ToxicPoison

So I figured I'd share my wish list with all of you and see what you think...if you're not too shy to share your opinion of course I'm listing them in my expected order of introduction. School of Blue-Green Reef Chromis (6ish) Bangai Cardnial (2 - This is at the request of my wife. Gotta keep her happy!) Kole Tang Green Mandarin I'm also considering a Kleins Butterflyfish to help with my Aiptasia problem. Would that be overstocked? (Tank specs are in my signature) The chromis will likely come from liveaquaria.com since I have a gift certificate there, but I'd like to get the remaining fish locally if possible...tips? Any other comments will (probably) be appreciated! (whistle)

This is what I'm thinking too..especially if that big black box is a chiller? Doesn't make sense to have a heat exchanger and a chiller. I'd toss it regardless..

Theres a few ways you can do this actually. 1) Go around your house, write down the power draw of every single device, and do the math noted above to figure out your consumption (Not easy, nor recommended) 2) If you are willing to wait until you move in to determine your power draw, you can install a device like this, which will record your total power consumption: http://www.theenergydetective.com/store/ You can also get a rough idea with a cheaper device like this: http://www.amazon.com/P3-International-P4400-Electricity-Monitor/dp/B00009MDBU This would probably be better if you wanted to have a certain subset of your house powered by wind/solar (ie Just your aquarium stuff) I'm not a professional electrician, so this is not professional advice

I've been out of town so I missed this but...Congrats Eric! He's adorable =)

Good luck Eric! Guess you won't have much time for fragging next week (laugh)

EVERYONE will have an opinion on how to aquascape and ultimately, you won't wind up doing exactly what they suggest anyways. You (and maybe your family) are the one who's going to be looking at this everyday... set it up the way YOU like it.

Portland drinking water report can be seen here: http://www.portlandonline.com/water/index.cfm?c=29551 It does not appear to have silicates in the water... Most major cities post their drinking water reports online. It's a nifty way to see what exactly is in your water without doing a bazillion tests.

Here is an 800w without a controller...not sure what you consider "cheap" http://www.aquacave.com/800w-titanium-heating-brelement-by-jalli-1627.html I prefer Won Brothers myself, but they don't seem to sell an 800w without a controller. Maybe you could get 2 400W? Might be better for redundancy purposes.. Good luck, tank seems to be coming along nicely!

Yeah, that's what I was figuring. The whole username/password thing in the URL kind of defeats the purpose of a "guest" account since I'd imagine someone with a small amount of smarts could just use that to log into my apex directly. Don't really want to take the chance of someone being all "Hrm..I wonder what this does" and turning off my pumps Seems silly that theres no view-only account. Guess I'll talk to Neptune shortly. Thanks for confirming my suspicions.

For a tank that size, you might want to look into a Brute garbage can or something for water storage. Just mix it in there, then use a small pump to get it into the tank. It'll most likely save you a lot of time in the future as well... I have 2 40 gallon containers plumbed together, and basically only need to mix up salt water every 6 months or so. Theres pictures in my tank thread if you wanna check it out.. Lifting 5 gallon buckets gets old real fast...and dropping them when your arms get tired is no fun at all...not that I know anything about that... (whistle)

So I have a Neptune Systems Apex controller. For the most part, it rocks and I love it. My biggest issue however, is the fact you can only view the data by logging in. There appears to be an "XML" section, but it appears pre-formatted and I cannot for the life of me figure out how the RSS feed is supposed to work... Theres nothing in the manual about using it as far as I can tell. I don't mind logging into the controller to see what my current tank state is, but it would be much nicer if there was a "view-only" guest account or something. I haven't contacted Neptune yet...figured I'd ask in here first. If no one knows, I'll get in touch with them. Thanks!

So I headed over to Eric's place to get just 1 zoa frag... I wound up with 2 zoas, a Xenia and an Acro. The best part however, is Eric's tank made my wife much more interested in reefing! She actually mentioned setting up a second, smaller tank...AWESOME! So, many thanks to CA2OR Corals...I couldn't ask for a better first experience with dealing with a PNWMAS vendor.

OK, sent you a PM

Depends on how urgently you want it looked at If you want, I can grab it when I get the zoas for the growout competition. If you want it looked at sooner, just let me know what your schedule is like and we can figure something out. I'm not that far from you I think.

A much better solution that I've found is to use the eggcrate diffusers for florescent lighting in offices ( http://www.collins-consulting.org/orchids/eggCrate.jpg ) Just cut the egg crate to the size of a cookiesheet, place it on the sheet, then fill each square with the mashed up food. Let it freeze and you can pop out little cubes of food. It seems to be a much better size than the ice cube trays, plus you can make a LOT more at once. Hope someone finds that helpful =)

I can confirm that Portland has approx 15 TDS straight from the tap (rock2)

In my experience, while the blue barrels are great for storage, they're a pain in the *** to plumb. You cannot get your hand in there to attach a bulkhead, and finding a pump small enough to fit in the opening, yet powerful enough to overcome the head-loss is also near-impossible. I prefer Brute containers since they're much easier to work with. I do still have my 2 25gallon barrels for emergencies though. I just find them too annoying to use daily. Just one guy's opinion...

Let me know if you're still looking for help on that LED panel... Small electrics are part of my job.

I wonder if I could convince my wife to do something like this... She does seem to have a passing interest in my tank, perhaps this will put her over the top! This should be fun to watch. (popcorn)

Thanks! I completely agree about the aquascaping. However, due to the overflow and where the Vortech needs to be, theres no way to move the rock around without blocking the flow completely to half the tank, or having rocks fall over a lot. It's actually a lot more open then it looks. Here's a side shot that shows this a bit better. In retrospect, I should've gone with corner overflows instead of a long one along the back. Next time perhaps The tank/stand was designed by myself. It was custom built by a company that now appears to be out of business. It's not that surprising since their company service seemed to consist of "I have your money, you have your tank, now leave me alone". The quality of work is very good though. (Shameless plug: Anyone looking to get into the tank building business? Let me know! (whistle) ) Thanks to everyone for all the kind words. Apparently I need more Corals cuz Emerald is mad at me (scary) So I'll get on that shortly.

er...uhm...that should be .02ppm. I do that a lot. I often refer to my water salinity as 1.25 too. Thanks for pointing that out. Thats not a bad idea either. I could probably just close the ball valves for the drain/return pipes and siphon out the fresh water. Is this more/less/the same effectiveness as muriatic acid? I think I'm more inclined to use the fresh water since it would do much less damage if it got into my system (I'm assuming). As for the blowtorch suggestions...not an option