Theron

l am surprised you are having heat problems with florescent lights. You must have pumps or other devices adding heat to your tank. I had a 90 gallon with 2 400W halides and two 110W VHO. Fans did a pretty good job keeping my tank cool, under 82 degrees. I had 4 fans in the canopy that ran while the lights were on and a cheap clip on fan over the sump on a temp controller. The tank was in a daylight basement that was cooler than the rest of the house. Now in the summer during those hot days, the sump fan was on a lot and I started to have humidity problems. Carpet go moist from the cool cement floors and the high humidity. luckily I caught it quick and no damage. Hooked up a chiller on it's own temp controller. So I ran both fans and chiller. Sump fan came on at 81 deg and chiller came on at 82 deg. That worked great. I think fans can do a lot for cooling, but you have to be careful of humidity from all the evaporation. Also my sump was not enclosed under the tank. It was on the other side of the wall in a laundry room , so it had lots of ventilation. After the humidity problems, I added window fans to make sure to keep humidity in check. It was great having a chiller in the summer. I could leave town for the weekend and not have to worry if the tank was going to overheat during my absence. It was a great piece of mind. Especially if you are already having heat issues, summer will be bad. My chiller, Aqualogic, was not too loud, but would not want it in my living room. You can get some quite fans. I would try to plumb it in a remote location. Maybe crawl space? As for cost to run the chiller, really depends on how much it has to run. I calculated at 8 cents a kWh it cost about 5 cents an hour to run my 1/4 hp chiller. The cost to run the fans is probably negligible. Theron

I know you are asking for live rock. But as another option you might consider is base rock. I just ordered 200 lbs from Marcorocks. It cost about $2.60 a pound shipped to my door. I have not received it yet, but it looks pretty good. I had several people on RC suggest it. I am going to take the time to cure it myself. I not too interested in coralline and hitchhikers, just good looking rock with bacteria. I have 150+ lbs of live rock in another tank that I might add to it. Theron

I have never had a fuge. Not sure if I would ever have one, but just wondering, what if the water into the fuge went through a sock. You would have to change out the sock periodically, but might keep the fuge cleaner.

Oh,... Ok I get it now.

Sorry, I was not trying to imply I am from California, just have noticed a lot of people moving here. Theron

Yee Haw! Did someone say bbq? Seriously, we are not all a bunch of banjo plucking rednecks here. It is funny how many Californians I meet. Depending when it is, I might attend. Mainly because I am always looking for an excuse to visit Portland, but also I am not too impressed with the coral availability here. It might be worth the drive. Theron

I did not get written instructions with the skimmer. I bought it used, but the person I purchased it from told me that is what he did to keep it clean. Theron

I might have another solution. I was told to put a timer on the NW pump on my deltec so that it would shut off for 10 minutes every day. This allowed the tube to fill with water and disolve any salt deposits. Might try that if you have a spare timer. Theron

Hey Shawn, The tank looks great. I am really impressed. Looks like you did a lot of planning for this one. I have a few questions for you. What is the distance from the top of the tank to the floor, inside? It looks low. I have been trying to decide how high to place my tank in the new house. Should I optimize it for viewing sitting or standing or somewhere in the middle. Also are you going to keep the tank exposed in the garage or are you going to build a room around it. It looks like it is below the door bay in the garage. Is that bay dedicated for the tank? I have a simular place in my garage to place the tank, but it is very close to the garage door. That would limit me building an enclosure around the tank. My concern leaving the tank exposed is I don't want to heat the entire garage. I'm in Boise now, and it can get cold in the garage. It might be hard to keep the tank warm when the lights are out and if something happened it would cool down fast. I see you changed your mind about acrylic tanks. Last I talked to you, I remember you saying something like never owning a acrylic tank again. Just curious what changed your mind. Theron

I have had one for about a year. It has worked great, no problems at all. Theron

I just used water based primer and interior paint for my stand. Last, I put a few coats of Minwax Polycrylic. It works really well. http://www.minwax.com/products/protective/polycrylic.cfm My stand is white and I used a spar product before, but it ended up turning yellow. Theron

I think that is british pounds, so it would be over $500.

So what happened? I thought we were quoted $71 for shipping. It ended up $40 more. Oh well, Joel you should not have to pay the difference. I will give you some cash when I pick up. Theron

Joel, sent you payment for two powerstrips via Paypal. Theron

Joel, I like the idea of the CL screens. Are you going to have them removable so that you can clean them?

It looks like they can. Check out this article, http://www.signonsandiego.com/uniontrib/20040415/news_1n15taxes.html "To help people like Suarez file taxes legitimately, the Internal Revenue Service created the nine-digit Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, or ITIN (pronounced eye-tin). People who don't qualify for a Social Security number, such as undocumented immigrants, cannot file their taxes without it." "Because the taxpayer numbers cannot be used to get a job, many of the tax returns filed with the numbers come attached with W-2 employer forms showing a fake or fraudulent Social Security number." It seems wierd to me that they can work illegaly, use a fraudulent SS number, and still file taxes and get a refund. I wonder what happens if an illegal gets caught working and not paying taxes. It is a pretty big offense to an legal, just ask Richard Hatch. Theron

I will take 2 also

Ya, I named my Sailfin "Mikey". From a popular 70s comercial.

Using a controller to keep the ph in the reactor is the way to go. Sounds like you are using your AC JR to do that, so it should be easy to setup. No need to count bubbles and testing the effluent. I have a Deltec reactor and I keep my Ph in the reactor at 6.3 to 6.5. I use their reactor media and that is what is suggested. I used ARM in my last reactor and I tried to keep it around 6.8. I just monitor the alk in the tank and make small ajustments to the effluent drip to keep the level where I want it. Theron

Ya, I like Thunderbird. If you like outlook, you could still use it. You can have multiple profiles. Outlook will ask you which profile to use when it starts up. That way you can have for work and one for personal. Theron

Also here is where the original site is hosted. http://easy-bizzz.go.ro/newjwarehouse/ it is an .ro domain, Romania. Looks like they hijacked a positive ebay account. Theron

Ya, definatly sounds like a scam. And the domain name for the website is suspicous. ...us.tf, some sort of free web domain service. Did a google search for "ebay warehouse". Found this on ebay forums. http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?threadID=1000296375&tstart=0&mod=1149707830575 Theron

I hate to get in the middle of this but... I am also not convinced that we (humans) have had a significant effect on global warming. Is global warming bad? If it wasn't for gloabal warming then we would still be in an ice age. The earth is always changing from warm and cold periods. And like Rich said it has happend without us around. There are so many things that affect the earths temperature. The slightest change in the suns output would change our temperatures. Theron

Great article thanks. Anyone implement this UPS system? Theron

I woke up with our power out this morning. My wife was awake and woke me up shortly after it went out. I had to search the whole house for my inverter, removed the battery from my riding lawnmower and hooked up a air pump in the tank. This is the first time I have had to do this. The air stone did a pretty good job of moving some water around. Anyway, really reminded me that I need to get a UPS to power the air stone automatically, when the power goes out. Does anyone have something set up to automatically kick on when power is out? We don't usually get power outages if we do they have been very short. The power was out for about 2 hours. On my way to work, I found out why it went out. Someone ran their car into the power pole down the street so hard it broke. Theron