Timfish

Here's a video:

I do not worry about nitrates. What I noticed a long time ago was nitrates do not cause nuisance algae problems and did not seem to impact the corals in my tanks. The simple circle given by Spotte in his book Marine Aquarium Keeping and parroted by many "gurus" since worked for fish only systems but just seemed lacking when it came to reef systems. Trying to find a better explanation and a better understanding I was pleased to find a much better description of the nitrogen cycle in Debeek and Sprung's The Reef Aquarium Vol III. Since then, chasing down papers, I've found it fascinating at how much more complex we're learning the nitrogen cycle both outside and within the coral holobiont. What seems very obvious to me now is we need to think of organic forms of nitrogen, urea and amino acids, and inorganic forms, ammonia, nitrite and nitrate as just parts of the total nitrogen in the system. And both corals and algae are competing for the same forms. There's other issues the shift the equilibrium from algae to corals or corals to algae. Beside getting Forest Rohwer's book Coral Reefs in the Microbial Seas here's a link to a paper reviewing the research on the cycling of nitrogen: http://www.cell.com/trends/microbiology/pdf/S0966-842X(15)00075-X.pdf

Well, there are certainly some individuals that are pleased to see you do so. I'm curious what your thought process was in making that decision?

And here's a current video:

They're all crees. Whites are XPG2 and blues are XPE2. The heatsink is running ~100° F and I've mounted thermostats on it to turn off the leds if the fans fail so I'd expect a typical life span.

And here's some PAR readings from in the tank: This is looking down from the top back:

Here's where it's going. It's one of three that will be lighting up this tank. (The closer fixture in the image is the 2nd prototype to check PAR levels and possible heat issues.) Aquascaping this one was fun as it will be seen from above and behind as well as the end and finally in front as you descend the stairs.

Roughly $750 for all the parts. Even if someone went with more colors and channels (I'm only going with 2) and dimmable buck pucks it wouldn't be much more.

Half a dozen designs, two prototypes, and finally . . . 3000 PAR @ 14" (FYI, 3000 is as high as Apogee's PAR meter reads. ) The heatsink is 12" x 4" and has 3up LED stars with 16° lenses. It's pulling about 250 watts (2 150 power supplies). LED colors are 9 CW stars, 2 NW stars, 8 B & 7 RB stars.

Yeah, it was added back in '98 and was already half grown. It's my impression they should be living decades in our aquaria.

Well, I survived the holidays and moving 3 systems in 10 days so maybe it's time to post some pictures.

+1 and include the brand. Things have changed so much it's often cheaper just to buy new. Either fixtures are too cheap to pay for a couple hours of tech time to fix or the proprietary parts for the higher end fixture push repair costs up to where it's not that much more just to buy new.

Thought I'd post the parameters for the new slatwater. I didn't test for ammonia but it should be around 1 mg/l as it's made with just RO and not RO/DI. Alk 11 dKH pH 8.2 Calcium 400 mg/l Nitrate ~2 mg/l (Red Sea Pro) PO4 .1 mg/l (Nyos) Mag 1600 mg/l And here's some pics:

Smart kids don't grow up!

Don't feel like an idiot. There's several hundred species of Sinularia and many have similar looking growth forms. Mine is the only species I know of that I can provide paperwork from a world respected taxonomist, Dr. Micheal Jaines in Pheonix, AZ, proving it is what it is. Sinularia foliata is one of several dozen different speicies found in Palau and was one of the species nearly wiped out by the El Nino event in '98 and current research only has it identified in one local. Ironicly most if not all of the aquacultured "Nepthia" Palau Green Fingers available are actually in the genus Sinularia and not in the genus Nephthia.

Thank You! Well, to be honest , the green finger is Sinularia foliata and is arguably the rarest aquacultured octocoral. And the thin clams in the bottom left corner have successfully reproduced in this system which is a pretty rare accomplishment if I do say so myself. Here's the thread I posted about them.

Pics for this week:

This weeks tests results and pics Alk 7 pH 8.1 Temp 77 Magnesium 1040 Calcium 340 Nitrate <.25

Here's some current photos: Left end: Right end:

Corals are competing with algae for the various forms of nitrogen and phosphate in our systems. In my experience neither nitrates or phosphates are the primary cause of nuisance algae problems. If you look at this thread on hair algae I got rid of the hair algae without reducing PO4, inorganic phosphate. The nitrate, NO3, did not drop until AFTER the hair algae disappeared. The anemones that had turned brown with the algae outbreak started to recolor as the algae receded even though there still had not been any change in those nutrients. The Dissolved Organic Carbon (DOC) skimmers might, at best, partially remove is consumed by cryptic sponges and converted into bicarbonate, HCO3, that corals will use for both skeleton building and photosynthesis.

This is the first system I set up 19 years ago in June, 1997 without a skimmer and thought I'd do a thread on it. For the first post I thought I'd start with a video taken a couple years ago: Recent water parameters: Alkalinity 5-10 dKH pH 7.8 - 8.1 Salinity 1.022 - 1.027 Temp 76 - 78 Nitrate 1 ppm

If it weren't for this breeding thread I'd be getting everybody together to have an intervention with you after your comment "I've been having some luck getting the aiptasia to throw off mini aiptasia. Pretty happy about that."

I'm happy to take all the credit for finding it but truth is I knew it couldn't be the skimmer 'cause the way I rigged it to fail wouldn't have caused any electrical smell and you had already ruled out just about everything else so the heater was the obvious next thing to check.

Great pictures! Now if you could get a close up video of one of the babies Berghia eating a baby aiptasia!

(Rigging those things to fail days or weeks after I've visited is a real trick! )