Emerald525

I’m going to just miss it ! Great pictures! April is usually a good time to go to Texas it’s like summer in Portland. There’s a good chance you’re going to have clear skies.😄

This sounds like an amazing and special meeting thanks for organizing this Brittany. I’m sad I am going to miss it. I love a trip to the coast and have wanted to see your tanks. I hope others are able to participate in this wonderful opportunity.😊

I really like their products and all for reef is great! I was able to do acros in a 20 Nuvo with hand dosing. I did notice that when I had a doser for a bit it would clog the tubing .

You do have to check the individual parameters . I found my system was using more magnesium then the mixture so I had to add extra magnesium from the powder solution.   Other friends noticed good color as well. That’s a good idea to maybe just use a more dilute solution . I would be curious to see what Lou has to say. 
 

I really like Lou Ekus he doesn’t heavily push tropic marin and has a chemistry background but explains tank chemistry in a simple way. 

My purple tang has the same thing after the water dropped I assumed it was just damage due to the extreme cold but it’s been resolving .

Great seller healthy aquaculture’s nems. They survived the winter freeze and tank getting down to 50 degrees and look better than ever and split .

12 hours ago, SuncrestReef said:

That was the most "Lions fan" moment ever...Blowing a 17 point lead in a huge game. 🤕

At least there's a sign of hope for next season.

I was shocked and impressed the Lions were ahead by that much.  I was rooting for them. I think Dan Campbell is a good coach but not a great coach and that was the difference.  Sometimes you just need to kick the field goal and also realize you have a talented team and you don’t need to rely on the trick plays.

Sorry John I was pulling for them. They are like the Charlie Brown of the NFL but if my Texas Rangers can win a World Series the Lions can make it to the Super Bowl.

Seems in the end it’s always the same three or 4 teams that get there.  

1 hour ago, obrien.david.j said:

Will you sing us this song, at the club meeting Sunday?   

Would be glad to but I won’t be able to make it 😔. Happy to sing it when we see each other again!!😂 (Be careful what you wish for 🤫) 

Heres a song about corralline algae to get you through 😂

8 hours ago, half-astronaut said:

Also, what corals are named after Jawbreaker songs?

Jawbreaker is just a brand name for the types of mushroom. It has to do with the swirl coloration like the candy. They are usually discomma mushrooms and it’s simply a marketing tool. 
 

I don’t know of any jawbreaker songs but I am a big fan of Pat Benatar so I can make up a song for you on the spot .

You’re a jawbreaker

Dream maker money taker 

don’t you mess around with me 

12 hours ago, SuncrestReef said:

Posting this in Out of Bounds for obvious reasons.  

As a native of Detroit (born and raised there, moved to Oregon when I was 21), I've been a life-long Lions fan even though it typically ends in disappointment.  I honestly never thought I'd see the day that the Lions might be on the verge of a Super Bowl opportunity.  Anyone else out there feeling as excited and optimistic as I am???

Go Lions!

I don’t have strong emotions either way for the Lions.  I hope they win but I don’t think they stand a chance against the Niners but anything can happen. 
 

It actually benifitted them that they lost to the Cowboys because Greenbay was the hot team this year at the playoffs and they almost won.  I was tired of hearing about the “bad call “ . It was actually the right to call the penalty and the Cowboys have been on the wrong end of so many calls it was nice to have one go their way. Cowboys won’t make another Superbowl until Jerry Jones is no longer in charge. I didn’t think they were going this year. 
 

Jared Goff gets off his game when he gets hit and the Niners have the pass rush to do it. If Deebo Samuel is playing it won’t be close. 
 

But again anything can happen. My Texas Rangers won their first World Series so I’m rooting for the Lions to knock the smirk off of Purdy’s face !😊

Think I found what I need please close mods ☺️

5 minutes ago, Colbymac92 said:

Depends!

1. Do you want a fresh cut or would you like it to heal/encrust the plug?
2. How big of a piece would you like?

 

I was thinking about 1.5" for $40? but im flexible to meet your budgetary needs 

 

Pm sent

1 minute ago, Colbymac92 said:

if you're interested, I have an OG watermelon grape chalice that I could slice a frag off. it's about 12 years old and SUPER hardy!

This chalice came from a tank I inherited in 2019, at that time it was already 8 years old.

It went through a 10 day power outage in 2021, and barely survived. I've managed to completely heal back and grow it out more since then.

Ahhh yes that’s a classic for sure I will take a frag how much ?

