Sharkb8

If it were me .... I would pick a region of the globe you like best and try to recreate that environment so every time you see it it would be like you are diving there. But that's just me. Pick your favorite fish, figure out where it's native habitat is and recreate it. Just some thoughts for inspiration. My wife would tell you to put some stingrays in there.

Celebrating 13 year anniversary, my wife donated a couple hundred in my name to this organization that is attempting to restore coral reefs to Dominican Republic. They are very highly rated (she did a lot of research to find an organization worthy of donation and highly rated by an independent source) and funding it through donation is super easy through globalgiving.org: http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/adopt-a-coral-dominican-republic/ SummaryCoral reefs occupy less than 0.001% of the world's ocean surface yet they contain about a quarter of all known marine life,each meter of reef can protect an estimated US$47,000 of property value,and provide economic goods and ecosystem services worth about US$375 billion each year.Yet coral reefs have been experiencing a long-term decline for years now, and most recently they have experienced a very sudden and radical degradation, threatening related ecosystems, livelihoods and global economies. What is the issue, problem, or challenge?Like in many countries, Dominican Republic's coral reefs have been declining rapidly due to overfishing, pollution, coastal development, urban and agricultural runoff, and now climate change, resulting on a global coral reef crisis hard to deal with. Given that most of problems affecting reefs come from humans, we play an essential role preventing and solving these problems. We also have a key part in restoring already damaged marine ecosystems, as natural recovery alone seems unlikely. How will this project solve this problem?This project aims to support coral nurseries, an active restoration tool to preserve genetic material of endangered coral and enhance natural recovery observed in Marine Protected Areas. By collecting fragments of naturally broken coral or from existing coral nurseries, and re-fragmenting into more, then placing into coral nurseries for grow out, to be later transplanted back to the reef. This work will be carried out trained volunteers as a way to raise awareness in coral reef conservation. Potential Long Term ImpactThis coral nursery program in La Caleta Marine Protected Area seeks to replicate the long term effort and success of Punta Cana Ecological Foundation and partners, and will serve as a replicate of biological material (corals) in case of any future impacts to a given location, decreasing the overall chance of coral nurseries damage by storms or other causes. Also, once coral nurseries grow in size and abundance of corals, the need to take corals from the natural reefs become unnecessary. Funding InformationTotal Funding Received to Date: $3,620 Remaining Goal to be Funded: $6,380 Total Funding Goal: $10,000 Resourceshttp://www.reefcheckdr.org/

The final rule is over 1000 pages long. I may be able to take some time this weekend to peruse it to see what the prohibition may mean for hobbyists. Being an attorney I have some experience slogging through bills like this. However, the language used in the NOAA website initially indicates flexibility. It also states, for now, that "[t]here are currently no prohibitions relating to individual conduct, except for those related to the two previously listed elkhorn and staghorn corals in the Caribbean." What can we do? I am just getting into this area of the hobby but I wonder whether any of us submitted comments and/or were involved in the information gathering phase after the initial rule was published and open for public comment. If so, my hope would be that the administration will take into consideration hobbyists and the helpful role they play in propagation. If not, then we should start writing. Meanwhile, I believe Julian Sprung did have a talk at MACNA 2014 on this topic but unfortunately I did not attend that particular talk. Now I wish I had.

I am going through MACNA withdrawals. It was an awesome conference. I really enjoyed all the talks and learned so much. Even cruising the vendor booths was very informative and helpful. Definitely got some ideas of how not to run a MACNA conference as well. Denver did a great job, but there were definitely some complaints as evidenced by the comments on their app. I can't wait for next year. Already looking forward to it!

I am confused about the schedule. The talks are an hour long but the workshops start on the half hour and the talks on the hour. So if you attend a workshop you risk missing two talks? That makes no sense to me. And there's little to no information about the workshops, I.e., what will be demonstrated or discussed. Can one of the MACNA veterans enlighten me on how best to plan this out? I feel like I want to attend all the talks and all the workshops but without cloning myself I see that's not possible...

