Sneeze
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Posts posted by Sneeze
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Very interesting article.
Obviously, very biased, but well written.
I don’t agree with everything(most), but it’s often those nuggets of truth that hurt most.
The one time I visited a wholesaler in LA, attests to his quote of “only one fish in ten makes it to the hobby alive.”
There were dead fish everywhere.
“Why it’s time to put an end to the cult of the aquarium.”
https://aeon.co/essays/why-it-s-time-to-put-an-end-to-the-cult-of-the-aquarium
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Got a director for the Vega today.
I wanted to dim the whites, two hours before sunset and it’s great.
I couldn’t resist taking a few blue pics. I love how the colors pop with the whites off.
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So no more sand?
I'm betting you don't need a ton of flow for the BTA's, I'd save your money!
I’ve kinda intentionally not answered this yet. Lol.
Now that “most” of the sand is out, I don’t have sandstorms but the bottom is still 80% covered.
Single gyre is set up vertically with only one propeller. Switching between 100% and 10% every 4 seconds.
No sandstorms and the water is moving pretty good. I still have dead spots though, with detritus piling up on the intake side of the pump. Seems to have taken care of my cat I problem though. I’ll give it another week to see.
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How’s she looking?
Any eggs?
Still fat and happy?
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Hi!
Show us your tank!
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How big do you let your nems get before you cut them?
What’s too small?
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Added one of the gyres this week. It works well, vertically, but I couldn’t raise it above 10 %, so the sand had to go.
Large water change yesterday.
Siphoned out 3/4 of the sand.
I’ve been intentionally over feeding the gargantuan green BTA (18”) in hopes of a split with no success. So while I was doing the water change, I picked him up, rock and all, and set him on a wood plank outside the tank for about 30 min.
Success! I stressed it enough to split last night. Now I have two green beasties.
Tank looks so much more blue with parts of the bottom glass showing. Far less white reflection. I’m curious to see how the nems respond to the diminished light. Granted, I’m still pushing the vega at 100%, 12 hours a day.
I found someone on R2R that’s selling me a director for $75. I’m gonna dim the whites on the Vega a bit in the evening for some more blue pop.
Gonna give it another week before I siphon out the rest of the sand, but the single gyre is pulsing at 30% now. I probably won’t need more then that once I add the second gyre.
My biggest complaint with the gyres is that I can’t sync them without a controller. I’m thinking about building an arduino board to control their power, alternating between the two every 3-4 minutes. What I really want to do is have them on an “off” sync where one is on/off every 2-3(or ???) min and the other is on/of every 3-4 (or ??? Greater than the other) min with a direct overlap every 18 hours, to match tide cycles.
Pics for your time:
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Yup. Completely normal when you first mix it in.
Once the water becomes saturated, the nice thing about kalk is that the impurities settle out to the bottom as sediment.
Important not to have a circulation pump keeping it suspended all the time though. Let it settle, and don’t have the ato intake at the bottom. You don’t want to pump the sediment into the tank.
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The floating canopy is awesome!
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Nice!
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This is easy to do, but hard to make “perfect”.
Sand with 120 grit paper, so the paint can adhere.
Use krylon spray paint for plastic. It’s not “high temp” but it’ll be fine for the temps we’re talking about. Definite below 120°. And it’s reef safe.
Start with two-three super light coats and let dry. Then sand with 220 grit sandpaper in between 2-3 moderate coats. Not heavy (dripping) or light (dusting). Let dry completely.
Top it off with krylon clear coat in the finish of your choice (matte, gloss, whatever). Again, sand in between coats.
Consistency in your coats is the hard part for a perfectly smooth surface.
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I love the clean plumbing! It’ll look great once you fill it with water!
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I wanna be a clown fish in that tank! Looks awesome!
Thanks!
I’ve actually been contemplating an experiment. I can seldom find my two, giant maroons amongst the tentacles. I never see them, unless I’m feeding or looking really, really hard.
What if I were to add 5-7 baby Lightning’s in there? (I know, loaded question. We only seem to see large harem tanks or single pairs. Harems in the wild aren’t always 20-50 fish.)
I suppose, I would just have to monitor closely. There will definitely be aggression, and I can pull them if it gets out of hand.
Great. Now I need to find a clownfish breeder. Thanks guys...
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I have some smaller rocks... but they aren't dry.
Thanks! I’ll keep that in mind when I pull the sand.
