DaJMasta

Also check for nudis - they'd be little white hairy things probably in the affected area. If not, corals can regrow around a live skeleton even if the flesh is gone (still bone white), but with time the skeleton will stop being viable and the tissue will no longer regrow over it.

This, though I'd say not all reproduce like mad either. I've had a few in each of my tanks and have never had an explosion of them. Some eat corals, the vast majority do nothing harmful.

Wouldn't be palytoxin, could be something else. Chemical warfare with zoas and palys produces a distinctive smell when the toxin is released, but it usually doesn't piss off corals much. If the tonga piece was not cleaned or boiled, then it could be ammonia, it could be built up chemicals on the surface.... it could be a lot of things.

Not too difficult to get to, I can probably come by on saturday, but I'll let you know for sure in the next day or two by PM. Don't hold them on my account, but if they're still there I will be interested.

Where are you located? If you're close enough I'd be interested in some of the SPS...

I doubt you'd be able to get rid of them all, but there's a chance - a natural starfish predator the harlequin shrimp. If you have other starfish or critters with tube feet I doubt they'd be a good idea (they eat the tube feet), and I'm not exactly sure whether they eat brittle stars.... but with a little research you should be able to tell. A lot of people don't keep them because their diet is only starfish, but it could help solve your problem. That said, I don't know for sure whether it would work. There are chemical options like a copper based ich treatment, but that will essentially kill any mobile invertebrate and could be bad for corals, so it is by no means a reasonable option. If you can't keep the numbers down I'd gladly take a few - I have some regular sized brittle stars but none of the mini ones.

It will keep them alive but they probably won't be fully colored. If they're in the top half or so of the tank they should do just fine, the bottom half may be a little low for some types of zoas, especially if the bulbs are old.

I've always liked acan lords. The two smaller frags have the best color IMO, but I think that's just cause the red and white ones you see around more. That said, I've got some red and white ones which really look awesome,.

Not sure how well shipping would work, but for a few choice pieces it's definitely an option. Everything in your tank now has been overnighted at least once and made it safely +1 to the LFSs being able to take care of you. There's also the usual internet suspects if you want variety or are on a very tight budget. We've even got local custom tank builders, professional tank care services, and cherry-pick coral importers among other things within a half hour or so of the center of the city. Not as sure about the frag swaps though. Lots of activity in the livestock and trade forums for smaller scale stuff, and more than a few members with extensive frag tanks, but otherwise it seems to be mostly the frag swap meetings. I don't know of many others at least.

Not all jellies have the same requirements, there are some which don't need round tanks and some which probably should. There are some that do well in captivity and some that most certainly don't. There are a number of relative constants though, including: They need low flow and intakes MUST be protected. Round tanks are recommended because they can get caught and injured on any corner, there are ways of doing this without a round tank though. They need high lighting, they are photosynthetic after all. They need live food, I think I usually hear about using enriched brine. Any corals or tankmates have to be docile and soft/without hard edges. Other than that, you really just have to find a jelly that's well suited to aquarium life. Something that will live in tropical waters, something that isn't an extremely active swimmer, etc. I don't know much about them but i've seen a few successful tanks which aren't the thousand dollar in-wall monsters that are used in commercial aquariums and such. Look at some people's tanks who have kept them, I know there's a couple on nano-reef.com which I've seen, a cube aquarium was one and I think the spherical biorb was another, but it can be done somewhat less extravagantly than the extremely expensive option if you've got it planned out well.

I think mine was around 165 when tested a couple months ago. If you're on city water it's pretty good, but the quality of the pipes in your building and the newness of the feeders that get it to you play into things quite a bit.

That pico should come with a basic filter, as do most of its competitors. For a fuge I would consider looking into getting an AC50/AC70 filter and modding it into a fuge - saves you the work for the overflow and all that but keeps the desktop only footprint. Don't know if you have a tank already, but a BC12 would probably be a good option on the large end, I've got a 7.5G built with a Mr. Aqua tank from fosters and smith (or was it marine depot...) and they have small sized bow front, rectangle, and cube aquariums that are rimless and the shipping seems fairly reasonable. Those are all spending money options though, which isn't always the best.