Which talks are you all most looking forward to attending? And which booths do you really want to visit?

Just bought tickets tonight. Will be my first ever MACNA meeting. Cool to know there will be other WAMASians there. Should we have some kind-of secret wardrobe symbol or color to wear so we can spot each other in the crowds? What are these blinky things? Sounds like a good idea. Oh wait I got another option - everyone from WAMAS wear your t-shirts backwards. Then we'll know

Question about the lights you bought. So my understanding is there are only two settings, on/off? Or is there some programming involved? You can't do a sunset/sunrise program or moonglow with them? Is that right? Wondering how you are doing with them. Following your build - looks great and can't wait to see the "final product"

I will be setting up my own 90g soon, but it is not plumbed like yours (wish it was). It has no overflow. I will likely use an HOB skimmer, etc. I am very curious about what you will do with the lighting. I may be missing something but the lighting you described above seems entirely insufficient for corals? I am considering buying a new programmable LED fixture but am uncertain what brand/wattage to buy for this type of tank. Eventually I would like to grow SPS at least at the top/middle of the tank. I can't seem to find very good information on what LED system would be best for this type of tank. ... Anyway, I will be following along step by step. Good luck!

Just wanted to thank SEANTADEZ for posting this. I'm in the same boat. Was in the hobby around 2005-2008, but then moved to CA and got out of the hobby. Now, six years later, I'm trying to get back into the hobby and am completely lost. Everything has changed it seems. It seems I have to start from scratch again on researching what I need/want. However, I do recall my number one fear was going on vacation and worrying the whole time about my livestock set up. For those who have been using controllers for a while - I would be very interested in hearing how the controller has "saved your bacon" and situations in which it helps avoid catastrophe in the tank. This will help me figure out why I think I need one and which aspects are most important to me in terms of functionality. Also - not meaning to hijack the thread, is it ok to ask another related question? Can controllers handle power outages? I mean, if power goes out and I have a back-up power system in place, can the controller be programmed to automatically switch to the back-up power and power-save functions to run only critical life support? Thanks again everyone for contributing your experience and opinions. That's one of the things that makes this club so awesome.

any photos with the new LED light and with the old light?

Wow! I don't know which part of that comment is more cool, the fact that your are related to Br. Berge or what he said! Both are very cool

Most livestock I ever lost was due to a power outage ... still hurts to think about it. I'm sure I'm not alone in that one. And for the record, I don't eat fish (or cats or dogs, just in case anyone was wondering).

Ohhhh, ok. I think I need diagrams, but I think I get what you're saying now

Thanks for all the great responses. I loved WAMAS when I was a member five years ago because there were so many brilliant people in the club, and I see that has not changed I am going to check into the Best Buy ethernet through your power outlets thing since I don't have an Apple. Djplus1 - thanks for the link to the cheap router - but wouldn't I still have to connect that router to an internet cable somewhere? We have FiOS WiFi all set up and running, no problem (because they did it, not us). Or do you mean I can hook the Apex up to that router and then communicate with it from my home computer? I guess that would mean I could not access it over a web page though, right?

In my old standard AGA 90g I had a mature yellow and a mature sailfin. They were the best of buddies. That being said, at mature age (for reefkeeping hobby fish) it was crowded. If you don't expect them to live long or grow large, three may be ok. But if you're looking at a long-term pet situation, I would think two is more than enough. Always consider how big they will get and not their size at purchase (they're usually sold as juveniles or younger). Finally, in my experience, each tang has its own unique personality added into the mix. You can generalize about species, but only about as much as you can generalize about humans, or dogs, or cats. You can't know how exactly they will play with each other until you try it. Have a back-up plan in case it doesn't work out, i.e. a "time out" tank or holding tank in case you have to sell one off to a new home. That's my two cents anyway, FWIW.