5 hours ago, Deuce00 said:

The odd thing was most my favorite fish lived besides the clowns. Lost 3 Chromis 3 pajama cardinal all 5 years old. 2 clowns and a random goby I had in a 10g. So 9 total. I had an air stone with a battery bubbler going mostly the whole time, the cobalt aquatics one.  The fish that lived were an Orchid Dotty, Coral Beauty, yellow Coris, and my new Midas blenny just got from cuttlefish. The aptasia survived in the cold, go figure. The cold water destroyed my mushrooms and made the tank go cloudy pretty quickly. I found out quick that most my heaters were trash, so I’ll be getting a few new Eheims. Now just need to go back up to Portland and goto cuttlefish and get a few new things here eventually. 

Sorry for the loss but glad you’re moving forward and staying in. My tank stayed clear so my guess is the loss of the coral and fish caused an ammonia spike that added insult to injury. I was afraid of that with my tank. I thought the puffer was dead because he wasn’t moving and was considering disposing of him and then his eye moved as if he knew .

2 hours ago, Electrokate said:

I am a little nervous... haven't been there in over a week because of the storm! The building has a natural gas generator system that supposedly runs the whole thing because there are servers for the district there so hoping for the best. 

Fingers crossed 🤞 

Lost my one baby jawbreaker and they are my favorite mushrooms. Looking to buy one or two to replace it.

I am also looking for old school chalices 

watermelon

oregon mummy eye

my Miami 

And crazy fox 

Let me know what you have 

17 minutes ago, obrien.david.j said:

Your tank got cold, but did you have circulation in the tank?

#1 thing a tank needs is Oxygen, and gas exchange.  That happens at the air-water interface at the top of your tank.   The simplest way to enable this, is Circulation.   battery powered air pump... is just circulating the water.   Smallest of small pump, on backup power... circulates the water.   With my the MP10/40/60 backup 12v supply situation, all power heads drop to something like 20% (or 10%?) and just run low and slow, for as long as possible. ... circulation.

Temp on the other hand, CAN do bad things.  But I wouldn't have expected that much of a fish loss from 20 degrees down.   That's what my tank did, with zero fish loss.

Sorry to hear about your losses.  Heartbreaking.

I didn’t have any circulation going for 14 hours while the generator was down and the only coral that died was the one acro and one frag of zoas and a baby jawbreaker .   I had a theory that just like in humans oxygen needs would be significantly reduced. People who drown in extreme cold water have a better chance of brain survival. Newborns who have been without oxygen and have brain injury get hypothermic treatment to lessen the brain injury. I also have a rectangular tank versus cube for better gas exchange. 

Tank is going to be in great hands with Kate! Glad to see the program starting back up !

On 1/19/2024 at 7:08 AM, obrien.david.j said:

Wind was back last night at our house.   Power outages reported around us, withing 1-2mile radius... but ours stayed on.   

Lost two more big fir trees, but it was expected.  They were holding up half the weight of two other big fir trees that had fallen.   They're now resting on the neighbors roof.     We have a row of smallish cedar trees.   I expect to lose 2-3 of them.   The ground has heaved, roots visible, and the wind was bending them over 40%-ish.  Will they need to come out, or just learn to continue growing - but at an angle.   Waiting for clear morning light to assess what the world really looks like.

Sorry to hear you're out again.

You had such a nice backyard with all the trees glad they didn’t go through the roof. Thursday night the freezing rain and wind came and there were power lines down trees down and roads closed. 
 

Power went out again Thursday night at 11:30 pm and Sirena and I were up all night trying to keep the old generator going. 
 

Luckily for us Amazon must have put high priority on cold weather items because they delivered the new generator in 24 hours 2 days before. We just didn’t have gas or propane to run it.  We chained up yesterday morning and the side roads were bad.  People with no chains were sliding backwards. This one woman was frozen in fear halfway up the hill and in the middle of the roads we needed to pass . I told her to just to reverse but she wouldn’t listen. She wanted me to drive her car for her and I thought about it but :

1. I’m not an expert in driving in winter weather 

2. I had spikes on my shoes 

3. Sirena was braking down a hill trying to get around the person and I just needed her to move immediately which she finally we did

Shout Out to the Happy Valley Fred Meyer on Sunnyside . They had gas cans out and we got extra gas and they helped pump it for us.  I bought propane but the night crew took the key for the propane container.  As I was in the store trying to find wood pellets and getting some space heaters and a bottle of wine for Sirena , they found me and said they found the key. Nice group there always helpful!

New Lesson: propane is great and cleaner and easier to install and one standard container lasts about 3 1/2 hours BUT it can freeze and stop working in severe cold so glad I got a dual fuel generator and we switched to gas.

