Djplus1

So, we are under contract on a new house and barring a horrible home inspection this Thursday, we will be moving a couple days before Thanksgiving. Of course this likely means there will be an everything must go post shortly. The new house has more than enough room for "the tank of my dreams" sometime in the future, but that future is not now. My question is should I keep my Red Sea Max 130 and just keep a simple all in one to stay in the mindset of owning and maintaining a tank or should I just dump everything and give myself a real break? I don't think I'd try to save any of my existing livestock for this exercise as I don't know how long the moving process will be and it will be getting colder anyway. Perhaps I'd get something cool like a lion fish or eel that we can't normally keep in reef tanks just to keep it super simple.

I managed to clear my Biocube with a one spot fox face and a blue tuxedo urchin. I think the foxface did the initial heavy lifting and the urchin keeps it at bay.

+1 on dollar store mini tubes. You usually use them before they dry out and if they do, who cares. I have a $10 container of Corafix used maybe twice that I can't even get the lid off of anymore to drill. Not buying expensive "coral glue" ever again.

I got stuff here. Used to be in Gaithersburg, but moved up to Frederick. They have a decent site so you can at least do a price comparison. They also have an Annapolis location, but it's smaller. http://www.exoticlumberinc.com/

Just an FYI, Aluminum is rarely "aluminum" only. In fact, a good bit of aluminum alloys contain copper, so I would avoid.

I don't think it's that kind of product. Are you guys thinking of theRed Sea NoPoX product? That's the one that's like vodka dosing in my opinion.

Anyone here use this stuff? Any first hand experiences that can be shared? I got a free box of it with my Coral Pro salt bucket on Amazon from Salty Supply (which incidentally was also $3 less with free shipping, so I was indeed winning off the field). It seems like essentially coral food elements by looking at the web.

Pretty high is fine. Pretty overflowing on the floor is not. If I turn off skimmer and all returns, my sump will get about 1" from the top, but no more water can come in, so I'm good

Way less than I should I presume. I generally wait until it doesn't work like it's supposed to (less foam than normal, etc) and then take it out and completely clean it out.

If the flow through the back is an issue, I would use the MJ1200 and ditch the Koralia. You probably can get by on one power head. If you search this forum I did a fan install on my 14g Biocube. Though I did end up changing the fan placement to the left side rear of the lid instead of the access door.

Looks like it's an Aquatec pump with about $10 of Spectrapure fittings thus the name. I have that pump and agree with above.

Maybe eventually, but I'm not trying to keep a system running for an extra 3 weeks to find a home for some green chromis or clownfish, when I'm going to need every second to dedicate to getting rid of as much equipment as possible.

I'm just dreading the selling process or the moving process at this point. Neither seem like a very appealing option, kind of like wanting to deal with Comcast customer service or Verizon customer service..... Second bit of concern, is what do most people do when they have 2-3 corals or fish that no one wants? I assume that I can maybe take them into a store for credit and take whatever they offer, but what if they say no? You don't just flush the fish, but if no one wants them, even for free, then what?

So, a potential move is on the horizon. Much bigger house, more room for fun, ha ha, but what do I do with my tanks? I have a 72 gallon bow front with about 3 years of growth, pretty nice size corals/colonies (mixed), none "irreplaceable" though, with fish that the family have become attached to, disease free, etc. Also a Red Sea Max 34 that I use as a frag tank with a couple nice fish. Also a Biocube 14 in my soon to be 6 year old's room, with fish he likes. Doing some home visits tomorrow and have a feeling that an offer will be made by this weekend on one of them (if I know my wife). New house will be relatively local (Montgomery, Frederick, Howard or Carroll counties) Do I A. Try the impossible and move all three tanks to their new home, while moving a whole house full of crap and not lose a beat (or all corals and fish) B. Sell everything now and be done with it and start fresh at new house (probably one tank this time with a piped in frag tank) C. Get rid of the 2 smaller set ups and try to save as much as I can of the larger set up and combine all fish for the time being, with the goal of moving the inhabitants to a larger tank in the next few months Additional information. We do not require our old house sold to purchase new house, so perhaps I can leave tanks in old house to do this in stages over a couple weeks (options A or C) So this would maybe be option D. Either way, I want the bowfront, not to be the main display anymore, but I'm not going to immediately get a new tank.

