Taylorhardy1

34 minutes ago, River City Corals said:

I have the Ghl and this it’s the bomb

What's the and this? I've heard great things about the ghl, and it's been sitting in my shopping cart for 3 months now lol. Just can't bring myself to order it,  half of me is convinced carx is the way to go.

Dosing pumps or carx? 

I get each has its pros and it's cons, but from a reliability standpoint? Which one is closer to a "set and forget" kinda setup? Will a doser be able to keep up with a heavily stocked sps/lps reef as it matures? Will I spend more on c02 and media, or on alk cal and Mag supplements? Am I gonna be forced into daily testing my alk again? With my garbage jebao doser I was constantly making minor adjustments and I hated it. Ive been looking at the ghl doser, alkatronic, and a few others. Some of them I've noticed have some interesting fail-safes. I've also seen quite a few carx setups with multiple fail-safes that seem to do really really well. This will be for my current 93g setup, but I'm working on getting me and my brothers 210 build off the ground (literally, need a stand to start making real progress) 😂 basically I want to know, overall which is more reliable? Which one will give my tank the most stability? Which setup will cost me more long term? 

What are the dimensions of the mh's? Might make a good fixture for an led conversion

I'm all for radion/t5 hybrid. 3 xr30g4 pros with diffusers with 3 blue+ t5s, and 1 purple+. Youll get nearly mh type shimmer, and the best colors and growth you've ever seen. 

The 3 most relatable memes in my life currently.

6 hours ago, Pennywise said:

Lmao.Yea the race car and other hobbies got pushed straight to the back burner.

I feel this. I sold my racecar to setup a new tank. The addiction is real. 

Went through almost an identical fiasco with my tank at the beginning of the year. Anytime I have something funky happening in my tank I test my basic elements (n03,p04, ammonia, alk, cal, etc.) 3 times before making a decision on anything. I take the average # between the 3 tests, and then base my attack plan based on those findings. I find it absolutely critical to test 3 times back to back on everything I have kits for. This process severely reduces chances of taking the wrong steps towards a solution. I also test my wc water just as extensively when issues arise.

Looks like I'm the only participant in this week's acroholics anonymous?

*everyone*

"hi Taylor."

Some might say the first step I need to take is admitting I have a problem. And I most definitely do. But I can't bring myself to stop buying them.

So, I'm here to ask you all to help feed my addiction. I'm in search of some nice tenuis frags to replace my high end ones I recently lost. I really want to find a nice pink lemonade. Im not necessarily looking for jf and rr pieces here, but I'm definitely looking for less than common pieces. If it's yellow, pink, blue or orange, I already want it. I'd be interested in pretty much any and all interesting acros. Show me what you've got! 

I could be interested, but Itd take a nice tenuis or Millie to count me in.

I want the gyre, aquamedic doser, return pump(if it's quiet) and that green favite. I'd also be interested in acros!

2 hours ago, albertareef said:

If we are nitrogen limited we are more likely to grow cyanobacteria. We can either reduce the phosphates available to reduce cyano growth or increase nitrogen to allow algae to out compete the cyano. If we are phosphate limited we are more likely to grow dinoflagellates. We can either reduce nitrogen to reduce the amount of dino's growing or add phosphates to allow algae to out compete them. We can use visual clues in our tank to determine if our systems are balanced. If they are balanced and we still have these issues then it is likely we are missing a trace element such as iron or manganese.

After reading up on the Redfield ratio, I feel it's critical for reef keeping and managing algae. It can be essentially a diagnostics chart for your reef. First things first I think you need to find the source of the problem, ie which element(s) are out of wack. Some people claim to have luck with blackouts, but I think thats more stressful on stock than its worth. Cyano is photosynthetic, so certain light spectrums can set it off too, but it does need nutrients to feed. Make sure your using 0tds Rodi. Test your water right after you mix it, and make sure you're not adding anything that could be negative. If your source water is truly good, you can rule it out. Next/continued step is finding what is causing excess nutrients to feed the bacteria. Could be detritus build up in the sump, or sand bed. Maybe your rocks are just starting to leach some nastys. In this step I think it's a good idea to attack everything. When I first started I had cyano/dinos growing all over. Mostly on my rocks. So I started to siphon the cyano off my rocks, and the stuff on my sand. I made sure to get the hose really close to the rock, you wouldn't believe the nasty stuff that came out. After about a week of siphoning 5g/day, the cyano stopped coming back on the rocks, and only returned on the sandbed after 24 hours. At first I tried just siphoning up the cyano and detritus in the top layer. Didn't have much luck. Wasted alot of water, and about 3 weeks doing this. Eventually I decided to just start removing the sandbed entirely. By the time I got about half of my sandbed siphoned out, the cyano stopped coming back entirely and I haven't seen it since. As precaution I replaced my sandbed anyways, and made sure to get more sand sifters. I almost always see cyano ends up being due to excess nutrients in the sandbed. 

