[Water clarity]

I do keep a cuc including snails (nesarius and another type) hermit crabs and a shrimp. Mostly I am concerned about clarity when I take the filter off the tank. I will try running the filter with only carbon this week and see how it looks. Thanks for the advice

[Water clarity]

Sorry forgot to mention how I top off.  

 

I only lose about 1 gal of water per week. I have been mixing the RODI Salt with some RODI fresh that I have to make a mixture around 1.023 that ends up keeping my tank about 1.025 or 1.026 when I do water changes.  Tonight I added 1.25 gallons of RODI fresh water and my tank is right at 1.025. I will do a water change tomorrow with 5 gallons of full salt at 1.026.

[Water clarity]

I have been plucking each bubble every week as I siphon off water. It has been good fun trying to release them from the rock without breaking and sucking them up the tube.  Some have broken and I think that is why they are still around. I haven't cleaned my tank in a week and I probably have 3-5 bubbles right now.

 

I have 4 fish (2 clowns, 1- four stripe damsel and one purple dart) and I feed them 1/8 cube of mysis every other day.  About once a week I will substitute the shrimp with flake food or pellets but I have noticed that a lot of those foods just end up on the bottom.

 

About once every other week I feed some mysis to my hammer and my duncan.  I was feeding the fish daily and a bit more each feeding but I think that was contributing to the algae problem.

 

I have been getting RODI at various LFS in NOva. Centerville Aquarium and Vienna Aqurium in Leesburg mostly.  I had a second bad experience at Vienna today (not related to water) so I am probably done with that store. I am headed to Winchester Aquarium tomorrow and will see if they have a smaller RODI unit otherwise I will be ordering one soon.  I have been told that is not a unit that is good to buy used.  Any opinion on that?

[Water clarity]

I have been changing the water with store bought RODI salt water. I have finally convinced myself that at 7 or 8 bucks a week (plus the required trip to the LFS each week)  it wouldnt take terribly long to payoff an RODI unit of my own so I might be doing that soon.  The algae problem is almost gone. I have a couple of bubbles of bubble algae and some hair algae but not much.  I think I will try to run the HOB filter but just with the carbon. I also like that it adds flow since I only use the skimmer and one powerhead in my tank.

[Water clarity]

I change 5 gallons of water each week. I have stuck to that pretty well. But I had a hair algae problem for about the last 2 months and was told by my LFS that the HOB filter can hold and generate a lot of nitrate.  However my nitrate readings had been between 0 and 5 ppm on the color scale. I also did see higher phosphate than I wanted up to about .25-.5PPM.  In the last 3 weeks or so those number have come down to 0 and 0.  I did start feeding less, removing what algae I could grab by hand each week,  and I used a few drops of a phosphate remover and removed the HOB filter all around the same time. I also figured out that I was getting too wet of skimmate so I dialed that in better. All in all my tank parameters got better and the algae is under control and almost gone.  But the water clarity has come down a bit. I do have live rock (about 25-30 lbs and the tank has been running since July 2016.  Here is a pic of my set up from two weeks ago:

 

 

[Water clarity]

I have a 36g tank with a hob skimmer. I used to run a hob filter with carbon and sponge but I think that was causing high nitrates. So I pulled it about 2 months ago but my water clarity seems to go down a bit. Last weekend I put the filter with carbon And sponge back in and my tank water was very clear. How do I achieve the water clarity without the hob filter?

[Weird New Life Form]

Can you help me identify the small igloo shaped white life forms in the picture? They have a opening in the center and the body is about 2-3mm wide. One is pointed right at the camera and the one to the right is pointed straight down (ignore the large area of white on the left which is super glue gel when I attached the rocks)

 

 

Here is another picture

 

 

 

Lastly, I think there is a larger one growing in the middle of my zoas in this picture

 

 

 

Today is the first time I have noticed them! Any ideas what these are?

 

 

[New to WAMAS and new to Marine tank (5 months)]

Hello all, my name is Dave and I am a new WAMAS member. I live in northern Virginia near Leesburg and have had a marine aquarium for almost 5 months. I have had freshwater aquariums for many years and for some reason in July, I just decided to try a marine tank and it has been great fun.

 

My tank is a 36 gallon bow front. I have an Eshoppes PSK-75H skimmer, HOB regular filter which I am running a sponge, carbon, and a Phosphate Pad.  My light is a Current Marine Oribit LED but I think it is under powered for the long haul. I have 40 lbs of live sand and about 30 lbs of live rock.

 

 

 

My live stock is as follows:

2- clowns

1-4 stripe damsel

1- Purple dart

5-Nasarius snails

10-misc snails

5-hermits

 

Corals

Several Zoa colonies and few stragglers polyps that I glued down

2 headed branch hammer

one leather (behind top zoa colony in picture)

2 Favites on plugs on the rocks

1 war coral on plug in the cave on the bottom right

1 chalice also in cave on plug

Mucho hair algae

 

I have been waiting to join until my tank had some color in it but I think now is the time since the primary color I have is hair algae green most times. The picture above is after cleaning today.