gopens

i bought the tank brand new. but i did buy the LR from a guy that lives between grants pass and medford. that all he does is sell LR. the rock looked awesome when i bought it, than slowly died off. i was going to put the rock in a 55 gallon tank and a heater, powerhead, and some fresh saltwater. than drain the main tank. completly break down my system and clean it extremely good. oh and i am also going to add new substrate. its a shame that this might get me out of the hobby. i truley love reefing. i just spent 3000.00 2 months ago to get started. i am not going to repeat that amount again. people are saying that if there is any copper in my tank, that i could not get it out of my tank, sump, skimmer, all my plumbing etc. basically i would need to toss everything accept my stand, canopy, and lights. whats your thoughts...

yes i was. but i had checked for copper yesterday with my test kit and saw no traces. even today when i went to my lfs and had him check it. the only way to tell that i had any traces was because he also tested his and compared the two. only then you could see a tiny tiny tiny difference. i mean there is onle a trace.

well i have some bad news. i went to the lfs today, and we tested my water. i have a slight tinge of copper. i thought maybe that the slight tinge was common, so i had my lfs guy test his water in front of me and his was perfectly clear with no signs of copper at all. so now that i have this problem, i have some deciding to do. is there any possible way i can get rid of this problem so i can have inverts and corals. i have read of a fe different ways to remove copper (via carbon), but they don't work 100%. i am sure i know what all you guys and gals are going to say. but i was just making sure that there is no help for me and this LR and subsrate. i just spoke with a and he told me that with such a tiny tiny trace like i had, that some water changes should put me back to normal. he told me that his son has put pennies in his tank and found them months later. and his lr is fine. i don't have a problem with replacing all my lr and substrate. but i honestly don't want to spend 700.00 more dollars on lr and substrate. i was thinking of removing the live rock, and putting them in a 55 gallon tank with fresh saltwater, heater, and a powerhead and cure the rock. than i was going to remove and trash all my sand (in the main tank and in the sump). then clean my main tank and sump with a vinegar and water solotion. do this a few times over a few days. than set the tank back up and use fresh sand. than add my old live rock. please help. thanks

thats funny you said that blaine. 6 beautiful water circles on the ceiling. but hey its nice...i woke up this morning and my tank was at 78.5. not bad being i left the lights on all night..

well finished the fan project i talked about last week. i would say it came out awesome. before i added the fans and the vent holes, my tank reached 82 degrees with in 30 minutes. my tank has been on for over an hour, and its holding at a nice 79 degrees. both fans blow inwards, and you can feel the air coming out of the 6 holes i drilled. the pic was taken minutes after i was done, so there is tons of dust. but it cleaned up well. any comments would be great. thanks

well i am running 2x250watt MH's. i am using the 20k bulb, which i do not like. its way to blue. i was thinking of going with 14k's. now i am also thinking of running 1 VHO in the very front of my tank for added color. if i do get the 14k mh bulbs, which vho bulb do you think would work for me being that the 14k mh has a bit of blue and white. or would i be wasting my money on a vho if i went with the 14k mh...

well i used ro water and it was still way off from the hydrometor. i am going to try distilled later

i just read online that you can simply use distilled water and set it to zero. has anybody done that?

well i have been using a hydrometor for a few weeks now for both my main tank and the q-tank. i have been doing a hyp in the q-tank with some percs. over the last 5 days i have slowely lowered my salinity from .026 to .020 in my q-tank. being that i am shooting for a final salinity of .009, i decided to get a refractometor being i have heard that hydrometors can be a bit off. well today i got the refractometor. i checked my q-tank with the refractometor and it said it was .025. but my hydrometor says .020. is it possible for them to be that much off. i understood that a hydrometor was not super accurate, but pretty close. is it possible that one may be broke or is it common to have that big of a difference in the two. also my refractometor came with a little screw driver. do i need to mess with the settings in some way or is it exactly what it says, .025.

lol, it seems that i am going to have to put fly guy and ccr on some form of a payroll. but honestly thanks fly guy for all your help. with that being said. my tank is pretty close to the wall. there might only be a few inches back there. is that enough space for the fans to work to the fullest. i might try both. put the fans in the back and a few holes on top. i am going to try to saty away from a chiller as much as possible. not for the money reasons. but because i have already run out of plug opening. i already have all my fish stuff and all my t.v, xbox 360, dvd player and much more coming off of a the outlet. and moving things is not an option...

