DaJMasta

Then is a whole collection of pictures of the corals. Each coral is numbered and where it is in the pictures is numbered as well. If you want specific history of a coral I know where I got most of them and what they were called (if there's any info) for most. I can also tell you how they've done in my tank relative to other corals I've kept.

The end of the day today is my goal to sell everything to be able to clean out the tank (selling the tank would be great too) as tomorrow I pack the truck and early sunday I drive out. Make me an offer or just stop by and pick things up, if you want to bat cleanup and drop me a line at 7 or 8pm I would be happy to sell you the remainder. Also, cash only and I will not hold unless you arrange a paypal transfer for the items. I will check back on this thread often and PMs are a good way to reach me. I live at 51st and N Lamar and cannot deliver (no car). Combos: All corals and fish: $40 All live rock: $80 24G Setup: $150 (see below for what it includes) All live stuff: $100 And livestock in the main tank: 4 - Red and yellow scroll coral - $20 6 - Magician zoa frag - $5 15 - Green and Orange Echinata Acan frag - $5 16 - Green and Brown Favia frag - $5 17 - Green (Milie? Prostrata?) Acro frag - $5 20 - Green and Blue Acro mini-frag - $5 21 - Orange Polyp Montipora Digiata larger frag - $5 30 (Not numbered, but center right in the pic in this post) - Green and Red Rhodactis mushrooms - $5 Fish: Lattice Cardinalfish - $10 Green Banded Goby - $5 Live rock: All of it - $90 - Everything pictured in the main tank and the 5G tank. Included encrusted goodies include 2 acros, 2 pocilloporas, and some zoas. Also coming with is an emerald crab, the little guy doesn't want to let go, so i'll just let him be if the next tank will support it. Equipment: 24G JBJ Nano Cube with no hood, stand, JBJ Nano Glo light, MaxiJet 900, JBJ surface skimmer - $150 Pics of what remains: Corals: Goby: 24G live rock and setup: Additional bucket-o-live rock: It needs to go as I don't have a home for it when the tank is taken down. Just come get it, if you're willing to take all the live stuff I'll knock $20 off the total.

There's also one from me....

The frag tank is the one maybe half the height on the shorter stand in the pics? If so I would be interested in the frag tank alone... would you sell it, what would it come with, and how much?

+1 to ballast problems - especially if there is some sort of audible noise or slight flicker when some bulbs don't light properly. If it is the ballast, the solution is to replace it. Not really easy or too safe to go messing with it on your own.

+1 to flow and CUC if you want it gone. It won't be a problem in the long term.

I've heard people mention moonlights are useful because they help stimulate breeding cycles... but in a home aquarium I doubt there's much difference with or without. Having some lights on after dark is really just so you can see things., and with LEDs, if they're too high power they could break the proper day/night cycle for some corals.

Just remember that 1 inch under means about an inch of your display tank WILL end up in the sump in the event of an outage - so be sure the sump has enough capacity. I prefer a pair of small holes near the water line. That way if one clogs (algae, snails, etc) you're still good and not too much of the display is siphoned into the sump.

That just gives you the link to the main page, which is not functional. I think part of the reason people keep tanks at lower temps is to prevent things like power outages from being as immediate problems in terms of tank temperatures and because a lot of critters we keep are used to deeper depths which are cooler in the wild. Really unless you're specifically aiming for a biotope and have done your research, you're going to have species ranging from a bunch of different temperature areas under the umbrella of tropical water temperatures. There will be some creatures from the shallows where it's warmer, some from the deep where it's cooler, some from farther from the equator or in a normally towards-equator current that are used to cooler temps, and so on. The important thing is that there is always some fluctuation in temperatures so they should be fine in a decent range, but knowing approximate limits of what can be tolerated, I would keep it a degree or two on the cool side - I usually aim for 78F. Basically, if equipment fails (chiller, AC, whatever), here in Austin the odds are the temp will start to rise, and it seems like the critters we keep are more sensitive to high temperatures (like 82-83 for long term and 85+ for extremely short term) than they are to a few degree colder ones (after all, they're usually fine after airmail transit). I think this is because in the wild the water temperatures really never get past the low 80s, but with cooler currents and winter months, they get down easily to the mid 70s or below. It's less of a concern for people with large tanks - at least in terms of the power outage thing.

