Burningbaal

Looks like my hydor 700 isn't repairable. Anyone have a recommendation for a circulation powerhead of similar power? Can't break the bank, tho. If you have one to sell, even better Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk

Another FITS. Not this blue in person, but oh well: A closer look at the sump area. Under the floss will be a submersible bar light and grate for growing (and removing) hair algae. The rest of the area is return with a heater, ATO and pico 70gph return pump. I'll probably remove the filter floss in the once fully settled Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I747 using Tapatalk

It won't let me upload pictures, so here's a link to the first four pictures (just taken with my phone): https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9LsMl29jfgoUVY3WWZqNUFaTUU/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9LsMl29jfgobTZLdGdBYkw4bGc/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9LsMl29jfgodmZ0dG9hdFRiX3M/view?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B9LsMl29jfgodGJKcVdSLWN6TE0/view?usp=sharing Fish picture is of one side of the tank. No idea if the rock will stay like this, I was just trying to get it off the glass Second picture of the display end third picture of the sump area last picture of the same side of the tank, but with just the actinics on

Hi everyone, I am trying to get back to this. I used to have a 90g display and 55 sump/fuge that I had just gotten the way I liked and was building livestock when I moved to the Seattle area (from Corvallis) and couldn't take it. In a condo I lived in at first, I converted a standard 29g aqeon tank into a peninsula by adding some black acrylic to one end. I'll post pictures soon, but I've got about 4-5" on one side that's behind the acrylic. It's split roughly in half with an over/under so there's a 3-4" overflow from the main tank to a 'fuge', then over/under to the return section. return is powered with a hydor pico 70 (20" head max). flow: I've got two hydor koralia 240s running now and am trying to clean up a koralia 700. assuming about 25g of display, that's 47x water flow, but I'm thinking I'll put the 240s on a simple wavemaker, so it'll be more like 37x flow (still not counting the 70gph return's flow). lighting: dual 20w LED, one 10000K, the other actinic blue, can be separately timed. Have a moonlight kit I need to assemble was thinking of adding a submersible light for PAR in the 'fuge' to grow chaeto or micro on a grid for nutrient export, have not purchased yet substrate: Tank was initially set up about 2 years ago, was stabilizing for about 4 months, then I moved to my house and it's been having zero maintenance since then (luckily no livestock except substrate). Not even topoff or heater. no flow, zero maintenance. about 40lbs of rock, mostly dry, about 10lbs was live two years ago... about 2" of sand. was from one of those questionable 'live sand' bags (again, 2 years ago) Yes, I have a BRS 5-stage RODI. I've just got the tanked topped up and am starting a series of 5g water changes, hoping to replace most of the water within a month (5g at a time). I'm ignoring the tank's salinity while doing these, just making sure the new water is dead on. Choices to make: * Do I put a ~5000K submersible light bar in the 'fuge' and grow chaeto or have grid for microalgae? or do I put a tiny skimmer in there? Maybe both if I put the skimmer above the return pump? * Have a topoff I haven't set up yet, should I add nutrients to this? I have a 10g glass laying around I'll probably use to store the source and a diaphragm pump I'll use to move the water * Should I bother with a backpack skimmer? I have an old one (have to check brand) that I once had on a 55g I could probably use livestock: None yet, but I have a vision! I would love to make this an SPS tank with VERY minimal motile livestock. at most, I'm thinking a shrimp or two and MAYBE a small fish (goby?). I'm imagining a tank of montis and acros and something encrusting. I would consider a LPS or something too, especially lower in the tank So once I get the water changes through, I think I'll get 10lbs ish of LR rubble to stick in the return area, just to make sure there's still something live in there. Probably chuck in some tiny shred of something from the seafood aisle and let that ride for a while. Then I'll get to livestock. Thoughts? I know there's a bunch of nano people here, so please give your suggestions for livestock and for my 'choices' that are pending.

