ArtC

Whenever Jeff makes any full or partial payment, I will post that information.

My 39g CAD just arrived, and I'm wondering where's the best place to get LR. Previously I got most of it at Dr. Mac, but he's cut back to just Walt Smith Fiji. I'm in an apartment now, so it's probably better if I get rock that's at least partially cured!

When I broke down my tank in preparation for moving, NAGA bought all my LR and livestock for $1200. That was in April. I haven't seen a dime yet. His check bounced twice, I went by his shop several times since then, and each time he promised to deliver at least partial payment at my nearby home on some specific day. On which day I wouldn't see him, and after which I wouldn't hear from him. He did try to sign some customer checks over to me (about half the $1200), but when my credit union wouldn't take them without Jeff present I had to give them back to him to deposit himself. And I never saw anything from that. I finally gave him a week's notice (by voice mail and WAMAS PM) that I was going to post a review and file in small claims court if he didn't get back to me by yesterday. And again I didn't hear from him. (You can check that he's been on WAMAS today via his member info.) I hear he's had other complications, and if I can't get by without $1200 for a couple of months then I'm in the wrong hobby. But the combination of not making good on any of the the debt and repeatedly not showing up when he told me to my face he'd show up is too much. NAGA has never made any objection as to the condition/survival of the livestock, or made any suggestion that the transaction wasn't good. He does make nice tanks - maybe he's overextended due to the big CAD/CAM system he bought to cut them. But for now, I recommend you not sell anything to him unless you get cash up front.

Randy believes it works, and that's usually good enough for me! But he describes a test you can do to find out if your living space has higher than ambient CO2 (which is more common than not.) So you can tell if there's a potential benefit before you run the pipe. http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-09/rhf/index.php "The Aeration Test" section

http://www.ehponline.org/docs/2008/10966/abstract.html Results: Sunscreens cause the rapid and complete bleaching of hard corals, even at extremely low concentrations. The effect of sunscreens is due to organic ultraviolet filters, which are able to induce the lytic viral cycle in symbiotic zooxanthellae with latent infections. Conclusions: We conclude that sunscreens, by promoting viral infection, potentially play an important role in coral bleaching in areas prone to high levels of recreational use by humans. Who knew? And wash your arms before putting them in the tank!

'Everything the RO missed is an exageration', but say the RO takes out 90% (of whatever your water has to begin with, varies greatly) then the DI takes out 90% of what is left. Just using DI resin to take out everything is too expensive, which is why the units all put RO first. Also, RO works better at high water pressure and low pH, so YMMV on that part of the system. Hard to say what the DI is taking out, but whatever it is, you don't need it in your tank. I had a cheap RO when I started, and I had algae everyplace. Finally got sick of spending my weekends scrubbing rocks and bought RO/DI. Haven't seen a strand of hair algae since. Whenever you want to know more about tank chemistry than you really need, check out Randy Holmes-Farley articles and forum on reefcentral.com. Here's one for RO/DI: http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-05/rhf/index.php

This is the first time I ever heard of Phil. PHil: you gotta step up and tell us what you do and where to find you! There's no ecological niche for cryptic vendors. Think 'cleaner shrimp' - get out there and start waving your antennae

I tried this argument on him too. Just got to convince him that we'll buy enough stuff to pay for DC real estate. Or that it's the only way he'll get Byron out of his hair.

It sounds a bit like we're ganging up on you, but it's just the reality of the hobby that things die. And vendors who don't break even also die How do you know BRK did anything wrong? There are risks all along the supply chain, and the LFS can't assume all of them without raising the prices on everything. Or the fish could have had bad genes that made it less adaptable to new environments... The longer between when the fish is sold and when it dies, the less likely that the death was the fault of the supply chain. Not to say it wasn't, but there's no way to prove the cause so vendors need to have some rule to deal with the situation in the absence of knowledge. Another thing you can do is ask the LFS to hold the fish for you for a while to see how it does. I don't know what BRKs policy is on this. Because that's also a cost - tanks full of fish being held are not available for new stock, and sales go down.

