Rascal

I have used the the coffee filter trick with some success, but I also spend a lot of time fiddling with different settings trying to get the colors just right. Seems that every time I make an adjustment that accurately captures the color on one coral, I lose color accuracy on something else. It may have a lot to do with the camera. I have a Cannon 710IS. My dad came down to visit recently with his new toy - a Nikon SLR of some sort. Without adjusting a thing - auto white balance - the colors were just about perfect right from the get go.

Thanks. That was only 1 1/2 months ago but unfortunately it doesn't quite look like that anymore -- thanks to AEFW. It is on the rebound now though and hopefully will be much improved when everything colors back up and grows in again. Live and learn . . . Bob: When I reaquascaped I ended up with a couple of small pieces of GSP on a rock that was no longer part of the island. It is hard to scrub every last bit of it when the rock is out of the tank and the polyps are retracted - so I missed some and didn't realize until a day or two later when I saw some polyps. So I turned all the pumps off and injected it with a healthy dose of Kalk paste. Then I completely covered it with as thick a layer of Kalk paste as I could get on there. I left it like that for about 10 minutes before turning the pumps back on. Then I repeated two days later. Seems to have done the trick with no ill effects to anything else.

When you move it into the 240 you should have plenty of room to isolate it. Maybe even make an island dedicated to all of the things you might want in your tank but are afraid to add because they might take over. let them all fight it out. You can see my colony on the right side of the tank in this pic, behind the anemone island. The GSP actually covers both sides of that rock but the polyps were retracted on the left side when this picture was taken. It used to completely cover the center also but has receded quite a bit as you can see. At the same time it has continued to spread along the sides and up the glass.

Yes. Kill it by lethal injection. The zoas will recover.

I think they are just trying to "clean" you when they do that. I once saw Jeff Corwin let a cleaner shrimp into his mouth to clean his teeth on the Great Barrier Reef.

The combination approach works for me. Some more food for thought. An advantage of closed loops that doesn't get mentioned a lot: you get water movement around the intakes too. So if you have a manifold with multiple outlets at the top of the tank, and 2 or more intakes around the middle or bottom of the tank, you are moving a lot of water around at different areas of the tank = less dead spots = more stuff in suspension longer = good for corals & skimmer. An advantage of powerheads that doesn't get mentioned a lot: if you put them on a battery back-up you will be able to run them for very long time as opposed to your return or cl pump. For example, with my system I can run my return for about 3.5 hours and get about 800 gph of flow, or I can run my 2 MJMod 900s and get about 2000 gph of flow for 36 - 48 hours. Finally, you can always add powerheads to an established tank if you feel you need to, but it would be really hard to add a closed loop once you've got water and livestock in there.

Hahahaha . . too funny. Kalk works, but it's a temporary fix. The only long term solution IME: I have 2 islands in my tank to contain things I don't want to spread or move around and sting my SPS. One was for anemones and xenia (although the latter just died off for some reason). The other is for my GSP. On the GSP island I am trying out different aggressive corals (other things I don't want near my sps) to see if anything can hold its own against the stuff. One other thing, over the last few months the GSP has been receding at the center of the rock - directly under the MH. It has never seemed really happy under very intense light. I don't know if anyone else has had that experience though.

A year is pretty good from what I've read. The general consensus seems to be that they are not getting enough to eat, but as you said there is a lot of debate about whether they eat phytoplankton, zooplankton, bacteria, dissolved detritus, "marine snow", a combination, something else altogether. Some have reported success from stirring their sandbed once a week. I wonder if blowing detritus off of the rocks would have the same effect? It also seems that providing it with enough, but not too much, flow in alternating directions is very important. On the bright side, since this is a coral that has proven so difficult to care for there is a lot of ongoing research into these questions. Plenty of room for more study. Might be a bit ambitious for your first Marine Science research project though, unless you have the right gizmo for measuring suspended particle size down to the nano-meter. In the meantime, you could give this a try: http://www.garf.org/lemn02/BAG0BUGS.html

IMO you would need a minimum of a 2 x 65W Power compact fixture (ex: http://www.amazon.com/Aqualight-Power-Comp.../dp/B0002DIFXO) But T5 lighting would probably be better, something like this: http://www.marinedepot.com/ps_ViewItem~idP...ct~CU01120.html Choosing between T5 and PC (power compact) can be misleading. It is not all about watts. For example, for supplemental lighting on my tank I used to have 4 x 65 W Power compact. When I replaced these with 2 x 54W T5 bulbs there was no comparison. Even at less than 1/2 the wattage, the T5s blew the PCs away.

