Jarosh

darn BRK has those super low prices and my tank is just filling up with live stock. I need to find a different LFS with high prices and poor stock so i can make room in my tank. Keep up the good work Johnny

Where exactly is Wally's, If in the area I may try and stop by to check it out.

Dr Mac has some good prices on Live Rock. He may be coming to the meeting and you could save on shipping if you are ange for him to bring it with him. Also some members might chime in if they have some available, but this is usually listed first in the ForSale Section for members.

Khanh If interested you can borrow mine for the day. Its a 6500watt Coleman. I think I can do with out it for a day. All you would need to do is keep it fed with Gas and possibly allow a hitchhiker frag or two find thier way home with it. Let me know and we can see what we can arrange.

They are also made very well. For example I had a differnt type of battery operated air pump that I used that night on x-mas eve and well to make a long story short the darn plastic spindle inside snapped off. Leaving me with 1 air pump for 2 tanks. This pump has a metal spindle and more importantly the auto on feature when the power drops out.

Yep power crapped out again today for ~2hrs, nothing like on X-mas eve when I was a little less prepared. I admit back on Dec 24th, I had everything I needed, but I just needed to be present to set it up, which luckliy I was. I was also here for the current power blip, but this time the tanks took care of themselves. And the thanks go to this little inexpensive baby Silent Air B11 Air Pump You plug it into an outlet and basically when the power goes out the pump comes on. It then runs on the D Battery. The first time I used it I had this thing going for 8+ hours on the same battery. It could prbably go for 16+hrs on the same battery. Just enough insurance for when you are a way from home.

Once you go Bare Bottom you don't Go back!!! I originially set-up my 90 gal as BB, due to lack of sand at the time. Clean up is so much easier, I just use a power head to push everything to one side then suck up the crud. I do have a DSB in my sump to help with the Bio filtering.

The Southern States south of old town Manassas along 28 usually has Tropical Playsand aka "South Down".

Getting them started is the hard part, but having a mature pair is a very good start. Once mine were ready they pop out a new batch every 14days. I've also trained them to lay the eggs on a small 4x4 ceramic tile, so I can easily remove the eggs to a different container to hatch. Like mentioned above raising the fry requires extra attention. You will need a supply of rotos and also phyto to feed the roto.

Interested in grasses as well let me know about a group order

It would be interesting to see what has a higher reproductive rate the Apstasia or the nudi? Keep us updated on your progress.

It really depends on your set-up. My first set-up is a 30 gal with Power Compact lighting, I only really feed the tank comercial fish pellets, while my other set-up is a 90 gal with dual 175W Metal Halides that gets fed oyster eggs, cyclopeez, brine, Phyto and nori. The zoas that were in the 30 gal set-up didn't grow very much may be adding 5-8 polyps every 6 months. But when I moved them over to the 90 gal set-up, they doubled in size and added 5-8 polyps every other week. Just my expierence, but I would say zoas like more light and a varity of foods.

Pretty darn nasty looking. But I'd say it's some type of worm.

Well my Christmas eve was great until about 9:30 pm, when the lights dimmmed and then totally went out. After the wife and I rounded up some flash lights and candles, I realized the sump on my 30 gal was starting to over flow onto the floor. I guess waiting until after the holidays to adjust the top off in my sump wasn't going to help me now. Well after gathering some towels and partitioning off the stand from the rest of the room, I realized I best dig up the battery operated airpumps. I found the first one rather quickly in my black hole of a garage and set it up on my 90gal reef. For the next 30 min I searched for the other pump, while alternating every 5-10 min between the 30 and 90. At this time I was about an hour and a half into the power outage. So at this time I had one pump going on the 30 and the other going on the 90. This was good for about an hour until the newer pump decided to call it quits. A small plastic pin that toggles the pump membrane snapped clear off. So I was back to alternating a single pump between the 2 tanks. This lasted for another hour and a half while I tried to rig the broken pump. Fortunately I was able to glue up the part. So now I was back to 2 pumps and pushing 2 am. At this time I decided to try and get a little sleep as 5 am was fast aproaching and unfortunatley I had to work this Christmas. So I set the alarm for 30 min intervals where I would quickly check the pumps and get a few winks inbetween. It was about 4:30 am when the power came back on with a flash of lights and blaring TV. The sound of pumps turning over cut through the exhaustion as I jumped up to do a quick run through of the set-ups. Most of the fish were hiding out and some of the soft corals were looking a little wilted, but overall no worse for ware. I'm back from work now and so far everything looks to be in good shape, fish are out and about. Corals seem fine except where a few were knocked over from poking around with the airstone. I'm super glad I picked up these battery operated airpumps, in light of the $$$ I could have lost this was the best 14$ I could have spent. Also I was a bit upset I had to work for X-mas, but otherwise I would have been out of town and been coming back to a near if not total loss of fish and corals. Xeon how did you make out? Did you lose power as well?

