Timfish

It's what the manufacturer of my refractometer says to use. I don't really see an issue of using RO/Di though. I also haven't bother to see if there's a difference between using distilled, RO, RO/DI or tapwater. In practice I doubt my refractometer more than once or twice a year. Seatests floater type hydrometer is what I use on a regular basis but for this test kit comparison a refractometer is probably a much better choice.

Here's a link for a recipe to make a 10 dKH standard: http://www.wamas.org/forums/topic/41663-diy-10-dkh-alkalinity-standard/ Marine Depot, and most likely other suppliers, has Calcium, pH, and Nitrate calibration fluids. If a refractometer is calibrated correctly with distilled water it seems to me it wouldn't need to be verified with a sample of known salinity. Besides using a standard of freshly mixed saltwater I'd still like to see water from a bunch of tanks checked as well. The results from the DFMAS tests suggests there may be processes in the tanks that might affect the tests. For example, the mean Alk for Pstleeb's tank was .59 dKH higher than AWT.com's results while the mean Alk for Davej was only .3. Why? The salinity was the same and as I understand the testing methodology they described there were multiple eyes verifying questionable interpretations of each test. It also seems to me if a sample of the freshly mixed saltwater is sent to AWT.com you'd have another standard to work with besides using calibration fluids or maybe send of a sample at the same time the tests are done and dispense with getting calibration fluids.

Check the temp in the tank. If your flow is correct through the system the temp change in the biocube should reflect the temp change displayed on the chiller.

If it was my tank I would be getting a UV sterilizer.

I'm reading your post as your chiller is turning on and off or cycling between 5 and 10 times an hour. If this is so that strikes me as quite a bit. If I should have read it as running 5 - 10 minutes an hour that's probably still a little frequent but not necessarily so. The chillers I've worked with have had a 2 degree difference in set points also and typically will only cycle every couple of hours with T5s in a closed hood, this is partly a function of the size of the chiller to the tank. I've always tried to size a chiller to give a 20 degree pull down below ambient temp. on a given tank size. If your chiller is inside a closed cabinet make sure it's well ventilated or your chiller is working against itself.

I keep a canister filter around in case I need to run carbon in an emergency. Even though some people like them I haven't met an O-ring yet on one that wouldn't leak. If you do use one keep some silicone grease on hand and clean & lube the O-rings whenever you clean or open it.

I much prefer to run lights continuously but on a few tanks have run them on a split schedule with no apparent problems. I would only do one change at a time, wait till your corals have adjusted to the 400W before playing around with a split schedule.

Sorry to hear about your loss! Not to be the bearer of more bad news but I'd be expecting some kind of algae bloom in the next week or so and would encourage you to start looking at how to deal with it.

Add another vote for the six-line.

My experience corals will grow over it.

+1, I would reiterate being patient. I've seen green hair algae and other nuisance algae problems clear up on their own without any intervention outside of manual removal during water changes and I've seen tanks all screwed up because too many things were done to fast. Neilson and Fossa i Vol 1 of "The Modern Coral Reef Aquarium" have some good pictures and charts of a big reef system going through it's algae cycles and it looks horrible at first. Definitely keep an eye on your pH, Alk and calcium.

Yes you can but I think there will be more of a guess factor in getting corals that will thrive under just actinics. A lot of corals utilize the red part of the spectrum and may not thrive long term under just blue. This doesn't mean you can't have reds. Corals that are flourescing red will be red under just blue light. Corals that are reflecting red will loose a lot of their color under blue light. This article http://www.advanceda...08/3/aafeature1 is about color and corals and while the first half may not be relevant to your question there are pictures of 11 corals grown under 20,000K MH, 10,000K MH and T5 and the ones that grew best under 20,000K or the ones that did well under all three would be possibilities.

Bear in mind there have been many, many doctorial thesis on lighting so we are not even buffing the surface here. There's really is no such thing as "optimal" lighting. Some corals are highly adaptable others are not. If you are happy with the coral and lighting combination in your 120 by all means duplicate it in your 55. If you are wanting something different ask around and do some research to match your corals and light to each other. Dana Riddle and Joshi Sanjey have numerous articles on Advanced Aquarist looking at different aspects of lighting on reef aquariums. Looking at some of the LED fixtures while they are still expensive the payoff is around the 5, 6, 7 year mark so if they do last as long as they are being advertised you're easily looking at less than half the cost of T5's of MH over the life of the fixtures.

Sorry, I can't tell if it's a sponge or a hydroid. Sponge is harmless but if it's a hydroid it would most likely win any territorial dispute with a coral.

For starters here's what Sprung and Delbeck have to say in their discussion of Berlin Systems Vol , Ch 5 of The Reef Aquarium ". . . one can build a healthy reef tank in one day using well-seeded live rock . . . " (They use the terms "seeded", "cycled" and "cured" interchangably, see their discussion in Vol 3.) I for one can attest to it's effectiveness. For over 10 years I've been using cured liverock, live sand and 10 - 20% water from an established tank to start new systems and not seen any ammonia cycle. I want to emphasize to be safe I expect an ammonia cycle and test for it but since I started doing this I haven't seen it happen and can be adding fish and corals within just a few days. I will use cultured liverock interchangably with wild collected and haven't seen a difference except live usually looks better with more nooks and crannies and cultured I've seen doesn't need curing. To cure liverock I put it in a spare tank or barrel with water from an established tank (new wouldn't bother me though) and a small powerhead for water movement for three or four weeks. I also keep scrubbing to a minimum, just what's obviously dead. Regarding potential pests from my experience few survive shipping (I've found this curious as I'll open a box to find dead brittle/serpent stars,snails and shrimps/crabs but small coral colonies survive on the rock). Fewer still hide all the way through the curing process and make it to a display tank. In over 15 years I've only had to pull two mantis shrimp out of tanks I've worked on. One did require tearing down a 500 gal. but the other was surprisingly easy as it's hiding hole was known and the rock was easily removed and salt dumped in the hole. (It was exciting trying to catch it as it scooted around on the floor .) I think Nelson and Fossa do a good job discussing the potential pests in Vol 1 of their book "The Modern Coral Reef Aquarium". One thing they point out is a species that causes problems in one tank doesn't necessarily cause problems in another. I've seen some discussion regarding the ethics of using live rock and don't see a problem with it. For one it's a renewable resource and can take only a few years to form and is part of the natural processes on a reef. The second, and this is specifically referred to by Sprung & Delbeck and by Alf Neslon in "Reef Secrets", live rock brings in a great deal more income to these island nations than using it as building material and road base, giving them a significant economic incentive to preserve their reefs.