That's really a great article, thanks for posting. I can definitely relate to some of the thoughts in there. I often tell friends and family that "fish are friends, not food" and sometimes even follow with "how would you feel if I told you I had cat for dinner last night?" The problem there is if I follow this line of thought to its logical conclusion I end up a vegetarian. So I try not to think about it too much.

Hi all. Thanks in advance for reading my question(s). I have been away from the group for a little over four years. I sold everything and moved to California. I just moved back a few months ago. I'm setting up a 90g reef and am in the planning stages. I would like to start my planning with getting a good controller. It would be great to be able to monitor my system (and hopefully control it) from the internet. We have Verizon FiOS and if you are familiar with that, you know it comes with their own router. Our router is on the second floor. My tanks are on the first floor. Wiring up the controller to my router is not going to happen unless I can do it by WiFi. The crux of my question is - does any company sell a wireless controller, i.e. one that can communicate with my router without physically attaching a cable from the router to the controller? If not, do any of the computer types out there know how I can accomplish this by using some kind-of wireless adapter (dongle?) device? I have this same issue with my tv, too, but that is a different topic (i.e. my tv is in the basement, my router is upstairs, and my tv does not have built-in wireless capabilities - is there some dongle or other gizmo I can buy to allow my tv to talk with my router?). For extra credit - I'm also considering getting one of those new Radion LED fixtures (or two). I love the functionality and ability to control them from the computer. Will I need two different programs then - one to program the Radions and another to talk to my Apex (or insert other brand name controller here) controller or can I control both from one interface? I have been away from the hobby for about 5 years and it is really amazing how the technology has changed just in this short time. Again, thanks for reading and I apologize if these questions have already been addressed elsewhere in the forums. If there are clues to the answers to these questions elsewhere, please feel free to point ignorant me to the proper threads. Tom

