KeeperOfTheZoo

Ditto what Jake said. Set up correctly an overflow can not flood. Mechanical errors can always happen drilled tank or not. I've been running my overflow for about 6 months now, no problems except it does loose siphon at times and I want more flow. Both issues will be fixed by adding an aqualifter pump to a bigger overflow box.

Does it matter? At the rate they get covered in coraline the back will be purple in no time regardless of what you want. I've seen back walls covered in gsp which I also think is cool. I have a bunch growing on my back wall right now and I think I'm gonna encourage some yellow polyps as well. All that said my tank is black and I like it much better than the bright blue. Dark blue might be neat though.

How old is the tank? If it's new, I'd give it time before adding anything to the bioload which very well could just make things worse (more critters= more waste=more available nutrients=more algae especially in an immature system). If the brown algae are actually diatoms, then they should pass as the tank matures. Just part of the cycle. If it's not a new tank, then I can't say enough good things for conchs! I have a great big one, but he does more good for cleaning the sand than my army of hermits, snails and my mandarin that does sift some sand as it hunts for food. I'd watch the number of hermits in a small tank, they are fun but they are destructive. In my experience, they do little for the sand and mostly spend their days picking algae off the rocks (and knocking over your corals). I have some nassarius snails but I can't tell if they are doing much to help the sand bed. I probably need more, they're neat if nothing else. Also keep a keen eye on your water parameters... excess phosphates and nitrates are a great way to grow algae.

Thanks y'all! It really surprised me how much the tank has changed. I knew it had, but I guess when we look at our tanks every day we loose sight of the magnitude of change that goes on (looking forward to the 1 year mark, are you posting pics somewhere ORD?). I can't believe the growth on some of the corals. The pocilipora surprised me. The growth of the softies is fairly obvious, but I didn't realize I was getting so much growth on the few SPS frags I have until I looked at pictures. Dave, a blog would be a good idea. Gotta find the time to get it going. James, I noticed that just in the last couple days several of my corals are showing more color including the zoas you have (I kept a similar sized frag). They aren't back to their best, but do look better. I think everything is finally adjusting to the new bulbs. They are fast growers so keep an eye on them. That frogspawn taught me a lesson about coral placement... it stung the daylights out of a small frag of Miami orchid that I have. Thankfully it didn't kill the whole thing and I have another much larger frag that has more growth so it wasn't too painful of a lesson. At least not for me personally, the corals may not agree. Again... a big thanks. Without the support of everyone here I'm not sure I would have made it threw the not so fun parts of a new tank to get to where I am now.

I hope y'all don't mind a little self indulgence on my part. I was looking at pictures tonight and had a moment of realization.... my tank has gone through a lot of changes in the last 7+ months since I got it! October... this was the original set up. The original fish and single mushroom rock that I bought. See how deep that crushed coral was. Yikes January... all the big, mean & aggressive fish are GONE! We now have a little clown & a yellow tang. Also a few more corals. Watch the growth on the nepthea! At this point my mushrooms started budding like mad, the xenia took off and my single green ric has since split and one section has three mouths and is in the process of splitting more. Also reduced the CC bed, a lot. February... Hmm, more corals. Seeing a pattern here yet? I also realized how fast my tang is growing. April... cruddy picture, my digital camera grew legs while I was on vacation. Grr. This is a phone camera shot. You can get the general idea though. Massive growth in some of my softie colonies (crazy xenia, anthelia, nepthea, palys and zoas). More corals and a few more fish. Finally have a frogspawn (thank you James, I LOVE that coral it is just gorgeous), my candy canes are growing new heads almost as I watch, I finally ID'd my mystery SPS as fuzzy green pocilapora and both mini colonies I have are growing like mad. The CC is now gone in most of the tank replaced with a shallow sand bed. And check out the coraline growth across the back of the tank. The cool thing is, I know in another 7 months it'll be even more amazing. I can't wait to look back then and see how it's changed.

Amen Eck. I'm gonnna just say it.. I think chalices are kinda ugly. I wouldn't trade my frogspawn for one.

Exactly.... ones worth the effort $$$$ one isn't.

Hey Cyrus, I'll buy water from you at that price. Kempner is closer to Killeen than Austin. Unfortunately.

The victory dance.... oh man.....the dance!

My 12,9 and 3 year old boys really liked that one Derek.

Hey Christian, talk to Mama before starting a business. As for the nem, no way.

My Aunt said the same thing about my Great Grandma making coquina soup. She said they'd put the clams in tomato soup and boil them. I suspect that's the simplified version.

Just a word of warning before putting those coquina clams in a tank, they are heavy filter feeders. You'll need to feed them like any other filter feeder because they wont find enough just sifting the sand in a tank. They are more likely to die and foul up a tank than do any good. I found a ton if those on the FL side of the gulf but left them at the beach after researching and realizing that they aren't appropriate for most captive tanks.

I like the look of hanging lights. Can you get T5 pendants or is the pendant style just a MH thing? I'm thinking eventually here I'd like 2 pendants over my 6' tank but I'm not real keen on MH. Hmmmm... at the rate I'm going I'm gonna ponder lighting forever.

Bubble trap. I also accidentally discovered that the media containers for an old dual biowheel filter fit perfectly side by side in my sumps baffles. Right now I'm running phosguard in one container and carbon in the other. Its super easy to change out media and very effective since all the water in the tank, sump and fuge eventually runs through the baffles.