It wasn't that rapid. It has slowly taken place over the last couple months. Just out of nowhere the individual polyps will start closing up and/or releasing their "footing" to the rock or plug and drifting off to where ever it is that zoas go when they die. But like I said, it's not widespread and only affecting one or two patches that are/were associated with a particular plug(s), and everything associated with that plug will die, but not the coral next to it (even if its the same species).

So I'm not certain what is happening, but I recently had a couple plugs just sort of evaporate on me. I have an area that has a bunch of various zoas and palys all next to and on top of each other, which has never been a problem in regards to warfare of any sort. The strangest occurrence involves nuclear green palys which were right next to another plug of nuclear green palys. The one plug and all the surrounding polyps from it all but died off, so I took the remaining 4-5 polyps from the plug and moved it to my frag tank. Two other plugs in the same general area with semi nice zoas are now completely gone or are a week or so from completely disappearing. The other spots in my tank (including directly next to where this is happening) are doing fine, in fact they are doing very well and are starting to crowd out some nice encrusting corals next to them. Any idea what could be making this happen ?

This is the one I use. http://www.marinedepot.com/JBJ_Nano_Glo_4_LED_Refugium_Light_Refugium_Sump_Lighting-JBJ_Lighting-JB9315-FIRFRL-vi.html

to second ^^, this is what I do now.

I used pretty much your exact setup for my tank for a while. Raising the line up will do nothing in that amount of space as the siphon will still happen. Buy a small T that fits in your tubing. First raise up the line inside the stand like everyone is saying, but cut the line and place the T at the top of the arch. To be safe, I added a third piece of hose to direct the drizzle overflow into your sump. Siphon broken, no drips in your stand.

^^This is what you need to do^^ I've actually ordered from a couple of places that won't guarantee the product UNLESS you pick it up from the distribution center. They say that the trucks could be delayed or the livestock may sit on truck all day, etc. I don't remember who it was specifically, but it's not a bad idea in any case to go to the center yourself in the morning rather than wait.

As far as the two gasket thing goes, traditionally you use the gasket on whatever side the FLANGE is on, not the nut. The reason being, when you are rotating the nut onto the gasket, you would be twisting and distorting the rubber gasket, causing leaks, where the flange is not twisting against the gasket (unless for some reason, you are trying to turn that part of the bulkhead, which you shouldn't be doing anyway). This has nothing to do with being inside or outside the water also. I'm not sure why it is supplied with two, so perhaps it is a "special" bulkhead that is designed to work with both

While normally I would agree about cheap chinese stuff, but if your talking about the normal layout metal bracket, with the three-five normal sized canisters, please tell me how you think a molded injection canister from AWI, Coralife, BRS, Buckwheat, etc is made and where? I would be willing to bet that every one of those canisters is formed in China from the exact same materials, with slight different colors or molds depending on the company that's selling them. The metal bracket is the same story. It's not like a well tuned v-6 engine, it's a cup with threads molded into it, screwed onto a bracket. Now if your talking about one of those cheapo portable units that look like toys, yes, of course those are junk compared to the modular designed units.

The only difference between RODI systems are the filters that are included and the fittings that attach the hoses to the canister and random accessories like gauges. Any RODI manufacturer that tells you otherwise is full of it. If you want customer service, sure there is a difference but the nuts and bolts are ALL EXACTLY THE SAME.

You can install a small computer fan in the back corner of the lid and cool that bad boy down a bunch. I did a write up on here of putting a couple fans in the feeding door, but had to move the fan to back corner since the flap fell into the tank.

IMO, you need to get rid of those if you are concerned about the ones in the display. They will ALWAYS keep popping up in your display if you are farming them in your overflow.