Folta

Ok, I realized i could to go myEbay and look up what I paid: it was $15.99 (thats INCLUDING shipping), for 30 snails, all arrived alive, which works out to just over $0.50 per snail.. a great deal, especially seeing as how I didn't have to go anywhere to pick them up (ie. no gas money).

Alex, I bought nassarius snails off of ebay last week and was quite happy with them. It was for 25, but the guy packed extras so I actually got about 30... and didn't have a single doa. If you want, I can pm you the seller's id, he was really friendly and kept me updated about the package (and it arrived 2 days after the end of the auction, and was sent from florida, priority mail). I don't quite recall the price, but I think it came out to about $0.90 a snail or something, after shipping. As far as store bought water, don't buy spring water, that will have stuff in it.. you need to buy distilled. But it sounds like your ro/di unit is working well as far as TDS is concerned.

That is a good point. My thermometer is about 4" below the surface level of the water. I also have a glass thermometer, that I checked several places in the water with last night, but all closer to the surface rather than deep. Happily, the reading on the glass thermometer coincided with the digital thermometer. I think I need to pull my heater out, and get all the coraline off of it. I'll also check temps near the bottom.

I just added a bunch of snails to my cleanup crew last week.. 30 nassarius, 15 astrea, and 10 ceriths. I think the nassarius were bugging my leopard wrasse - last night I found that the wrasse has established a new home! I'm curious about the cucumbers, but I never really liked the looks of them. Alex, if I recall, weren't the water changes you were doing that messed things up, back before you had bought your ro/di unit? You will have to do water changes, if you have any hopes of maintaining a long time successful tank. But you can always test your saltwater before putting it in! Mix the saltwater in a food grade container, put in a pump to keep it circulating, heat if you like, and wait a few days. I'm assuming you have test kits, correct? Check to make sure the new water is phosphate, and nitrate free (heck, test the freshwater coming out of your ro/di for that as well before wasting sand ) Do you have a tds meter? If you check your water, and aren't satisfied with the results, buy some distilled water.. its not very expensive, the pain is just having to bring it home. How big is your tank again?

Howard, are you talking about these : Hermits ? my cyano isn't really that bad.. but it annoys me because I see it everyday ^_^ I'd say its covering.. hmmm 2-3% of the rockwork, if I let it go. I have 8 scarlets, and 8 blue legs in there now... or how ever many are left of those. Do either of those types touch cyano? I know they both go after hair algae; I've witnessed that. Good luck with getting your temps stabalized!

Wow.. and I thought my swings were bad! How are you getting such a swing though? If it is the pump, wouldn't you be running the pump 24/7 and your temps just be high? How do they get back down to being low? Well, it sounds like my temps then are at a decent spot, and I should let it be. - I think its helping with the cyano issue... I've noticed that when the lights come on, I have some cyano but by the end of the light cycle it almost all seems to have gone away (without me siphoning any out even). I was considering using the red slime remover product, to get rid of whats left. Has anyone had any experience with this type of product? I'm not a big fan of adding chemicals and what not to treat a problem, but it sounds like it'd be helpful in this case, to give my tank the edge in finishing off the cyano...

I also would like to add; I don't know how accurate this digital thermo is (its a corallife digital one, for aquariums and reptile things) - my jager 200 watt heater is set to 77 degrees, yet does click on during the night from time to time.. at which the digi thermo still reads in the 81's. My thermo is in the main tank, is has got quite a bit of coraline on it... so I thought that this also could be affecting what temp it *thinks* the water is at?

Lately I've been trying to stabalize my temperatures. My aim was to get it at ~ 79.5 degrees. I have a digital thermometer, and until recently was getting a range of 77 to 84, night to day. I bought a 6" fan, thats on the same timer as my halides. Past couple days, temps have sat around 81.5, dropping as low as 81.1 (oddly, while the lights were on) and going as high as 81.9 (again, lights being on). Circulation seems pretty good in the tank, and doing my oh-so-accurate test of sticking one finger in each corner of the tank, it all feels the same temp. My question, is is this range too high? In the 81's? My thought is that it'd be better to have it stable around 81.5, as opposed to dropping it to a lower temp but a bigger range (say 79.0 to 80.9). Thoughts?

Hey guys.. I do have a ro/di unit. its sitting here on my floor, still not yet connected. I was going to hook it to the faucet, but it didnt' come with a faucet adapter. so I went to home depot, they didn't have any. Then I tried a few plumbing stores, but they were either not open or didnt' have it either. So I ordered it online. When it arrived, I discovered both my sink and the adapter had female ends. I've gone back to home depot and got an adapter, brought it home... to realize that it didn't come with an o ring and the one that was used with the previous tip wouldn't fit... so thats where I'm at right now. But for the record, I haven't used tap water in my reef tank in over a month! I've been buying distilled water. I have a tds meter, tap water here is ~ 200, the distilled (says its steam distilled on the container) had a reading of 002. Soon, I will have my ro/di hooked up.