well now that i have my MH's i have noticed that it does raise my water temp above normal level. i have 2 fans i want to install. the box says to drill a hole on the side of your canopy, and install them on each side (i have 2 fans). i don't want to ruin the look of my canopy by drilling holes on the sides. i was thinking of installing them on the top of the canopy, facing down, blowing the room air into the canopy. would this work or am i stuck ruining my hood. or is there any other ideas. here are the pics of the fans and the canopy. thanks

well i have decided to open up the reflectors some. it seems to work awesome. but i got to thinking. if i did turn the lights90 degress, would i be able to run a par of VHOs inside the reflectors (one vho on each side of the MH). would the heat from the MH not work with the VHO. just a thought for the future...

thanks for the advice. i will be turning them around tomorrow morning. i was told bny my LFS guy to run them the way they are. i have also been told that the bulb will take a month+, and the bulbs will get some whit to them. so i guess i will just wait a couple months. i will post some new pics tomorrow on the MH setup...

oh, and one more thing. does anybody know of any tricks to making this huge ballast look good. the only place i can think of putting it is on top of the canopy. but the ballast is flippin heavy. well this make it that much more top heavy...

well today was a spendy day. i finally put the final touches on my tank with 2x250 metal halides. the shop only had the 20k bulbs. i bought the 20k, not relizing how blue they are. i want to get some 14k. i have heard the 14k are a great bulb for the blue and white look. but now for the question. i had no diresctions on were to put the reflectors. so i put them 13 inches from each side of the tank. is this a good length? it seem the center on the tank is much brighter than the sides. i am sure the reason for this is the over laping of the 2 bulbs. here is the pic...

i am treating 2 very small percs. i am slowely taking it down to .009. i will be lowering the level over the next week or so. i have heard of people lowering it within 8 hours. but i have also heard to do about .001-.002 a day. whats your thoughts. thanks

ya know, i never thought of doing another hob filter. that sounds like a good idea, plus i would be able to put to filter inserts from my main sump for extra bacteria. but than again, a power head might do the job as well. i am not medicating, unless i have to. what i am going to do is a hyposalinaty for 4-6 weeks. i hope this works. this will give my main tank 4-6 more weeks to cycle.

thanks for the comments. is that carbon filter good to have. i am only going to do a hyposalinity (sp) for 4-6 weeks in the QT. so no meds, unless i need to, that i will pull out the filter. also, should i go with a small power head. if so, what you recommen as far as gph. thanks

well as some may remember, after losing my fish, I have decided to set up a Q-tank. I have included some pics. I am looking for ideas to see if I am on the right path. I am also going to add some pvc pieces. but other than the pvc, this is what I have to work with. The aquarium is a 20 gallon high. I was looking for the long version, but there were none in my small town. I am also running a basic over the back filter. The heater is a cheap ol' 100 watt. one thing i am concerned about it the lack of water movement. should i go buy one of those little water pumps or do i need a spendy power head. I have seen some set ups that only had the over the back filter, and that was all for water movement. Here is the pic of my set up now here is a pic of the isert that came with the filter. It has been in my sump from my main tank for a few days now. I have been told to put this insert in the filter when i am ready to Q some fish. Will this filter insert collect enough "goodies" to seed my tank with the right stuff. Now the next pic is going to show how stupid I am in this hobby. I am not sure what it really is because I tossed the box. But it is a insert just like the above. Accept one side has a white looking filter annd the other side has some small black pellet looking things inside the filter. do I need to use this well thanks for any help. If everything looks good, I will be purchasing a 2-3 clowns this weekend and using my new Q-tank.

yeah, i did that as well. I also went and bought a over the back filter for my tank. my local fish guy told me to put a bunch of crushed live rock in the filter instead of a filter/sponge that has been sitting in my sump picking up some bacteria. any thoughts...

last night I was looking around the ol' tank and then out of know were this thing came out..(scary) what the heck is this thing and how did it get in my tank. Also is it bad. I have seen 2 other smaller ones in the tank too. For those of you following my journey, her is a pic of my clown. I thought it had ich. But today he seems much better than this pic I took yesterday. The fin is a bit torn still today. But I really don't see any white specs at all on him. what could that fin thing be. The other clown died yesterday from that disease that started with a "B" (i don't remember what it was called)

Well i have decided to get a q-tank up and running. I want to make sure I am going to do this correctly, so any help would be great. So if you see anything that you might change, please let me know. I know there are tons of threads on many different boards on how to do this, but they all seem to differ in some way. Well I am going to start with a 20 gl long aquarium. Then simply use a 50 wt heater and a hang on the back filter. From what I have read thats about all I will need. I have also been told to not use LR or LS in the QT. I have been told to take the sponge from the filter and leave it in the main tanks sump for a week or so. Now this is confusing to me. I have been told to use water from my main tank to seed the QT. This seems weird to me because there might be some bad things in that water. Well I am sure there are some bad things, being my fish got ich in that water. I will have some more questions later. I am just heading to the LFS to buy my equipment this afternoon. I just wanted to make sure I had it all. Thanks