Folta

I have a handheld, but have been thinking about getting a pair of inline meters - for exactly where you test, Dave. What place would you recommend to buy them from?

Hey Bob, It was I who talked to you about the kalk reactor at the meeting. It's very interesting to see just how little air matters, it seems.

Hey Doug did you get my PM?

Let me just clarify that the actinics are for your viewing pleasure. Your corals health will be perfectly fine without them, pending you have enough light in MH form. From what I remember, the 14k's are pretty dang blue (for me both 20k and 14k are way too blue for my taste).

What are you using for top off water? What skimmer are you using?

Dhoch, I'd still be interested in the frags I mentioned before: blue/teal milli - http://www.danj.com/reef/corals_detail.php?coral_id=41 green stylo - http://www.danj.com/reef/corals_detail.php?coral_id=17 blue tort - http://www.danj.com/reef/corals_detail.php?coral_id=65 yellow milli - http://www.danj.com/reef/corals_detail.php?coral_id=57 Dbartco, I'd be intereted in a frag of: miami orchid stag bubblegum milli

A full sheet every other day? Really? Maybe I've been underfeeding my tangs then... I would take maybe an 1/8 of a sheet and put it in either every day or every other day. And even with that, the first thing the Sohal likes to do is bite right where the nori meets the clip, pulls it off, chases it around nibbling at it until it gets to one of my seio 2600's...... then I get itty bitty nori pieces everywhere in the tank. I can only imagine the disaster it would be if I used a full sheet! Rebecca, as far as my issue with the hair algae - I did dose sugar and I also hooked up my Ozone unit (200 mg) directly into my skimmer. I can't say for certain which is what helped (or if it was a combination of both), but after a few weeks all the hair algae was gone. Oh, I also bought 5 turbo snails, and they have helped keep the algae down by constant grazing.

Hey Boxxr! Sorry to hear about your loss... no matter what the reason it's always depressing losing fish :( I won't berate you on the QT'ing issue, as I haven't ever QT'ed either.... there's upsides and downsides to the topic. Anyway, as for your questions... a hospital tank doesn't necessarily have to be large as it's obviously a temporary home for the fish. However, one thing you'll want to make sure to do is to move something that has bacteria into the tank, from your display tank. That way it won't start a cycle and make things worse for the fish that are surviving. The algae issue, what type of algae is it? How long has the algae issue been going on? Did it just start as the fish were dying? If so, the dying fish are contributing to the nutrient levels. Other causes can be anything you're adding to the tank (for example excess fish food). As far as your tests for nitrate and phosphate, they can be misleading. They will read 0 of course because there's no longer any nitrate or phosphate in the water - the algae is using it up. That doesn't mean however that something in the tank isn't breaking down and creating more nutrients at the same rate they are being used up. I feel your pain on this - I battled hair algae for almost all of last year in my 180 gallon! Very frustrating indeed, especially after my 55 gallon tank (which I broke down to upgrade to the 180) was so very successful. Good luck on the recovery of the remaining livestock, and again sorry for your losses! EDIT: I meant to add, if your main tank is fishless for the life cycle of ich, it will all die off, and then it would be safe to re-introduce the fish back to your display tank.

I like it. Ha, you can now see where you got water down the back of your tank and the background 'stuck' to the back! =) I don't think it's 'not blue enough', but then again I also only have 3 x 250w 10k XM bulbs over my tank with no actinic at all....

Some good online recommendations, thanks! I'm still looking for a few good paper published magazines.. I believe Howard was speaking of Marine Fish and Reef? But I cannot find a place to get a subscription to that. I've also found 'Coral', which unfortunately is only a bi-monthly run.

Sweet. I battled hair algae for close to a year, finally getting it to succumb to my will with sugar dosing and ozone. What did you do to get rid of it other than pull it out?

Thanks for your reply. I do read the reefkeeping online mag every month, lots of interesting stuff in there. As far as the things I mentioned above, those are more like examples of the level of articles I'm looking for. I'd like something in print too, that I can read more for when I'm not near a computer than when I am. I haven't been to reefs.org, didn't know that they existed... do they have an online publication?

Hey all... well, I"m looking for a few new magazines to subscribe to that deal with corals and marine fish. Any suggestions? I had subscribed to Tropical Fish magazine for a year, however I wasn't all that ecstatic about how much non-reef stuff there was. To be more specific, I'm looking for a magazine that caters to a lot of the extra stuff we have to do for our reef tanks, instead of seeing in a Q&A thread over and over 'what specific gravity should I be at?' 'how do you cycle a tank?' - While those questions are helpful in their own right, I'm looking for magazines that would discuss different types of lighting (T5 vs. SE MH vs. DE MH, etc), different skimmers and how to tune them, lowering nitrates and phosphates to the degree we look to do in our tanks, and so forth. So, suggest away!

