pdxmonkeyboy

I feel like if you are able to never test and have good results, then you are not adding anything to your tank or no SPS are growing strong?   My calcium and alk needs have changed ALOT since i didn't have any sps or clam in the tank.

It is totally feasible that I am missing something?  

well there you go.  He was hungry

 

are you using tapatalk? if not, i would highly suggest it

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I'm beginning to think that reef keeping should actually just be called saltwater testing.

 

Hey man, you have any hobbies? yeah, i like to test saltwater and when I'm done I tell myself, you better test that water again just to make sure the numbers are correct.

[emoji1]

 

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dibs on Rasta rocks. yes Sean, I'll frag you some:)

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tenius #3 please. shoot me a text and I'll come fetch it.

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.. ahhh there was a link. it didn't show up on my screen so I was like...wth? I guess his daughter and new husband run the store now. nothing fancy for sure, but I'll take good deals over fancy any day

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yeah Sean, you should head over. he said he was going to put then all on sale this weekend. I think he said $99 for the 4" and 79 for the smaller ones?

I need to stay away from fish stores.. "yeah let just go and look"... 30 minutes later.. "ok, your total is $298"

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ummmm, must be an inside joke. I did manage to stop by there. tiny store but he had some really nice acro colonies at very reasonable prices. he also just got a big shipment of clams in

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you can speed things up by getting cycled live rock. I got mine from upscales. beautiful purple rock.

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All you really need to know about skimmers. They remove organic matter from your water before it can be turned into ammonia

http://www.reefedition.com/what-is-a-protein-skimmer-and-how-does-it-work/

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Well, we took a picture just to make sure... [emoji102]

thereby stealing it's soul. nice one Sean.

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it's a good thing you feel obsessed as their is a ton of reading and learning involved with reef tanks. I have seen coral beauties in tanks with mostly soft coral, i have heard they can nip at harder corals. I want to get a mandarin as well but even though I have had LFS owners tell me "oh yeah, they can eat pellets" everything I have ever read says that most starve to death if you don't have a mature tank with lots of copapods.
since I don't have that yet, i bought a t-shirt with a mandarin on it instead

what kind of skimmer do you have?

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I've seen a fish like that when I was in college. I'm not sure if it is the exact same one however as I was on acid

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my only observation is that the red sea mag test is very very finicky if you don't follow the instructions EXACTLY!!

shake for a full 15 seconds after each DROP of solution A and shake a full 60 seconds after adding the 5 drops of B. Then titrate. I'm willing to bet you will come in lower on your mag reading.

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my system is pretty durable. I use this.. https://www.google.com/search?q=temperature+controller&client=ms-android-verizon&sa=X&biw=360&bih=560&tbs=vw:l,ss:44&tbm=shop&prmd=sivn&srpd=466882350852107576&prds=epd:699564730045312934,cdl:1,cid:1072488906883695803&ved=0ahUKEwj86ZfTocDTAhVH22MKHWN2DvEQgTYIwAU

and two finnex titanium heater elements.. the ones with no thermostats. I calibrated the controller with a glass thermometer. that controller looks cheesy but you can set temp and deadband at .1 degree increments... something you cant do with the inkbirds. and it has an audible alarm...something the inkbird doesn't have.

lastly, in case the controller breaks I have an old heater set a couple degrees lower than normal plugged into a separate outlet. It will only run if the controller breaks and temp falls.

I'm a big fan of the metal heaters, i have broke glass ones.. my fault, but still.

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I'll use whichever one becomes available first

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phase 1 complete, 4,396 phases to go

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Delete

 

Accidentally purchased two rolls. It's 6 or 7 feet by 3 feet. I figure a beer or two is fair price.

 

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You can place him on a sheet of nori and see if that helps.

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Oh, gosh. I misspoke.
You're right. Glyphosate is mixed with a surfactant in Round-up. I just swore I remember that it, itself, was a surfactant. My mistake. 
Although, after looking deeper, where the surfactant is applied on the plant (I.e. root, leaves, stem) plays a larger factor in the survival of the plant than the surfactant itself. While there are surfactants that when applied to any part of the plant will kill it.
I guess there are more factors in the home made weed killer than I thought.
 
 

Huh, i wasn't aware of surfactants that could kill plants. Makes sense though given the broad definition of surfactant. Our go to surfactant is Dr bronners

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Nice looking tank! In wall fo sure on the next house. Probably a couple of them actually.

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I was also thinking after reading, it might just be the soap. 
Soap is a darn good surfactant and that's what can easily kill a lot of plants. That's all Round-Up Weed Killer is. 

I'm going to have to disagree here. While round up (glyphosate) has a surfactant in it to increase foliar coverage, its actual mode of action is the interruption of synthesis of amino acids. This disrupts the movement of molecules through the plant, a build up of a certain compound that I don't remember, and the ultimate death of the plant.

Soap doesn't kill plants at all. In fact we use soap as a surfactant on many beneficial spray mixtures.

I don't mean to diss, but at least now you know.

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Well the long and short of it is that the author found a plausible explanation for growth patterns of coral based on flow models and how they are diffused relative to velocity. The theory being that the corals would grow in a manner to maximize food capture. It's a good theory based on solid assumptions but it is unfortunately a qualitative exolanation. Which is a researchers way of saying "This all sounds good but I can't actually back it up with statistical analysis" Two things I thought were .. huh, this would actually mean corals are more compact in high flow (less need to maximize food capture) and two, I think this may be related to really low flow scenarios as the units of flow (cm/s) seems really low to me. We always used meters/sec for stream velocities and even slow moving streams (slower than my wavemakers at their lowest setting) were much higher than the flow numbers shown in the report. Meaning there may be a threshold that this theory brakes down.

But as Sean mentioned, this may be entirely too geeky for most peeps.

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