Ah the joys of homeschooling... We are studying oceanography for science this year. Ties in well with the new 125g micro ocean in the living room. The trip to the FL coast was nice for hands on science as well. On the 28th some of the families from one of our groups are coming out to visit the farm in general. Should be 30+ people. I've seen talk of setting up 'touch tanks', I think that would have a long lasting impact on the kids. On our recent trip my kids fed the rays at the Tampa zoo and are STILL talking about it. In my experience with kids in general and teaching/ educating about animals the more hands on you can make the experience the more impact it'll have. There is a very nice aquarium in Corpus and the Waco Cameron park zoo has a couple neat SW tanks now. Austin has never really gotten into the whole zoo thing. Neat idea Gabriel. It amazes me how so many kids have so little exposure to the diversity of life on our planet.

James, Cyrus said the same thing about his. I guess I got the hyper conch. Hope yours comes out soon. If I'd known how great these guys are at sifting/ cleaning sand I would have gone to FL sooner to get one!

Thought I'd post this pic of my awesome cleaner conch. I don't hear them mentioned much when folks talk about clean up crews. This conch is pretty big, about 2". However, I've been very happy with how little destruction he causes to the various corals I have placed on the sand bed. He has excellent eye sight, I've even noticed him actively watching me when I'm standing next to the tank. Pretty cool guy. As you can see in the picture, he's doing a great job eating the film algae that grows in my tank by the end of the day (I'm thinking this is being encouraged by my lower K bulbs, gotta get rid of those things). And what goes in must come out.... the whole process captured forever!

I sure can't join the single tank club. I have 4 running and two 55g tanks sitting in the garage awaiting set up. I need a 12 step program. Melissa, while ya got the tank empty are you going to have it drilled? Congrats and have fun on the set up.

Wow that's a gorgeous tank! I love the layout. Very well thought out and unique.

KH is carbonate hardness, a KH test doesn't test for total harness or even true alkalinity in the pH sense of acid/neutral/alkaline. It's worth watching because the carbonates (carbonate and bicarbonate) get used up via biological processes (of the living things in your tank) and when they are gone or too low it can cause pH swings amongst other things. When people talk about 'buffering', they are usually talking about KH. If your KH is where it should be (8-12 dKH), your water is well buffered and it should help keep your pH stable. You have to have both carbonates(KH) and calcium amongst a whole lot of other minerals for your water to be balanced. I read a great analogy one time that talked about balancing pH, KH and calcium. It basically said think of a glass filled with two different colored marbles, red and blue. KH and calcium both dissolve in water and water can only hold so many dissolved solids. If the cup was full of red marbles (calcium) there would be no room for blue marbles (carbonates, KH). Your tank would be in big trouble. Sure, you'd have really high calcium levels which might seem great since most of us are trying to keep our calcium up for our inverts, but remember, balance is key! So, if you started adding some blue marbles (carbonate, KH) to the cup, what would happen? It would displace some of the red marbles which means your calcium would be lower, but that's ok... you really need it to stay in a range that also allows the KH to stay in a good range. The opposite can happen to, you can add too much carbonate and drive your KH & pH up and your calcium down. In your case, if you are dosing calcium without knowing what your calcium level is you might be adding to much. When there is to much calcium your KH will get driven down (remember, if one is too high it displaces the other causing it to drop) which can also drive your pH down. A big drop in either or both of those will start harming your livestock. It's a good rule to never supplement anything that you haven't first tested for. If you don't have a lot of hard corals and are doing frequent water changes you probably won't need to supplement for anything. I do 10-15% water changes every other week and I'm just starting to see my calcium dip down between changes to where I might start supplementing (it gets just below 400 sometimes). The thing is, it doesn't always dip below where I want it to be. If I start to supplement I'll have to test often and be very careful to make sure I don't over dose my tank and screw things up!

What's your calcium and kh at? Everything else is good. Maybe its just their time to go.

Are any of your other corals irritated? Could any of the GSPs neighbor corals be bugging them (anything with sweepers?). Maybe they are falling victim to toxins being released by other corals, I think the fancy term is allelopathy. Basically coral chemical warfare. Are you running carbon? What exactly are your water parameters? Having recently watched a friend struggle with a KH problem I've learned that some corals are a lot more sensitive to certain water parameters being off than others, and it's not always the ones you would think would have problems and be more sensitive.

Ok, I started this thread so those of us discussing nepthea wouldn't totally hijack the for sale thread. That said, Lamont, I think my little colony is the polar opposite of yours. It likes low flow, low light and gets really irritated if either of those factors increase (I've moved it around a couple times). I'd actually asked a few people about it because it seemed odd to me that a photosynthetic coral would expand and be beautiful at night, then be grumpy when the lights were on. It is a low to medium light coral though. Here is a picture of what mine looks like during the day (sorry about the photo quality, my digital camera took a hike while on vacation so I'm using my new Droid to take pics until I replace my real camera). This is about 50% inflated. Ignore the dirty glass. I have been. I got this mini colony from Jian (John) Song I think. It was back in Dec. and he was breaking down his tank to move up East. His mother colony was HUGE!!!! It was growing under very blue T5s (I would assume pretty high K, it was real blue). How rare is this stuff? I've read it's extinct in the wild but it seems like many of us have it.