Thinking I may head down, looking for probably 1-3 member CUC for my femto. I know I want an herbivore or two, maybe a detrivore? Ill try to make it down to check it out for the first time! Sent using Forum Runner

mmmm...marine creature death juice...yummy :/

Mangroves should grow under a pot light ...er...plant lights, ask your local hydroponics store for a bulb or just get a 6500k cfl bulb from home depot/etc. Just like a refugium. Usually you'd run a fife on opposite cycle from you reef, but since the mangrove is using. Atmospheric CO2, not dissolved CO2, it shouldn't make a difference, maybe whatever 12hours you feel like? Sent using Forum Runner

I think mangroves make a lot of sense. I also am all for minimal disturbance of the rdsb, as kasasah said, much of the value is when leaving it undisturbed. I still haven't known anyone to keep a deb over 10yrs that didn't cause issues eventually, and a 5g bucket has way less denitrification space than a tank-sized 6-8" dab, so it'll probably fill faster. Also, the idea is denitrification via reduction of nitrate to nitrogen, not sure it can help with phosphates...maybe? So, when you have to change it out (mangroves should make it last longer, in theory), I'd plan to keep a 3-4"diameter core undisturbed. I'd drill as many small (1/8"-1/4") holes in a 3-4" PVC pipe as you can and leave the pipe in your deb from day one. When you replace, put another one in a different place, in the new sand. leave the old core alone until a week or two later, then pull it out, preferably leaving the old sand in place. Even if you leave both in, the holes will allow the bacteria (etc) to populate the new sand pretty quickly. If you have to leave the old one in place, mark it so you know which one to take out next time. Good points by kasasah, et al Sent using Forum Runner

first of all, you'll probably lose this batch, but the rumor is that once a pair starts spawning they keep spawning. I'd start to set up for the next batch. you can order pods/rotifers/baby brine from online retailers that will ship overnight, probably won't get to you till tuesday. I'd start your own baby brine factory. get a 2g tank and a plant-spectrum (5600-6500K) CFL light for it, get a live food starter kit and they'll get going. I've always though it'd be cool to rig the factory with a bulkhead to drain into the display (your eclipse) and return water from the display to the factory with an aqualifter

I'd bet that ducan came from a tank that had high phosphates/nitrates, particularly in a dirty sandbed. I don't know where it came from, but that's my bet. therefore, the skeleton of it is overloaded from soaking in the nutrients. if your tank parameters are right and you scrub off what you can as often as possible, it should diminish over time. Think of it as the stony part having been bathing in algae food for months/years. you've transplanted it into a low-algae-food environment (so you tell us, though numbers would be helpful). so the algae will continue to grow as long as the nutrients are there (and there's enough light). You could light-starve it, but it'll just grow again once the lights are back on. you can dip it, but it will just grow again after it recovers. you've just got to keep removing it for a few weeks (hopefully not longer). As the algae grows, it'll pull the nutrients out of the skeleton, into the algae, which you remove. enough iterations of this will cause it to eventually starve out. It probably did grow faster after you removed a bunch because it was growing closer to the nutrient source. I, personally, wouldn't focus on a dip because it doesn't remove the nutrients and, in fact, slows the algae growth so it'll just drag the problem out. just my $0.02

http://www.latimes.com/sports/sportsnow/la-sp-sn-shark-golf-course-20121025,0,7711527.story

Generally true, but in a non-ocean system, it's partially acting as a nutrient sink (and partially what we actually want it for), so at some point, the sink is full of dishes. if you stir it up as part of the system, you're probably doomed. hence my idea is this post. That, to me, is the perfect implementation of a dsb and would work great in a cryptic filtration setup

You're right, I'd expect maybe 2-3yrs and use a pipe or something to leave a small core undisturbed during the change-over if possible Sent using Forum Runner

true for oxx155, looks like an intense setup. I'd recommend if you're putting a sugar DSB in the cryptic tank (not a bad idea, I'm a huge fan of the remote dsb, and it certainly doesn't need the light). make sure there's an easy way to tweak the plumbing on the fly to take that tank out of the system. that way when (not if) you replace the dsb, you can leave the rest of the tank working as standard while you spend a few hours (or days) replacing the sand bed. just my $0.02

could work, but you'd want to watch the bubbles (especially popping for salt spray) in an uncontained fuge and also, you'd probably need to up your fuge's lamp wattage. they'll be getting access to more CO2, but they need more light to use it. that's just on a technically molecular-speaking basis, it may not be significant in practice. give it a shot, I'm thinking a big fatty long (or round) airstone under your macro would make a lot of sense, give it a shot and let us know!

