DaJMasta

There are quite a few parasitic marine isopods... generally clearish with black eyes and pill bug shaped (pill bugs are also isopods). While I've heard of many that are fish predators, I don't know of coral predators - but it's certainly a possibility.

This is the chuck's page that mentions them, there are a few additional links:

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

Yeah, massive algae growth and no skimmate points to a skimmer problem. I would ammonia and nitrate check the RO, just to be sure. I'm sure they do a good job with it, but if there's something in the buckets or a bad batch or something, it would certainly contribute.

In the mean time I would do this:

Reduce the photoperiod by a couple of hours

Reduce feeding by at least 1/3

Get more CUC - especially crabs or an urchin or a lettuce nudi or something else that is known to work on algae. Maybe large turbos would be a good choice.

What do you mean by added macros turn white? Is it only at night? It is normal for many macros to turn white without light and green when lit.

Do you have a refugium or other place with macroalgae as a nutrient sponge that is lit 24 hours a day? If you have the space it will help.

I'm not really seeing the baffle/bubbletrap design, but my guess is that there is your problem. Do you have a series of 3 baffles - one over one under one over in terms of water passage - somewhere in the sump? Are they spaced far enough apart for the given flow amount? Is the baffle the water travels under low enough to actually stop many bubbles? Is the fall of water over the baffle introducing more bubbles?

Is the water height differential at the overflow great enough to be generating all these bubbles in the first place? Does turning down the pump's flow help? Have you considered adding rocks or something for the water to 'land on' when entering the sump?

That's a lot of questions.... but all things that could potentially be doing it.

I've ordered a couple of times from them (special offers on nano-reef.com notably) and I find their service to be pretty good. The corals come advertised and all that, and for the price I certainly think it's worth it. That said, people get mixed results with the survival rates of some of the mixed packs - often you loose one or two from a pack of 10-12, still worth it in numbers when you consider most packs are under $100 shipped.

Still, I've never head a problem with the stuff sold outside of packs, and the 13 frags for $130 shipped is near impossible to beat. Just know that the corals you're getting aren't the super premium stuff, it's the pretty-close-to-premium stuff... a little less vivid color, a little different growth pattern, whatever. They look like what they're advertised as (though under my lights they tend to be a bit dimmer, and it's obvious from the pics that some photos have had their colors tweaked), and the $10 frags are fully healed and all.

There's actually a large thread on it here: http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=238690

Maybe a leafy less-calciferous macro like ulva?

Like many hitchhikers, there are many different species of Asterina. Some are good(I'd vote for most), some are bad. They will reproduce like mad so if you don't like them pull them out, you'll find more.

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.

Nope. 325W seems like a lot, but over a 90G it's not much. 125W over a 29G cube is considered mediumish light.

So no to acros.

Maybe to montipora capricornis (one type of thing as far as I know) or digiata, but I wouldn't expect full color or fast growth, even towards the top of the tank.

Some LPS and softies would work, but probably not much on the sand bed.

I've heard some clams can be kept under PCs, as with some anemones like BTAs - still it is less than ideal and not all species will survive under those conditions.

As for the acclimation, sometimes they are wild caught and sometimes farmed, it's not a matter of acclimating to the type of light so much as it is the amount of it. In the wild the clams don't move (same goes with corals), so while they can usually tolerate very intense light (the sun if they're at a shallow depth), they need to be moved into it slowly to avoid bleaching and expelling all their zooxanthellae.

From what I've read, there's not many options when it comes to those worms. I've heard the most effective methods are still dealing with each individually - smashing, putting a needle down the tube, or gluing it shut.

That sort of sounds like a frag/second display tank more than a quarantine. I can understand wanting to make it nice, and perhaps really large specimens would warrant a 90G QT, but the whole thing seems closer to another regular tank than a quarantine.

Treating the tank regularly with interceptor and FWE is probably not a good idea, it's like taking antibiotics regularly and there's significant risk for organisms developing a tolerance to the treatments.

Treating the tank as a whole will require less of the treatment with a smaller overall capacity.

Having lighting is important if you're going to QT all your corals, but a lot of live rock, a sand bed, or even a lot of places for things to hide is NOT a good thing. I would recommend keeping the tank bare-bottom with flow to keep detrius from settling. It will give you a better idea of what's living in the tank. I also would start it with all dry rock and maybe a piece from your main tank or just what comes in on frags - the extra organisms in good live rock are not the important thing and the risk should be avoided.