All corals have mouths -- that's basically what a polyp is -- it's just that some are bigger than others. A squirt of very small meaty foods (like cyclops or just little bits of mysis) every once in a while will help. Once they regain their color and start to grow again it may not be necessary to target feed them as they will probably get all that they need when you feed your fish. The tank looks great. You may want to consider moving that green star polyps to a location where you can more easily contain its growth. IME it will overgrow and smother most everything, icluding the following: discosoma mushrooms, ricordia mushrooms, xenia, zoas, montipora, caulastrea (candy cane coral). My torch was able to fight it off with sweepers, but if it ever gets a hold of the base forget about it. Right now I am trying it against an acan and a hydnophora. We'll see. I have it isolated on an island to stop it from over-running the entire reef. It does look cool when it spreads up and covers the glass - or maybe the overflow in your case.

Of the first 3 that I bought, one got pretty big after about a year. By big I mean about 2" in diameter. After its last molt it was a very shiny green so I called it The Incredible Hulk. I saw it take a couple of swipes at nearby fish but never caught any. I started to suspect it was munching on zoas at that point (had never seen it do that before). I thought about removing it but then it just disappeared. About 6 months later I bought 2 more. Similar experience. For most of their lives they seemed model citizens - eating all types of algae and detritus. One was a casualty of interceptor, but the other lived through it and got to that same big and shiny green point. Again I started to worry it was eating some zoas, then it disappeared. I never actually saw it eat any zoas, and it may have just been picking scraps of food from b/n the polyps. No crab is entirely risk free, but I would put these with sally lightfoots on top of the "reef safe" list - at least unlike hermits they won't eat your snails.

I'll take a stab at your IDs: The first pic is a colony of zoanthids. They can tolerate somewhat "dirty" water but would like a bit more light than they are currently getting. The second is an aiptasia anemone ("glass" anemone). It is a pest which will multiply like a weed and sting nearby corals. Get yourself some "Joe's Juice" and kill it. Maybe add a couple of peppermint shrimp to your clean-up crew. The third is hard to tell because of the pic - but it looks like a Dendronephthya (aka "carnation coral"). If that is indeed what it is and someone sold this to you as a "hardy" coral, don't believe another word that comes out of his/her mouth. They are commonly imported and sold to beginners but almost impossible to keep. Here's a good article on them: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2002/1/aafeature. Lesson learned: research before you buy, not after. But take heart -- it's not like your the first person in this club to make that mistake. The fourth looks like a sarcophyton (leather coral). If so it is a fairly hardy coral but needs a lot of light. The fifth is kenya tree coral -- capnella sp. Very hardy, tolerates low light. Some more questions for you: What type of protein skimmer are you using? What is your water change schedule? What are you using for make-up water? Keep your eye on the boards for a used lighting fixture that will work for your tank. Power compact or T5 will probably fit your needs & budget best.

They have worked like a charm for me in the past. I've also had a yellow tang that loved the stuff. I agree that manual removal is best, but for complete eradication it wouldn't hurt to try something that will eat it. There will always be someplace you can't reach.

That's really the dilemma right there, at least it was for me. When I went from a 54 to a 150, I intended to just take enough sand from the old tank to seed the new. Every time I pulled up a scoopfull of sand and got ready to put it in the dump bucket though, I would see a little worm or something and just couldn't bring myself to throw it out. I ended up discarding only the anoxic stuff. Anything that didn't smell like rotten eggs got a saltwater rinse and a new home. I'm sure there was some die-off initially, but to me it was worth it.

Sorry, typo in the topic title -- should say Chloramine. Anyway, FYI, from the Fairfax Water FAQ's page:

I'm not really a long-timer, but you will find lots of conflicting advice on all aspects of the great temperature debate. I've never tried to push the envelope with 5-6 degree temp swings, but in my experience even a 3-4 degree swing has been detrimental to my livestock. Maybe not the corals, but the fish definitely seem stressed by it. In fact, ANY change in temp parameters in my tank usually results in a few white spots showing up on my hippo tang.

Would an aqualifter work? $10-20 most places. https://www.marinedepot.com/ps_ViewItem~idP...uct~OE1137.html

Same here except I glued the foam down and then trimmed the excess once the tank was in place.

On second thought, I don't think I'm going to touch a thing. 22 hours: 32 hours (slightly different angle but there's about an inch more there and its darker): Yeah, I'd say the mesh mod was worth the $5 and 20 minutes.

Me too. Keep the bugs though. If they were going to overrun your house they would probably be doing that already, considering they are ubiquitous around here and our homes are not exactly bug proof. Some interesting info on these things here: http://www.pestcontrolcanada.com/INSECTS/p...gs_sow_bugs.htm Turns out they are actually terrestrial crustaceans - thus the gills. They need moisture to survive. Says they feed on decaying plant and animal matter.