TTT I really need some responses, sponsors!

possible, you'd have to keep it clean, rather than doing it myself, I always vote for diamond gobys and the like to stir it up. if you're doing 48" square and can keep the floorspace open (minimal rocks on the bottom), I've always liked the idea of a horshoe crab. if you have enough flow to keep the sand off the corals, a pair or two of engineer gobies are a personal favorite, they toss sand all the freaking time! Make your creatures do the cleaning for you!

voted for 2, had more like 3 in my 55 and 90, have about 1/4" in my femto for looks (and just a HOB filter for flow). I really like the sand-dwellers, so I doubt I'd ever go less than 1", especially not BB. with lots of sand-dwellers and 1-2", it should stay plenty stirred for the skimmer to get everything. also, I REALLY want to do a remote DSB when I (someday) put together a big tank again. my plan: get a 5-10g tank with 1-2 bulkheads and about 3/4 full of ultra-fine sand, possibly 1/2" of crushed coral on top for stability. glue (silicone/weld-on, whatever) a 3" wide shelf that goes the whole width (not length) of the tank ~1-2" above the sand level. Drain water from the tank's siphon pipe (I'll run a bean animal overflow every time) onto that shelf, the shelf breaks the flow to not disturb the sand. the bulkheads are on the opposite end from the shelf to drain the water out (should be about the same height as the shelf, maybe a hair higher. I want this to break down dissolved organics, not particulate, so the full siphon will cause enough flow to hopefully keep particulate moving. drain out of this into the skimmer/sump/fuge/whatever. don't touch it. If you notice a problem (or on a schedule?), move the siphon pipe's drain to the sump directly, skipping the RDSB, taking it out of the system. squeeze a 2" or so PVC pipe down into the sand to keep it intact, scoop everything else out, refill with clean sand, remove the pipe so that core seeds the new stuff quickly. move the siphon drain back to the RDSB and you're back in business. my $0.04 (at least it took longer than two cents, not sure it's worth more)

Hello All, hopefully you have found the new banners on the home page and are happy with it, we're hoping it might stir up some new business, see the related thread for details. However, 2012 is coming to a close and we are shifting our sponsor memberships to a calendar year, so, as the vendor relations officer, I need two things from you. 1. contact info, at least an email address. I (and other current/future board members) will need to contact you for things like renewing memberships, general info, etc and we (thankfully!) have too many sponsors to list them in a single PM, so email will work better. phone numbers, mailing addresses, physical addresses, website url, pager, whatever you've got. I'm going to compile a spreadsheet of everything so we have it all in one place. 2. We will need to have contributions for all of 2013 received by December to renew your membership. Part of the calendar year shift is so we can keep easy track of who's up to date. At the most recent board meeting, the understanding is that nobody is covered past this December, so we'll need the whole amount for 2013 ($150). If you believe this is in error, please PM or email me with how much you contributed and when (during 2012), and I'll check with the treasurer to sort it out. Keep in mind we have the big get-together in early December and that's a great time to take care of your donations as we can raffle off prizes then! Please let me know ASAP what you plan on offering so we can know what to expect for that. Of course cash and donations for other purposes are also appreciated, but that's a good publicity opportunity for you in the club. As a reminder, this page has the basic info on being a sponsor

Good thoughts, I don't think we have plans to have it flashing at you on threads, at most I would think the control panel and on sub-forum lists, but probably not on threads. I, for one, would at least hope we could make it static if it was on threads (so it just loaded one still image when the page loaded, and changed when you went to a new page).

Hello all, In an effort to bring a little more value to our sponsors, Chief has (kindly) set up a rotating banner ad system to show the sponsor's banner in a random/rotating type fashion. currently, it only shows up on the main forum page (click 'forum' in the top left corner). I'm unsure if this can be expanded to include other sites. If you find the banner irritating, obtrusive or otherwise detrimental, please either post in this thread or message me (or any other officer/board member). If you have a reason to think that the site is running slower (only if it changed with this implementation about the 11th of this month), please message Chief. If you have further recommendations or thoughts, please post them here or message me. Because I don't have all the sponsor's email address, nor time to type out every sponsor's handle for a mass-PM right now, a message to our sponsors: Let current/new sponsors know that the banner needs to be 468x60 pixels.

All sold, thanks, Bob! Sent using Forum Runner

that dimorphism is true when you go crabbing on the coast too...must just be a crab thing?

tangs pending. runner is from salem, probably tonight, so salem people might want to bum a ride for something! contact soon!