malacoda

I just did my neon green leather last weekend. New clean Xacto blade (in an aluminum handle). Trimmed it in tank (unable to remove the rock it's on without upsetting a ton of other stuff). Basically cut off a doughnut-shape ... leaving just the stalk and silver-dollar-sized 'cap' on the top of it. Only took ~3 minutes.

Similar experience here. Had two red mithrax crabs in my 24g, one of which developed quite the taste for acans.

How about one of smaller (3-4") fang blennies ... such as a harptail or smiths'? Always out and about throughout the water column. Reef safe (except in rare instances to very small ornamental shrimp). Get along great with other fish (except other fang blennies ... so just one in the tank). And, are available captive raised (by ORA).

+1 on Dave's comment. Do you vary the types of food you feed your fish? I see a very significant and rather sudden 'burst' of foam/skimmate production whenever I feed LRS fish eggs ... versus LRS reef frenzy, pellet foods, or the addition coral foods such as Coral Frenzy or Reef Roids. I suspect the fish eggs may be far more laden with liquid proteins or something which results in an abrupt jump in foaming.

You may feel it's been "slow progress", but whatever your doing, keep doing it. Tank is looking really good! Clean, healthy and colorful. Can't ask for much more than that. (On a side note, I too am a fan of ESV.)

2 to 2.5 inches in mine (24g tank). Actual live sand from the Gulf of Mexico that came with the aquacultured rock from TBS. 2 years old and I still often discover little bits of life in it either tunneling up against the glass or exploring the surface at night. Just noticed some chitons of some sort for the first time earlier this week. So far I haven't had any negative experiences with it other than just having to be a little careful with flow from my gyre.. And I prefer the natural look of a sand bed versus bare-bottom. If I ever upgrade to a larger tank (as I hope to do), it'll definitely have at least a 2" sand bed as well ... regardless of whether the tank occupants include a pistol shrimp and some wrasses (which is part of my plan/hope at the moment).

Yep ... although it depends on what you consider 'proactive measures' to be. I set up my 24g two years ago using 'The Package' from Tampa Bay Saltwater. In essence, a 2" deep sand bed and ~30lbs of Walt Smith reef rock that was aqua-cultured in the Gulf of Mexico. For the first 10 months my nitrates wouldn't fall below 12-15ppm. Suspecting it was due to the Walt Smith rock not being porous enough, I plumped a homemade 'nitrate reactor' into my system. All this 'reactor' is though is a mayo jar with some micro-porous rock (Seachem De*nitrate) in it ... which provides the proper environment for the anaerobic bacteria in the system to take hold and do their work. Within a week my nitrates dropped to ~1ppm, where they've remained ever since. If I had used properly porous rock in my DT in the first place, I wouldn't have needed to add any rock to my sump. Either way though the effect would've been the same - near-zero nitrates with no special treatments other than proper rock for the natural de-nitrifying process to take place.

If you're worried about the pavers because of any of binders used to make them, what about a piece of flagstone instead? May not be quite as perfectly flat or smooth as a paver but will probably be pretty inert.

+1 I like the fact that it has a precision of 0.1ml versus 1ml - makes for better stability in a smaller sized tank like my 24g. Also nice to be able to use one of the 4 pumps in conjunction with a level sensor for ATO versus have to have a separate pump/piece of equipment in my stand to handle it ... however, I'd only rely on such a small dosing pump for ATO on a small tank. On large tank it would be running almost constantly and wear out the motor and/or flexible tubing fairly quick.

Boy, you guys are making me feel like a neglectful reefkeeper. I typically just rinse with tap, follow with a quick rinse in RODI, shake 'em off, then stick 'em back in the box for the next test a couple days later. I do notice a little bit of scale build-up on the upper third of the calcium vial but the rest remain pretty clean right up until the kits run out.

Wow, not even a week old and this has already become an incredibly informative thread. You've certainly put a good amount of time into your posts and it's very much appreciated! Priceless info and experience being shared here ... and pics of a stunning new display to look at to boot. New build looks great so far, can't wait to see how it progresses.

+1 I started out with a Mame on my 24g. Near silent (if you use the silencer cap) and quiet elegant ... until film algae coats it. Had to clean it every couple of weeks. Was in a rush while taking it apart to clean it one day and inadvertently smacked the side of the sink with one of the glass tubes ... which, of course shattered and sliced my finger open. Ordered one of the Marine Depot boxes (the nano-sized overflow box) that night and have been using it for the past year-and-a-half completely trouble free.

77-78 F. Was running it at about 75, but see a bit more coral growth with the slight increase. I do run one 75w heat (DT and sump have total water volume of 22g). I've toyed with the idea of dropping it back down a again now that my corals have filled in nicely ... but we tend to let our house get rather cool at night, particularly in winter (~68 F) so am not sure I'd feel comfortable giving it a go without a heater.

Thanks for sharing the pic! IMHO that looks really good. And when the rock in the back middle gets partially reduced per your plan, it'll make it even more assymetric - adding the illusion of even more depth and making it look even better. I think your tank is going to look pretty amazing as the coral starts to grow out.

