Barelycuda

I am just offering up what I have had experience with. The others have their place also. For me in an extremely highly stocked system the biopellets are by far the most effective. I am going to be setting back up the ATS for both systems here shortly tho. Not so much for the Nitrate reduction as I noticed a huge difference in algae accumulation on the ATS instead of the tanks when using one.

Brandon, I have run every one you have mentioned. Vodka, Sugar, RDSB, Bio Pellets, ATS, Sulfur Denitrator, you name it I have probably tried it. In my experience nothing has worked as well as the bio pellets. I had over 150 fish in the new growout system that I did one water change on in 4 months while cycling. After 4 months the nitrates were about 20ppm. That I thought was incredible since my nitrates out of the tap are about 10ppm and I evaporate 3-5g a day into that system. I did not have very good luck with the RDSB. The ATS can work but for your size system you will need one much larger than will fit in a 5g bucket. Check out http://www.algaescrubber.net/forums/ they have a ton of information on turf scrubbers. Dave

Well for those of you that were at the meeting last month with Matt Pedersen we made an announcement that in this quarters issue of Reef Hobbyist Magazine our club is the MASNA spotlight club The initial credit needs to go to Micheal7979 for contacting the magazine to get this started and they agreed to spotlight our club. The BOD came up with some rough draft paragraphs and with a LOT of help from Matt Pedersen ( At last count he helped me revise the article 5 times !!! ) We came up with what was presented. There were some photgraphs sent and what you will see is the article. http://www.reefhobbyistmagazine.com/archives/vol_5/issue18/pages/36.htm I hope you all like it as it was a lot of work. I am not an author or editor and am glad to have know someone like Matt who helped us create a very professional appearing article. Now enjoy and lets see if we get some new members. (clap) Dave

Thanks again Matt. I have received 2 phone calls and now an email from someone back east in New York wanting to buy them I am still honored that you chose me to be a part of your plan of trickery......

careful calling people names Mick Everyone just wait for the next issue of Reef Hobbyist Magazine.

Ha Ha. I found out about this about 5:00 tonight. I had a store call me asking to buy one I spoke with Matt this evening and they always try to get a april fools on people and it did work on some.

I am glad to see some enthusiasm in trying to breed fish. If you take a few things away from it is that unless you are going to try bangaii cardinals it is a lot of work...... You will need rotifer cultures and phytoplankton. A brine shrimp hatcher or 2. At least one dedicated tank for rearing the larva and depending on the species you may also need copepods. Also IMO a group buy is not a good idea. You will have a group of people with the same fish and nowhere to get rid of them. Keep in mind that a clownfish can lay anywhere from 200 to over 1000 eggs at a time. Give it a shot and see what happens. Do some research and see what's a good fit for you. For anyone serious about trying breeding check out this site. www.mbisite.org it is the marine breeders initiative and has a database of people that have bred fish. It will give you some information to work with. There is www.marinebreeder.org also. Also you should buy Matt Wittenrich's book on breeding, it is a must if you are serious about this.

Rick, I should definitely have clarkii's ready before then. The next clownhouse meeting will be in September.

Shaun, PM Electrokate. She is big in to freshwater and has some beautiful tanks. She may be interested and has some nice corals too.

Oh and by the way my Bangaii's spawned today also

Well in the spirit of the meeting I came home and hatched about 400 clarkii clowns I'll grab a few pics tomorrow. Nice hatch now off to bed cause I didn't get much sleep over the weekend. I think I was up with Matt til almost 2:00 this morning talking fish while he tweaked his fish room presentations.....

Kim, Thanks for the awesome pictorial summary of the meeting. I am still stoked that we were finally able to pull it off. I have been talking to Matt for almost 1-1/2 yrs now about coming out and to be able to hang out with him all weekend was icing on the cake. He is my Fish Jordan . I also wanted to thank Randy Reed and Nuri Fisher for the huge donations for the club's raffle today.

Come on Mick. Jess should understand that this type of meeting is a once a year type of thing and you can always do something next weekend. Besides this is for a couple of hours

Matt told me yesterday that he did a write up for reefbuilders Now we are going to be in the hunt for another speaker for maybe later on this year. We have the candidate in mind and he has already asked about coming up. As soon as we have more details we'll let you know. And yes what Michael said about being published you will find out soon enough......

I believe that there is not a problem with pictures just not recordings.

Well what Matt was hinting to is not a rumor. Nuri Fisher the owner of PE Mysis is going to be in town on Sunday and will be at the meeting as well!! Nuri has been generous enough to donate and entire CASE of PE mysis to the club for the meeting.

I just spoke with Randy Reed the owner of Reed Mariculture. He is going to be present at the meeting also and has agreed to come down early to meet with anybody that has questions about the Reef Nutrition line or phytplankton, copepod, rotifer cultures, ect. I am planning on being at the site at noon with Randy and Matt for anybody that wants to come and talk with them. This is an opportunity that does not come around often so lets take advantage of it

So I spoke with Matt this afternoon. Since there may not be a lot of time after the meeting to chat I am planning on arriving with Matt at 12:00 for anyone that wants to show up early and talk with him. I have also sent out an invitation to Randy Reed to see if he can show up early also. If there is anyone that has ANY type of question regarding phytoplankton, rotifer cultures, copepod cultures, the reef nutrition line of products this may be your chance to ask the owner yourself. I have spent time with Randy in the past and he is a incredibly nice and intelligent person. I personally cannot think of the last time this club had 2 people of this caliber here locally, and especially at the same time and place.....

Grassi may be interested in the maxima clam for his breeding project.

No you do not have to respond to the evite to attend and you do not have to be a paid member. The more people that attend the better. Here very shortly we will be starting an evite thread that will allow everyone that does not currently receive evites to get on the new list for them. It appears that the database that we are currently using needs to be updated so it will be. There will be some nice stuff to raffle off and I would like to see a large attendance for the meeting.

Here is a shot of the broodstock. Yours should get dark like these. They are a nice looking pair, I like the markings.

They are picasso's or shmowcasso's as Nick likes to call them. They will blacken up as time goes on. The parents are beautiful IMO as they are in tank #5 in the clownhouse Mick has seen them. It will take some time. IF you have been to Westside and seen the pair in Tim's show tank they looked about the same as yours now. I delivered them to him right about a year ago. Since they are a percula variant they are a little slow to grow. One of the best foods you can give them to color them up is cyclopeeze. It is high in anthaxsine (i know I didn't spell that correctly) and will bring out their color the fastest. I'll find you a pic of the broodstock so yo can see what they should darken up to.

Juvenille Bangaii's will school together. It isn't until they start to reach sexual maturity that you will start to have problems. If you start to see 2 fish hanging out consistently away from the others you most likely will have a pair and get the rest out. Once a pair is established they will not tolerate others.