Timfish

Yeah, that thought never crossed my mind!

It was pretty frustrating to see most of my animals happy as can be and the Brown BTAs melting in front of my eyes. Check your phospates. Most frozen and fresh seafood form the grocery stores have sodium triphosphate or polyphospate added as a preservative (active ingrediant in Spic and Span). Frotunately the Rose BTA is also doing well but for some reason whenever I want to go over to pick it up my friends say it would be inconvienent and I need to call back next week.

My display tank has 12 brown BTA's that are from a clone line started with a BTA purchased in 1997, 1 Rose BTA, 2 Green BTAs and a Teal w/ Pink Tip BTA. A few weeks ago I was out of town for a few days and had a friend feeding my fish. The day after I got back I noticed both Green BTA were dying along with several of the Brown BTAs and the rest of the brown BTA's didn't look very good. The Teal & Pink Tip BTA was looking kinda wilted but was opening up as was the Rose BTA. Immediatley I did a 15 gallon water change and put a internal canister filter on the tank with carbon. Checking with my friend (who has taken care of my fish numerous times over the years and will in the future) she fed some medicated frozen food to the tank once the day before I got back. I did leave instructions for her to feed the medicated food to my quarintine tanks twice daily and pellets to all my tanks once daily. The Teal & Pink Tip BTA was looking kinda wilted but was opening up as was the Rose BTA. The next day (2nd day back) I syphoned out 3 more of the Brown BTAs and this is when I noticed the tank was running about 84 degrees, it ususally runs about 78 but the thermostat on the heater appeared to be sticking. At this point the Teal & Pink Tip BTA was looking ok just not as full as normal, the Rose was wimpy and I could only find 4 of the Brown BTAs all pretty sad. Everything else was looking as good as ever including fish, brittle stars, cucumber, Protopalythoa grandis colony with about 20 polyps, Blue Coral and assorted leather corals. I contacted a friend and moved the Rose BTA to thier tank. Over the next week the remaining Brown BTAs slowly declined while the Teal & Pink Tip looked better and was inflating more. I also had access to a Brown BTA from the same clone line as mine that was in another tank and added it back to my tank. Now after 3 weeks I have only one of the original 12 Brown BTAs left, it is inflating, has not bleached but it only about 1/6 it's former size (as far as I know, there could be a couple behind the rock). The Teal & Pink Tip looks great and the Brown BTA returned to this tank looks great. So my dilemma is what caused the dieoff of just the Brown BTAs? It seems unlikely that just one feeding with medicated frozen food would have caused it but on the other hand I've seen Brown BTAs from this clone line in warmer water over the years and when exposed to excessive temperatures it doesn't kill them without bleaching them first which did not happen in this case and it doesn't appear to have adversly affected the Teal & Pink Tip BTA. So lessons learned: $&^% happens, always give explicit instructions on what to do (which I did) and on what NOT to do (which I didn't) and never trust a thermostat.

I'm pretty sure my cats would haunt my dreams if I did something like that to them, safer to cremate them and keep their urn on my dresser.

In my autofeeders I use New Life Spectrum mixed with powdered krill and/or freeze dried krill run through a food processer. What I look for in dry food is grain products don't show up 'till 3rd or 4th ingrediant.

Derrick makes a very good point. Whatever kit you use the reagents can be damaged by temperature and are going to age so also check experiation dates.

Every so often I'll try a product but end up stopping as I don't see any difference. My tank is not your tank though so go ahead and try it. As long as you follow the manufacturer's instructuions you shouldn't be hurting anything.

Chip, you don't mind if I save the .jpeg of the PAR readings and pass it on to people as "a" reference for locating corals do you?

Hey, look on the bright side, it's easy to keep! If it was my rock I would get a bucket of watwer from the aquarium, take it out, scrup off as much of the offending polyps as possible the use either salt or kalk paste just on the spots that were left. Many sponges that grow voluntarily in systems will tolerate a few minutes our of water but I would keep dipping it in water so the sponges don't start to dry out. You might be able to leave the sponges under water while your doing the scrubbing and pasting maybe? If you have to deal with them in situ make sure you do as much as possible to get everything out and do a big water change, all the stuff floating or around or decomposing will add to the nutrient load of your system.

