Timfish

This report is three years old now but table two and table three show the population increases with Yellow Tangs and non aquarium fish from 1999 to 2009 off the west coast of the island Hawai'i. It' also gives a pretty interesting history of the issues around collecting aquarium fish of the west coast of the island Hawai'i. One important note is the research for this report was conducted by three different universities, two governmental agencies and the World Wildlife Fund http://hawaii.gov/dlnr/dar/pubs/ar_hrs188F5v2.pdf (This certainly requires much more research but one curiosity looking at the census numbers for the different species of tangs collected shows some species have larger populations in the areas where collection is allowed than in the protected areas. Since this is opposite of the Yellow Tang and Kole Tang populations is there some incompatibility between them or is there some mechanism(s) in the ecosystem that regulates the over all combined populations? Both?) A chart showing the changes in yearly Yellow Tang population census including the 2010 is here: http://hawaiibanfactcheck.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/YT-Abundnace-Change2.jpg New rule changes by the Hawai'i Department of Land and Natural Resource, Division of Aquatic Resources states unlimited numbers of Yellow Tangs between 2" and 4 1/2" can be collected but no more than 5 per day can be collected smaller than 2" or 5 per day larger than 4.5". Bear in mind there are restrictions and permits required for nets used by collectors and there are practical limits on scuba diving. http://files.hawaii.gov/dlnr/meeting/submittals/130628/F-DAR-Submittals-F2.pdf An interesting website for those interested is the website for the Division of Aqoatic Resources here: http://hawaii.gov/dlnr/dar/index.html

What are your phosphates?

Based on my experiences with different fixtures and my own DIY you want something that's using B, RB and UV/violet LEDs for the blue spectrum and if if you can use a fixture that does not need a fan that's a plus as I am seeing fixtures with fans either clogging up from dust or sucking salt spray into the fixture. The buildmyled.com 14000K three different blues as well as CW, G and R. Also if you look at cost/wattage the 2' 14000K buildmyled.com is 39 watts @ $181 vs $209 for a 25 watt Panorama. Any LED strip light that is put inside a closed hood will need some kind of ventilation. Even though they use less electricity they still generate heat and LEDs are more sensitive to excess heat than fluorescent.

Anybody want to do this? I still have the Nitrate standards in my frig.

Do you know how old the fish are? Most dwarf angels for example are juveniles or sub adults when we get them and can easily double in size and quadruple in weight in a couple of years. This would certainly effect decisions about any additional fish you may think about adding.

Sometime last year there was a thread about BTA's and how often they split and it was observed some clone lines seem to stay smaller and split more often so maybe your right!

Good question! I learned a long time ago to be very cautious about saying something can't happen. BTA's can split into three and once I have seen a big difference in size between clones if that helps any.

For some reason when I save the post some blank spaces are being added to the link. If you do a cut and past in a search bar you should be able to link to them. I'm looking into what I need to do to prevent this.

Actually there's a huge amopunt of research that's being done on this subject. The dozen or so articles Dana Riddle has done on fluorescing and chromo proteins and published on AdvancedAquarist.com over the years and the excellent reference lists he includes there are are an excellent place to start. Here are several others I've stumbled across: http://www.deepseanews.com/2010/09/color-me-stressed Increased fluorescence associated with bleaching www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20952612 Green fluorescent protein regulation during photoacclimation www.nature.com/srep/2013/130312/srep01421/full/srep01421.html Effects of cold stress and heat stress on coral fluorescence on reef-building corals

I would add I prefer to get my corals locally from systems I know the history of for several years. Best way to match the lighting, flow and water parameters.

If it was doing well for a couple of months that would tell me it was happy with the flow and lighting where it was at. I would focus on a water quality issue and run GAC and do water changes as well as monitor the pH, alk and calcium. Now that it's been moved and it dies did it die because it didn't adjust to the new flow, the new light or whatever was wrong with it after it was doing well?

Here's a good paper on it's lifecycle: http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/fa164

You might try finding out what LEDs or spectrum the Kessil has and compare it to your current lighting. My suspicion is your lighting has less blue but that's just a guess.