If space is tight, there are some decent hang on back refugiums, that have some decent water capacity. Otherwise I would remove your current sump and get a larger container to convert to a sump/refugium. This is how I run. It is split with once section holding the skimmer and pumps while the other section holds sand, LR rubble, cheato.

Bill that is the same story with most pet stores. 95% of things are overpriced. I mainly visit to look for deals (that remaining 5%) or to check something out before I buy online. The only local exception to the pet store rule has been Blue Ribbon Koi in manassas. If you are looking for live rock the best option would be if somone is selling or just buying on line. Either way it will still be half of what you would pay at a local shop.

Stopped by Maru in Fredericksburg on Weds and they are starting to get in a lot of SW fish and corals. I picked up a some Zoa frags and a small mangrove. They were both priced rather reasonably. The fish looked in good heath as well.

The fist side effect I can see is the bacterial sludge that blooms from the over use of vinager. When i used to drip Kalk, I too used some vinager to make it more soluable. But after a while I was just pouring in more and more vinager, until one day I noticed that the top of my tank had a thick snot like film on the top. this ended up clogging my overflow and filter media. Needless to say tha pushed me to set-up my kalk reactor so I no longer needed to use vinager.

At the rate they are growing under the MHs that may not be to far off.

The other day I noticed a small single eagle eye zoa mixed in with some of my mushrooms. This was rather strange because the mother colony is across the tank from this polyp. After looking around further I found that another zoa colony that was on a half bare rock also had some very small eagle eyes starting to grow on the rock as well. This rock is ~8" away from the eagle eye zoa colony. So what I'm getting at is I'm assuming that eagle eye colony is spreading by some other method than just dividing. I though I read an article a few months back about this happening but can't remember by what method they are reproducing. Any info or a link to an article would be appreciated. Paul

That is the same results I had when I tried to grow digi under PC's. I was using 2 96w pcs and got really good growth for about 3 months. After that they started to brown and then slowly retracked thier polpys. I have since moved everything under the MH's in my 90 gal and the color has been slowly coming back, but the gorwth has sky rocketed.

Johnny How about Dt's oyster eggs any plans on carrying this? Also do you have hours on Weds? Only seen Thurs-Sun on your site.

I don't think it would be to much to ask if we prepay prior to ordering. That is of course after a price has been set. It's easier holding onto an item that has been sold vs waiting on payemnt. Otherwise after stopping by your place the other day, I have to say things are looking good. Obviously you are just getting things up and running, but I see real good things to come in the future. Also your prices beat any other local store in the area, and the fish are in great shape. I hope this works out for you and you end up expanding your operation.

Peppermint shrimp won't do anything for bubble algae, but emerald crabs will do the trick. I find them snacking on it in my tank from time to time when it shows up.

I found that that the red tip hermits from aquaticisland.com are the best when it comes to not bothering the snails. They seem totally disinterested in snails and also when I'm feeding. While the blue legs I have start to go for any left over meaty food the fish don't eat. They do tend to wrestle a bit amongst themselves, but so far I have zero hermit losses The main reason I think they are so good with the snails is because they are full grown, I have yet to see one move into any of the larger shells that are in my tank. Howard are you having the same luck with them?