Thought you all may be interested in this article, especially those with chemistry backgrounds: http://cen.acs.org/articles/90/i48/Coral-Seaweed-Battleground.html The Coral-Seaweed Battleground Under attack by toxic seaweeds, corals summon help from a friendly fish By Sarah Everts Department: Science & Technology | Collection: Critter Chemistry, Climate Change, Life Sciences News Channels: Biological SCENE, Environmental SCENE Keywords: coral, reefs, chemical ecology, goby, fish, seaweed [+]Enlarge GROWING GARDENS Healthy coral reefs are inundated by seaweed due to climate change, ocean acidification, overfishing, and pollution. Credit: Courtesy of Mark Hay [+]Enlarge WET WORK Marine ecologists set up experiments between corals and seaweed along Fiji’s coast. Credit: Courtesy of Mark Hay [+]Enlarge Credit: Danielle Dixson [+]Enlarge DARLING DEFENDER The goby fish G. histrio protects A. nasuta coral from the seaweed C. fastigiata, which produces the two toxic terpenes shown. [+]Enlarge Credit: Courtesy Mark Hay [+]Enlarge WATERY WORKBENCH In experiments on Fiji’s coastal reefs, the coral A. millepora is exposed to the harmful seaweed G. filamentosa, which produces the two toxic loliolide derivatives shown. Goby fish may not seem like great underwater warriors, but when it comes to protecting corals from poisonous and invasive seaweeds, the pretty little reef dwellers are an essential line of defense. Earlier this month, a paper in Science reported that 3-cm-long goby fish called Gobiodon histrio respond to a chemical distress signal given out by the coral Acropora nasuta when it comes into contact with poisonous seaweed called Chlorodesmis fastigiata. The goby fish save the day by eating this toxic seaweed—which most reef fish deliberately avoid—so that it cannot hurt its coral host (DOI: 10.1126/science.1225748). This is more than just a straightforward case of goby homeland security. The goby is defending Acropora coral, a genus that is among the first coral to die when a reef is under duress from environmental stressors such as ocean acidification. This kind of coral is also important for reef architecture, providing “the structural complexity that attracts everything else on the reef,” says Mark E. Hay, a marine ecologist at Georgia Institute of Technology who worked on the project with his postdoc Danielle L. Dixson. Over the past 30 years, coral cover decreased by about 80% in the Caribbean and by about 50% along Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, Hay says. At the same time, seaweed, a form of large algae, has flourished in many of these weakened reefs, says Robert Warner, a marine ecologist at the University of California, Santa Barbara. A healthy coral reef will have only about 0 to 3% seaweed, but under duress, many of these “beautiful underwater habitats become seaweed-covered parking lots,” Hay adds. “There’s this argument among coral reef people about what’s killing the coral: Is it bleaching, pollution, overfishing, global warming?” Hay says. “The answer is that it is probably all of those things, and they all lead to more algae and less corals and more contact between corals and algae.” Marine researchers worldwide are trying to understand the antagonistic relationship between corals and seaweeds on compromised reefs. But Hay is one of a few researchers searching for the chemical cues involved in the coral-seaweed battle. Working in coral reefs off the coast of Fiji, Hay’s team has isolated toxic chemicals that seaweed unleashes on corals. The researchers have also investigated how the behaviors of different reef fish populations—such as the goby—are sensitive to chemical cues produced by organisms on the reef. Hay’s work to untangle chemical communication on coastal reefs shows that the battle between coral and seaweed is more complex and has “broader impacts than we had previously thought,” comments Robert S. Steneck, an oceanographer at the University of Maine. Hay started studying Caribbean coral reefs in the late 1970s and watched them degrade dramatically before moving his research to Fiji in 2004. The South Pacific research initially involved searching for natural products in coral reefs that might one day be inspiration for blockbuster drugs. But he became increasingly interested in the chemical ecology of coral-seaweed interactions as the coastal reefs he was studying became more inundated with macroalgae. In 2008, a review paper on coral reef management cowritten by Steneck and Peter J. Mumby of the University of Queensland, in Australia, called on researchers to investigate whether seaweed actively contributes to coral demise or whether it is just an opportunistic actor in evolving reef dramas (Trends Ecol. Evol., DOI: 10.1016/j.tree.2008.06.011). Two years later, Hay’s group reported the first molecular evidence that seaweed does not simply opportunistically fill empty reef real estate created by dying coral. Instead, some seaweed releases chemical poisons that kill coral. In underwater field experiments along coastal reefs, where the scientists don scuba gear instead of white lab coats, Hay’s team found that C. fastigiata seaweed, the nasty one eaten by goby fish, produces a pair of poisonous terpenes (Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA, DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1108628108). These acetylated diterpenes begin causing tissue damage in Acropora coral species within 20 hours of contact. Likewise, another alga called Galaxaura filamentosa produces two harmful loliolide-terpene derivatives that are deadly to the coral A.millepora. The team eventually found that direct contact with many other seaweed species can lead to coral death. “In both the Caribbean and the Pacific, we could show that some of the seaweeds were actually toxic to corals and killed them or damaged them in a fairly short period of time, but this was almost always limited to areas of direct contact,” Hay says, because the poisonous compounds are hydrophobic and