lmeyer

Depending on when, I might be able to get the family and come along. We'd be coming from Kensington (close enough to Rockville). Larry M.

A couple of thoughts: I agree w/ Howard, don't think that you want to put anything live in your mixing reservoir. Assuming you don't put anything live in the 55G tank, do you still need a seperate drum or can you just have the float valve going into the 55G tank? How do you plan on driaining the "appropriate" amount of water from the main tank. Best way I know is to have an empty reservoir of the same size as your mix tank. Drain 55G into the empty reservoir and replace it w/ 55G from your tank. You could accomplish the same thing with your drum and tank if you only changed 40G at a time.

Since you say it isn't Bryopsis, this part won't help you, but for others, I had great success with adding a Kole Tang for Bryopsis. He went to town on it. Unfortunately, I've had seemingly every algae under the sun. I have to respectfully disagree with flowerseller about there necessarily being a nutrient problem. That is the conventional wisdom, but I am sceptical after my experience. After my cucumber sushi problem that many have heard about, my tank went to H-E-double hocky sticks. The cucumber killed all the fish, led to an ammonia spike and killed most of the coral. Then the algae took over. When I had a chance to recover, there was 6 + inches of algae over everything. I didn't feed the tank, reduced and eventually eliminated the lights, and still the algae thrived. I am convinced that sometimes when significant algae takes root it needs very little to survive. The only way I broke the cycle was to take out all of my rock, put it in a covered rubbermaid trash can for several weeks, scrub it as clean as I could, and then put it back. That seems to have worked. I've been back at it for 5 months and haven't had an outbreak yet. Is it possible to take the rock out in stages, scrub it, and put it into the tank without the algae problem? When you've got the bulk of the bad rock out, you can start rotating the scrubbed rock back into the tank. Possibly you will have the same success I did and get it down to an amount that is manageable for whatever algae consumers you do have in the tank.

To be honest I never worry about it. I feed a little extra before and after and go on my merry way. I do have an auto top off system, so I don't worry about the water level. I have a neighbor's kid check the tank and they will give me a call if a disaster strikes (300 gallons on the floor, that kind of thing). I don't have him so much as feed the tank, I'd prefer to let them fend for themselves for the week. Never yet had a problem while on vacation and I've been doing it this way for nearly a decade.

Sachin, When are you planning on ordering? I'm a little out of your suggested range (live in Kensington), but would pick up in Falls Church if the timing is right. I've been holding off re-stocking my 20 gallon until later in the summer, but the pricing is good.

I've also seen people put together "pod piles" in their tanks. I have one in mine. Take some small pieces of live rock, put them in a pile in the tank, take half of the plastic container that strawberries come in and put it over the pile of rocks (keeps predators out). Put some larger rocks over the strawberry container to keep it in place and mask it. Creates a small in-tank refugium for your pods. If you really want to get into it, check out http://home.alltel.net/teakiebarber/page2.html.

Don't know about this particular one, to me it looks most like Echinometra mathaei (http://wetwebmedia.com/urchinsii.htm). I have two pencil urchins in my reef for turf algae control. I have two problems with them, first you can tell exactly where they have been by the bare patches on the rock (they even eat the coralline) and second, they do knock stuff over. I've read that the long spine urchins can also scratch acrylic and puncture fleshy coral polyps. I guess that when they are clearing the rock they do "erode" it a little, but I doubt it is significant enough a reason to pull them. On the other issues, though, thats a personal choice.

Sorry to hear your woes. Been through it. I wound up going the route you are planning, I put all of my rock in an unlit rubbermaid trash can for a while, let the algae die off, scrubbed it, put it back in the tank. I couldn't get all of the hair/turf algae off, but it seemed to get below critical mass. I've had my tank back up and running for about 4 months and the algae has not come back. I did make an addition of two pencil urchins to the tank as a precaution against the algae which has been a mixed bag. I think they help, but they do knock over corals on occasion and they do eat up the coralline algae. Am considering removing them and seeing what happens. As for your questions, I would remove as much algae as possible from the corals without harming them and then take my chances. Hopefully when you reduce the total amount of algae in the system, your clean up crew will be able to finish that job. Are you keeping the fish in the tank while you do the scrubbing? The tangs and foxface may be able to eat the algae still in the tank while you are doing this. If not, I would probably feed them a little, but not too much. When I go on vacation (week at a time), I throw in a little extra food before I go and a little extra when I get back and have never lost anything as a result. I would rather feed the tank, but don't want to put anyone in the position of having to care for my tank.

I have converted 1/3rd of my sump to a refugium in the past few months. Always had it divided into three sections, just added lights, sand, and macro to the middle section. Haven't seen any real increase in unwanted algae and I've been running the lights 12 hours/day for about two months. Have seen a huge increase in coralline algae in the sump, especially in the areas of greatest water flow. I know its only a couple of months, but take it for what its worth.

Good rationale. I haven't looked at prices of these since I set up the tank 6 years ago. Is the $10 difference on the initial set up, on replacement membranes, or both? Do the membranes filter the same number of gallons (i.e. a 24 gpd membrane and a 100 gpd membrane will each filter 1000 gallons cumulatively on a given system)? Just curious.