Definitely add a UV sterilizer and a reasonable skimmer. This will give you options of removing fish from your main tank if the worst strikes, and will clean up the system if something takes a nose dive in QT.

Don't link the tank to your main - then it's not a quarantine.

Stability of parameters is nice, but consider the bioload. Hopefully, you'll be running less than a full bio load worth of critters in the quarantine and basically not feeding corals unless they're in recovery. There's no requirement to keep pristine water conditions or bring out the full color of frags, you just have to keep them alive and healthy, keep the water fairly clean, and be able to see and treat any nasties that come along with things.

At least that's my take on it. If you make it too complicated and like a normal tank, it will only make it harder to diagnose actual problems - though it may be fun just to have a second tank.

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.

You definitely want a light for it, and leaving it on 24 hours seems to be good for most people.

It doesn't need much light to survive - I've got some in a tank with no lighting, just whatever it gets from the room lights, closed blinds, and the side of the MH on the tank 10 feet away that is still alive and green after months.... but if you're trying to use it as a nutrient removal system you need to have a lot of light to increase it's growth rate. I've got those JBJ Nano Glo lights (4x1W LEDs) and while they work, I could really use a bit more for more effective removal. It certainly grows and helps, but not as much as one might expect.

That is a TON of rock (looks like my tank ). I would definitely try to keep it a little lower to the ground when you scape it out, maybe even drop some in the sump. Having space for corals and free swimming fish up top will be nicer to look at than trying to look around rockwork all the time, as neat as the tall caves and overhangs can be.

I would hesitate from making ammonia sound so positive.

Some bacteria do eat it, but they convert it directly in nitratres.

Even in tiny, tiny amounts (less than 1ppm) are harmful to aquarium inhabitants - it's quite toxic.

And I'm not so sure corals really eat the ammonia....but I really don't know so maybe so.

That said, the RO membrane will get rid of it fairly well, and I believe the carbon stage breaks it down as well.

I still think the best method for variety and cost is to use primarily dead rock, but use a few pieces of nice looking pest free seed rock. Pest free can be hard to determine, but if it's from another aquarist's tank which is clean or is closely inspected you can determine a lot of what could be wrong with it. There's also the option of curing it a tub which would give you a lot more time to examine it for pests.

Personally I like most of the hitchhikers I've gotten, and I think the biodiversity of some of the larger creatures that come in live rock is better for your tank than just going with all dead and whatever comes on frag plugs and stuff, but with enough additions it could get to a similar level. There's a risk involved though, and it's more expensive... no doubt there.

One of the pervasive myths is that SPS are more difficult to care for. In fact, there's little biological differentiation between SPS and LPS, so little that they are only categorized this way in the aquarium hobby and are diverse enough as groups that they can't accurately be described in terms of care level using those designations.

That said, there are plenty of corals which generally follow with that rule, and with most of the SPS that are considered difficult to care for, it takes cleaner and more stable water parameters to bring out the full color of the coral, whereas LPS typically retain their color in less ideal conditions. This is a gross over-generalization though.

Doing the reading is good, that should give you a good overview of what is needed. I'd say ask specific questions after that instead of just asking for general advice - you'll get better quality advice and more replies.

As far as equipment goes, you'll need several major categories:

Tank and plumbing

Water circulation (powerheads, return pumps)

Lighting

Temperature control

Waste removal (skimmer, refugium, algae scrubber, reactors, whatever)

Then supporting equipment is something like:

Water purification (RODI usually)

Water testing

Saltwater preperation

Then before you add your main livestock:

Live rock

Substrate

Clean up crew

There's a lot of kinds of tanks out there and a lot of ways to go with things. If you want to keep corals lighting and flow requirements exist for each and should be heeded quite well - this is how they get most of their energy and release all of their waste. Have a plan for the kinds of corals you want to keep and the livestock you want in the tank before you put it together - do the research on what will eat or pick on what beforehand. And finally, just take your time. I wouldn't say there's a reason to wait long after doing your equipment research and making a proper plan, partly because it will take a while for the tank to get going. The first life in there will be your live rock, then a clean up crew of some sort. At that point it's usually recommended to wait a while, for some species quite a long time, before introducing them to the tank. It will take some time to get to a point where you can keep all of your parameters stable and having an established biological filtration system before you add other things is essential. Stock the tank gradually and keep a close eye on your parameters, as they say nothing good in a reef tank happens fast.