The answer is 'it depends.' If you want a more quantitative version of 'it depends'. then check out the carbon article in this month's Advanced Aquarist But remember 'only bad things happen fast' and that there's no practical way to know when your carbon is shot. So start out using a little to avoid bleaching, and keep using a little to avoid throwing a lot away. If you plan to use it regularly, a reactor (or one of those Magnavore things) will make your carbon use much more effective. If you don't use a reactor, using only a little carbon at a time will help avoid dead spots that the flow never gets to.

I'm job hunting, and I'll probably wind up having to move somewhere still within the greater WAMAS area. So I'm sitting here looking at my 220, and wondering if there's any practical way to break it down, move it, and set it up again without killing everything. Or if life would be a lot simpler if I broke it down, sold it off in advance, and started over at the beginning after my move. Not having any specifics yet, I also have to think about the possibility of either moving on nil notice or having a gap between moving out and moving in. Moving to Herndon and driving to Annapolis to feed the fish would get old, and a 220 isn't the kind of thing you can set up at a Residence Inn for a month... But I know I can rely on all of you if I have to conduct a fire sale

Did you ever try eating them? Harlequin shrimp would eat them, and then starve when they ran out of food.

uh, how much denitrification? It isn't exactly a yes/no question, but 4"-6" is enough to qualify as a DSB. If you are limited in floorspace, make sure you do the other things that impact DSB effectiveness, e.g., current and particle size.

The unknowns is why the gloves are a safe bet. Unless your critters develop an allergy to latex. Pure metals worn as jewelry are pretty much inert. For some reason women have never liked it when the jewelry I gave them turned green or brown first time it got wet, but if yours rusts then don't put it in the tank - the oxide could dissociate and release metal ions. And it will sure rust more in salt water.. Name a chemical - almost certainly nobody has tested it for toxicity to whatever lives in your tank. Some, like the germicidal soaps, are intended to kill things. Soap itself is very bad for cell membranes. The gloves also protect you against the stings, toxins, and the few diseases you can catch from fish. And then you could develop allergies to your tank. :( For this reason, Calfo was pretty annoyed with himself when he forgot his gloves at the SMMAS meeting and had to frag corals with his bare hands.

A 50 pound bag cost $16 at the last group buy. And we bought a ton of it - so I wouldn't expect another buy any time soon. Find somebody to part out (a 50# bag is about 3 salt buckets.)

IIRC, one of the CMAS speakers said Joe's Juice consists of kalk and salt. But all of the 'safe' products are based on locally overdosing something that is found in the aquarium anyway. Acids, bases, salts, kalk: small ions that the cellular membrane can't deal with when there is a big gradient, but which which make a tiny contribution to the levels in the tank as a whole once dissolved. High gradients burst the cell membranes via water transport in addition to any damage the material itself does - which is why salt also works. The slight advantages of kalk are that you are actively trying to increase the Ca levels in the tank anyway, and it doesn't dissolve before the whole animal gets killed. Kalk particles are more likely to drift to something you value - I spilled some on my clown's anemone last week while killing something else and I thought it was a goner, but it healed over in a couple days. I guess reef life is used to chemical warfare. Fully dissolved kalkwasser should work about the same as the acids - might take two shots instead of one. My aptasia are small, and I never had any trouble killing them with kalk paste just dumped on them. It will sure kill whatever part of the animal it hits. Even my real anemones only take one shot as long as I get it on the disk. (I dunno what they are, Calfo couldn't ID one in person so I gave up trying.)

Or just learn to love them... Something in my main tank eats them. I have absolutely no idea what and I guess I won't know until 'it' dies.

1) What is your pH during the day - how much is it fluctuating? 2) what is your alkalinity? Alkalinity buffers pH. 3) did you calibrate your pH sensor prior to panicking?