ReeFit

Do I have to go anywhere near your ***?

Nobody's at war, its all just healthy debating and opinions. In the end we are all mutual friends sharing a hobby that has great rewards for hard work. Its good to hear multiple sides to assist your own decisions in hopefully avoiding head ache and unnecessary pocket book fires.

strap that baby on top!

thats a really nice cube, makes me want to work on mine. Love the ricordeas. How old is the tank?

One morning i woke up and my kenya tree was looking down at me with an evil grin like it was going to take over the world...:eek:

I know, we're not very far away from each other. Right now we are just doing the demo, got it down to the bones. Its a big mess, local dump and recycling facility is liking me right now.

I actually like to take xenia and kenya out, roll it up in some nori and rice... chop it into rolls and put a little wasabi and ginger on it. mmmm.

Your tank shouldn't cycle at all if you keep everything undisturbed. I would even do a 10-15% water change at this time too when you setup the new tank. The important thing is to get the tank inhabitants stabilized in their temporary area and get your tank setup and operating quickly. I always recommend taking the sand out because i never place rock on top of sand, it creates unstable rockwork and could lead to collapse or crush sand dwelling critters or burrowers. I place base rock in first and then place sand around it.

i'd either go hypo on it or raise the tank temp to about 210deg. how many broke heaters would u need? I know i have at least 3 in my garage.(scratch)

Thank you, i like a clean tank like my wife likes a clean kitchen. I don't touch her kitchen and she don't touch my tanks. Now if only i could figure a way how to get out of taking out the trash.

just spray that stuff with some weed killer from home depot

Sweet deal, yea i love that clarifier, i use it all the time when i clean my tanks, etc. I have not had any ill effects on my corals or fish, etc.

i use clarifier by seachem, it clears particulates up in a few hours, otherwise run some carbon and a good filterbag it should clear up in 6-10 hours depending on how much debris is in the tank and how small it is. do you have good flow and do you have a skimmer box?

if you have pics of the 20lber's i'd be interested in them

self serve except when its 10 below or torrential downpour out side.

hey hippo tangs are just tall boned? their still thin! i'd never cut down a fellow member.

Here is the 55G mixed, 29G mixed biocube, 72G bowfront and Ref.

forget the seahorse, look the size of that hippo tang next to it?

Looks like your corals are going through a hurricane in that one pic. the epitome of good flow! LOL

Silicate sand has no buffering capacity, Coral based sand is full of calcium, will help keep your ph swings down and is part of their natural environment for a reef setup. There are 100's of articles on this subject so i won't go into big detail on it. Bottom line is silica sand will work fine, you can get it at your local walmart for cheap, it will not harm your livestock unless you don't know the source of the sand, then your just playing roulette at that point. In my opinion I am all about replicating the corals natural environment and would do what i could to make it that way in as low stress of a change as possible. Stores that dabble in pond / freshwater etc sell it. but i've not seen any at the salt only stores. but i don't shop everywhere either.

it will work, you will undoubtedly be chasing some of your parameters sooner than you would with a coral based substrate. I personally would introduce like 5-10lbs of aragonite, don't use the live sand because it will definitely throw off your tanks conditions, let your bacteria seed good clean dead sand. do this once a month over time and let it seed. you may get a mini cycle or 2 because of it, but it shouldn't harm anything.

i agree that you probably won't see any silicate leeching into your water if you haven't by now because its bound to the silica, but there are tons of reasons why you would want to use aragonite over the stuff you have if your trying to do anything but a FOWLR. You need to do some research on sand beds and how they affect a reef system. notice how the saltwater LFS don't sell silica sand.

I just make sure to change my pads out regularly and i clean opposite grains each time. if i get hairline scratches i use wet sand paper to polish it out.

would seem to me that would be a hard tank to clean or do maintenance on with the odd viewing angle.