The two problems I've thought the Marineland lights had were that there isn't nearly enough blue to use them without supplements, and that by only using 1W lights, they don't penetrate to the same depths, don't crank out the same PAR, and aren't quite as efficient as their higher power counterparts. For softies and LPS it's probably fine, but in terms of PAR (given that the supplemental lights haven't changed), the LEDs alone are probably putting out 1/5-1/6th of your 3x400W MH setup.

It's true, but the solana is fairly deep too... so long as the optics aren't too tight you could probably get away with a sol, just don't expect LPS in the top half of the tank. Though, if you've got it set up to be dimmable it could be just fine. In my experience many low-light corals actually can tolerate a good amount of light if they're acclimated to it or just out of the intense areas. I've had a 150W MH and now 63W of LED over my 24G tank which contains mushrooms, a maze brain, and some lower light zoas and things... but keeping them on or near the sandbed, or just out of the center of the tank or partially shaded by rockwork keeps them happy enough.

FYI, that has been 'coming soon' for quite some time now. 36W of LED over your tank (since it say's it's half a sol) would be enough to meet your requirements, but the SPS and higher light corals would probably have to be under the fixture and closer to the top.

Do the shrimp come out? They can be somewhat wary, but if you can get them out in the open just put the net behind them and your finger in front - their natural reflex is to back up quickly to avoid the finger and into your net. They're also not as quick as fish, so they shoudln't be able to get out before you scoop them up. Works the same way with a cup, but it's riskier because water doesn't flow through it.

Well, I didn't mean that they're cheap and expendable, just that they're fairly hearty and would certainly survive in good health if quarantined in a small space like a 5G bucket for a week.

Parasites don't take over the whole tank, they can enter the water column and stay, but they can only live on their hosts, so they don't infect rock or sandbeds or anything. I don't know the specifics about the eel... looking around the web some people seem to have used it on puffers (also don't have scales) without negative effects. Since they broadly generalize in their advertisement it can treat a lot of things and works in salt and freshwater, I wouldn't be surprised if it works fine. That said, they're just chromis.... so do you have a 5 gallon bucket and a spare heater and powerhead? You can do a little mini quarantine for the length of the treatment without too much concern I think.

What was your salinity before the water change? 1.021 is a little low, but if you were running 1.025 or higher the sudden change in salinity of the water change could definitely do it. Also was the water you used already heated? If you have a big loss immediately after a water change, it's usually an indicator of bad water chemistry going in. Occasionally it could be stirring up something or killing something in the cleaning process before the change, and sometimes it's a coincidence.

I notice it the same way 80 and over is noticably too high, below about 77 feels cold.

Unless you have a chiller and it's on a lot I wouldn't even think about loosing the heater... unless you keep your house between 76 and 80 all year around with an accurate thermostat. 72 is too low, are you sure the animals you're looking at online are tropical and not temperate? Or maybe they're found at deeper depths? If you've got a large tank, a closed top, warm lighting, and some sort of chiller now, then you can probably deal without a heater. But in a small tank you'd see a lot of fluctuation, and in an open top tank I'd expect there's too much heat loss potential there after the lights are off.

I hear you can grow xenia in with your chaeto as a nutrient removal system

http://www.chucksaddiction.com/harlequinshrimp.html

Right, then none of the traditional sand sifters would be a good choice (cukes, stars, nassarius, conchs).... I should have read and understood that instead of just reading and ignoring Hmmmmm.... maybe micro brittle stars would be even more appealing then? Because they'd actually be able to get into that substrate and do some cleanup, while I can't think of many other critters that could (small pods, maybe large crabs).

