fab

if you can see the color change then you are finished with those lights for your display tank. The fact that you see yellowish color means the red spectrum output is overtaking the blue end of the spectrum. It may be possible for you to continue using these lamps over an algae growing refugium and get a bit of a second life out of them. fab

Near the pentagon with guage. Where are you? Which RO/DI unit do you plan to buy? Check your pm's. fab

Yes. Quarantine him for the entire treatment. fab

How much RO water do you need and how soon? I am near the pentagon. fab

A seller should have no fear of your going around him. The seller's vendor should not have a similar fear. He is not going to be able to buy from directly from a manufacturer; unless he is a distributor, probably a master distributor at that. Maybe he could buy at a reduced price from a distributor like Hamilton Lighting, PFO, or Champion, if he can do enough volume, but not from the manufacturer. What he may be up against is that the bulbs are "knock-offs" by a minor manufacturer and you would never be able to find the manufacturer if you researched it. There are a lot of private label items in the trade. Some private label knock-offs some private label existing brands. Many private labels and knock-offs are not necessarily bad items, but you might not be able to recognize most of the brands. Some of the knock-offs are very good. ASM, for example, is an American knock-off of the German Euro-Reef, according to some. If you can't get the manufacturer out of the seller, go elsewhere. In fact, he should go elsewhere also and get past the weak story he is hiding behind. ... And, by the way, "Kelvin" is always spelled with a capital "K" by anyone who knows his stuff and who is careful about detail. fab

Looks like Biodork can retract his retraction. I've never dived in the Carribean and I've never seen a "Tang Parade." I guess I should finally make it around to the Carribean and see this first hand. BTW, notice the packing density of these tangs. It is pretty high, even though there is a lot of open water around them. I've seen even tighter packing than this many times. Of course these fish can disperse whenever they want to. fab

That makes a big deal of difference in my book. You really do want to have separate controls over each component. fab

I've never seen tangs school in nature, or swim in flocks. But then I haven't see all tangs either, or all of nature. But I have seen a lot of tangs in a lot of different places at a lot of different times of year. fab

A single plug means you cannot separately control pumps and lighting. I'd consider that a drawback. fab

It will be a short summer, or a short project. The baffle should take about 1 hour to procure and 10 minutes to install. Then you'll have to wait for the silicone to set. fab

Congratulations! Now what excactly did you do with your system when the exterminators worked you home over? How about sharing with us what steps you actually ended up taking? fab

If you want a glass baffle, go to the yellow pages and look under glass. Find one or more stores that sell glass. Measure the length and width of the glass that you will need. Call some stores ask them if they will sell you a piece of glass the size you need and with the edges ground so they are not sharp. Then go buy it. You can set it in place in your tank with some silicone. You will want to use fish safe silicone. That should be available at a garden supply place or a fish store. good luck, fab

A 10 gallon tanks is so inexpensive, you might be just as well off by just buying one and cutting the holes you need. A fish store or a glass shop can drill the holes for a few dollars each, or maybe someone here can help you with the drilling. fab

Have any of you ever dived inside a bait ball? ... or in the middle of a packed school of fuseliers where these 12-15" long fish are about an inch apart side to side and head to tail? ... or a dense pack of sentinel barracuda? or a school of thousands of glass fish in the confines of a very small cave? or similarly dense packings of any of a number of other types of fish, extremely dense packings, at least if not more dense than his handful of fish in his tank? I can tell you from first hand experience that such packing densities are not uncommon in nature. I've seen this in two oceans and in at least 3 seas. I've seen it in nature where thousands of fish are involved. I've seen cases where many, many more fish than are in his fish list crowd themselves into spaces smaller than my own display tank, sometimes in open water, sometimes in a confined space. Also, in nature, I've never seen an angel fish pick on another angel fish or butterflys pick on other butterflys. I've seen that a lot in hobbyist tanks. What do we conclude from this? Is Angel on Angel an artifact of the hobby? On the other hand, I have seen damsel fish pick on almost any other fish, large or small that comes by. In fact I've seen them pick on divers very aggressively. How many of you avoid keeping damsel fish in your tanks with other fish that they pick on in nature? Have we evolved to where we think that our tanks really emulate nature, when they don't, even in this issue of density of fish being crammed together? fab

