BeltwayBandit

Hrmm.. Atlantis in Richmond is a good one. Roozens in Ft. Washington might be worth a stop. You will not find a better selection anywhere, but it is definately a buyer beware kinda store. The Aquarium center up im Baltimore is a pretty good store. I don't know how far out of your way you are willing to go, but If you go down the coast Dr. Mac's is out on the Eastern shore of Maryland definately worth a trip. There are two excellent stores to the west Blue Ribbon Koi and Fins and Feathers but those would be almost an hour out of your way (On the opposite side of DC). Dr. Mac's Pacific East Corals (Salisbury, MD) http://www.drmaccorals.com/sys-tmpl/door/ Call us toll-free 877-887-5224 Mailorder Hours: Monday-Friday 10 am-6 pm Eastern, Saturday 11 am-5 pm. Retail Outlet Hours: Saturdays from 11 am-5 pm, other times by appointment only. Blue Ribbon Koi / Marine (Manassas, VA) Current Hours Thurs - Sat 10-6 Sun 10-5 703-753-7566 Blue Ribbon Koi & Marine Fins & Feathers (Ashburn, VA) m-fri 11-8 sat 11-6 sun 12-5 703.726.1655 http://www.finsandfeathersstore.com/aboutus.htm Roozens Nursery http://www.roozens.com/ 301-248-2500 Dr. Mac's Pacific East Corals (Salisbury, MD) http://www.drmaccorals.com/sys-tmpl/door/ Call us toll-free 877-887-5224 Mailorder Hours: Monday-Friday 10 am-6 pm Eastern, Saturday 11 am-5 pm. Retail Outlet Hours: Saturdays from 11 am-5 pm, other times by appointment only. Marine Scene (Herndon, VA) http://www.marinescene.com/index.shtm 293 Sunset Park Drive Herndon, Virginia 20170 (703) 689-2815 Blue Ribbon Koi / Marine (Manassas, VA) Current Hours Thurs - Sat 10-6 Sun 10-5 703-753-7566 Blue Ribbon Koi & Marine Fins & Feathers (Ashburn, VA) m-fri 11-8 sat 11-6 sun 12-5 703.726.1655 http://www.finsandfeathersstore.com/aboutus.htm Roozens Nursery http://www.roozens.com/ 301-248-2500 Ultimate Saltwater Aquariums http://www.usaquariums.net/ 11101-B2 Indian Head Highway Fort Washington, Maryland. exotic Aquatics up in baltimore- http://www.exoticaquatics.com/ exotic Aquatics up in baltimore- http://www.exoticaquatics.com/ BB

No, you put the shiskebobs on after you finish cleaning the tank. That is my secret ingredient! Pre-seasoning the skewers before making the Ka Bobs!

Darn polls don't let you make two choices. I have breeding fish (clarkii) and inverts.

I'll second that. Also check your electrical connections for salt creep, check your anti siphon holes for algae (a bamboo skewer works good for cleaning them out). If you really want to get down and dirty pull your pumps and powerheads and give them a good cleaning. If you don't Mr. Murphy will definately pay you a visit at a very inconvenient time.

Darn it Johnny cut that out. Can't something be unobtainable and extremely overpriced? You and your killer pricing are going to cause me serious marital problems...

I was thinking matching funds or just a donation from WAMAS, not you personally. I think supporting something like this does fit within the charter of WAMAS for education and conservation. I'm guessing with donations just ask for a check made out to the Waikiki aquarium and just note that the donation is from WAMAS in the memmo section. If we collect the checks and send them all together there shouldn't be a problem with getting the credit for the club. (That also eliminates the problem with keeping the monies separate from club funds.) As far as the cash goes, I guess you would have to deposit it into the club account and cut a check. I will keep thinking on other ways to solicit donations for this project.

Another option for keeping nitrates in check is tridacnid clams (they do require calcium suplemenatation). Granted you need a MH lighting setup but in a tank your size a clam would be a wonderful additon. But, you need to have the tank established for at least 6 months or more before you can add one. I would stay away from cannister filters or HOB filters because they realy aren't necessary with good skimming and proper biological filtration. They end up being nitrate factories in a SW aquarium. If you manage your bio load (i.e. don't overload the system), you can manage water quality with water changes and the bio filtration from LR, sandbed and a skimmer. If you don't want a sandbed you can go bare bottom with more frequent water changes and have a successful tank. Just my opinons on your setup. BB

I will pledge $100 to be designated from WAMAS for the exhibit. Craig please let me know where to direct the funds so the club gets credit for my donation. Also, would it be possible for the officers to consider matching donations from members from club funds (up to some designated ammount to be determined by the offcers) in order to encourage other direct donations to this worthwhile cause? BB

I would second the halides, but go with 250W for better penetration at 24" depth. With a fan in the canopy I have never had problems with excess heat in my 120 with 2x250W MH.