It varies a lot from person to person and place to place, reefcleaners is somewhere in the middle.... maybe a little on the high side, but seems to emphasize smaller snails and no crabs. A small number of turbos can do a lot of damage to algae, takes a few more good sized nerites, and many, many ceriths to do the same job. The larger the snail of course, the bigger the chance of bulldozering frags. I hope those aren't actually cone snails, but are cone shaped snails like trochus, astrea, or ceriths. Cone snails are parasitic and are quite small. Neither of those starfish count, but perhaps a brittle star would work. If you're interested in cleaner sand, a sand sifting cucumber, starfish, or couple of conchs would be a good choice, but I would hold off a few months before you add them. Some more turbos would be great for GHA combat, but I've never thought of them as doing much on lesser algaes. I've had good luck with nerites, but they have a little tendancy to climb out - in the past year I've found maybe 3 outside the open topped tank. I've heard good things about trochus all around, but when I ordered some, their initial survival rate seemed to be rather low (despite a long drip acclimation), however the one of the 3 that survived seems to be doing good work. If it were me - someone who isn't afraid of crabs in the tank and who wants a decent sized CUC - I would add: 2 emerald crabs 3 turbos (medium sized) 20 nerites (medium sized) A sand sifting cucumber in a couple of months 10-20 nassarius (florida sized, not tonga sized) 1-2 serpent starfish or a seed colony of micro brittle stars It's a fair addition, but it adds algae cleaning, sand sifting, and detrius eating capability. While it's somewhat heavy stocking for CUC, it shouldn't be so heavy that they starve each other out trying to get food.

Yeah, those temps are a bit too high. I've heard that elevated temps can also shorten life spans if it doesn't do outright damage.... and this is only march, the weather will be hotter outside soon enough. The organisms don't really adapt to higher temperatures, they cope with them. It's just like trying to have a temperate fish in a tropical tank - sure it can survive for a bit, but not as long as it normally would. What kind of lights do the tanks use? There's a bunch of options if you're handy to mod the stock hood and get some extra ventilation for the lights - or if there's already a fan in place you can upgrade it. A fan on the open rear chambers is another option. Getting a more efficient pump/powerhead/skimmer can reduce some of the heat put into the tank, and switching to a different lighting system or a custom hood with better ventilation is a more expensive way to go. It sounds like your lights are building up some extra heat, but it may be worth an experiment if 77 or 76 degrees as a room temperature drops it significantly enough. The difference may not be linear, especially if you already have some ventilation over the tank, so a small reduction in house temperature may make a big difference. If it's happening with both tanks, maybe this is worth it. I've got a small apartment, so I can aim my room temperature at 74 or 75 and keep my tanks just fine (with the halides, now that I'm on LEDs I could probably go to like 77....), but I've always considered my heating/cooling system as something that works hand-in-hand with the tanks. Just like you have to pay for the electricity for the high intensity lights, maybe running a lower temperature is what's required to keep the critters healthy.

Yep, it's not a problem. The waste water is more broken down than tap water thanks to the carbon blocks, but it's still not terribly concentrated stuff. It's still mostly water, and if you're on city water it's still way below the TDS of most well water systems. Not that grass is so picky either.... As long as you're not using the water taken out for a water change on the lawn you should be fine.

That was me But I think we're getting caught up in the naming system. The nitrogen cycle encompasses the whole thing, denitrification is the very last step in the cycle converting nitrogenous waste into nitrogen gas. The breakdown of ammonia, nitrates, and nitrites occurs in aerobic bacteria - yes - but then you've still got nitrates in your water. If you're really talking about denitrification - the removal of nitrogen from the system and thus the removal of nitrates without a skimmer/chemical means/growing macroalgae - and not just the breakdown of wastes, then you NEED anaerobic conditions like that of a DSB. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitrogen_cycle (works the same way on land as in the sea) Thus my emphasis on the complexities of the sandbed. If you choose larger grain sizes you have the potential to catch more debris, but more 'filtration capacity' similar to that of what live rock gives you (the ammonia -> nitrite -> nitrate part). Smaller grain sizes means less oxygen in the sandbed, but unless you have the sand bed depth to make it completely anaerobic (oxygen is toxic to denitrifying bacteria), you will not get ANY denitrification from the system. That means going with a medium depth (2-4") sand bed is essentially useless in every situation except with really coarse sand (crushed coral), and then you run the risk of packing detrius into the gaps and needing gravel vacuuming and such. A shallow sandbed will be the most efficient otherwise unless you are looking for true denitrification, in which case as far as I know, DSB is the only option. Now these are strictly nitrogen cycle concerns, there's certainly arguments to be made for the critters living in the sand as well as fish and things that need a certain kind of sand to survive.