SDBDRZ, I heartily disagree that 'Articles like this are a disservice to the hobby.' The article is very thoroughly caveated with warnings that this setup and stocking is extremely unusual, that the fish will outgrow the tank and that the aquarist has a very expensive, GIANT tank to accept the fish as they grow out. That is totally responsible. We should not be afraid of someone who does have the resources to do something bold and at great expense and with apparent success so far. If folks read this and ignore these important details, that is too bad. We can't overcome darwinian tendencies in aquarists. Sure if someone is stupid enough to stock a tank like this and ignore 90% of the article that goes to great lengths to explain in detail, the many special steps the aquarist has taken and the extraordinary care that has been put into many aspects of husbandry, then that stupid hobbyist will demonstrate his own stupidity. But that happens every day with hobbyists who don't research and read about husbandry requirements first. For example, how many people buy clown trigger fish and don't have a thousands of gallons to properly house this nearly pelagic fish. Sure it is cute when it is small. But they get huge. I'll bet I just stepped on the toes of some of our own members with that example. I believe this article is a positive service to our hobby. It points out that rules of thumb are just that. They are not some kind of inviolable gospel or dogma. Actually, it has put me to thinking of a miniature version of what I call his "grand central station." Maybe a large tank with a fairly large, diverse population of pygmy anglefish would be an interesting undertaking. It gets around the problem of the giant destination tank for the grownups. Pygmy angels get all the way up to a whopping few inches. It does retain the problem of overcoming the variable social behaviors of the little guys. But that may be one of the interesting lessons learned from this guy's experiment. The article provides no basis for doomsday forecasting. Perhaps bad news has been left out. We do not know that. If bad new has been left out, then that will have to be dug into by anyone seriously interested in pursing this concept further. This article inspired me to think of ways I might apply some of what has been learned from this guy's experiment. I just might monitor his progress, collaborate with him, and maybe ... just maybe, try a variation on it, myself some day. To me that shows how this article is a positive contribution to the hobby, not a disservice. And I'll project that if he can keep up his rigourous protocols, he will not have a death rate that is out of line with that is out of line with the hobby. The fact that he can afford such an expensive approach to the hobby should not be held up as a NEGATIVE. I wish I had that kind of discretionary money to put into my hobby. I hope the wamas folks would not line up to put me down were I in such a position. fab

Kind of the Grand Central Station look, eh? .. and rush hour at that!! fab Bemmer, I think the proof is in the pudding. The fish are healthy looking, bright, colorful, energetic and so forth. Cruel,would likely end up with signs of stress... erratic behaviour, slinking around or aggression, and of course ICH. Seems like none of these indicators are at play here. fab

There are many condemning opinions being expressed here. Come on folks, there was no mention of having lost fish along the way due to density. In fact there are statements to the contrary where the author describes the 20 minute acclimation to move fish successfully from 'normal' salinity to hyposalinity. He describes the remarkable successes in feeding fish that are reputedly 'finicky' without catering to their idiosyncratic culinery fetishes. He describes fish retaining their vitality and brilliant colors. He describes fish that are not 'put-off' by territorial disputes. He describes fish exhibiting the kind of social harmony that Japanese and Chinese people learn from living in quarters we would regard as incredibly tight, with virtually no private space available to individuals. And he describes this behaviour being manifest by fish that are normally aggressive amongst others. We do not have anything that tells us that the fish are unhappy or on the verge of nervous breakdowns. Nothing that is except our expectations; our expectations that are based on our understanding of what "needs to be" to keep a healthy fish tank. And where do these expectations come from? We live by a host of 'rules of thumb.' These rules have become ingrained into us. That doesn't mean they are necessary for good husbandry; rather that they are perhaps sufficient for successful husbandry. These rules have sifted to the top because they enable the least experimental of us to succeed in keeping a tank going with some minimization of losses along the way. Humans live in incredibly dense quarters in many parts of the world, Think in terms of poorer sections of Hong Kong, and much of Asia. Think in terms of Bombay, India. Children who grow up in these densely populated communities know no other way of life. They are not necessarily miserable. I've seen incredibly dense marine life on reefs in the central Indian Ocean. There are times of the year and places where marine fish crowd together with extreme density. An example is in the Red Sea south of Sharm el Sheikh during June. Moorish Idols and Butterfly fish of all kinds school in dense swarms over the reef tops, mixing with the more permanent non-schooling inhabitants. I can't say I've seen them as dense as in this aquarium, but I've seen them in much, much higher density than any tanks I've seen otherwise. I personally think this article points out that we know less about marine fish husbandry than we would like to admit. It shows that we strive to operate within fairly confined boundaries because we've seen it work before. It also shows that when someone else breaks our cherished rules of thumb [self-perpetuating], that we react against the breaking of the rules; rather than standing in awe of how much the rules can be bent when good methods are applied. Remember the rules, as we know them, serve to let the least energetic of us succeed in keeping a tank healthy, or fairly so. The rules do not define the boundaries of what can be done with a lot of energy and lot of thoughtfulness. I do applaud this aquarist for pushing the boundaries. We can learn a lot from his successes. If he starts having failures, then we can learn a lot from them, too. But the exciting thing is that we can learn new stuff from his fabulous successes to date. That's the positive side of all this. fab

