albertareef

Hey Holly! Glad to see you are still in the game... with sense of humor intact! Ain't thrivn' but ain't dyin' may need to be my new tag line - where do I send the royalties?

Guilty as charged

Nice find! Diet of coral mucous eh? Crazy the kind of specialization one can find in marine life. One complicated ecosystem for sure.

That is starting to look really promising! So now I know to bring my washed out coral to Kim's to color it up.

Looks like your nutrient export is in full swing! That is some happy macro...

Yeah - lots of familiar screen names in this thread... is Chief really the only one still around? CCR, Impur etc. do bring back some memories.

Fortunately I was already planning on coming because I could use this!

Yep - that family has developed some crazy effective neurotoxins. They are up there with tetrodotoxin.

I have to admit it is a pretty cool looking sponge. Glad we got a first hand ID - thanks Bret!

That would make a sweet setup for some lucky person - GLWS!

So coral huffing is the new toad licking eh? Lots of interesting toxins in the marine world. We use a lot of conotoxins in our work to study channel properties. Nasty but highly useful biological tools. Don't mess with marine snails ☠️

Except then you will release the toxin in the water vapor (according to the article). ? Some pretty crazy stuff in there between the scrubbing and the boiling water. Wonder if anyone has a better ID on the coral ("flower coral"?).

Haha! I was thinking about this myself but figured you would mock me after our prior discussion.

This would be my vote as well but it's a bit fuzzy on my screen.

Love those anthias - seems like a good swap. Hope the six line doesn't decide to pick on it. Squatchatoa eh? I need to get into the zoa business so I can start coming up with some cool names! Looking good!

But where is the challenge in that! Besides, even if you start there, how long until you get the next "big tank". I put that in quotes since big becomes a contextual thing around here

Well, I don't remember saying it would be easy... or maybe I did. Shouldn't trust everything you hear!

I would say this is an example where testing does matter - you introduced a significant, known driver for calcium/alk fluctuation so would want to test to see how your system responds. The trick would be not over-managing this in the sense that you may find that you would like to keep calcium/alk at 500/9.0 but the system ends up stabilizing at 430/7.8. Is it worth trying to push for the "ideal" numbers? Maybe not as long as you are getting good growth and color where your tank seems to want to be, just do what you need to support that.

This, I think, is a real issue. Also, it is clear from many examples on this board that you can be successful over a large range of conditions so it isn't so much the absolute values that matter (within reason) but rather the stability. If you have an "ideal" target in mind, you might do all kinds of unintentional harm chasing that. Systems all seem to have their own somewhat distinct happy place so you are best off letting things (again, within reason) find their natural equilibrium and then try not to over-manage. Of course, this is coming from the person still trying to get their calcium reactor completely dialed in (think I'm close!).

Sounds like a deal! I missed those the first time through but wouldn't have room for the rock anyway.

And don't forget... you better test it with at least two separate test kits for each parameter - and there are always more parameters! That being said, I have heard several of the more long-term successful folk on this board admit that they don't test very often anymore... getting to that point, however, is the trick.

Looking great! That is really a perfect spot for it and the all white works really well. Glad to see this tank up and running again - super sweet.

Hi WingRider - looks like the pic issues should be fixed per Chief's post in the other thread... maybe give it a try?

I managed to run a 120 with two 400 watt MHs in a canopy without a chiller... BUT, I had a lot of fans running in the canopy and sump to accomplish that. Sounded like a jet runway in my dinning room. Tank still got to the upper end of what I considered safe and, as you can imagine, evaporated a lot of water. It is probably more feasible if you use pendant style lighting a reasonable distance from the water surface as the heat will not be as contained. You can also reduce the heat load by using external return pumps etc. if you want to capture some additional headroom.

Kim - if you actually would rather use this I would be happy to help fix. On the other hand, if you would prefer the ATI (silly question) please proceed. ?