Depending on how you are mounting your lights, it might be easier and more feasible to add screening and/or eggcrate over the tank. Then every so often take a sheet of screening off, until all sheets are gone. That should acclimate them without you having to change your tank around.

I think the easiest way to tell is to look at their eyes... the true percs tend to have orange circles in their eyes while the false percs do not. True perc: false perc: I had (I believe) one of each when I first had my tank, and they got along together just fine.

Alright, I've stepped up the extra food I have clipped in the tank the past few days, and I haven't seen him go after any of the zoas since I have... -- nori, celery tips, AND lettuce.. all clipped in the tank.. he does quick loops from one to the next to the next... and is still first in line when I put in pellets... Hopefully he'll behave as long as I make sure there's a lot of food for him to nibble.

As far as aquarium use is concerned, a refugium is a place where we keep macroalgae to use as a nutrient export. The benefit of growing this macroalgae, such as chaeto, is that it will pull nutrients out of the water more aggressively (hopefully) than nuisance algae, and thus keep the tank clear of that. The purpose of running it on a 'reverse' cycle is that when there's photosynthesis taking place in the tank, it will keep up oxygen and pH levels. Not typically as much as your more powerful lights over your display, but it will help keep them a little bit more constant. Finally, a refugium is a sort of refuge for certain critters. People often try to get pods growing in there. One neat thing about that is, as the pods multiply you can actually scoop some up and put them in your display as live fish food. The ones left in the refugium will reproduce on their own. Why would you want to get one? It's cheap, easy, helps maintain oxygen, pH and temp levels a bit if run on a reverse cycle, and helps reduce nutrient levels in your system. Talk to bemmer about refugium lights, I know she was just researching which ones are good. Hope that helped!

Wow, seems that it's not as rare as I thought it would be! Now why can't he just have gone after my yellow polyps instead? I have some on a rock that I want gone. : /

The past few weeks I've been trying to figure out what was happening to one of my zoa colonies... I have a rock that has maybe 200 or so zoas on it, and they have been disappearing. Well I finally found the cuplrit; it's my sohal tang! I thought maybe I wasn't giving him enough, so I've attached extra food for him to much (nori as well as some celery tips)... and he devours that, he devours the pellets I put in the tank (and I make sure to feed him a little extra), and then after a bit he'll go eat some zoas.. even when there's nori and celery still hanging in the tank. Anyone else ever see this type of behavior with a Sohal? He leaves all other zoas alone.

Link?

You've basically listed the easiest 3 right there.. kalk, baking soda, or 2 part. Kalk and 2 part both will also increase your calcium levels.

I think the key to keeping up with water changes is to make them easy and convenient. Lately here's what I've been doing: 1. I get out my two empty 5g salt buckets. I fill each with RO/DI water. 2. I put a mini jet 404 in each to start circulating water 3. I scoop 6 scoops of salt mix for each bucket. (Make sure you add your water to the bucket first!) 4. I wait until the next day. 5. I put in two capfuls of seachem reef complete into each bucket. 6. I wait a little while longer. 7. I dump both buckets all at once into my sump. I don't worry about my skimmer overflowing because I get 10g of water out of the display quick enough that it doesn't have time to overflow. 8. I scoop 10g of water out of my display. 9. I rinse out the buckets with tap water (chlorinated), then let dry out. Done! Setting up the buckets on day 1 takes like 2 minutes. Doing the actual water change takes about 2 minutes. One thing to note: If you have a 100 gallon tank and for 30 days do a 1 gallon change, it does NOT come out to the same as doing a 30g change on one day. The reason is that when you do a water change, the water you add gets mixed in. So each water change I am actually pulling out some of the 'new' water from the last change. Another thing to note, is that in most our cases where our nitrates are already down to around 10 or below, doing a water change really won't help them get any lower. Think of it this way; if you have a 100 gallon tank and your nitrates are at 10, after doing a 50% water change at best your nitrates are only 5. Then if you do another 50g water change, you nitrates are only 2 1/2. I'm not saying there aren't other advantages for doing water changes, I'm just saying that it is not a very efficient way of getting things like nitrates down.

Alk of 9.9 is in the 'good' range and is just fine. More than trying to target a particular number, focus on maintaining it's stability. Seems to be just your tank maturing. Diatoms typically appear in the tank for a bit, then they go away on their own. I wouldn't try any quick fixes, just keep up with your regular water changes!

For quicker comparison: Innas: Normal: Pretty cool!

I'd be interested.