I'd say it depends on your sense of aesthetics as to whether or not it's to much water flow. I don't know of any corals that would do well in the direct output from those pumps but you can have a nice tank with that much flow (24x). From my experience it also doesn't matter how much flow you have you will end up with areas that don't have any flow where detritus will collect. I wouldn't go with really high turnover rates with the expectation it will eliminate all the dead spots in the rockwork.

I wouldn't be inclined to blame the tap water. I've seen this happen in tanks I've moved that religiously used RO and I've been using dechlorinated tap water for biweekly water changes in this tank for for over three years, additionally the original acrylic tank (original owner appears to have gotten an used tank) blew a top seam 3 months ago and when the tank was replaced a 50 gal water change was done and there were no algae cycles I often see in a move or swap out. If this was my tank besides using the chemiclean (once) and increasing the frequency and/or size of the water changes I would also get 2 - 4 urchins. What I would be worried about is seeing a hair algae out break in a few weeks and in my experience urchins are the only animals that will actually scour the rocks. I wouldn't at this point be thinking about more than 20-30% water changes weekly or replacing the rocks. The move has disrupted the previous equilibrium of the tank and I would prefer the system work through the algae cycle than keep disrupting the ecosystem with huge water changes or replacing rocks that have a lot of good bacteria on them. In a 6-8 weeks if there hasn't been any improvement or there is a bad hair algae outbreak I would revisit that reasoning. Regarding the discussion about ammonia if you test a bucket of fresh saltwater made with RO/DI water you'll probably see something like 1 ppm. If you test your aquarium water an hour after doing a water change you should see a proportionate amount of ammonia, 20% water change - .2ppm ammonia. If you keep testing every hour it will gradually drop and have all been consumed in 12-24 hrs. It's important to remember ammonia is a food source for corals and their zooxanthellae algae, I don't know the conversion factors for determining how much ammonia is converted from one gram of food but I wouldn't be surprised if much larger amounts of ammonia was being generated by the fish daily than is added in a typical water change.

If you want a number try 8.34 turnovers per hour in the tank (sumps/refugiums work fine with just one or two turnovers per hour). I've got tanks running 30X in tank so there obviously isn't a magic number. The 8.34 is based on research referenced by Sprung & Delbeck in vol 3 of "the Reef Aquarium" pg 377 of flow rates across a reef crest. I prefer propeller type powerheads to reduce heat vs impeller type. If you're going to put them on a simple wave timer each one probably should be rated for the flow you want plus at least 20% for performance loss as algae and gunk grows on the pump. (You should be able to find pumps in the $20 - $40 range.)

I like alot of surface agitation also. I read somewhere a long time ago it's a lot harder to get CO2 out of water than to get O2 into water. With it's adverse affect on pH that's something I've always been sensitive to. A simple test to see how well your system is getting rid of CO2 is remove a bucket from the middle of the water and areate it heavily for 24 hours then test the pH if the pH in the tank is lower than the pH of the water in the bucket steps should be taken to increase surface agitation. It's better to use an airline or airstone since the heat from a pump might have some effect on the saturation levels.

I'm guessing you're asking about the water draining over the overflow after the pump shuts off. If the return line opening is above the water line after the water drains down to the bottom edge of the overflow lip or "comb" a syphon hole is not needed (although I would still be inclined to drill one anyways). Almost always I see the return output below this waterline and water would keep syphoning until air was sucked into the return line and depending on the setup this can be a significant amount of water which may overflow the sump. The syphon hole needs to be cleaned regularly. Also, make sure the syphon hole is pointed down (didn't pay attention once and was very embarrassed when I turned on the pump ).

+1 and never ever use check valves or float valves on an aquarium, fresh or salt, they WILL fail.

A nice and simple tank I saw a few years ago was a 75 with a pair of clowns and a Long Tentacle with an oral disc 6 - 8" dia. The guy had it running for several years with just a Penguin 400 (the kind that had a couple of biowheels) and did biweekly 10 gal water changes. The only problem I see with adding an anemonie to what you have now is the risk of the anemonie getting sucked into the intake of one of your filters. If you monitor the water, maintain the filters and do your water changes you can have a nice tank with what you have. If you do get an anemonie you will have much better success with a aquacultured one.

This is a good question, sometimes these animals are artificially dyed which is pretty much a kiss of death.

Don't know if it will fit but Marine Depot has their Blue Moon fixture on sale.

I'm glad to hear you'll be able to get RO. I know people locally using tap water on reef systems successfully but when I switched to RO years ago a lot of my nuisance algae problems cleared up on their own and I still feel a lot safer using RO. A precipitous drop in oxygen would explain why the fish with their higher oxygen demand died where the crabs survived. I would urge you to monitor your tank very closely as you start to add more fish. It's reasonable a 5 gal. water change caused this dieoff but over the years I've had to do much larger water changes with dechlorinated tap water in emergencies without an immediate or significant loss of life.