From what I found it averages about $0.12/kwh with all the fees etc. added in Here is the full rate schedule: http://www.pepco.com/_res/documents/dc_schedule-r-2006.pdf Welcome to WAMAS. What Law School will you be attending? I am starting my second year (part time) at American.

I was editing my post when you were replying. I don't know that many places carry them locally. Big Al's ships from Buffalo NY so if you ordered it today it would probably be here by Friday.

Like these? 2 way http://www.bigalsonline.com/BigAlsUS/ctl36...ybrassgangvalve 3 way http://www.bigalsonline.com/BigAlsUS/ctl36...ybrassgangvalve 4 way http://www.bigalsonline.com/BigAlsUS/ctl36...ybrassgangvalve 5 way http://www.bigalsonline.com/BigAlsUS/ctl36...ybrassgangvalve

Yeah, cross country ground shipments are the worst. 2-3 days with no updates then bam.. Out for delivery. I would love real time on overnight "live goods" items. I hate having to spend a whole day hanging around the house to accept a shipment.

Probably not..

I have this umm... obsession of sorts. When I have items shipped to me I find that I tend to repeatedly track the item to see where it is on its journey. Am I wierd? Or do others frequently track the progress of their goodies?

Thats a shame. I wish I could have just ignored results that didn't agree with my hypothesis when I was in Science class, I guess I need a PhD for that.

Well, I guess it is easier for you just to dismiss contradictory information via ad hominem attacks than to actually consider it on its merits. From your little snip: "Articles and opinions published in newspapers or popular-press magazines (for example, "Time" and "Newsweek") are not peer-reviewed, and thus must be considered with caution if they are not based on a peer-reviewed scientific papers." I guess your way of treating the opinion of the Chair of the NAS panel for Applied Statistics with caution is to just give him a blanket dismissal as an administration stooge. Somehow I don't think that a person could be elected by their peers to chair a National Academies of Science technical panel and be quite the willing stooge that you are attempting to portray Dr. Wegman as.

"This Ad Hoc Committee has worked pro bono, has received no compensation, and has no financial interest in the outcome of the report." I guess you didn't read that part. Its nice to see that you don't let those silly little facts get in the way of your opinions. As far as the statisticians not being climatologists, they weren't reviewing that aspect of the literature. They were looking at the application of statistical methods, so in that matter I will trust the chairman of the NAS committee for Applied Statistics over a climatologist who has repeatedly stated "I am not a statistician". Read the report it is very easy to follow. Have a nice day. "It would be published in a peer reviewed scientific journal instead of prepared as a report for the commerce committee." Which journals did you check?

Wow, I was thinking "Only 36 pounds"... I'll be quiet now.. I used to need a lot less. In my defense I don't need that much unless I have a wetsuit on.

I was doing some looking around in my tank tonight with a flashlight and I noticed that on the rock next to my clown's anenome there was this brownish mass on the rocks. A few quick searches later and I have decided that my Clarkii clowns spawned!! Of course I do not have a setup to try and grow out any fry if the eggs hatch. But it is really cool that they spawned. I'll try to get some pictures tomorrow. I couldn't get any tonight since the lights were already off. Of course they laid the eggs where you can only see them from the top down... Ugh.

FYI here is the Statement of Task for the NAS committee that Dr. Wegman chairs. (Emphasis mine) The National Research Council established the Committee on Applied and Theoretical Statistics (CATS) in 1978 to provide a locus of activity and concern for the statistical sciences, statistical education, use of statistics, and issues affecting the field. CATS occupies a pivotal position in the statistical community, providing expertise in methodology and policy formation. And you fail to notice that it was statisticians reviwing the statistical methods of the climatologists. So now you are saying that the National Academies of Science are administration flunkies? How is engaging in ad hominem attacks against the authors of this scientific assessment advancing the discussion. If you care to discuss the methodological problems that they identified in the PCA analysis used in the creation of the Hockey Stick then I'll gladly discuss it with you. If you are just going to engage in a smear campaign, well there are other forums where you can engage in that type of discussion. PS In the for what its worth category. Wegman is either author or co author of hundreds of peer reviewed articles. So he does have some idea what he is talking about. Not to mention he is presenting a similar topic at the American Statistical Association. http://www.amstat.org/meetings/jsm/2006/on...stractid=307662 Here is Dr. Wegman's resume with published works: http://www.galaxy.gmu.edu/stats/faculty/wegman.resume2.htm Are you sure you want to call this esteemed statistician a flunky for the current administration?

