huskerduck

Sold, lemme know when

Looking for a bigger than 125 tank, perferably some shape. Jason has a nice one for 1200 but I am seeing these as low as 800 ( with accessories)on Craigs list, most in Miami. My Corals are bulging @ the seams and all my equiptment seems to need a larger stand as well

Is this sold?

Yeah, and its not like he owns a hybrid to drive back and fourth in 3 seperate times, because the following day was Memorial Day and we had another emergency and he basically did it again ( I broke the top of the Kalk Reactor by hooking straight into the RO and it cracked the top so on Memorial day he runs into the shop and makes a dosing system that he had actually brought the night before but for some reason I had a misunderstanding of why I needed the electronics and a seperate pump. It also runs in the family, his daughter is the friendliest little thing, she came out to say Hi and proceed to tell me my car was pretty or something to that effect. His neighbors must get a chuckle out of people screeching up, jumping out and getting a bunch of equiptment that appears to be making chemicals or gawd knows what with a final hand off of a big bag of white powder. Im not sure if I tell the aspect of all this that REALLY is amazing but it involved a huge amount of trust on his part because of the Holiday weekend but lets just say I know of no business that would have done all that he did. In all fairness, I did have another offer from "the other great guy" in Salem but it couldnt have happened until Wednesday but the tank would have roasted without a chiller, even on Monday it would have been pretty warm without dropping Halide, we have air-con but it runs like a banchee because of the tank location and really freezes the house, but not the tank. Anyway Coral Reefs Jason said he would actually come out to the house and hook everything up for me since I was going to be out of town when he got the equiptment. You get a good feeling dealing with the Salem guys and feel fortunate to have them! In all fairness

I need to call the President and arrange this. I get a call that I have to leave the state for 2 weeks to a month on FRIDAYDOH! and my setup is far from user friendly for my wife since I spend no less than a half hour a day minimum Kalking and all the other crap that goes along with maintaining a HUNGRY tank. I called Ryan on Saturday asking if he had a chiller and possibly a calcium and Kalk reactor, I mean come on he should have a dozen of each right? Well most would say I can get it for you next week and rightfully so on Memorial weekend but I was leaving Monday night. Ryan said he would make some calls and see what he could do and thought it might be possible to get the stuff if he got on it. To my amazement he called back late Sat. night and said he had a shot on Sunday maybe........ On Sunday he called and had been sitting there for awhile waiting and it was looking like his distributor wasnt going to show, now rememberhe drove like 35 miles to do this, I told him on the phone not to sit there all day and waste his memorial weekend and he said hed wait a little while longer and it wasnt a problem. about 5 hours later I get a call to come pick the stuff up and he got EVERYTHING including going to his shop and making sure everything was setup and ready to roll since I only had a couple hours before I had to go. He even met me at his house so it was a shorter drive. Amazing indeed, actually amazing might be a little bit weak in describing that type of service

Thanks guys, guess we'll wait and see. When I talk to the wife around noon I will relay info Ryan

I am out of town and left the poor wife with an unfair responsibility of dealing with my nightmare. Before I left I got a chiller, Calcium reactor, and unfortunately a Kalk reactor so she wouldnt have to worry about my daily ritual of messing with the reef. Turns out the kalk reactor is obviously not set up right and actually stirs the kalk too much as its delivering it in the top off system, well last night after I left I get a deservable frantic call that something happened and the pump that delivers the RO water had created some sort of syphon effect and kept running, for about 1/2 hour. Tank clouded badly. I had her ( on the phone) shut the RO system down. I asked her to imeadiately take tests starting with PH then Alk and the Alkalinty had dropped to 4 that fast(scary) but the PH appeared to hold at 8.3 ish, in a panic I told her to start by putting about 4 teaspoons of baking soda in the sump, this increased the alkalinity to about 7 and it had been at 11 earlier when I left. She put in 2 more teaspoons and it was back to 10 and held over night, PH held well too so maybe it appears stable as this is almost 10 hours later and holding. Im sure everything is already dead but she says everything looks good but all live rock and plants are covered in "snow", she said it seems to be slightly clearing up and she emailed me these pictures. She says the corals never appeared snowy because the lunar lighting was on and they were all vibrant even in the snowstorm, The fish were asleep but are all out and eating well and spunky, the snails appear to be cleaning trails everywhere ( bet thats tasty) and she says its appearing to clean itself but there is white Flakes floating around because I have pretty vigirous wave action with about 2500 GPH in a 125 gallon tank. She washed the large return sock filters last night almost imeadiatly because they were about due and seemed to collect alot of the Kalk ( thankfully) and replaced them to try and collect more flaking through the day and will re wash them in a couple hours. Does she try and keep stirring and washing by blowing with current as to keep the percipitate floating or just let nature run its course? So much for helping her out, I fear the blenny, gobie and Stars, snails, shrimp arent liking their new diets The strange thing is the calcium level plummeted down to 320ppm, Im guessing this was due to my panic remedy of slamming the alkalinity back up to 10 from 4, but I figured that low of alkalinity was certain death for everyone and the PH would climb to 12, I am wondering if she should turbo calcium back up to 400 while checking alkalinity throughout the next couple days, it may not even rise at all with all the precipitate, maybe a large water change? I hate to put her through that but........

