Rascal

O.K. that makes sense. Thanks for the explanation. This is the solution Neptune gives for port 80 blocking: But obviously that hasn't worked for me so I will try to figure out tonight how to reconfigure the ACIII to a port other than 80. Am I correct that I would then put that number in as both the "starting port" and "ending port" on my router's port forwarding page? Do all of the other settings look O.K. to you? Thanks again.

Right now if you could spend $80 you could get a membership ($20) and 20 lbs of live rock for you tank (a member is selling some for $3/lb last I checked). Incidentally - it would be hard to find 20 lbs of live rock for $80 from any LFS, so this alone is a good reason to join the club. My point though, is that if cash is tight maybe upgrading is not the best thing for you to do right now. As someone else pointed out a bigger system is easier but it will also be significantly more expensive. More live rock, more sand, more water to buy or purify, more salt to make more water for water changes, bigger and more expensive skimmer, bigger and more expensive lights, . . . you get the picture. You will even end up spending more on livestock to get it to look the way you want. The same three or four little fish that will liven up a 30 gallon quite nicely might leave a 55 looking kind of empty. Spend a little bit of that money on that money on taking proper care of water quality in your 30 gallon and you will be much happier in this hobby, I think. Stick with fish only for a while and you don't have to worry about upgrading your lights. Invest instead in creating more flow and improving your skimmer, and don't skimp on salt or water changes (10% per week is what I would recommend). Good luck.

That's what I thought, but I must be doing something wrong. Here are the input options on my router's "Port Forwarding / Port Triggering" page: I have selected "Port Forwarding" as the option. Service Name: Service Type: Starting Port: (1~65534) Ending Port: (1~65534) Server IP Address: . . . For Service Name, there was a pull down menu with a lot of common services, so I clicked "Add custom service" and set up one with the following settings: Service Name: ACIII Service Type: TCP Server IP Address: 192.168.1.50 Starting Port: 80 Ending Port: 80 As I said, this worked fine from home but not from the office. So since I can still log into the router and change settings I have tried various combinations in the starting port / ending port fields but nothing has worked. Neptune's FAQ talks about "internal" and "external" ports, but I don't know how these terms relate to "Starting" and "Ending" ports. All I know is that it won't let me enter a higher starting port than ending port. For example if I put starting port 4567 and ending port 80 I get an error message stating "The starting port address must be less than the ending port address." So I have tried starting ports less than 80 and the ending port 80; starting ports of all sorts of different numbers other than 80 with an ending port the same as the starting port, and starting port 80 with an ending port of all sorts of different numbers higher than 80. So for example it looks like this: Service Name: ACIII Service Type: TCP Server IP Address: 192.168.1.50 Starting Port: 80 Ending Port: 4567 or Starting Port: 4567 Ending Port: 456 Then I open up a new browser window and try my ip address with each of the ports. No luck so far.

Another question for the group. I upgraded to the ACIII last week, and have managed to solve most of my problems using the help already provided in this thread, but I've run into a snag. I have Netgear wireless router with Cox as my ISP. I picked up a Linksys gaming adaptor to hook up the ACIII. At home everything works. I can pull up the ACIII's webserver at IP address 192.168.1.50 no problem. I also successfully configured email alarms through my yahoo account (port 587 for me too). I now get emails to my phone and email account. My problem is with being able to access the web server away from home. I can access the router but not the ACIII. I have enabled remote access, port forwarding and the UPnP on my router, and added the Service name ACII with start port 80, end port 80, and the IP address 192.168.1.50. When I am at home and I type in myipaddress:80, it works just fine. I get the prompt to log in to the ACIII just as if I had gone directly to its IP address and then I can pull up the webserver. But now that I am at work and I type in the same thing, I get an "unable to connect" window. The funny thing is that I can log into my router from work, using myipaddress:8080 - the port assigned by my router as its remote management address. Any of this make any sense? Any thoughts?

Curt was nice enough to offer to cover the replacement anyway even though it was technically out of warranty. That is the sort of far-sighted thinking and fairness that some retailers in this hobby could use more of. As disappointed as I was that the temp probes can fail so quickly, I was even more impressed by this. So impressed that I decided to just do now what I was going to do eventually anyway, and I upgraded to the ACIII - picked it up at BRK last Thursday. Very happy with it so far.

1) Throw it out and cut my losses if I even think I see bite marks (already done this once - didn't see them at purchase but I wasn't too sure when I got home); 2) Cut off and discard the base (unless it is unmounted and was just fragged, then only cut and discard any dead areas). 3) 5 minute dip in Revive. 4) Mount to new plug w/ superglue, then 3 week in QT, dipping every 5 days in Revive or TMPCC. Inspect with magnifying glass every time. 5) Cut off base again and mount frag in tank with superglue. I think this should work as long as I can keep converting my frag tank to a QT tank whenever I want. When it gets populated with frags again I'll have to think of something else. Of course, right now I am deluding myself into thinking that I am not going to need to add anything else to my tank. I went on a bit of a frag spree in order to restock while I was treating my survivors - giving new frags the same treatment. so currently my plan is to just let things grow out and I think the tank will look pretty good without any new additions. That's the plan anyways . . .

