ChrisS

Have you considered turning one or both of these tanks into a planted tank? Or at least adding macroalgea to the display tank? It seems to me that this might be a good solution to the skimmer problem you have with these tanks. I've run my seahorse tank skimmer free for 3+ years now and the nitrates are always very low and usually undetectable because of all the macroalgea I have. I've been collecting macros for awhile now and have a nice collection of interesting and colorful macros. I would be more than happy to give you a nice collection of them such as my blue ball, red feather, red grape, titan, codium, dragon's tongue, neomeris etc. I'm just a few mile away in Annandale and could drop the macro by whenever is good for you. With a low light/high nutrient tank with no option for a sump and limited skimmer options I think a mixed softie/planted tank would be a great choice. I think a well done macro tank could be just as pretty and interesting for the kids to watch. I usually get more comments and interest from friends and visitors on my planted tank than my more traditional reef tank. If you do decide to connect them via the u-tubes I have and old overflow box with a brand new u-tube that you can have. Making one a planted tank and the other a reef tank would be really interesting IMHO and the planted tank could act as a nice biological filter for the second tank.

Have you considered doing it with macroalgae instead of coral? It grows a lot faster so you could actually have some decent growth in 2-3 weeks. I have some dragon's tongue I can visually see the growth from day to day. I can give you some it you want. Of there are lots of people who could likely give you some fast growing cheato or caulerpa. You could get some 10g tanks pretty cheap and some different lights. Or just get one long (48" or 36") light and lay it across all the tanks lined up side by side. That way they're all getting the exact same light. Buy a bottle of seachem flourish and dose each tank different amounts. You could put a small powerhead in each tank or even easier just get one air pump and run some tubbing into each tank. That would be enough water movement for macros. I bet if you asked here you could find members willing to lend you the tanks, lights, and such. So all you'd have to buy is a bottle of flourish. The experiment could be really easy. Get the tanks set up. Get some macro. Borrow a scale. Blot dry the macro and weight the same size portion for each tank. Dose some different levels of flourish in each tank. Repeat doses once or twice a week. At the end take out the macro, dry it off, weight it, and see the difference in growth.

Welcome. I usually takes a few days for the treasurer to get your payment and change your settings so you can see the member areas.

The seahorse found in MD is classified as H. erectus. Erectus are also found in FL, keys and south. The seahorses for all of the eastern US is classified as the same species. However they are quite different in appearance, behavior, and characteristic of the fry. For example the southern erectus have larger fry that hitch from birth. The northern erectus have smaller fry that are pelagic for the 1st 3-5 weeks. There is some belief that these might not be the same species but for now they're still classified that way but distinguished as a northern and southern subspecies. Most erectus sold in the trade are the southern erectus. There are however a few places that do breed and sell the northern erectus. Anyway here are some pics of mine. Here they are in thier mating/display colors. The female mimicking the rock. This pic is right after I 1st got them. The male is very skinny/starving in this pic. He's still skinny one month later not quite this bad and is fattening up some. If I could just get them to switch to frozen mysis it would help a lot...but I'm still working on that.

Hope he does well for doug. If I had seen this earlier I would have taken him for you. I have a pair of WC eretus from the bay in a qt tank right now. And as of this morning about 100 or so babies. FYI the N. eretus fry seem to do best with copepods as a 1st food. I'm going to try this batch with rots. They can also take the small stain bbs right away but don't seem to do as well on those...nutritional issues I assume. These were also caught on crab pots. I know a prof. fisherman who gets lots of these guys on his pots. They're actually pretty common. They usually show up more in the fall but for some reason this summer he has been catching them in record numbers. The northern erectus do better in cooler waters. I've got the QT tank at 68 right now. I'll slowly raise it to about 72-74 as that is where I can keep my main tank stable at without a chiller.

I've seen it most commonly called blue ball or blue Ochtodes. It looks like this.

I have one of the 12 LED strips from that ebay seller, this one. I originally thought I might use it for moonlighting but it was much brighter than I expected...too bright for moonlights in my small tank. I ended up using it to supplement blue light for the 10k PCs I had on the tank. It did a nice job of that and adding a bit of glimmer for the 10g nano. I've got it laying around not in use right now...though I may put it on the 20G nano if I ever get that up and running. In the mean time you're welcome to borrow it if you want to see how something similar would look in your tank.

Hey I just saw this..sweet tank. I noticed you're looking for some strawberry anemones. I have quite a few that appeared as hitchhikers on some macro in my seahorse tank. It's not exactly a cold water tank but is it kept cooler than norm...around 74 and these guys have taken off. I recently was cleaning out some of my macro and wanted to save these so I fragged them out off the macro and now have them all one one rock...well most of them. I have various others hiding throughout the rock work in my tank. I could be convinced to part with some of them. I was actually worried that they might not be such a good idea with the seahorses but then I read somewhere that their sting is actually really weak so I haven't worried about it as much. Anyway if you're still looking for them drop me a pm...I'd be happy to trade you a few.

Count me in.

OK, I knew the free corals would get all your attentions! Now who wants to help me win them! If I do win I'd likely SWAP some of these and really who doesn't want some lovely new corals making the rounds of WAMAS! Even more important everyone should check out this new site www.marineplantedtanks.com. Its a new site dedicated to...you guessed it marine planted tanks. Looks like it has a lot of potential. Since I love planted tank...they just seem a natural with my seahorses I'd love to see this site take off. It a bit discouraging to those of us who like marine algae when 99.9% of what is posted about them on most sites is "How do I I get rid of this?" questions. Anyway, Sam (bluenassarius), the founder of the site is trying to get the word out and part of that is a contest where the person with the most referrals wins this great frag pack. So go check it out, sign up, list me (ChrisS) as the person the referred you, and win me some great frags already!

Actually acid rain is mainly sulfur dioxides and nitrogen oxides. Then there's the heavy metals floating around in the air...and the VOCs although they may not hydrolize...and the chlorinated haydrocarbons..and the...well I can go on but you get the idea. Some are from industry but a great many are from our cars...most of them you don't want in your tank. Ever noticed how grey and soot covered cars, buses, buildings, everything in the city gets? or seen what comes out the stack of a metrobus? Rain will wash most of that out of the atmosphere and into the water. Even if you buffered it to stabalize the pH and off gassed the sulfer you still have all the metals and possible other crap to deal with. Rain water around here is pretty disgusting I wouldn't use it for my tank.

I love mine...one of my fav corals. Mine has done extremely well, but then I do feed it pretty much every day. Its in my seahorse tank so when I'm feeding the horses I squirt a few mysids it's way. I've had this for just about a year now. It was one small dime-sized head when I got it. now it's has 6 large quarter sized heads and another 3 dime sized heads and 4-5 tiny little heads forming. I'll post some pics this weekend if you want.

You'll want to bring the salinity back up very slowly. I'd do 10% water changes over several weeks each time just bringing up the salinity a point or two. Also be careful when treating with FWE. The dieing flatworms will release a lot of toxin so you need to be prepared to siphon out as many as you can and do some large water changes. The fish and corals will be stressed from this so I wouldn't make any other changes until after they've had time to recover. There are several post on here and on reef central about FWE I'd so a search and read up on it if you haven't already. Some people even suggest moving fish to a QT while treating.

You got me and treesprite right anyway. I'm in no big hurry. We can try to work out an exchange at the next social. Chris

Anyone need a few more hermit crabs. I have 5 blue-legged I can part with. I'd love to trade them for snails of any sort.