I wanted to reduce shadowing. It did a really nice job for both my lps and sps (a few pieces of easy stuff - monti cap, stylophora, setosa, digitata, etc.) ... and the Bluefish app is REALLY convenient. However, as expected when I purchased it, the fact that it was only 2 LED clusters set the stage for a fair bit of shadowing. I wasn't really worried about shadowing at the time though and wanted to go with a pure LED setup. Since pretty much all the other top-end LED competition for nanos at the time - Kessils, Radion, ect. - were two clusters as well, I went with the Nanobox because its form-factor appealed to me the most. Now that I have a stable tank and decent idea of what I'm doing, I decided it's time to try 1 or 2 acros ... but felt I would need a wider spread of light and less shadowing for any new acros additions to all be able to thrive (all the real estate in the central high-PAR field of the Duo M was occupied). Right around the same time, I saw the new GHL Mitras LX7 series lights and became a bit mesmerized by the idea of being able to have 3 clusters of LEDs running front to back on my tank rather than just one (e.g. 3 rows of 2 clusters rather than 1 row of 2 clusters). So I decided to switch over to a Mitras. Since you're going with a hybrid model, I'm sure you'll get a fantastic spread of light from the Nanobox and not have to worry about shadowing. On a separate note, the idea of using the corner braces was genius. Kind of wish I thought of that when I built my plywood stand... Really looking forward to the next set of pics of your aquascape too. I though your last pic looked good so am really curious to see the tweaks you made.

I ran a Nanobox Duo Plus M over my 25g (24 x 15.5 x 15.5) for about 18 months. They are nice lights. I'm sure you'll love your hybrid.

If you get your water from a water main (versus a well), you may also want to check with your water company to find out if they use chloramines (I know that both Fairfax and Loudoun counties here in northern VA do). If so, make sure one of the carbon cartridges is rated to remove not just chlorine but also chloramines. Otherwise, not only is some chloramines likely to make it past the ro/di system, it can also cause your DI cartridge to become exhausted much quicker.

I think these two responses sum it perfectly.

Can't speak from experience since I haven't done it yet ... but my plan for my next tank is all dry rock and sand cycled via ghost feeding and sped up a bit with the addition of Stability and/or Microbacter 7 to seed it.

Welcome to the area! Looking forward to seeing your tank as it progresses.

I fought for green cyano several months. Increasing flow didn't help (some of the thickest mats were in high flow areas. 20% weekly water changes weren't barely held it at bay. H2O2 dosing didn't affect it at all. And several weeks after I had gotten my PO4 down below 0.02 and my NO3 down below 2 ppm it was still holding its ground. Then I decided to try diversifying my bacteria population a little more so I began doing maintenance doses of Seachem's 'Pristine'. I honestly can't say if the Pristine was actually diversifying or 'balancing out' my bacteria in anyway versus what was already in my tank ... or that it wasn't merely due to my nutrients remaining low for several weeks and finally starving the green cyano out ... but within about 3 weeks of starting the Pristine additions, it had pretty much faded away to nothing.

Sweet! I noticed a 'new firmware available' notice in Control Center when I was tweaking some settings in mine on Sunday ... but haven't yet had the time to download the update or check the release notes so to see what it contains. Will definitely have to try and find the time to do the update this weekend.

My one big 'want' right now is a GHL Doser 2.1 (with 3 pumps). Will be nice to have a doser with 0.1ml precision versus the 1.0ml I'm limit to with my current dosers. Hopefully I'll have the extra mullah to pick one up in another month or two...

If you're concerned about it sagging -- and with that much weight it may unless the container is wide enough so that its rim is right above the legs versus supported solely by the plywood top, you could also just use a good wood glue to add another layer of plywood on top so it's double-thick.

^^^+1 This is what I did as well when making an all plywood stand for my 24g (24"x16.5"x16.5"). I CLEARLY MARKED the 4' factory-cut edge on a piece of plywood and trimmed off a 4" wide strip of it to use as a saw guide. (If you don't mark it before you cut it, when you set it down to do something else you can easily loose track of which edge is the factory-cut edge.) Then to cut my actual stand panels: - I laid 3 scrap pieces of 2x4 (each ~3 to 4' long) down on my garage floor. - Laid the working piece of plywood (e.g. piece I would be cutting panels from) nice-side down on top of the 2x4s. - Measured and marked the panel width on the working-piece of plywood - From the 'panel edge' mark that was just made, I measured and made a second mark to account for both the 1/8" blade width and the width of the saw base plate to the outer edge of the saw blade. - Set my 'poor man's' saw guide on to the working piece at this 'second mark' so that the factory-cut edge was facing the cut I was about to make. - Used two c-clamps to clamp it in place. - Then grabbed the circular saw and made my cuts. You can get good old, straight, clean square cuts for nice, flush finishes where two piece join together. (Don't waste any time trying to make miter cuts with a circular saw this way though. They'll never be straight and true enough to make a nice, flush seam when joined together...) And making a guide like Jon's will save you a lot of time and potential trouble measuring. I would've made one myself ... but I would've had to would've had to pick up another large piece of plywood to make it, and I wouldn't have really had any use for it once my stand project was finished.