The upside is it's pretty soft and fragile. A soft bristled tooth brush will usually take it right off, without damaging anything else. It can smother and it doesn't look great, but it won't kill anything just by touching IME. There are worse problems to have.

Thanks for posting this. It kind of jibes with a lot of what Ousnakebite was saying in his recent post in the last global warming debate thread -- the causes of coral reef decline are a lot more varied and complex than just global warming. While the human impact on climate change can be and is debated, there doesn't seem to be much room for disagreement on who is to blame for higher nutrient levels fueling the growth of nuisance algae. It is undeniably our fertilizers and our poop that runs off into the ocean. I have always been skeptical of the idea that global warming (man-made or not) is THE main cause of coral reef decline. This skepticism comes not from a scientific background or extensive research in the area, but from my own experiences in trying to maintain a healthy reef ecosystem. For example, I know that my reef could easily withstand a few degrees temp change one way or the other, but I am quite sure that if I started peeing, pooping, and adding lawn fertilizer to my top-off water things would go down hill in a hurry. I don't think I'm going out on a limb here if I say that most of my fellow hobbyists would agree. Dropping an anchor into the tank probably wouldn't be too good either. The sad thing is that this story probably won't get nearly the coverage by the mainstream press as one blaming everything on global warming. For the record, my personal opinion is that we should take reasonable steps to reduce CO2 emissions and prevent rainforest destruction if we can -- just because we might be contributing to global warming, and even if the we aren't, I still really like clean air with a lot of Oxygen in it and I don't like acid rain very much because it's bad for fishing. That's just me. The problem I have is that global warming has become such a political darling (the Nobel Peace Prize ???) that it has taken a lot of the focus and attention away from other environmental issues that, in my view at least, are really more important. My rant for the day.

Another variation of Lancer's idea can be found here: http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-06/nftt/index.php Very easy to do and works like a charm.

Just a six-line. Never saw it show any interest.

Long time since I've updated . . . I continued with the plan outlined in the last post - removing and dipping everything two more times. At that point I decided to wait and see. I am still really paranoid. One coral in particular I have pulled a couple of times to check and dip. I think it was just weakened from shipping stress and is taking a long time to acclimate (I am not helping things). It is very light on the shaded portions and it's just very hard to tell from looking into the tank whether or not I am seeing tissue recession. The last time I took it out I almost panicked when I thought I saw a couple of FWs on it, but further investigation with a tweezers revealed that the little circular darkened areas I saw were just the beginning of axial coralites. I found it was very easy to tell that I had the buggers when there was a large infestation, but I fear it may not be so easy to spot the signs of just one or two. Anyway, at this point I would say I am about 85% sure I am cured. Slowly but surely, the corals are starting to regain their colors. I am working on opening up a tank progression thread in the dedicated tank forum, so I will post recent pics there.

Very cool. That pic belongs here: http://www.wamas.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=18981

If you got your inline duct fan from HD, it is probably only rated to around 40 cfm (that's the only 4" model they sell IME) The fantechs Justin is refering to will do about 3-4x as much at least. They also cost more though. A decent wet-dry vac will move about 250 cfm with a 5 hp motor, but that comes at a cost too -- namely in electricty usage. You are talking about several amps (3-6 ????) running all the time. IMO you might as well bite the bullet and just get a good sized chiller. You will still need to vent the hot air out of the chiller, but you can rig up some duct work and use the 4" fan you already have to do that. Another option would be to close off your canopy and then run one or two 4" exhaust lines to vent the hot humid air from above the tank to the outside. If I were having the humidity issues you describe I would probably do both of these things. Excess humidity in the house can be a bad thing in the long term. Mold removal is expensive. Not removing it can be more so.

Maybe. They don't push a lot of air though, probably around 45-60 cfm total. I can barely feel it if I put my hand more than 12" or so from the fans. It's just enough to circulate the air. If I remember right, before I got a chiller there was about a 2 deg temp difference if the MHs were on without the canopy fans, which seems like a pretty large effect for such small fans if the only cooling is due to evaporation. This may be partly due to the way I set up my canopy though. I have a large aluminum reflector that runs across the top of the canopy, as kind of a back-up to the individual reflectors on each MH. Without the canopy fans turned on this reflector gets hot to the touch - so much so that I put some insulating tape around the cords where they contacted it because I was worried they would melt. With the fans on it is just warm. It is possible that I get some additional radiated heat from this reflector. Kind of like I created an oven. Oh well, seemed like a good idea at the time.

Can you tell if it is leaking from around the bulkhead, or just from the pipe that is inserted into the bulkhead?