Jamal, Do get an air pump and a long line of tubing to supply lots of air to the tank FROM OUTSIDE, BUT TURN IT ON ONLY AFTER THE FUMIGATORS HAVE LEFT. Then be careful that there are no fumes wherever you put the air pump. High capacity air pumps and air stones are cheap insurance. Keep the skimmer off until you are absolutely sure there are no fumes left in the vicinity of your skimmer and turn off any other equipment that could pick up fumes and run them through your tank. I have a friend who poisoned the contents of a 700 gallon tank in less than 15 minutes because noxious fumes got pumped through his system. He lost everything, including the sand and the rocks and his support equipment. He was too afraid of reusing his pumps and skimmers because they had been tainted by the noxious materials. He did not believe he could clean them and KNOW that there was no poisonous stuff left in them. Besides, he had no way to test for the noxious material, shy reconfiguring his tank with "Canary" fish and other livestock as indicators. Be very careful and good luck, fab

ACME plastics in Virginia, near Edsall road and I-395. Reed or Read Plastics in Md. fab

What is a pico skimmer? what size tank? fab

Are you running a phosphate reactor? ... or UV sterilizer? and RO/DI with silica buster DI stage? Just some other ways to try to beat mother nature at her incessant algal tricks. fab

Welcome to New Tank Syndrome and near-mandatory successive algae blooms. fab

Do you have a UV sterilizer on the main tank? It is good at killing the swimming phase of the ich parasite. That is really the phase where you need to overcome the infestation. It won't do 100% but it will kill any of them that get into the UV sterilizer. It is a help, but not a total solution. fab

First off, Thanks for a clear and straight line discussion. You answered my question. As I understand you, the O2 enters the tube from the reactor, causing the encrustation to occur, even if the tube tip is underwater where it is seemingly protected from air. fab

You really need to look into the life cycle of 'ich' to understand how to treat it for the long haul and not get lulled into a foreshortened treatment that will virtually guarantee a resurgence, or two or three or ... I don't remember the detailed time lines here, but a quick google on "ich" should tell the story. The problem is that the visible parasite (small white bumps/spots) will drop off the fish after a while. Then they are at a new stage in the life cycle, on the bottom of the tank, not on the fish. After a while they become free swimming parasites and re-infest the surviving fish in the tank anew. ... and the cycle repeats and repeats and ... So the trick is to kill them when they are not on the fish. As I recall, you need to be setup to kill them when they are in the free swimming stage. A UV filter should do pretty well here for those free swimmers who swim freely into the UV sterilizer chamber, but it won't touch those that don't make their way into it. Rather, those will survive handily and the cycle repeats and repeats and ... This is the reason that quarantine methods are so appropriate. By removing the infested fish from the display tank while you can still see the parasites, you have the chance to move all of the parasites into the quarantine tank where you can deal with them away from your display tank. You can do a lot of things to the fish in the display tank to fight the ich while it is on them. There are benefits in elevating the temperature. That accelerates the life cycle of the parasite. When the parasites fall off the fish, it looks to be cleared of the problem. Move the fish to yet a second quarantine tank, and get rid of the parasites in the first quarantine tank by whatever means suits you. You can now let the time frame for a life cycle to repeat itself while the fish are in the second quarantine tank. If the parasites reappear, wait for them to abandon the host fish and rotate back to the first quarantine tank. All the while you are playing musical quarantine tanks you can be doing all the treatments and witchcraft you can learn about to kill the parasites. When you finally have out waited a full life cycle of the parasite and had no recurrences, it is time to decide about re-introducing your rehabilitated little critter back into the display tank. Meanwhile back at the display tank... all the while you are quarantining your sick squad, you can be running UV sterilization, BIG TIME, on your display tank to try to catch any of the parasites that may have escaped your removal attempt when you first quarantined the infested critter(s). If you see other fish showing up with the 'ich' spots, you can move the newly infested fish into your quarantine protocol until at least a whole life cycle of time goes by without any fish showing signs of 'ich' in any of your tanks, including the display tank. Worst case is you eventually end up with all of your fish in quarantine. If you get that far, you can consider drastic water changes in the display tank while you swimming community is away in quarantine. And set up so that all of the display tank water is cycling through UV Sterilization, frequently. This is a heavy duty divide and conquer protocol. You can look up the details yourself on the timing of the parasite's life cycle and its stages. Likewise you can look up or consult on the chemical wizardry you might bring to bear on the critters in quarantine to increase the probability of actually ridding both them and your display tank of residual parasites in various life cycle stages. Basically, a PITA to deal with. Aside from all that, it seems that stress can induce breakouts of 'ich.' So review your situation and see if you might have stressful conditions for the particular critters in your care. If so, then mitigating the stressful conditions can go a long way at least to making 'ich' appear to disappear. Good luck, fab