Or you have ICH, if they have white "frosty" appearance on their fins or looks like little grains of salt on their bodies. Do you have a living fish? If so, maybe its aggressive.....we have a maroon clown that panics everytime anything gets near its anemone and takes time to get used to other fish coming near. I have trouble with large fish, they always die in a week excluding 1 blue tang and a Mystery Wrasse I would try a Hawkfish, Blenny, Chromies they are tough as nails in my tank. Other than a stress on the tank, remember these fish were in the ocean and had a pretty stressful trip from there to your tank, its a small wonder any fish make it through that stress

I moved a 2-5" sand bed without knowing it would harm anything. When I say move, I mean 40 miles and it took about 10 hours before it was set up and bio filtering again. We put all the live rock and fish/corals in 12 - 5 gallon buckets and the remaining water in a 75 gallon horse waterer ( rubbermaid) We then scooped all 130 lbs of sand into the rubbermaid with the water and off we flew down the road, being in a horse trailer we are positive it remained stirred up and sloshed around the entire time, it dropped to about 72 degrees within the 6 hours to finally setting back up and getting heaters back on. the RO was the reason filtering and Protien skimming wasnt in action until the 12th hour. Boy was the tank a mucky mess until about 20 hours later. Granted we only had 2 chromies a clown anemone and 5 corals but did have 150 lbs of decent live rock. All the coaline on the tank turned white and disappeared but the rock remained good. In the next month we went through what appeared to be another cycle with Brown-green- red algae but the water remained great in testing other than the Magnesium levels dropped considerably. I tested daily for about 1-1/2 months and always showed perfection in everything but as month 2 starts it appears magnesim is a continuing problem as well as Marine ICH. We can not seem to own a tang or any large fish without it getting white spots within 4-7 days and we waited 6 weeks after the initial fish was lost to the parasite. I think stirring up the sand must have really had an effect on this ICH problem because we have hosts like 4 chromies, clown, mystery wrasse, manderin, goby, cleaner wrasse ( who only starts cleaning infected fish after its too late) and a Hawkfish which none seem bothered. We do have alot of sand sifters though, how deep they go and how well they perform is a hard question, we have three Stars that continuously burrow and 5 snails that constantly burrow around. We just bought another sifting star and are thinking of getting even more because we like the ever changing deep sand bed

Here you go, .wmv and smaller and more compressed http://www.mediamax.com/gobigred/Hosted/tank.wmv

MPEG4 Windows Media should be able to play it, I will put it up as a WMV file here in awhile I can put it in any format you want now that Vegas edits ACVHD

Hey all, Not very exciting but if youre bored and have very high speed internet and want to see some testing of an HD camcorder heres the link, it plays in Windows Media Player ( maybe, it does on mine anyways) Its highly compressed from the Blue Ray and HD DVD files and is still rather large @ 450 MB. It looks pretty nice in its native HD form ( incredible on a 1080P monitor but I shrunk it as much as possible without it looking hopelessly horrible and let some folks have a look. Theres really not even a real NLE ( editing software ) for the codec it shoots in so I apologize now for the unprofessional results. Wednesday, Vegas Video will FINALLY support editing these HD shots and they should look alot better. http://www.mediamax.com/gobigred/Hosted/NVEExport.0001.mpg

I should price them out but I have an account at the Tigard acrylics place ( cant remember the name but its huge and I get great prices on acrylic but I would like to have Envisions possibly bend the front since I no longer have my heated tube to do it myself. I can do everything else which is sort of the fun. I really want glass since acrylic is so prone to scratches and cleaning them can be bothersome if I remember correctly

Thanks! Pictures do it no justice ( maybe its my crappy camera) and the really coolness factor is supplied by Ryan of Advanced and Jason of Coral Reef of Salem, a couple of really class acts!