I agree with ScubaTodd, the tang is probably not well suited for a 55. There are a bunch of different recommendations on the web for minimum tank size. Marine Depot recommends 100 gallon tank for the tang. Wetwebmedia tends to go with about 75-80. A bunch of other sites say you can do it in 50 - 55 (Aquaria Central, Fishdomain, ReefersInn). I would tend to be conservative and not keep one in under 75 gallons. ScubaTodd recommended a 100 gpd ro/di unit in the same post. Not sure why he chose that capacity. I'd like to hear back from him on that. I use a 24 gpd Kent Marine Maxxima for my 350 gallon system and that works for me. I top off about 3 gallons per day and do regular 30 gallon changes. For the 30 galon change I keep a rubbermaid trashcan and just refill it over a couple of days after the water change. That way the water is sitting ready whenever I am ready to do my next water change. The only times I could have used a greater capacity was when filling the tank for the first time or when I had a catastrophic event involving a cucumber and wanted to do a 25% water change.

Probably wouldn't be a problem. I've been known to forget to turn the return from the sump to the show tank back on after feeding and go to work. Never yet had a problem as a result. Of course that is only 10 hours or so, not 48. I would think that as long as the tank was in good shape going in it won't hurt anything.

From what I have seen on your posts, I think you would be well served by getting a book that highlights a specific approach to setting up a reef tank. I'm partial to Tullock's The Natural Reef Aquarium for set up type questions. I like Borneman's Aquarium Corals and Calfo's Book of Coral Propagation for info on the selection and care of specific corals. You say that you get ammonia spikes when you do a water change. What is your source for water? Have you tested the incoming water for ammonia? Do you have an RO filter for your incoming water? If not, my next purchase would definitely be an RO filter. You can't fix your water chemistry if you are adding dirty water to the system in your changes. Just a thought.

Awesome tank. Check out this site too. http://www.aquarienanlagen.de/ Select Beispiele (Examples). My favorites are the 4000 L column and the 15000 L system. Not too shabby! I want to move to Germany so I can have these people build me a system.

Been looking into this again. Don't know if you made any decisions/purchases, but I've been thinking about trying out 3 Heniochus diphreutes. Don't know if you have space in your tank for these (or want to spend the $), but they definitely school in the wild.

Lee, Don't know if I'm going to make the meeting yet. Will depend on the time. April 30 was great, May 14 not so good for me. Going to try to make it, though. Don't have anything to trade right now, you've seen my other recent posts, just getting started again. Would love some chaeto if it hasn't all been spoken for. Also some of your sand. Hope to see/meet you at the meeting. Larry

This is also called a lollipop coral. Wetwebmedia strongly advises against these (see http://www.wetwebmedia.com/seasquirtfaqs.htm). In looking over all of their info it seems that these tunicates live off an unknown type of bacteria that is lacking in our tanks. If you still want to get one, I saw one the other day at Totally Fish on Georgia Ave. I didn't get it based on what I've read, but admit that they look very cool. Sorry, I don't remember how much they were asking for it.

I think you will have the same problem with Banggai Cardinals that you had with the chromis. I started with 5, now have 2 plus the one that escaped into the sump that I've been too lazy to trap and trade out. The 2 that remain have been happily paired for over a year. I've avoided anthias in the past due to the feeding requirements. I have always wanted to keep a square spot anthias, but I've been told they require at least two feedings per day. I try to limit my feeding schedule to once in the morning. Also, per the selection section of http://www.wetwebmedia.com/anthiines_ii.htm, there may not be general agreement that anthias are a good choice for creating a school in your tank. Let me know what you find out. I have been thinking of adding a small school of chromis to my tank to see how it works out, but it doesn't sound like you've had success with that route.

I would be shocked if this was not dyed. I wouldn't touch it.

Pics are helpful. I'll wait to see how much the shipping is. I went to FedEx, UPS, and DHL websites to try to estimate shipping. Looks like that may be a problem, was getting quotes of 50 to 100 euros for shipping. I'll wait to see what the manufacturer quotes, but I won't pay that much on top of the cost of the parts. If I wind up getting it (and get it in time) I'll bring it to the Spring Meeting.

A little additional info: Heard back from Thomas Zinn/ZC Aquarientechnik (the German sellers). They will sell the parts for about 50 Euros (about $65) plus shipping. I will probably buy it, but will need to know how much for shipping before I do.

A little additional info: Heard back from Thomas Zinn/ZC Aquarientechnik (the German sellers). They will sell the parts for about 50 Euros (about $65) plus shipping. I will probably buy it, but will need to know how much for shipping before I do.

Those who have it to spare, if you are coming to the April meeting can you bring some out? That might be the factor that convinces my wife to let me go

Haven't done much work trying to figure out the schematics/workings lately. I have e-mailed Thomas Zinn, the designer. He didn't have a way to ship them to the U.S., didn't recommend shipping them. At my request, he said they could possibly sell/ship the inserts into the tank along with instructions and I could install it into a tank I got here. I have e-mailed him back asking how he would like to proceed with this. Xeon is right, from what I have seen on the web, the mesh between the dividers is a plankton sieve. The green tubes are air lift pumps. I believe that I saw that they also had plankton sieves to prevent cross contamination. I'm looking forward to seeing the info he gets from the person who has one. The only other places I have found with info about them are: http://www.saunalahti.fi/~haaga/Tekniikka/107-0766_img.htm (images of a working reactor including documentation of some type of crash) - found from http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2003-06/totm/ (same system as highlighted in reefkeeping mag).

Sorry, just added location to the profile. I am in Kensington, only a few blocks from where we hold our Maryland meetings. It seems that a lot of our members are from Virginia (including the two of you who were good enough to reply). Culpeper is a bit far to go for me for macro, so I'll wait it out. I appreciate the info on the different varieties. Yours is the most straightforward and concise info I've seen! Larry