typically are located on the seaweed’s surface. To get a better idea of how toxic seaweeds might damage corals they touch, Hay’s team set up an underwater experiment. Dozens of A. millepora corals were put into physical contact with a range of seaweed species, from the terpene-wielding ones that cause coral photobleaching and tissue death within a few days, to more benign species that don’t seem to cause much harm to corals even after weeks of contact. Then the team compared the changes in coral gene expression before and after seaweed contact. The results were a surprise, Hay says. They expected that the greatest amount of gene expression would occur in corals that had come in contact with the most toxic algae, revealing a valiant attempt to fight off the harmful algae, followed by death. Instead, they found that the greatest changes in coral gene expression took place when the coral was in contact with less harmful algae, with much fewer changes in gene expression when coral was put in contact with the most toxic algae (Coral Reefs, DOI: 10.1007/s00338-012-0943-7). The likely explanation, Hay says, is that corals can readily deal with the threats posed by seemingly benign seaweed. For example, the coral’s changing genes were those involved in the stress response to protect cells, repair cellular damage, and maintain metabolism. As for contact with the more harmful seaweed: One possibility is that the coral doesn’t have the inherent ability to fight back against the seaweed, Hay says. Another is that the seaweed is sneaking in like a Trojan horse and causing damage before the coral can mount a defense. Either way, the coral A. nasuta has figured out a way to produce a chemical flare to attract goby fish to the site of first contact with C. fastigiata seaweed, Hay notes. His team captured water near an A. nasuta coral just as it was put in contact with this seaweed. Goby fish moved quickly toward the water they collected from the contact zone as well as recently attacked coral. Meanwhile, the goby weren’t attracted to the team’s controls, including fake seaweed plants made out of green nylon in contact with the coral. Hay’s team hasn’t yet been able to identify the chemical panic flare made by the coral to attract the goby’s help. But the researchers are working to see if chemical signaling between different goby fish species and their coral homesteads is universal. “There are a bunch of gobies that associate with a bunch of corals,” Hay says. “I don’t think this chemical communication is going to be unusual.” Hay’s results help explain a common, worrisome observation about reefs in distress. Namely that once seaweed takes over on a reef, it is very difficult for the corals to recover. Hay suggests that coral larvae trying to grow may encounter poisonous seaweeds that kill it before the coral can grow up—or grow big enough to recruit defensive goby fish. Hay and Dixson have shown that “coral recovery could be hampered or slowed by the absence of that fish’s facilitating behavior,” Steneck comments. To figure out which fish are essential for seaweed suppression and thus coral recovery, the team is also assessing which other reef fish eat toxic seaweed. Hay has found that most of the toxic seaweeds found in Fijian reefs are eaten by one or a few of the 25 species of herbivorous fish found there. “Because the different fish have different and sometimes non-overlapping diets, it means that to control different seaweeds on the reef and to keep them from killing the corals, or overgrowing the corals, or making it harder for corals to recover from other damages, you have to maintain the diversity of fish,” Hay says. More generally, Hay’s team is trying to look much more at the odor cues involved in recruiting fish to coral reefs. This past summer his team began to study whether juvenile fish in search of a reef to call home could tell by smell whether one was healthy or overrun with seaweeds. For example, water from protected marine areas, which are typically free from seaweed, is normally very attractive to young fish, Hay says. But if seaweed that flourishes in dead zones is placed in such waters, juvenile fish no longer find the water enticing. The broader take-home message from Hay’s work is that helping underwater seaweed parking lots return to healthy coral reefs requires a complex and diverse cast of corals and fish, whose interactions and mere presence on a reef are mediated by chemical cues. Although many researchers are focused on coral recovery, only a handful study molecular aspects of coral-seaweed interactions. One is Guillermo Diaz-Pulido, at Australia’s Griffith University, who is untangling the chemical and biological mechanisms by which Acropora corals become more sensitive to seaweeds at ocean acidification levels predicted in the coming century. The field is wide open for chemical ecologists to tease apart these tangled networks, Hay says. And in doing so, he adds, they can figure out how “small, inconspicuous fishes have effects considerably larger than their mass would predict.” Chemical & Engineering News ISSN 0009-2347 Copyright © 2012 American Chemical Society

Um, really nice job on the photo too!

Wowww. Cool photos. Thanks for posting! So much stuff in that tank! Sometime when I am back in town I have to see this.

I would agree with epleeds. I too had an MCE600 and it worked wonderfully even on a 90g. Also had a CPR large 'fuge HOB and I liked both very much. I got my 'fuge on eBay - secondhand blemished version. Looked just like new to me and worked just as well, but much cheaper. The MCE will set you back some coin, but it is a long-lasting commodity and holds its value well over time.

Could you use a trashbag? Just cut out a hole for your head at the top? Maybe it would not be big enough ... Maybe time to ask for a wetsuit ... I would be really worried about deodorant, etc. getting into the tank. But I guess a tank that size it may not matter. As they say, "dilution is the solution to pollution"