This article (first on googling chloramine breakdown) actually seems to cover the topic pretty well:

http://www.wqa.org/p...-Chloramine.pdf

It seems like they probably don't do anything to treat the water before releasing it, but it doesn't mention chemical means, so it's hard to say exactly. Perhaps one of the normal treatment chemicals for waste water addresses it in part, since it does say that chloramines pose a problem to fish. That said, I'm sure there's plenty of freshwater tanks using chloraminated city water to varying degrees of success.

It also mentions that removing chloramines can improve water taste (though smelling like bleach isn't something I've heard of)... I don't notice it myself, but my guess is that your well water is different enough from city water that its sort of amplifying the effect. Well water may not be treated with chloramine, but it's typically quite a bit harder and can have other chemicals unlikely to be found in city water supplies - so it would be natural that it would taste different. UV light is good at disinfecting, but will not work in a large system because of the time the water spends within a municipal water supply, since there's nothing in the water to prevent the growth, the inevitable bacteria that survives the UV treatment would be free to multiple unchecked after the initial sterilization.

Yes, sort of. They sell specialized chloramine RO filters, but they are at least based on activated carbon. I believe the carbon breaks down chloramine successfully, but the resultant compounds need to be further broken down, so most RO systems that advertise that they will remove chloramines have two carbon stages.

Don't buy into the chloramine conspiracy theories.... or the flouride ones for that matter since we're talking about city water.... but that link is a good one for general water information. It's required to stay updated and be checked regularly.

A wavebox can be a way to get a huge amount of flow without just cramming in more powerheads. I believe Mark added an MP40 recently too, maybe he can vouch for specifics, but I know that it's a powerful and well regarded powerhead.

If your rockwork isn't too tall in the tank and you keep the flow relatively parallel to the bottom, you can deal with a higher flow pump without ripping the flesh off of anything. Still you may need to make sure there are lower flow zones in the tank for lps and the like.

Yeah, I don't see them as much in DIYs, but some of the prebuilt few hundred watt hoods often include a few reds. The cyan is a blue that is a higher wavelength than the royals?

Either way, you'll be able to see if it's not enough blues with the dimming controls, then it's just a matter if you want to run the whites at full blast then will there be enough blues.

Looks like it will be a nice setup. I've been wanting to go with LEDs for a while.... and the automated controller would help a lot (a little basic programming and you could easily have your lights fade in and out when turned on and off, and near complete control over the color spectrum).... but it's just so much of an initial investment. Since I already have decent lighting, I can't justify it simply as an upgrade

As for the light colors, I hear that people almost always like more blue than white, so I would expect the blues to be at a higher level. People also complain about the relatively tight spectrum of LEDs, so I'd consider adding some more variety. Maybe drop 12 of the cool whites for 4 red and 8 purple? Not that the current setup is an issue, just with so many LEDs the potential for a lot of variety is there. I think 144 LEDs will be enough provided they're driven at over 700mA.... I could be wrong but that's a hell of a lot of lighting power

I've got a Marineland stealth in both my 7.5G and my mixing bucket, both have been great fully submerged. In my 24G nano cube I use a 100W Jager that's large.... but is going fine all the same. None of the dials are accurate according to the temps my thermometers measure

I've generally seen the long lashes based on how strong the water flow is around the polyps. Stronger direct currents seem to product longer skirts in my case.

I've noticed the same thing.

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...

Maybe it's worth trying to redirect them then, the dynamics of it all are much more complicated with the wavebox, but if you could keep the circulation relatively uninterrupted you may get some bonus from the current recirculating instead of dissapating.

It's difficult to say because so few people (myself included) even understand all the fluid dynamics aspects at work in even a small single powerhead system, and there's lots of conflicting advice (crossing streams, etc)... but in my experience it's best to have the pumps generally working together and keeping rockwork and tank walls out of the line of fire where possible. I think this gets the most cohesive stream with the least resistance, enabling a current in the tank to form more easily and keeping the powerhead from needing to 'pressurize' the stream as much as if it were physically obstructed.