thedude

http://www.meerwasser-lexikon.de/eng/0/0/0/index.htm My personal favorite

Just vacuum the sandbed (ala freshwater gravel siphon) and you shouldn't have any problems with detritus accumulating.

James, We use the magnets from algae free with great success (the same company that makes the easy blade attachment). The only magnet they make that I don't like is the big boy Great White as it sinks and is heavy as hell. For the 110 I would go with the Hammerhead size. The piranha is kind of wimpy and the tiger shark is seriously strong (too strong for your tank long term). http://www.aquariumcleaner.com/products.html The other really cool thing about them is that they sell replacement felt and the scratchy side kits so that the magnet is pretty much good forever. John

I personally feel that if you have the option to purchase an already reef ready tank go that route. I'd had a tank drilled and had standard overflows on tanks and the standard overflow is a nice addition to begin with. I also agree with the guys above that if you do have a tank that isn't reef ready it would be much easier to get it drilled then save yourself the headache of messing with an external overflow. John

For what it's worth, clownfish have been coming in really crappy recently. They usually go through phases where for 6 months you get really strong ones, 3 months of death, then the cycle repeats. This is unfortunately a cycle of death in our case. The clowns seem to have some kind of disease that takes hold of an otherwise fine looking specimen and kills quick. I went through 6 clowns last week and all of them were dead in about 10 days while other fish did fine.

Joe, I feel bad that I haven't complemented you on your tank yet as I've been loving your photographs. Beautiful use of soft corals and a really really unique and gorgeous tank. Again, Nogtastic John

If it catches fire, it probably doesn't belong in a reef tank haha

That coralife timer used to have a problem catching on fire, therefore I don't trust it farther than I can throw it.

The answer is yes and I do. Sand sifting cucumbers in large reefs do wonders but you need ALOT of sand for them to live long term. Would a serpent star please you more? I really do believe those guys help a tank alot. John

Booooooo! He'll keep your sandbed nice and white and eat any leftover food.

Unreal Gabe, those pictures looks like something I've seen on the Discovery channel.

Mike, If you add the acrylic pad between the inside magnet and the tank and make the sure the outside magnet's felt is intact you should be fine. Mag Float incorrectly tells you that their magnet can be used on an acrylic tank without any kind of pad. John

Wow James you really cleaned that thing up brand new. I can vouch (having seen this system in person) that it was a very stable nice system and that James takes care of his equiptment as much as any reefer should do. John

I've had them live for over a week and a half without eating. By moving the rocks and such to look for him you're probably doing more harm then good stressing out the fish. Keep watching and feeding and hopefully he'll feel comfortable enough to come out and eat.

As a maintenance person, the Biomatix controller looks like a godsend.

I vote fairy wrasses (but I'll always vote fairy wrasses as they are my favorite fish).

I didn't know Ezra drilled tanks but I'll second that he is a really stand up guy.

Just as an afterward, the electricity leached into the tank killed all three large turbo snails in Mike's tank. If ANYTHING is tripping a GFCI in your tank, unplug it and assume it is leaking electricity.

Just an FYI on this thread as Stephen has been extremely busy... the B-Ionic was not making the skimmer overflow. Restricting the skimmers output ended up being the culprit.

I'm a huge fan of the Artica Chiller line by JBJ (and we use them as often as possible). My only word of advice is that I bought a 1/10th HP Pacific Coast chiller and wish I had gotten a bigger one. If you ever upgrade, it's much easier to use the same chiller you used on your 30 gallon. A JBJ 1/4hp Artica would be my suggestion for a long term, effective chiller that you can use on a much larger tank.

It's tripping the GFCI because current is leaking out somewhere (mags are warranteed for 2 years or possibly lifetime). STOP using the pump. Call incoming...

It all really depends how much you want to spend because some of the controllers are absurdly expensive. Off the top of my head -Biomatix -Elos Biotopus -IKS Aquastar -Aquatronica

I replied to Aggiemedic's thread on this and I hope it clears up some of the confusion. Soft starts increase the life expectancy of the pump but will still not work on a prop pump if the pumps powers down completely for any period of time. IE: The Tunze controllers are controllable from 100-30% Btw Seio's are a different beast all together. Seios are actually still an impellar pump and put out a flow very similar to a donut (thing of a ring of flow with the "eye" of a hurricane in the middle).

It's not so much the turning them off and on, it's doing so repeatedly (BTW questions NEVER bother me so ask away!). Prop pumps have problems starting in the correct way unlike impellar pumps (impellars can spin either way, props only work one way). To make them spin the correct way, resistance is applied to the shaft (utilizing gravity) and the prop automatically corrects itself and spins the correct way. The early Tunze nanostreams are having this exact problem. The shaft is too loose on the pump and the lack of resistance causes them to spin backwards indefinitely or until you put something near the pump's output (now intake as the prob is going backwards). The suction causes resistance, and the prop corrects itself. This problem with them starting makes prop pumps (nanostream, hydor, maxijet mods) unable to be used on a wavemaker. The normal on/off is expected but to do so continuously will ruin the pump. All the big tunze streams have a braking system that forces the impellar to always spin the correct way PLUS the streams never power completely down, only to 30%. This also happens to be the reason you can't clean a stream with muriatic acid, the brakes will melt. John