*crosses fingers for you* I had been getting alot of algae up until about a month ago. But my culprit was my use of tap water. I have been adding only distilled water for top off (and used distilled for the one water change I've done since I've stopped using tap). Added a dozen scarlet hermit crabs, and I'm practically algae free. It had gotten to the point that 90% of the rocks were covered in inch thick hair algae. Do you use ro/di or distilled water? Do you have hermits? Or a foxface?

How long have you been algae free? I hope it doesn't come back!

Very nice. What is your lighting? Did you change the whiteness for taking pics? Did you photoshop at all?

Actually, its something I'm still finalizing control on now... until a couple days ago, i would get swings of 77 at night to 84 in the day. I bought a 6" clip on fan on ebay, it came in the mail a few days ago. I have it blowing the air above the tank, below (and also at) the halides. Yesterday I saw a peak temp of 81 degrees. I've also adjusted my heater to keep min at 79, and this morning it seemed to keep it. My goal of course is to get it as constant as possible, and right at about 79.5 degrees. I think the fan has already proved its effectiveness.. just some fine tuning now. The fan kicks on at the same time as my halides (and off too)

Chris, a 180 is my dreamtank too. I had to make space for it FF, the cap looks very healthy to me, and didn't discolor when putting it in my tank (ie. I've never witnessed it being green at all) - it doesn't look 'browned', rather it looks like a nice light beige color, fully extended polyps, and showing nice growth. I have a tenius that has browned, so I can see a difference (in fact you can see it in the upper left corner of the pic with the purple monti cap in it)

welcome to the club Steve G! I'm in Olney, MD, myself.

Awesome pics guys. I need to get a tripod and a macro lens (and reduce reflection, etc). the red candy canes are my favorite type of cc... anyone have any of those?

Dave, I believe you. I'm hoping that it colors up nice and green, I was thinking maybe it colored out when it was in your frag tank possibly? It has great polyp extension and is showing signs of growth (white edge). If it doesn't green up, well it still looks very nice Chris, its a 55 gallon tank. I'm currently in the works of getting a 180 in and setup though!

I just snapped some photos of my tank. Before you guys make comments, yes I have algae, yes there are little bubbles in the picture, but that was because I was fiddling with the tank, and yes, there is alot of glare in some of these... but you can still tell what they are, haha! Ok, first, I want to reshow my 'white hammer' I bought a few months back, that turned out to be just bleached: here's what that same one looks like today: um... ignore the bleached hammer behind it... believe it or not, that one is doing much better than it was about a month ago as well - it was completely 100% white... I thought it would die, but I've noticed the tips have started getting their color back, and the 'tentacles' are starting to color up again, woo! Next are a couple monti caps.. a purple one, and the second one was supposedly green, although I haven't seen a hint of green on it yet ^_^ - not even when I threw pure actinic lighting over it! Then we have a broader shot, of just stuff: Here's one that shows my golden finger leather, as well as some yellow zoos I got from Dr. Mac at Macna: If anyone can id this following one for me, that'd be great. It seems to be doing well, good polyp extension and what not. Its the free frag I received from fragexchange, and has looked like this since the moment I put it in my tank. Also, you can see some pulsing xenia there that I was given by Dave (dhoch). Funny thing is that I had other xenia that stopped pulsing months ago.. the day I put this xenia (and another rock of it that Dave gave me) in the tank, the old xenia started pulsing! Mysterious! :P It also could be coincidence; I've made some vast improvements with water quality over the past month or two. And lastly, some blue zoos... the pic is blurry, and for some reason a whole bunch of them decided to not show their faces today, but eh... My lighting at the moment is 2 250 watt 10,000 k XM bulbs. These blue zoos look a lot more blue (obviously) when under at least some actinic or 20k's. They are growing well, so I hope to be making frags off of them soon. Thats it folks! Comments always welcome! (Unless its about the algae haha)

Did anyone happen to snap a pic of this pump?

Wow, $350-$450 just because they put the magnet on the outside? Interesting concept though...

I missed that display. What exactly are you guys talking about?

Sorry to hear about you being hospitalized, I hope you're doing better. I was able to get there for the exhibition hall part, which was great. Got to run into alot of the members of wamas, and got lots of free stuff (as well as buying some inexpensive frags from dr. mac).

Cool. So, if I take the metro, what stop do I want to get off at? I'm not really all that familiar with the metro so if its an obvious answer, bear with me EDIT: I did some actual searching of my own, instead of just asking and got this off our very own site!: Directions: Take Metro's Blue or Yellow line to the Crystal City station. Free shuttles running by the Hyatt to Metro during the conference. If you drive in, parking is just $10/day with a conference pass.

I think I will be going tomorrow. Floors open from 10 until 6, correct? Do dr mac, and other vendors accept credit cards as well?

Are there directions to get their from metro? I think I can make it for some of the time tomorrow. Also, is the entrance fee cash only?