For those that want the report behind the story: http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/home/0...gman_Report.pdf

Yet the lead author of this report happens to be the chair of the NAS (National Academies of Science) panel on Applied Statistics. Hardly an Exxon stooge. It would help if you actually considered criticism before applying a blanket dismissal of a scientific assessment that happens to gore your pet ox.

http://energycommerce.house.gov/108/News/07142006_1990.htm The Wall Street Journal editorial: Hockey Stick Hokum July 14, 2006; Page A12 It is routine these days to read in newspapers or hear -- almost anywhere the subject of climate change comes up -- that the 1990s were the "warmest decade in a millennium" and that 1998 was the warmest year in the last 1,000. This assertion has become so accepted that it is often recited without qualification, and even without giving a source for the "fact." But a report soon to be released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee by three independent statisticians underlines yet again just how shaky this "consensus" view is, and how recent its vintage. The claim originates from a 1999 paper by paleoclimatologist Michael Mann. Prior to Mr. Mann's work, the accepted view, as embodied in the U.N.'s 1990 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), was that the world had undergone a warming period in the Middle Ages, followed by a mid-millennium cold spell and a subsequent warming period -- the current one. That consensus, as shown in the first of the two IPCC-provided graphs nearby, held that the Medieval warm period was considerably warmer than the present day. Mr. Mann's 1999 paper eliminated the Medieval warm period from the history books, with the result being the bottom graph you see here. It's a man-made global-warming evangelist's dream, with a nice, steady temperature oscillation that persists for centuries followed by a dramatic climb over the past century. In 2001, the IPCC replaced the first graph with the second in its third report on climate change, and since then it has cropped up all over the place. Al Gore uses it in his movie. The trouble is that there's no reason to believe that Mr. Mann, or his "hockey stick" graph of global temperature changes, is right. Questions were raised about Mr. Mann's paper almost as soon as it was published. In 2003, two Canadians, Ross McKitrick and Steven McIntyre, published an article in a peer-reviewed journal showing that Mr. Mann's methodology could produce hockey sticks from even random, trendless data. The report commissioned by the House Energy Committee, due to be released today, backs up and reinforces that conclusion. The three researchers -- Edward J. Wegman of George Mason University, David W. Scott of Rice University and Yasmin H. Said of Johns Hopkins University -- are not climatologists; they're statisticians. Their task was to look at Mr. Mann's methods from a statistical perspective and assess their validity. Their conclusion is that Mr. Mann's papers are plagued by basic statistical errors that call his conclusions into doubt. Further, Professor Wegman's report upholds the finding of Messrs. McIntyre and McKitrick that Mr. Mann's methodology is biased toward producing "hockey stick" shaped graphs. Mr. Wegman and his co-authors are careful to point out that doubts about temperatures in the early part of the millennium do not call into question more-recent temperature increases. But as you can see looking at these two charts, it's all about context. In the first, the present falls easily within a range of natural historical variation. The bottom chart looks alarming and discontinuous with the past, which is why global-warming alarmists have adopted it so eagerly. In addition to debunking the hockey stick, Mr. Wegman goes a step further in his report, attempting to answer why Mr. Mann's mistakes were not exposed by his fellow climatologists. Instead, it fell to two outsiders, Messrs. McIntyre and McKitrick, to uncover the errors. Mr. Wegman brings to bear a technique called social-network analysis to examine the community of climate researchers. His conclusion is that the coterie of most frequently published climatologists is so insular and close-knit that no effective independent review of the work of Mr. Mann is likely. "As analyzed in our social network," Mr. Wegman writes, "there is a tightly knit group of individuals who passionately believe in their thesis." He continues: "However, our perception is that this group has a self-reinforcing feedback mechanism and, moreover, the work has been sufficiently politicized that they can hardly reassess their public positions without losing credibility." In other words, climate research often more closely resembles a mutual-admiration society than a competitive and open-minded search for scientific knowledge. And Mr. Wegman's social-network graphs suggest that Mr. Mann himself -- and his hockey stick -- is at the center of that network. Mr. Wegman's report was initially requested by the House Energy Committee because some lawmakers were concerned that major decisions about our economy could be made on the basis of the dubious research embodied in the hockey stick. Some of the more partisan scientists and journalists howled that this was an attempt at intimidation. But as Mr. Wegman's paper shows, Congress was right to worry; his conclusions make "consensus" look more like group-think. And the dismissive reaction of the climate-research establishment to the McIntyre-McKitrick critique of the hockey stick confirms that impression.

Oh my. That is terrible. Were they able to get everything fixed?