Tip for you all: 

1. Heaters  don’t do well with temperature swings . I added another heater to my tank and watched it and sure enough started smoking and I removed it immediately. 
2. Have a bigger heater than you need if you don’t have gas heating. Even with a backup heater that  I keep in the tank I couldn’t raise the temp above 71. 
3. I have a 90 gallon tank and 2 200 watt heaters and I only have to run one usually because the fish room is plenty warm.  I ran 2 and that wasn’t enough so added a 300 watt that I have for such emergencies. 
4. I would suggest buying new heaters when an event like this happens. I also buy new heaters if I break down a tank. I have 2 new ones on the way.

5. Space heaters draw a significant amount of power for their size. Never plug them into an extension cord.  I also wouldn’t suggest plugging 2 in the same outlet . We blew a circuit once in doing that. 
 

Sorry to miss this but so very generous of you to donate to all those who have lost corals. 

1 hour ago, Flash21 said:

At least the Mailbox is standing upright 😂 

That’s the first thing everyone says and we have backup parts !

The hill out front claimed several victims.  It’s pretty steep . We get to see a lot of the action since we were at the bottom. Someone hit my trash can and just left it with all the garbage spilled. Someone slid into this van and took off.  I told one guy who was stuck not to go up and he didn’t listen and ended up in a ditch further up. What is wrong with people . On a positive we ordered a generator from Amazon that was supposed to come in 2 weeks and it arrived yesterday 24 hours after we ordered it so we have a backup generator now. Others May want to try ordering . There was another generator same as mine in the truck too so they must be prioritizing them.

5 hours ago, Eatfrenchfries said:

Hope everyone is doing well and they are keeping their tanks warm. 

 

 

Power came back on for me after 52 hours.

 

Bad

- Complete loss of life in all tanks (240g total). 

- Halted all pod production. Unknown if total loss. With my luck it'll just be Tigriopus and rotifers alive.

- breeding projects....gone

- bacteria culture projects..... gone

 

Good

- saved all of the phytoplankton in my collection. Shaken on the hour every hour. 

- only thing to survive the tank wipes was Sargassum (prefers cooler temps)

- mangroves are fine

 

Ran a Ecoflow delta, Yeti 1500x, and hooked up a marine battery. Managed to keep power up for close to 40 hours. After that I was charging power cells st work to take home. 

But in the end it was not enough. I staggered what I could, went manual where I could. The hardest part was keeping the heat up in my apartment. 

 

Next time I'll get a place with wood burning capability or allow gas/propane generator. 

 

Maybe I just had too many things to take care of. The big glass sliding door facing a frozen creek didn't help either, terrible insulation.

Regardless, it was definitely a learning experience for me. 

 

Not sure where to go from here. Stepping away is not likely. Though my heart is definitely not in it right now. 

My heart hurts for you Sharokh I don’t blame you for being so discouraged right now. Sounds like an awful 52 hours. I would also support a fundraiser to get you back on track and I’m sure others would too.  

Power was out here from 11am Saturday to around 4pm Sunday.

I have an interlock and generator and tested it before to make sure it worked and had 20 gallons of gas so I thought we were set. Then about 4 hours later there was a loud bang and the generator stopped working . We don’t have gas out here so it was a rough night.  It was probably 40 degrees in the house and we layered up and put a lot of blankets in the bed and ran the car to charge our phones and heat up (with the garage door open of course) 

Tank was without power or heat for 22 hours. Temp was down to 52 degrees. 
 

I know nothing of engines but Sirena worked on cars in her teens and I was like Sirena you got this you can do this !! These engines are like old school cars . So she looked at some videos we took the engine apart in the shop and 2 hours later and a little bit of cursing she got it apart and cleaned it and it started working !!!

I am so proud of her !  Power came back 2 hours later. 
 

It took about 4 hours to get the temp back to 72 with extra heaters thrown in. The puffer was not moving and I thought he was dead . My anemones were shrunk up. Surprisingly this morning everything even the sps is fine . 
 

Lessons learned:

1. I am going to use ethanol free gas as I don’t think the stabil really did anything .

2. I am buying another generator as a spare with dual fuel (propane and gas)

3. We need space heaters too as our heater even with a generator fails because the wifi fails and the only thing we can get going is the wood pellet stove.

4. Coral and fish can survive in 52 degree water without flow. 
 

Below is the thread I did when I was thinking about this . It may be of help. 
 

Nice billiard room. I suck at pool and don’t have the patience for it and for some reason learned to play with my left arm as a kid. I also lose focus in golf and prefer contact sports and trash talking because apparently I want to hurt people  !😎

I am a supporting member ! Glad to see this back up and running !!