I understand what Justin is saying about irradiance vs convection, but in my experience (I have 3 x 250 MH in an open-backed canopy + a remote sump in the basement) a couple of 4" computer fans in the canopy that run when the MHs do helps considerably. Other things I do: Fans blowing across sump. I am partial to the "turbo" style AC fans you can get at Target/Walmart usually. This is by far the most economical and easiest solution if it works. If nothing else it will save electricity costs by decreasing the amount which you have to rely on your chiller. Since this speeds up the rate of cooling via evaporation, you need to make sure you can deal with the extra humidity. I use a dehumidifier which drains into the house's waterproofing system. Chiller - as others have mentioned needs to be placed outside or (what I do) vented to the outside using ductwork. Otherwise all of the heat removed from the water will just heat up the air in your mudroom, and all you'll be doing is wasting electricity. I did some sloppy ductwork and cut a hole in the crawl space next to the drier vent. I also installed a small 4" inline duct fan that comes on whenever the Chiller does. Other than noise and space, the biggest drawback here is that they are electricity hogs.

That may be so, but my independent tests (measuring just NH3, NO2, and NO3, and with hobby test kits) showed that there wasn't a whole lot of difference between most major brands of bottled water (although you're right, the distilled was the best, and cheapest), but my tap water registered very high for NH3 and NO3. The NO3 wasn't too surprising, but I was a bit disconcerted by the NH3 reading - I think it was 10 ppm if I remember right. None of the bottled water had any ammonia in it, and none of them registered more than 1-2 nitrates - most were nearly undetectable.

They look like some kind of flatworm or nudibranch to me. Do they move around, or are they stationary? I would just monitor the coral carefully. It doesn't look damaged in any way to me, so you're probably OK.

Top off with bottled water. It may not be perfect, but it's better than tap.

Well, I got an email from Curt at Neptune and unfortunately the warranty on the probe is only 90 days. I am pretty sure I bought mine in Sept. So I just ordered a replacement off of the website for $39 incl shipping. Bummer. It just hasn't been a great day for my reef. Just a few minutes ago I heard a clicking sound coming from one of my MJ mods - kind of like it was just starting up except there was no reason it should have been off. Upon closer inspection I saw that my bi-color blenny had decided to investigate its last little cave. Took a prop to the head and then got jammed in there. RIP little blenny. At least the anemones appreciated the little late night snack though.

Apparently so. A quick search on the neptune forum on rc revealed that this is a relatively common problem, although Curt says <1%. http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthre...ght=temperature One reefer offered these suggestions for redunancy and backups: I also pulled out a Ranco that I had in reserve. I think I will hook this up to the chiller outlet on the DC8 and set it to only turn at at temp >77. For runaway heaters, I still think the best solution is several small ones rather than one big one. Bright side for me -- looks like I caught it in time -- no massive death as far as I can tell.

Running an ACJR - <6 months old. Notice a few minutes ago that the Chiller was on. Thought that was odd for this time of day. Except in summer it usually only comes on when the Halides do. Stuck my finger in the tank just to make sure . . . yikes that's cold! I stuck an old glass thermometer in the tank and it reads 68 degrees. I quickly unplugged the chiller, turned the heater on manually, and turned on 2 of the MH to help get the temp up. Then I started trouble shooting. The display says the temp is 123 degrees. Thus the decision to turn on the chiller to get it down. The temp probe was in exactly the same place it always is -- submerged in about 6 inches of water, right next to the PH probe. Looked at the Data Log and revealed the following: Up until 0200 everything was normal. Temp stays b/n 79-80. At 0300 and every hour since, it reads 123. I tried disconnecting and reconnecting the temp probe cord, disabling and re-enabling the temp probe on the device, and disconnecting and reconnecting the power cord. No change. It still reads 123. Any thoughts? Advice? I will copy this in an email to Neptune, but I can't call them now b/c it's the weekend.

No I haven't used them. I was all set to order them after a couple of reviews and pics I saw on RC, but then I read Sanjay's test results and decided not to: http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2007/3/review#h2 Really low PAR on those.

Maybe different types of zoanthids react differently to them. I have some colonies in which only the polyps actually touching and aiptasia will close, but I also have at least one other in which a couple of aiptasia will cause the whole colony to remain closed.

I would think the corals, sand, and rocks would begin to dissolve too, wouldn't they? Most Ca reactor media certainly does if the PH gets that low. I agree with the recommendation to get another test kit (maybe you can also borrow one of the hand-held meters as well?), but once you figure that out if you are still experiencing a large swing at night I still think Kalk would help. Are you sure about that? All you need is room enough under your stand to stick a water bottle above the sump somehow, or even just resting on the edge. Look here for one example of how to do it: http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-06/nftt/index.php This will work too, and you can find it at most pet stores: http://cgi.ebay.com/Zoo-Med-Little-Dripper...ksid=p1638.m118