DI, and put it in some Uncle Bens for a couple of days. I just plugged it in again, and it still seems to work, but I'm going to leave it plugged in upstairs for a while to make sure the smoke doesn't come out. I feel pretty dumb for immediately dropping it in the sump.

Hey, I hadn't thought about that when thinking about my eventual dosing. That's a good idea.

Conch is trying to escape.

Buy lots before the meeting and turn in the receipts for raffle tickets.

My favorite aquascape of all time is Steve Weast: http://www.oregonreef.com/sub_aquascaping.htm Also, the biggest bristleworm ever.

http://www.ipsf.com/sandbedclams.html Sells sandbed clams, but Im not sure that is what you wanted.

Thanks, Tom. That makes sense. It is definitely fueling food sources. Not too much, though, because I am only feeding the tank a little bit. Maybe I should dump a bunch in there and see if I can get a nice crop of fur.

Here's an article I believe is good about GFCI and ground probes and such: http://www.beananimal.com/articles/electricity-for-the-reefer.aspx

ORLY? So you turned on all the deep blues and purples and did full light cycle with that and no other colors?

Maybe those of us in Montgomery county should let the forum know when we plan to go to a salt sale and we could get a few boxes. Like my beer club in grad school did when one of us was going on a family trip to Downingtown, PA. He would always come back with a trunk full of Victory beer.

I'm going to get some chaeto from monkiboy this week. Maybe I'll sneak out some substrate from him too. 8) I may make it the three months, but it sure is boring watching the lights ramp up and down each day while the snails and conchs hunt for something on the rock, glass and sand. The glass is pretty messy, but I'm leaving it alone for now. it's full of those tiny little hydroids that will apparently go away with time. I still have 4ppm NO3 and 0.16ppm PO4. I seem to be using up alkalinity without using up calcium, which is really high at 480ppm. From an old Randy Holmes Farley article I read that is expected in a new tank without any coral because alk is used in the nitrogen cycle, but calcium isn't. One of the pieces of liverock I got from Congressional a while ago has a bunch of purple on it, which I assume is coralline algae. I may take a scraper to it to try to spread it around and get it growing on the rest of the stuff since my calcium is so high.