bshriver

Some use feeding stations with mysis or cyclopeeze in them. You place a small jar with some food it it on the sand bed and hopefully the Mandarin will learn to feed in the mandarin diner. Putting some live brine in the jar couldn't hurt, although they won't stay there long - so that might not work very well. Mine lives off the pods just fine, but it is a 200 gallon system with lots of LR and two fuges. He seems to be growing and is plenty fat. He may also take the prepared foods, but I have never seen him do that. I think you will need to get him on prepared foods in a 29 gallon system, as once he depletes your pod population, he will starve. Fuges help providing a breeding grounds where pods can reproduce without being eaten. The plankton then spill over into the tank when they hatch and feed the mandarin/corals.

Thanks DT - now if I can only get water in it one day. Still no LumenBrights though. It has been two weeks since they were ordered.

Well the time has come to upgrade my very first reef aquarium, a SeacClear System II 46G bow front tank, to bigger and better things. I am moving everything into a 210G (60x24x30) AGA tank with a custom oak stand and canopy. It will be a mixed display with mostly SPS and LPS. The yellow leather will make the move from the 46B though as will a RBTA that host my mated black clowns. This and a few zoas should be the only softies. This thread will track the progress of my 210G system. It is in the living room, so I have to keep it presentable unlike my frag tank hiding in the basement that can only really be viewed from above I can't wait to stock it with some fish that I have never had the space to keep as well. Perhaps a powder blue, naso, achilles and a school of anthias. Not sure which ones will make the final cut. In homage to the retiring 46B that started my addiction, here are some progression shots since it never had a tank thread of its own. Thanks for looking. 46G Bow progression shots First LR - Feb 2006 First corals March 2006 2nd Corals March 2006 April 2006 FTS May 2006 FTS July 2006 FTS July 2007 Monti Cap Here it the new tank. We managed to get it into the living room. It needs some cleaning first. My son's shoulder was hurting so the tank was moved more with a series of make shift wheels (pipes) under it and we basically rolled it from the back of the truck to the living room. To get it on the stand, I lifted one side up to the edge and then lifted the other end up and slid it on while my kids stabalized it. It looks too big against the long wall in a 14x19 room. So we moved it against the far short wall and it looks better there. Unfortunately, that meand that I have to reinforce the floor, since it will be parallel to the joists. There are 2 20 amp circuits already ran to the LR. A pic w/o the flash - you can see the old 46's reflection in the glass. w/ flash I chose lumenbright minis for reflectors, so I'll have to put risers on the hood to get it up another 10 to 12 inches. Yet another project. I have the wood but not the time My kalk reactor also came in . It is a GEO model and I must say that I am very impressed with it out of the box. It is well put together and designed with maintenance in mind. The lid comes off easily, there is an easy access fill hole in the top, there is a valve for draining fluid out of the reactor for PH testing or having fluid for a slurry to fill in the top again. It blows my other reactor, a Grey Seas K6 model, out of the water. The Grey Seas has been ok, but there are flaws in its construction and design. For example, the tube for the fresh water feed was too short so I had to remove it and replace it. So far the GEO looks superb. Here is the unit.

Nice pics. Does the big angel bother any coral?

Thanks! I was too mesmerized by all of the photos in that post to actually read

what nasties were you trying to kill? 2 weeks at normal temperatures might not do it.

FYI - that is the day that the GARF people, Leroy and Sally Jo, are talking at the CMAS meeting.

They are gone but are always being replaced The mother colonies grow like weeds. I have lots of new purples growing out that I hope to frag soon from PMs garf bonsais to tyree tri-colors. They all grow slower though. Tank looks great BTW. Gotta a link to the Brightwell dosing program?

