David B

Ahh, ok. I'll take you up on the $15 pony ballast. You want to PM me your PayPal email address?

Checkout http://www.lightbulbsdirect.com/page/001/PROD/CF_BA/C2642UNVME000K It shows my ballast and lists that it supports "1 or 2 Lamp 24 Watt Twin Tube". I'd be willing to take your ballast but want to make sure this one wont work first. What do you think? Thanks for the help.

Yes, it's hard to show in a picture because we're using a couple sets of wires, but both yellows split and connect the two end caps together. Saying this made me realize that maybe some of the wires could be bad, but I figure that's less likely. From reading online if you see a quick flicker sometimes that means the ballast isn't powerful enough to get the gases lit in the bulb, but the specs on this ballast say it can support 2 Lamp 24 Watt Twin Tube.

My wife and I needed to replace the two ballasts that come with the Oceanic Biocube 14g so we purchased replacement parts online. We decided to use one CF ballast to light the two 24w CF bulbs. We got: 2x 24watt compact fluorescents (10000k and an actinic) 1x compact fluorescent electronic ballast 2x linear 4-pin end caps wiring, plug, etc. We wired everything up according to the diagram on the ballast, hooked the lights into the end caps and plugged it in. The bulbs do nothing, then sometimes flicker quickly after a few seconds and then turn off and never light up. Just putting one bulb in doesn't work either. I thought we had wired everything appropriately (after checking and rechecking it). Any ideas what's wrong? Do we have the wrong ballast? Could it be the wiring? I've included a picture of the ballast to show it's details. Thanks for any help! -David

So, I've made some progress thanks to everyone's suggestions. As I mentioned, I switched over one of the old 175W 14k bulbs to a new 250W 20k bulb (with a new ballast) and I swapped the other 175W 14k out for a new 175W 20k bulb. I also took my sump/refugium light down from 24 hrs/day to 8 hrs/day and bumped the tank lighting cycle down by an hour. The green algae growth on the tank glass has slowed down noticeably and my rocks look a lot better. I decided that most of the purple/dark pink growth is coraline and only one of the rocks had cyano on it (started filming like cyano does), so I gave that rock a good cleansing. My green start polyp is thriving (but it sounds like they're easy to keep) and hopefully my zoa frag will start growing. Here's a shot of it from yesterday: Thanks for all of the help/suggestions. -David

It's scary how real this all becomes, it's easy to forget we have real forces of nature in our tanks. Glad to hear you're ok Steve, that's really messed up. Hope you heal quick. I'm sure your wife loves your tanks even more now =).

As far as water flow: Since it's a 65g tank, it's only 36" wide and I have my return line pumping back into the center of the tank and I have two Maxijet 1200s (one on each side) using my ReefKeeper's wavemaker cycle (back and forth). It's a lot of flow in the tank, which I thought might be the reason the frogspawn wasn't happy in the first place. The frogspawn frags I got were from Steveoutlaw and were incredibly healthy (as was his mother colony). As far as the PhosBan reactor: I've had it running for two months now (long before I ever added the frogspawn and other frags). I don't believe it's sucking out my alk, since I've consistently tested alk before the reactor and every other day since and it never really changes. I've also tested my alk test kit on my roommate's tank and it showed 7dKH, which is what he said he keeps it at, so I feel somewhat confident in my tests. As far as the test kits: I've been using Aquarium Pharmaceuticals test kits, so nothing special at all, but before I setup the PhosBan reactor the phosphate test kit showed it was at the high end of the test scale, and afterwards it dropped to zero, so it did at least show a big change. I do have a lamp (40W I believe) over my sump/refugium and it's on 24/7 (my roommate has always done the same thing), but I'll knock that down. It sounds like a general consensus is to lower the lighting cycle in general and siphon out any cyano.

Does anyone have any clue why my frogspawn/SPS/polyp frags aren't making it? I have a polyp rock that closed up earlier last week and hasn't opened since, yet other zoo frags seem to be doing ok...

