gastone

Welcome to the club. Show us some pics of the Solana when you've got it up and running. If you are at the spring meeting in a few weeks I'm sure you will find plenty of frags to fill it. Garrett.

Okay, he's at my side and not in my lap any longer. I think Tyree is in fact "passing" these corals around. His methods of doing so may disgust you, but do you think the guy is living in a Beverly Hills mansion, driving a Bentley and carousing with Hollywood hipsters? I counted 94 LE corals from the reef farmers web site. Could be more, could be less. In fact, for ease, let's make it 100. Now, some of those are out of vogue, or have been so distrubuted (tyree toadstool for example) and haven't been reserved by anyone in a spell, and more than a few aren't available monthly (but rather bi-monthly or quarterly) as they grow slow, then there are times when corals that are reserved aren't distrubted as the colonies haven't grown enought to warrant cutting, so the reserve is cancelled. All in all I'd say he distibutes 60 LE reserve corals per month. Call it $80 per and you are looking at just shy of 5 grand. If that was his take home he'd be doing okay for selling some pretty corals... if that was his take home. Back out his electricity (if you can imagine the price of running numerous 400w hallides (in Cali btw)), his salt, his travel to find these things and the guy is probably not doing much more than breaking even. The fact is he is aquaculturing aesthetically pleasing corals. I highly doubt he has a limitless supply of "pretty" corals to pass out. He has to grown them out just like you or I. Ours may be brown and not have the widespread appeal (that IMO is well deserving) of his, but I would venture to say that they grow out at roughly comparable rates. At each meeting I hope to be able to frag *a few* choice corals to trade at the meeting. 5 tops. Quarterly meetings and you are talking 20 frags a year I've got available, minus the softies. Tyree does the same thing... distribute frags. He isn't selling an exorbitant amount of corals. Heck, don't you think if he had these things falling out of his cupboards he'd unload them now instead of having people wait until 2011. I mean, he ain't having no problem selling what he's got. FWIW I've never purchased a Tyree coral from Frag Farmers... too rich for my pittance of a teaching salary. But if I had the cash I wouldn't be opposed to it. (I'd probably get another mastiff first though) Labelling every coral under the sun doesn't interest me, but people that are pushing the hobby towards more aquaculture are okay by me. G. Edit: Now if you want to talk about the hack shops that take wild colonies, chop them up into pieces and unload twenty frags that may or may not survive and def. won't hold their color, then that I do have issue with.

I disagree... mostly to be contrarian. But a 150# dog is resting on my arm and I can't be contrary at the moment. I will be later though. G.

Robert, there are two sides to every fence. While the naming thing is a bit much (especially inre to zoanthids, look what happened to the zoanthid forum on RC. Used to be a decent forum, now it's all about "id'ing", whatever the H-E-double hocky sticks that means), the flip side is that Tyree and others are aquaculturing corals (which happen to be quite colorful often times) and passing them out. Meaning I don't have to purchase a large wild colony that is going to struggle in captivity to take hold, I'll just pay the same amount for a small frag (from whomever) knowing what captive conditions it does best in, knowing that it will be hardy, knowing what coloration/form (or whatever the appeal is) it will keep. That being said, there ain't much money is selling frags (or colonies for that matter) of brown whathaveyou. I understand you like the biotope. I think it's cool. I think Dave Sandstrom's Caribbean Reef is awesome. I think Daniel Shaw's biotope is sweet as well. What if Daniel decided he really wanted some intertidal anemone that is only found in some small beach in Indonesia, and the cost to have it plucked from the reef and transhipped to his door was $2000? Would we call him crazy, would we think it absurd? Probably, but I bet you he'd be thrilled. Isn't that what matters? G.

Wreck, I don't know nothing 'bout nothing, but what I do know is that this batch looks much better/fuller than the first. At the moment I'm not interested in rearing them. Down the road 6 months or so might be a different story. I'll be sure to be in touch with you and Scott if and when I think about making that leap. Garrett. She likes my man-purse style. She even likes those special times when we go down to Richmond when I wear her purses (and heels and not much else). She likes it mostly that I'm comfortable with myself. G. (Oh yeah, she likes to borrow my purses as well)

and again.... Sorry for the horrible pics. My camera skills have regressed significantly from the copy work I did back in college with technical pan film. Garrett.

