Derek

I love sail fin tangs! Elvis looks good!

They look like green tea cup palys to me. I have some similar ones that are slightly brown.

I like warty frog fish.

Can you put me down for 200 dwarf cerith snails? Should be around $30.

Sweet, count me in on the group buy.

Flypaper might be an option. I guess it does count as cheap food. My orange shoulder tang seems to love them. I keep waiting for my marine betta to go after one.

A 240 would be big enough. I have always wanted a Sohal tang but have been a little scared of their reputation as cold hearted killers.

I am a fish addict so I can never have a "last fish added". I am continuously trading out older fish for newer juveniles because I love watching them grow up. I think if you got a juvenile Sohal it would be perfectly fine with other tangs, it may just try to be the dominant tang for a while until he/she gets punked to the bottom of the pecking order.

When I was doing a water change yesterday I noticed that a lot of flies were hanging around on the underside of my lighting fixture. They were also "bathing" in my tank. Does anyone know of a good fly deterrent that would be fish / coral friendly?

I would like to get a bunch of cerith snails for my tank. I have not seen any in local shops, but then again I haven't really looked.

Does anyone know if any of our local shops sell them?

I don't know, it looks like a cephalopod go ahold of a fitted sheet and is pretending to be a ghost. Based on that video it doesn't look like there was any independent movement. It just seemed to swell and sway with the water, then sink. The "body" even seemed a bit off. I kind of reminded me of a fat globules that you'd see in large mammals like whales.

Try a U trap in the bottom. I have one in mine and I have been told that I have the quietest tank of all time for its size.

They'll go for hair algae. A long spine urchin would be better though. If your ant something pretty a radiata would be good. Rock boring urchins are good if it is on rocks.

They are in the same family as anemones. They'll move around. A lot of folks I have seen with free ricordia and mushrooms have put them in hamster balls with rubble rock on the bottom. Once it is attached they do not move too much.

I figured they would get their mouths open after a while. That is definitely a first for me, i.e. hearing that a fish ate glue. I'm glad they are okay.

Good idea.

I recently got a metal halide fixture for my tank. I have the fixture so that the bottom of it is six inches above the surface of the water. Is this too low? How high should the fixture be above the surface of the water?

It is a 250 watt fixture. There are two HQI bulbs in it and four T5s. It is easy to adjust the height as it is suspended by cables.

How long have you been in the hobby? When I first started I tested all the time and always freaked about my nitrates. After a while I started being able to tell if my nitrates were getting high by looking at a specific coral. As some folks have mentioned already, the tests are highly variable and easy to mess up. I am still waiting for one of the Hanna Checkers to be a Nitrate test.

It is true about the filter media. If you have it in there, it will trap stuff and cause nitrates to build up. That's why you clean your filters though. As long as you keep up with it, it shouldn't be a problem.

If you're afraid of one burning out something, let me know. I'll walk down the street with a bag and get one from you neighbor.

Haha, that is awesome. I've never seen a shrimp pair with a cucumber.

Very nice. I'd love to have an anemone that big!

I'd just a Hoevan's Wrasse to get rid of flatworms. I put one in my tank when I had flatworms and they were gone in two weeks. I haven't had a single parasite in the tank since adding the Hoevan's.

I lose 5 gallons a day in my 250 gallon system. It's two tanks plumbed together so there is a big surface area. Covering the top won't stop the evaporation. If anything it would just heat up the tank more and cause you to have some die off. Also there won't be any gas exchange thus suffocating your fish.

An auto top-off is probably your best option.

Look at that. Can I get a thumbs up on calling that reef compatibility!? Bam! I like the name of it. "Nebulous Wrasse". It sounds like it is a puff of smoke.

What kind of misbared clown? Maroon?

I'd say go for it. They tend to be voracious flatworm eaters.