I had to deal with this earlier this year. Chemiclean didn't work, aggressive skimming, and regular water changes didn't do anything either. I found my issue was my sandbed, and my tank had fallen out of the Redfield ratio. I started actually removing my sandbed, after I got about halfway removed I actually stopped having issues. I replaced my sandbed anyways. Did waterchanges with better quality water while siphoning my sandbed out, and havent had issues since. 

I have a mated pair of regular orange occelaris. 

Id be willing to buy the extra bulbs if you're willing to sell em! 

On my 6x2 footprint build that I've been working on I've got 3 radion xr30g4 pros, and I'm gonna supplement with 6 t5s on a controller. Definitely a less than budget friendly option, but in my experience nothing compares to radion/t5 hybrid. I did look into sb reef lights pretty heavily. They're producing some crazy results, and they're cheap. 

2 hours ago, lewisriverfisherman said:

They have oversaturated photos for years and years, it will not change.  I always look st the frag plug or rack to see what color they are and go from there.  A lot more people run blue lighting and less daylight now a days

Allowing the blue lighting to make the colors pop is different than the actual oversaturation I see so often when ordering corals online. Ive gotten $300 Cornbred acros directly from cb that were less impressive than some $20 pieces Ive gotten from Jeff. 

2 hours ago, Paratore said:

If you sell this Let me know! I can see why you’re debating, it’s a sweet piece. I remember when you snipped it in auction lol


Sent while trying to get my next coral fix.....

Its only colored up more since I got it. Its the nicest rainbow wellso I've come across imo. It'd take a high offer to convince me to let it go. Lol. 

Cornbred oversaturates their pictures like no other too. I've yet to receive any Cornbred pieces that are even 1/2 as impressive as they look in photos. I feel like oversaturated pictures make ordering corals more like gambling.

4 hours ago, pdxmonkeyboy said:

I would like an efflo as well.

You got it! 

Thats all the efflo frags called for. I do have the base I cut the frags from as well, willing to let that go for $30 6"x2.5" piece

I'm not sure if I'm gonna get out of the hobby entirely for a little while, or if I'm just gonna take a break from acros. This piece right here is the one reason I can't decide. Lol

34 minutes ago, albertareef said:

Well at least you know you have company - lost all of my SPS to what appears to be a weird heavy metal contamination. Not that I had a collection anywhere near yours 😞

I saw some stuff about your crash. Sorry to hear man... My alk crashed to 4.7dkh when I caught it.  I had already lost about 50% of my acros. Calcium spiked to 710. Ever since I brought things back to where they need to be most of my corals are doing great. Out of the 44 acros I had in the tank before, I think I have 14 now. Lost a jf beach bum monti, and some other high end sps too. I still have a few skeletons in my tank from some pieces I was super proud of. Can't bring myself to remove them yet. 

18 minutes ago, River City Corals said:

I’ll take 500 eflo, Tri color and pc rainbow 

You got it. You're welcome to come get them whenever this week. 

13 minutes ago, albertareef said:

Oh man - sorry to hear Taylor. I was just thinking that we hadn’t heard from you in a while and was going to shoot you a note. Hope things turn around for you soon. GLWS. 

It's been rough, but ill get it figured out. There's always a light at the end of the tunnel. 

Unfortunately life has gone in all the wrong directions in the last few months. I was just laid off from my job this morning, to add to my already enormous list of life stress. About 3 weeks ago my dosing pump burnt up the alk pump and I didn't catch it for probably 2 days. Crashed my tank, and I lost about 4k in most of my nicest acros. After the 5k in losses from aefw earlier this year, I've been pushed to the point of needing a break for a while. I apologize in advance for the potato quality photos, I will try to get out my DSLR and get some better photos later this week. I understand I won't get anywhere near the retail prices I picked the corals up for but I would really appreciate a little help recuperating some of the amount I've invested.

First up is a greened out multi branch jf homewrecker frag. I got this piece about 2 weeks before the crash, and it was one of 2 tenuis that survived (out of 13 total) It lost almost all color, but has returned to a bright yellow/green and the purple/blue tips are coming back in. I believe it will quickly return to its full rainbow of colors with some time and care in a healthy tank. Asking $400obo

Next is the LRO candy apple Bonita. Shows a green/gold base, pink and orange coralites with red polyps. I paid $400 for this chunk, would like to get $300 obo. 

Next is an orange acan colony I saved about 8 months ago. It was about 2/3 it's current size, and color was quite washed-out. It's got some yellow coming in on a few polyps now, could turn out really cool. Easily 40+ heads, about 4" across. Asking $125 obo

Next is a jf devils brew favia. Really nice colors, 30+ eyes. $75obo

Next is an LA Lakers tubinaria-$30

Og 500 dollar efflo frags-$10

Ora tri color valida frag-$15

PC rainbow encrusted frag plug-$10

Kryptonite candycane frags-$10 each

Hydnophora frags-$10 each

Wwc splatter hammer frag-$20

Purple/green hammer frag-$10

All prices are obo. Thanks! 

I'll take the skimmer, and if you still have any of that blue/rainbow tenuis Ill buy it back haha.