Bob, no pics recently. All appears to be well with the yumas. I feel that I can confidently say that the fragging was a success. I will get some pics up shortly. Garrett.

http://209.204.76.225/flapp.htm

Different strokes for different folks you say? I'm cool with that myself. I don't check for NO3 these days. Though I suppose I could. Even when I first started and my tanks were total disasters I found that using a refugium with macro and a DSB always kept my nitrates at 0. I can assure you I had (and have) a myriad of other problems, but the ammonia cycle has never been one of them. This article is pretty good reading and offers a general overview of a number of ways to reduce NO3 in the closed system. Dr. Farley doesn't mention specifically using a RDSB (I don't believe they were in vogue in 03), but as far as bang for your buck, I think you could do much worse. G.

You people are old. I'm going to be 25 again this year... and next year... and the following... and... Garrett.

Why not go with vertical slots on the overflow instead of a long horizontal slit? 1" is still pretty big and a lot of fish (and what have you) will be able to get through that. A series of 1/4" or 1/2" vertical slots though would accomplish the same thing and with each opening being smaller it would allow for less "stuff" to get into your overflow. G.

Sounds good Curtis. Keep us appraised of what you are doing to reduce your nitrates and let us know how it's working. Garrett.

Chip, I live in an old rowhouse built circa 1763. Insullation hah! We ain't got no stinkin' insullation. I don't check my ph as I don't have a fancy device to do that. I assume that it is fairly high (don't remind me about assuming). Can you run the air hose from your skimmer out of doors? Garrett.

Is that (1/4) per day, or per week? If that's daily, that's a lot, a whole lot. First I'd cut back feeding significantly. You don't mention anything about a DSB or refugium. If you don't have one, a RDSB can be set up for a minimal amount of money (<$25 easy). The investment is minimal and if it works, great. If it doesn't, it won't be the first, nor the last $25 that you waste on the hobby. If that's still not working you can look into some fancy-schmancy deluxe-denitrator reactor thingy. G.

They *might* not eat plastic corals. I'd say with that mix everything else is toast. Garrett.

That's not hair either..

Steve, why use the SS on your return? You are talking about a lot of flow through the sump, probably too much IMO. I use a Mag7 on my system, but I get a lot of head loss so I figure it turns the tank over about 6-7 times per hour (300ish gph). That's still a little much for me. I've got room to play though as my sump is a 100g stock tank and my display is 42g. Too much circulation and the equiment/systems in the sump won't operate efficiently as they don't have enough "contact" time. DSB, fuge, skimmer, GFO reactors, et al. You are also asking more of your overflows as well. Maybe bump down to a smaller return pump and do a dedicated CL using the eheim. Garrett.

Go wider, not taller. The biggest complaint I here from people is that they want more depth (front to back) so they can really play with the rockwork. 6'x'3'x2 sounds sweet, and with the 24" height you are fine with 250w hallides. Going deeper may necessitate 400w if you want to keep SPS top to bottom. Go around and look at some of the membership's larger tanks. If you are going to upgrade now, might as well make it the last one for a long, long time and do it right. G.

Matt, congrats on the beautiful tank. Jeff did an awesome job. I am curious on one thing though. It looks to me that the overflow is at the height of the bottom of the euro bracing. Is the thickness of the bracing enough to overcome the surface tension of the water so the water can get into the overflow w/o issue? Between that and in-tank circulation, how is water going to stay in the tank? Maybe I'm just looking at it the wrong way or maybe I'm missing something. Regardless, nice tank and I look forward to the impending build. Garrett. Edit: went back and looked closer and I can see that the overflow is under the bracing. I should have payed attention the first time. Ignore the rest of the post (expect when I say it s beautiful)

The first consideration would be tank size. We can probably eliminate the hippo tang and moorish idol immediately. There's a cleaner shrimp, that's doable, and a leatherback (or loggerhead, or some other) sea turtle (or 1000). That's probably not doable. I think there's a great white or two (my memory sucks). They probably won't fit in your standard 55 either. G.

Dave, I'm already eye-balling it and thinking, "Yeah, I can cut off a couple of nice size polyps from there...and there... and..." It's pretty big when exapanded. I'd say 10"x5"x4".

I'm too far south. I've thought about getting a few of us southern reefers together to do one, but for the majority of WAMASers it's just too far. Eddi used to do them on occassion, but I think his wife got sick of the stink. Garrett.

LPS don't eat phyto. Phyto is great for filter feeders (clams, feather dusters, perhaps some softies, cukes), feeding zooplankton, culturing rotifers. I feed my LPS mysis, cyclopeeze, and mush (when I've got some laying around... food party anyone??) Garrett.

What's CMAS? Welcome Phillip. I can't speak for everyone, but I'm glad that you are in the club. Garrett.

Whoever did that must be really stupid. Like WAMAS' dumbest criminal.