My fish: Yellow Tang (medium size) Blue Hippo Tang (smaller than the Yellow) (2) True Perculas Clarkii Clown Pink Skunk Clown (2) small blue damsels Cleanup crew: I originally purchased a cleanup crew package from Reeftopia.com back in August, and since a number of my snails/crabs died off on my first try, I ordered another package, they both included: 36 turbo snails 10 scarlet reef hermits 12 blue-leg hermits 4 emerald crabs 6 cerith snails 6 nerite snails 2 star snails I have a number of empty shells lying around but my roommate told me not to be concerned since a number of snails usually die off? I feed them Ocean Nutrition Formula 2 twice a day, and I only give them what they can eat, that way there isn't food lying around. I give them brine shrimp every once in a while.

Awesome, thanks guys. I do have my light cycle a bit long (VHOs for 10 hrs and the MHs for 8). I'll cut those back. As far as if it's coraline or cyano, maybe it's both. I do know some of it's cyano, cause I can take my turkey baster and squirt water at it and get it to film off (I had a bad case of cyano in the past, so I know first hand what it looks like). I didn't realize urchins would eat at your coraline, I'm glad you metioned it, I'll have to watch him to see if he really starts going at my rocks, but apparently if you have enough coraline growth one urchin shouldn't do too much damage, we'll see. Thanks for all of the help guys, I'll just cut the lights back and try to be patient.

I started my 65g reef tank back in August, so it's now been running for about seven months. I'm currently on what I like to call my "second run at it" since a few months back everything "exploded" for one reason or another (phosphates were high and ammonia/nitrates were getting there) and I lost all of my coral frags and a few fish. I thought I had done all the research necessary about water conditions, but it turns out there's always something new to learn. I added a PhosBan reactor to wipe out the phosphates and tinkered with my protein skimmer to get it working optimally and I now have my tank water in what I consider pretty good shape with the following specs: Temperature: 78-81 degrees F Salinity: 1.025 Nitrates: <5 ppm Ammonia: 0 ppm Phosphates: 0 ppm pH: 8.4 Calcium: 500ppm (I just started a dosing a two part and stopped because the calcium wasn't being used up) Alkalinity: 14 dKH (has always been this high and has never dropped, but most online research I've done seems to show that it's only a problem if it's really low, which can cause pH swings) My roommate has a gorgeous 120g tank right next to mine and I've checked all of my test kits on his tank and they are all fine (my water specs are actually a bit "better" than his). As far as lighting, I have two 175W 14k MHs and two VHOs (one 95W 10k and one 95W actinic). Here's my problem: Cyanobacteria has started to crop up on my rocks (image below) and the small amount of coraline growth I've had in the past has started to die off and turn white (image below). I always get a lot of green algae growth on the front/sides/back of my tank (more in two days than my roommates does in a week). I added two frags of frogspawn a few weeks ago and although they seemed to be doing fine at first, they've both died. I added two zoanthid frags and although they seem to be doing fine, they'll randomly open/close throughout the day. I have a few small SPS frags that have started to lose their polyps. All of my fish have been great for months and my water specs seem to be fine. My roommate just suggested this week that my bulbs may be too old. It turns out the MHs have been used for over a year (I bought them used) so I just swapped one out for a 250W 20k MH (replaced one of the ballasts) and another 175W 20k is on the way. I'm posting to see if anyone has ANY suggestions as to what could be wrong as I'm totally clueless and now at the point of frustration. Even my roommate, who's been a marine reefer for around seven years, doesn't have any other ideas. Here is a photo of the cyano starting to grow (this photo may look like coraline but even my roommate agrees its cyanobacteria when you see it with the naked eye): And here is a photo of some of the dead coraline: And here is a full shot photo of the tank (the MHs had just kicked off, so it's dimmer than usual, but you can see how green everything is): Thank you for any help! -David

Sorry for the late addition: 65g tank 29g sump

I recently started up my first reef tank (65 gallon). I did a lot of things my self (made an oak canopy, installed lights/ballasts in canopy, custom-made sump, etc). Here's my current setup: 65g AGA tank 2 x 14,000K MHs 10,000K VHO Actinic 03 VHO AquaC EV-90 skimmer Mag-7 return pump 2 powersweep powerheads 60lbs of live sand, 65 lbs live rock recently obtained from a guy who just broke down his tank (had the LR in his setup) My MAIN QUESTION: When is it OK for me to add fish/corals??? I've checked the ammonia/nitrate levels and they're pretty much at zero. It's been a number of days since the live sand has been in and the LR was added recently as well, but again the levels stay around zero. Any suggestions? Thanks!