It really doesnt look as impressive in a shallow tank as it does in a tall tank. In my old 200 gallon which I had before digital cameras, it was 2.5' tall and basically a Bow front of sorts. Im really just baiting and waiting for coraline and all the other goodies that attach quickly until I find the right person to bend acrylic or glass to make the another tank which will be tall. Unfortunetly you cant even see the really cool parts yet ( the actual break) which has to be buried in this tight of tank, when complete and in the new tank it will be rolled sideways and look snapped by the reef itself. After 1-1/2 months its really developing fast, coraline is popping up nicely and its just amazing how everything in the tank that can move is drawn to "manmade" shapes. Its a shrimp snail, and crab playground and the Blenny, Manderine, Hawkfisk Hotel. In its final resting place itwil be slightly more busted up as far as masts and row boats ( all 12 ) go, it will be scattered to resemble a hard bottom hit. Its alot of fun to build the ship and then watch it evolve as well as watch how all the creatures react to manmade structures. Thanks for the kind words, the end result will be much less noticable and will be more realistic and hidden. Too bad I cant make a 200 gallon bottle or Id be set.

Kick *** livestock, really spectacular everything!

I will give it another whirl, somewhere I have a roll of the heavy duty pink teflon tape. I think its quadruple thick compared to normal. I think I wrapped the knuckle 20 times and it never held up to the " pop over" I was thinking maybe shrink tube as well but all my shrink tubing has glue in it as well for underground wiring or well pump wiring. Not sure if the black stuff has some chemical makeup thats harmful

Ryan, I forgot to mention, My RO unit has an auto shut off on the waste, cool eh. Jason has a really, really cool fail proof do-dad with a fail safe shut off but the thing is sort of outrageous in price but it does seem rather a necessity for someone with an RO system that continues to run the waste water while the good water is off

As far as Teflon tape, it sort of works, but as you push the eductor over the "ball" it slightly loosens up. I tried this several times last night Electrical tape just has a habit of really tightening things up. I picked up an Eductor to play with and it really seems to make a nice wide flow pattern and seems to add ALOT of flow judging from the movement on the top of the tank and below as the sand is re-arranging. I think Ryan was claiming a 40%-60% increase in flow but I was reading where a proper enductor can increase flow 4-5 times and Im guessing its quite a bit more than it appears. LOL Ryan, I will weld'er up,

I could really make some much needed changes to my loc-line ends but they dont quite fit being different brands, electrical tape would fix it with ease. I tried different types of glues but nothing sticks in my tests ( what happened to the good ole days when you could glue plastic?) Ive seen quite a few on other forums mentioning using it on skimmers and such but the more the merrier for piece of mind I could also hard pipe but I like the loc-line because I bend it around to clean behind rock every now and then, really keeps the tank amazing looking

He is amazing no doubt, its too bad every business including our government didnt operate by his standards and practices of not only good deals, but digging through his parts and pieces to find something that saves your arse in a bind. You always feel like you got what you paid for and alot more when you leave his shop! To be fair, I feel pretty lucky to be nearest to Salem and theres several top notch outfits ran by people I feel very comfortable bugging as well as unloading my wallet on.

I actually wanted to put a mirror on the back but figured I will probably build an acrylic or find someone that can bend glass and make a 175 ish gallon tank, this is sort of temperary to get coraline growing on the ship and such. I really want a little taller and more square than rectangle like my older acrylic corner tank I had and make the wreck on a peak in the middle of a hill of sorts. Hopefully coraline will cover the back soon enough. Ive missed some pretty funny shots of hermit crabs and their tightwire acts on the ship, Ive had a dozen or more crawling all over the lines and never thought to take pictures. The Blenny loves the ship and spends hours and hours all over the Captains quarters and laying in the row boats. Ill try and leave the camera by the tank and get some funny shots.

I picked up a used tank 3 weeks ago after being out of "reefing" for a decade. I guess it was time to not have a life again. Its a 125, I really wanted another 150+ but got a pretty decent deal so this will do for awhile until I build my acrylic 200 gallon. This tank came with a GenX 2400 and 4100 in the sump which I moved to the tank with dual outlets and plugged into wavemaker outlet. I added a Genx 55HP with the wave device splitting 4 more outlets for a total of 9 outlets moving between 2000 gallons and 2500 gallons in a very unorganized wave action that appears ever changing. Im thinking a timer on the 4100 for nightime shutdown to give the guys/girls a little resting time. The "wreck" is 40" of ship cut in half, it seems to be a playground for everything and I am patiently waiting for coraline coverage. Its amazing watching the creatures drawn to anything manmade, its like a magnet. I am curious what everyones favorite salt mix is and why. Also I am dosing Kalk, Magnesium, Iodine and strontium for now and curious what everyone else adds to their tanks. It took me a awhile to even out the magnesium and now it seems calcium is really getting devoured quickly.