If you're talking about removing the plastic end that has the pins mounted in it your odds of success are very poor. They are glued onto the bulb and if you did get it off the leads for the bulb are only about 3/8" long so almost impossible to reattach. The Light Bulb Shop on Burnet Rd. has the square sockets with leads. You would have to dismantle the fixture, cut the leads to the old sockets and use wire nuts to attach the new sockets. The square pins actually are not square but rectangular, one diamension between pins is about 2 mm longer than the other diamension. The two pins on one short side corespond to either the left two or right two pins of the straight pin setup. I've got a hammer if you get real frustrated.

What they said. (Actually I'm just trying to up my post count with this response. )

This may work: http://premiumaquatics.com/aquatic-supplies/PM-F46B.html It would have to fit around a perferated pipe that threads or slides into the bulkhead fitting. Make sure the pipe is open and not capped so when the spong filter clogs it does not back up and flood.

I've heard of stranger appetites but I'm inclined to agree with Bige.

Here's a link http://dfwmas.org/fi...KitAnalysis.pdf to some comparison tests DFWMAS did that Robb in Austin posted last year. In the conclusion DFWMAS said "The primary finding we came to agreement on was that of all the Test Kits used, the majority of them were accurate enough for hobby use" and addressing API specifically "What really surprised us was how well API Kits did, these are some of the most economical Kits around and they did reasonably well against the more expensive ones." They also commented on the difficulty sometimes of determining the color change for some of the colormetric tests.

I have been feeding the anti parasite and dewormer both to fish in my quarintine tanks. I have a bunch of Bar Gobies in the tank and have not lost any yet, usually I expect at least 2 or 3 out of a large group so I take that as a good sign but it will take several batches for me to be real positive. It looks like it has killed several large bristleworms in one tank (or I don't see them anymore but I haven't turned over rocks [i know some people would see that as a plus but I like them as scavengers]). There are brittle stars and short spine purple urchins and a coral banded shrimp in the same tank and they are still fine after 2 weeks. Additionally there are large featherdusters in a second tank on the same system that have been unaffected so the medication does not seem to be getting into the water at levels high enough to hurt them. I have not tried actually dropping the medicated food in with the featherdusters to see how it would affect them if some of the food lands on them so in a display tank it may harm featherdusters. I run UV sterilizers so it's hard to say how the stuff works on ich but I would still use it during QT as a secondary treatment.

I have never kept them but I have seen them kept in 1000 gallon tanks made from plywood and rubber liner. Like all the cephlapods they are very effecient hunters and only cohabitate with potential mates and Dinner. They also are short lived and die after breeding.

Thanks Kendra & Dave for opening your home for the meeting! I had a great time!

+1

I've never tried a UV filter but I seriously doubt it would have any significant impact, chlorophyl is using blue and red spectrum not UV. If it's confined to one rock I would pull the rock out and if there's nothing valuable just toss it otherwise scrub it off in a bucket with some water from the tank (toss the water afterwards). I really like urchins like the royal or tuxedo for scrubbing algae off rock (research Dr. Martin Moe's studies of Diadem sp urchins role in controlling algaes on Caribean reefs for NOAA)

I'm about 98% sure the Zebrasoma and Acanthurus genus normally just have a single scalpel on each side. Maybe there was some confusion at one time or other and having 2 scapels, one on each side, got transliterated into a double scalpel. Maybe someone had one that actually had double scapels on each side (I've got a Sailfin that has two lateral lines on one side)? Naso lituras has two scapels on each side and some of the other Surgeon fish species can have as many as 7 so maybe there was confusion as to the species.

I will definitely be there! I keep missing out on the raffles so it's about time I get one! I may try to swing by All WYSIWIG also but my morning and early noon is pretty busy.

Yes, I've got a ton of spirorbids in my tank, too. Thanks for the update! I've been thinking they were snails for about 15 years.

Here's a video of Green Brittle Star's eating. They're sociable enough you can hand feed them.

They are beautiful and from my experience one of the hardiest of the Acanthurus sp. but like Hydro said it should be your last fish. Once added the only fish added aftewards with a good chance of survival are going to be species much smaller or much larger. They are not fast growers but do get large.

I've got them in all my tanks. The smaller spirals are actually a species of filter feeding snail that grows fixed in place, they are also ubiquitus. I guess somebody could argue they are competing with corals/inverts for food but I don't see anyway of compleetly removing them since they can grow in every little nook or cranny. And someone could argue removing them would be a method of nutrient export but I wont go out of my way to do that.