Now I wish I had waited longer before doing the recirc mod on my skimmer. I think Tim has a good point about wanting to see results in the cup. If you take an established tank with a non-recirc skimmer and then do the recirc mod on it and change nothing else, that would at least be something. Of course to be really scientific about it you couldn't just measure the amount of liquid in the cup because of differences in wet vs dry skimming. I think I remember an article once about dehydrating the skimmate and then weighing it to get an accurate measure of organics removed. Anyway, here's my very non-scientific take on why I think it was an improvement for my skimmer (ASM G4). First, the Sedra 9000 is rated at 900 gph, even figuring some reduction b/c of the needlewheel and head loss, I still thought it was way too much flow through the skimmer. The biggest advantage I could see though, was that it resulted in a huge increase in the amount and density of bubbles in the skimmer body. I guess this is partially related to having the slower flow through the skimmer, but I think it is also because that recirc is pulling in some water that already has bubbles in it, and then chopping those bubbles up into smaller bubbles while at the same time adding more bubbles. Whatever the reason, there was no question that I had more bubbles after the mod. So not only is there more contact time because the water remains in the skimmer longer, there are also more bubbles in the skimmer for the water to be in contact with.

I have my gate valve as far down on the stand pipe as it will go, and above that a T with the exhaust coming out the side and then back down into the sump. I can't even remember why I decided to do it that way, but it has worked fine until I did this mod. You can just see the T on the left in this old pick (3 days of skimmate last year after I did the recirc mod): As its presently configured I can't lower it or open it up any more. The only thing I can think of is to cut a little bit off of the the bottom section of the T. If that doesn't work I may try to put the T first and the gate valve on the exhaust line. Now that I think of it that is probably my best option. It's a nice problem to have. FWIW I definitely think I got increased performance with the recirc mod and IMO it is worth doing, but the meshwheel mod has had even more of an effect. With all three mods I really can't complain about the performance I'm getting out of this $400 skimmer.

Alk is short for Alkalinity - yes it's like hardness. Kh and dKH measure the amount of carbonate in your water. Since stony corals are made of calcium carbonate, it is important that you maintain the right balance of both in your tank to promote health and growth. Carbon Dioxide is highly acidic, so saturating the water with CO2 will lower PH. The media inside calcium reactors (you guessed it - calcium carbonate) will start to dissolve when the PH drops low enough. Different brands have slightly different dissolution points, but the principal is the same. Before you begin using a Calcium reactor, Kalk reactor, or dosing with anything else, it is important to know exactly what are your levels of Calcium and Alkalinity in your tank and decide what levels you are aiming for. Make sure you are using a good test kit (most here still use Salifert I think, yours truly included). IMO it is also important to test your fresh saltwater, because this will help you determine whether you even need to dose anything for the time being. It is possible you can maintain your target levels with water changes alone. If this is a new tank and you are using a good salt mix, I would even say it is probable. After you do a bit more reading go back and read those threads I linked earlier. They might make a bit more sense to you then. In the meantime, here are a couple of links to keep you busy: Primer on Calcium Reactors: http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2002-05/...ature/index.php This article claims to be "simplified": http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2006-06/rhf/index.php But I find this one to be a little more practical: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issues/feb2003/chem.htm

The little rolled up bugs you would expect to find when you pull a piece of bark off of a dead log. He stored the rock outside for a while and some of those bugs crawled in as hitchhikers. Apparently they have now survived 10 days submerged in saltwater.

Well, you convinced me. My skimmer was due for its 6 month maintenance anyway, so I ordered the enkamat from ebay last week and did the mod on Sunday. I have an ASMG4 with Sedra 9000 pump - recirc and gate valve mods done last year. Using an OR 2700 as the feed pump. I was able to get 4 layers of enkamat on the sedra, and just for the heck of it i went ahead and modded the OR as well - putting 2 layers of enkamat on there. Prior to the mod, it took 4 full turns of the gate valve to get the water level in the skimmer where I want it. After the mod, the skimmer was overflowing even with the gate valve wide open. I gave it 2 days to see if it would settle down on its own. During that time I emptied about 5 gallons from the collection cup. Last night I finally gave in and closed off the airline on the OR feed pump. That took the water level down just enough to stop the skimmer from overflowing. This morning there was 1" of dark skimmate in the collection cup. This is still with the gate valve all the way open. So far I have to say that the mesh mod is just as good as its cracked up to be. Definitely exceeded my expectations.