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Maybe gravid!
Or she just ate really well!
Keep any eye on her, and the rock work. It should go away in a day or two. If not, watch for worms or other parasite nasties.
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Got a few more nems. Another BIG rose and a couple rainbows.
I’m eyeballing a dayglo and a CB inferno rainbow on R2R... I’ve got too much red now!
Picking up a pair of icecap gyre 1k’s tomorrow. Plan is to run them with only one impeller, vertical, with opposite flow on either side of the corner overflow.
I’m guessing there’s gonna be a sandstorm (oolite is the devil. Never again). When that happens, I’m gonna pull the sand bed and replace with rubble Tonga.
Anyone have a bucket of rubble collecting dust?
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How often have you used that particular tank for QT with copper? Did you test the water before the most recent dosing?
10-15 years ago, I was moving a lot of fish in and out and learned that my tanks were holding the copper.
First, it was the terra-cotta pots I was using that held the most, even after bleaching. Then when I threw out all the pumps, heaters and clay pots, I was still getting significant copper readings in the glass tanks after I cleaned them. I seem to remember the conclusion had been that the silicone was holding bound Cu.
Lesson I learned then was twofold. First, once a tank has been used for QT with copper, assume it will always have Cu. Second, run the tank for 3-5 days, test for Cu, then add fish if safe, dose Cu according to current Cu levels.
As far as how the fish are responding, I can’t say. It was once said that clownfish could take epic amounts of Cu, but would often sterilize them. It was thought to be one of the biggest hurdles in learning to breed clowns, especially for the “sensitive” varieties like Darwin occelaris that took up to 3 years to become sexually mature. 3 years is a long time to learn that the fish were shooting blanks.
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Well it might explain why most new introductions take excessively long to acclimate
I have a similar problem. I keep my ai Vega at 100%.
Right now, I’ve got a BTA tank, so they just crawl around to where they’re comfortable. The ones that have been there the longest, have slowly crawled to the highest ricks and are happily bubbled up. They sort of auto-adjust to the lights.
When I keep corals though, I never light-acclimate them. My thoughts are that if the coral can’t take it, I don’t want a sissy coral in my tank anyways.
Didn’t work out too well when I tried chalices and jawbreakers a few years ago...
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Nice looking mens!
CSB and LD are nice, but not in the thousand dollars nice. Once they fully opened, they are just slightly brighter than the standard Rose bubble.
Agreed. Too expensive.
I keep meaning to email Bob with iBluewater to see if he still has his supernova BTA. That thing is amazing. Dark blue base and tentacles with red tips. His website has it listed at $350, I think.
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Don't I know it. There's a local guy that sells some really nice anemones that have some nice orange in them (not CSB) but for the price point beautiful and pretty dang close enough IMO!
I’ll keep an eye out! Thanks!
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That's really cool. I like it a lot. Clownfish heaven.
Thanks! I like it a lot too!
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Looking good! Where did you source your anemones?
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All over the place.
First one was a “test” that I picked up from Petco after the tank had been running 2 months.
Next came the acid rain and a tiny light green guy from capital aquarium.
Then I got the huge green (18+ inches!) and a large rose from members here on the boards. Rose split two days after I dropped him in the tank.
Black widows came two weeks ago. Ordered them from a guy on R2R.
I’m still looking for more.
Now I want an orange one and a yellow one. Unfortunately CSB and lemon drop are WAY too expensive these days. I was selling CSB’s for $500 bucks four years ago. Now they’re around $1500-$2000!!!!!!!
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Hi.
I’m Max.
I’ve built a dedicated BTA tank.
It’s not much yet, but here’s what I’m running so far:
Equipment:
Deep blue 30 gallon frag tank
AI Vega set to 100%
Sicce syncra 2.0 return
Bubble Magus curve 5 skimmer
Turbo twist UV sterilizer
DIY carbon/gfo reactor
Livestock:
Pair of Gold Stripe Maroon clowns
Chocolate chip starfish
Orange linkia starfish
9 BTAs from six different strains including 3 black widows, 1 acid rain, rose BTAs and green BTAs.
Spot fees the nems every other day.
50% water change every two weeks done by setting up a 30 gallon barrel with and overflow next to the sump and running a mag 3.5 from the sump to the barrel run 12-18 hours.
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Why it’s time to put an end to the cult of the aquarium.
in General Discussion
Thanks! I’ll fix the first post
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