Update. I had a structural engineer come out. He said I should sister the beam undert the tank with 3 LVL joists to be safe. When placing the tank parallel with the floor joists, he only recommended 1000 pounds with no additional support. His fear was mainly floor sag over time. I think structural estimates with wood framing have a 2 to 4 x safety factor built in though due to the variance in strength between different pieces of wood. LVL is much more consistent. We used 4000 pounds as the expected load. I could also use a single post on the beam directly under the tank, but that would intefere with living space in the basement. If I would have put the tank against the load bearing wall, perpindicular to the joists, it would not need any additional support.

Sounds good. JLMK. What colors you want?

zoanthids or sacrophyton leathers would be good choices. Maybe a sinularia leather. All are cheap and you should be able to get free frags of them from members in the interest of education. Green star polyps? Xenia?

Great looking tank, setup, equipment room, etc.... I look forward to watching it grow in!!

So you get baby bangais to two months old and then lose them? Are you feeding the BBS selcon or anything or just feeding them withing 12 hours of hatching? They should take cyclopeeze by then right? that is better nutritionally I would bet. My two were raised by luck mostly, so my opinion is probably worth what you paid

Awesome pics and corals as always Chris!

Glad to see it on the comback DTF!

Hope you find some. Mine had been in the overflow for some time when I noticed it. He had gotten to be a decent size - big enough to eay mysis. I found the one in the fuge a couple of weeks later. He was fat

I believe the pinpoint model can do both.

On magnesium: 1) Low magnesium will make it harder to maintain alk and ca as it is high magnesium that allows ca and alk to exist in a supersaturated state in seawater. I can link you to a Randy Holmes Farley article on RC if you want since the details of the chemistry is not comitted to memory 2) My experience with magnesium test kits has been that most of them read very high. I believe this is because CA looks very similar to Mag chemically and the test kits report some of the CA as Mag - just a guess. The SeaChem kit has an extra precipitation step that I presume is to precipitate out the CA. The SeaChem kit also provides a reference solution to validate the kit's measurements. I use that solution to validate other kit's and they tend to read high when CA levels are near or above 400. The Elos kit is the only one other than SeaChem that I have had any luck with. The Elos kit is a quicker test than the SeaChem one. Good luck!

Looks great! What tools did you use to build the site?

Exotic Aquatics has a pair. They said they feed cyclopeeze from the word go for the ones they have raised. I have a pair that are currently brooding. I have raised two offspring to 1/4 grown. I have always meant to catch the male, but never had time. Instead, one fry found its way to the corner overflow and lived on his own off of tank scraps. The other one found his way to the fuge by himself. He was fat and happy when I found and caught him. Both are in the frag tank now and doing well. I plan on trying the male in the fuge one time and see how many live on their own. That might cause my madarin's food supply to drop though Good luck!! What kind of clowns take baby brine from the beginning?!? My black ocelaris eggs hatched last night, but they became coral food Also, if you want to join another forum, here is one that is just for breeding marine fish: http://www.marinebreeder.org/ They have a bangai sub forum.

I agree with the buy exactly what you want statement. I ran my 110 gallon reef ready tank without using the overflows and a HOB skimmer while I was getting the plumping out the sump with no problems - just use plenty of flow in the tank with the LR.

I bought 30W (actual not equivalent) 5K ones from bulb0rama.com. I didn't find the ones listed in the thread at home depot, but I will look for them since they are 6.5K kelvin. This link has another source http://www.melevsreef.com/fuge_bulb.html

If you want redundant switches so that the water will shut off even if one of the switches fails, that should work. That is how mine are wired. But I am not exactly sure what you are doing either.

I agree with the above comments about tripping the GFCI and unplugging the suspect devices is certainly a better way to find the culprit. I can't see why you would try to fix this. Replace the device and then see what the manufaturer will do for you. A faulty "repair" of the problem could be dangerous. One problem with GFCIs that I have had is faulty trips cause by line noise, etc

If you have stray voltage from a device leaking into your tank, plugging the device into a GFCI extension cord should identify it - especially if you use a grounding probe while running the test. The GFCI should trip when the device is plugged in. You could test every submerged device one at a time to see which ones trips the device.