And why should I argue?! Here's a video so you can get an idea of the distrortion you'll see, it's going to be pretty much the same wether you go with glass or acrylic:

Seems to me the two joints would be a lot less obvious than on a rectangular glass tank. Personally I would try to get the sides and build it in place. Seems like that would be much easier and cheaper than shipping and trying to move it onto the stand. The bottom should be pretty easy to do with wedge shaped trapizoidal pieces, if there's two or three layers with the joints overlapped that would be pretty srtong and more resiliant than a single layer with butt joints. I think it would look better with some kind of wood trim around the top but it would not take much to hide the ross bracing. A lip would also greatly reduce the spalshing and drips that occur on rimless tanks.

Well obviously we need to build one to see just what needs to be done to propogate a wave all the way around it!

It's possible to do something close to this size out of glass. Aquavim.com does half cylinders with a diameter of 72" and full cylinders with a diameter of 32". Combining the two you would get a torus with about 19" or 20" between the inside and outside walls. You would have two joints on the outside walls but the glass would be a lot eaiser to clean.

Great minds think alike! I've wanted to do something like that on a larger scale for sharks. In theory since you have two circles the stress should be evenly spread so bracing isn't needed per say. Do yo have a room big enough for it? That's a tank that almost needs a room specifically designed around it.

How old is your system? If it's still maturing I would not go out of my way to remove it outside of syphoning some of it off. Hhowever if it bothers you I don't see a problem with using a toothbrush to remove it. If you do it's better to pull the rock out and scrub it off in some aquarioum water to physically remove it. If you scrub it off in the tank you haven't removed teh nutrients bound up in it and as it decomposes the nutrients are released back into the system.

I always think of maricultured as cultured in the open ocean and aquacultured as grown in tanks. In theory terrestial or dry rock that is aquacultured should be fairly free of problem animals but it's also free of many of the other organisms that contribute to a healthy reef ecosystem. Maricultured is cultured in the open ocean so it's animal diversity, some of which can not be purchased, is comprable to quality wild collected live rock that is transshipped. Boat rock is live rock that is shipped by boat and probably has had everything died off.

I would really encourage you to get Vol III of "The Reef Aquarium" There is certainly nothing wrong with the approach outlined in "Chucks Addiction" and I like that he enorses patience in setting up a system. But there are certainly other ways to set up a reef system. How much live rock is certainly a huge variable that depends a great deal on personal preference and not on some magical number of lbs per gallon (as a gerneral rule of thumb rules of thumb are way too general to work with all the variables there are in marine systems ). Because of the difficulty of getting rid of some of the problem animals that may come in live rock I would always "cure" or quarintine live rock like I do fish and many inverts (by live rock I'm refering to wild collected live rock or maricultured live rock, some aquacultured live rock are just limestone with some bacteria cultures added and it would be cheaper in my opinion to use dry rock and a bacteria culture). A point I would like to make is in all the years of using live rock I have lost, by far, more livestock and money and time to BTAs than to krackon worms, mantis shrimp, rock crabs and aptasia combined. I have also had some really cool animals come in on wild or maricultured live rock and wouldn't consider setting up a tank without some.

Can you please define the term organize, I don't believe I've come across it before.

I would reitterate Brian's advice here. With any display tank I would only use a UV sterilizor. Keep in mind there are definitely different strains, some being more virulent than others so some people are able to get away with just using immune boosting additives but this may not work every time (not that it's not a good idea to do anyway). Also keep in mind sterilizers are also used for controlling algae and this causes some confusion as the flow and kill rate needed to kill algae is much lower than what is needed to control ich.

How long have you had them? The Xenia I have in my tanks definitely are thinner in lower light levels. If you have T5s they will do better be 18" to 12" below them. As far as the pulsing I've never seen iodine supplements have any noticable effect.

Having messed with both CPUs and saltwater I can tell you they don't mix at all, very bad for both! You do want to get some circulation going and even just an air pump would be helpfull. Some people like canisters but my experience pretty much coincides with yours, I haven't yet met an o-ring that would leak. I would encourage you to get your girlfriend Vol III of Delbeek and Sprung's "The Reef Aquarium". The chapter on filtering systems cover the main different methodologies from the very simple pumpless systems by Lee chin eng and Dr. Jaubert to the very complicated multi-tank systems in an unbiased manner. This can be a fascinating and very rewarding hobby and it can also be very frustrating one as well (and expect to hear very contradictory opinions ). P.S. Charles Delbeek will be at C4 here in Austin in April and you can get it autographed.