Lexinverts

Orchard Reef has nice stuff!

Looking good, Jake! I love this Tenuis! Bert's Blue Tenuis from BHC Reef Oasis in Corvallis.

I got some awesome clowns and an anemone in the deal!

Yes, I am in Corvallis. Send me a PM.

While I generally agree with Micah about ich, the risk of velvet necessitates copper QT in my opinion. I got a nasty velvet outbreak from a Powder Brown Tang from Diver's Den. The fish looked great for 2 weeks and then was dead in 2 days. I would absolutely do a copper treatment for 30 days in a QT tank. See directions at the below link. Get a Hanna Copper checker to check your levels. I use Copper Power. https://humble.fish/copper/

New tank video:

I came back after 2 weeks away and colors in the tank are looking great! Kudos to my wife for keeping things filled and the animals fed!

Cody, I just got home and was able to measure my skimmer chamber, I will take the skimmer.

Go really slow with the Rowaphos. It is powerful stuff.

I have a bunch. PM me.

Very nice! Time for some corals!

Hi Brad, Thanks! Now, time for you to show some pictures of your tanks 😀! Aquabiomics.com @EMeyer sells the OCEAMO Icp tests. The Mass spec service is brand new, so it is not even available on the Aquabiomics website yet. You need to get a standard ICP test and then email Christoph (office@oceamo.at) and request the Mass spec upgrade. It will be an additional charge but I am not sure how much yet. The Reefblueprint folks also offer their own standard ICP test, but I am not sure how reliable that one is yet. (https://www.aquaholicaquaculture.com/store/p102/ICP-Test.html) I'm still experimenting with the ReefBlueprint Isol8 trace elements. I was previously dosing several trace elements separately using the ATI supplements based on the OCEAMO reports. However, juggling all of those bottles every day is kind of complicated and I am intrigued by the single dose possibilities offered by the Isol8 supplements. I'm going to keep doing it and then test again in a few weeks with the OCEAMO ICP Mass spec test. The Mass spec test is the best for trace elements, since it has a much lower limit of detection than standard ICP and can detect lost of stuff that ICP cannot. If this doesn't work out, I might give Andre's system a try. I have been following him for quite a while, and he has lots of adherents that are having good success! Yup, that Iodine surprised me. I ordered the Salifert Iodine test right after I saw that report. Cheers, Andy

I have gonis. I most have sps, gonis, and soft corals in my systems. I'll send you a PM.

No, those are sponges. I don't have those anymore. They are hard to keep happy. I'll send you a PM.

The first thing you'll probably want to address is why they got so high in the first place. Are you feeding lots of pellets? If so, I would back off the pellets and feed mostly frozen mysis and nori. I almost exclusively feed these two foods to my tanks. NoPox isn't the greatest stuff in my view. It always led to other problems when I used it. If you have a RS250 you could easily do some large water changes to get nitrates down as a first step. Doing regular water changes will help keep your nitrates in check long term, as well. Keeping phosphates down usually requires a little more than that. To bring down phosphates in my tanks, I run some Rowaphos in a filter sock. In my experience, an oversized skimmer will do a good job at controlling nitrates, but not phosphates. The Red Sea 250 only has an adequate skimmer, so probably regular water changes are in your future.....But having some large soft corals such as large Tyree green toadstools can help lower nitrates quickly in some systems. A big coral population in general will utilize nitrates help to keep them in check. I am currently dosing nitrates in all of my tanks because my corals use them up so fast that they quickly go to 0. I still have to use chemical media to lower phosphates, however. A refugium with chaeto can also help reduce nitrates, but doesn't tend to do that much for phosphates. And I'm not sure that you could run enough chaeto in your back chamber to make a difference for nitrates either. In a RS250, you could put some Rowaphos in a filter bag and add that to the media rack in the back chamber. Be careful with Rowaphos, though, as it can pull phosphate out of your water very quickly. You want to do it gradually, and under-dose what it says in the instructions. Use Hanna Phosphate and Nitrate high range checkers to track your progress. Very important.....keep the ratio of nitrates to phosphates roughly 100:1. As an example, that would be nitrate of 10 and phosphate of .1. In my systems, I try to shoot for nitrate of 5-15 and phosphate of .05-.15. If your phosphate ever gets HIGHER than your nitrate, you will often end of with dinoflagellate and/or cyanobacteria problems. Low nitrate and high phosphate is where people end up sometimes when they use NoPox or vodka dosing, so that is why I stay away from the stuff. Good luck!