There's a number of good online guides out there, but basically you have choices of: Power Compact T5 Metal Halide LED Or some mixture of those. That list is in order of efficiency, least to greatest, in terms of PAR per watt. If you want the shimmer effect, you need to go with lights closer to a point light source, so it needs to be MH or LED. If your tank is fairly shallow, a lot of PC or T5 will be plenty, but the deeper the tank, the more powerful and directional the light needs to be to reach the depths with reasonable PAR. If you have a mostly deep tank, LEDs with tight optics would give you the best PAR deep in the tank, most tanks will get pretty well covered by a MH lamp or two, and T5 will give you a fair amount of power with the same blanket lighting style and no shimmer effect. PC is uncommon in very large fixtures simply because T5 is more efficient, produces less heat, and is more powerful. Going from 65W PC to 54W T5 is probably approximately the same, with a little extra power in the T5 bulbs. The real advantage with T5 in this case would be if each bulb had an individual reflector (and a good one), in which case 54W T5 bulbs would be tangibly brighter than 65W PC bulbs. As said, T5 bulbs in standard lengths also come in a lot of varieties so you can fine tune the color and look of your tank fairly easily.

You guys sure do get a lot of fancy looking corals! That rainbow fungia looks really neat, too bad my tank with space is still way too young for more than your basic hardy corals.... and my tank without space would basically require me to mount it on end, front and center in the tank.

Yeah, more filtration is probably the answer. Getting a whole-house filtration system is probably the best bet, but if that isn't an option for whatever reason, I would double the number of sediment filters (run a coarse and a fine size in that order), get a second membrane with a high rejection rate (the higher flow 96% versions are no good in this case), and get a second DI. Not cheap, but more prefiltering (sediment filters) means longer membrane life and 2 membranes means longer DI life. I'm certain that there is a whole house filtration option which would probably lessen the need to clean out your plumbing (sediment in the hot water heater probably will be a problem with that kind of TDS), but it is possible to do in just part of the RO/DI system. Good luck!

Looking good, the water is a bit yellowed, but I would say your problem is on it's way out if you're only getting that much yellow through feet of water. Think of how much easier it is to see any issues with water clarity when you're looking through 3+ feet of it vs. 2 or less in a smaller tank... it's probably better than you think. Also sounds like you've saved quite a bit from the DIY option.

PM also sent

If my tank was big enough for a tang I would have posted a pic

Some zoas just have brown skirts. Unless you have reason to believe they shouldn't and they're just discolored, let them be. More actinic light (higher kelvin rating light colors, lower wavelength actinics, or UV really) could bring out the color they have more perhaps.

Yep sounds like diatoms. As far as I know they're pretty typical in a cycle and should subside on their own. CUC members and pods both eat them, so one way or another they'll go away. I've actually heard that small diatom blooms during the life of the tank are good because they replenish the pod population.

It looks almost like it's growing outwards, almost with rings... is that about the color of it when it's under full light? I know coralline comes in a lot of colors and there's a chance it's that. Also have you poked it? Whether it's slimy/spongy/rough/etc could go a long way to IDing it.

Easy solution, measure the salt and salt mix supplements before and add water until you hit the right salinity. Just have to do it in the other order. I think the more important application is listed in the description - you get to decide what proportion of supplemental salt mix is added. If your non-salt element demand is especially high (tons of corals) you can mix up a salt that starts at a higher Ca, Mg, Alk, etc content than someone running a FOWLR tank. You get to customize certain aspects of the salt, though you still have to use the non sodium chloride part of everything in the proportions they have mixed up. I would hesitate to go as far as saying it could be used supplementally - I don't think they intended to have this mix mimic the loss of nutrients in a tank just because the demands of each tank are so different - but preemptively raising nutrient levels in your fresh batches of water could be useful. I think unless you're using an expensive salt or this is especially cheap, this won't be much of a cost reducer.

That's a huge amount of LED power!!!! I hope your light cycle isn't too long and you can shade some of your corals because 160W of even fairly low efficiency LEDs is equivalent to hundreds (probably well over 300W) of watts of PC. If you want to grow SPS on the bottom of your tank, you should now be able to. I've never seen an LED fixture that powerful and those 30W LEDs are insane.