Nice! Are you coming down to Portland anytime soon? What kinds of corals are you looking for?

I have very thick gorgonian just like that, and I would be happy to sell you a frag. In the past I have heard corky sea fingers described as an encrusting gorgonian, but when I look at KP aquatics, I see gorgonians that are branching like the thick ones I have. Here's a couple of pictures of the one that I have in my seahorse tank.

That was a great game!

Good game so far!

I bet you an SPS frag that the Rams win!

Us Lions fans always have to live vicariously through other teams.....😬

Here's an update: https://www.reef2rainforest.com/2022/02/12/pijacs-lacey-act-update/?fbclid=IwAR0MhJi5Yt-LNEsqntGZbH7QkCcOoBD7Zz-9X5KbxJggbp2WJKkkyGpCuJ8

Following up on my previous post regarding the Isol8 trace element dosing by Reef Blueprint, I just got my latest chemistry report from Oceamo. A cool update is that now they offer a Mass Spec service as an option rather than ICP. Dr. Christoph Denk upgraded this report to MS for free. Thanks, Christoph! These MS water tests are available in North America from @EMeyer at www.aquabiomics.com Ostensibly, Mass Spec means that they are more able to accurately detect trace elements. Here's my report after about a month of dosing trace elements with Isol8. Generally things look pretty good, with a few exceptions. Given I have only been using the Isol8 for 3 weeks prior to the report, I don't really know whether they will even out eventually. The other unknown is that my previous Oceamo reports have all been ICP, which is not supposed to be as accurate as MS...so comparing previous reports to this one is like apples and oranges. I think the high Iodine is due to me overdosing the ATI Iodine supplement before I switched to the Isol8. I'm going to run another test soon to be sure. Here's what Christoph says about the difference between standard ICP and Mass Spec: "Using the Oceamo ICP-MS upgrade your sample will be analyzed using ICP-MS (instead of ICP-OES). ICP-MS (ICP with mass spectrometry) is by orders of magnitude more sensitive compared to ICP-OES, and allows up to 10.000-fold lower limits of detection. This brings the following advantages: - Optimum trace element concentrations are often below the limit of detection in ICP-OES analysis. Important trace elements can be measured with ICP-MS in the relevant concentration range in a reliable way. Those ultra-traces include Selenium, Chromium, Copper, Cobalt and Nickel. - Toxic heavy metals (like Mercury, Thallium, Bismuth, Lead, Thorium, Uranium, ...) can be detected at very low concentrations with ICP-MS (allowing counter-acting long before issues in your reef inhabitants appear) - ICP-MS allows to measure additional elements which can play a role in aquarium husbandry (like Caesium, Tellurium, Cer and Ruthenium)."

Here's a fairly helpful summary given by Coral Magazine: https://www.reef2rainforest.com/2022/02/09/aquarium-apocalypse-can-lacey-act-amendments-really-cripple-or-end-the-u-s-aquarium-and-pet-trade/ There is a useful discussion between Rich Ross, Ben Johson and Matt Pedersen here: Notwithstanding the title of the episode, "the aquarium hobby is doomed" it doesn't seem likely that the Lacey Act amendments will become law anytime soon. It is very important, however, to contact our senators and let them know why the Lacey Act amendment should not become law in this form. And, finally, we need to support the PIJAC, wich is the only political organization that our hobby has to communicate our concerns to congress. See link below. https://pijac.org/