dweyant

I'll take two of the Red Sea, that should keep me in salt for a while.

-Dan

They found each other yesterday afternoon. The wathman seems much happier now .

He was just hanging out under a rock looking sad all day Saturday, he looked much happier gaurding the hole all evening last night.

They have sort of run off the blennie that was using a hole in the top of the rock as somewhere to hide. He seems to have relocated to the other side of the tank.

One questions though. Do I need to worry about the pistol shrimp getting aggresive and/or eating any of my other fish? He is fairly small, and I'm assuming (hoping) that if I keep him fed he will be ok?

Thanks,

-Dan

I picked up a Watchman and a pistol shrimp last night.

The pistol shrimp took off into the rocks as soon as he got into the tank, and I haven't seen him since. The Watchman is hanging out on the sand looking sad.

Will they find each other again (they where paired at the LFS), is there anything I can do to help, or will it just take a couple days for the pistol to get comfortable enough to come out of hiding?

THanks,

-Dan

Just wanted to post an update on the drama that is/was the exploding heater.

I left some picture of the heater at Fishy Business a while ago, so I think some of you got a chance to see how it split down the entire side.

The tank is back to normal, and everything seems to be doing well and happy.

Shane at Fishy Business has been great in helping us figure out what to do with the tank, and getting everything back to normal.

Rosemary with Marine Land (make of the heater) has also been quite helpful. She was very anxious to get the heater returned to them so they could figure out what happened. They also immediately agreed to pay for our losses, and we recevied a check for everything from them today.

Also, thank you to everyone on ARC that helped especially offroadodge for loaning me lights (to heat the water) and giving me 30+ gallons of SW so I could do a bi water change the first night.

-Dan

I'm a (semi) retired engineer. I'm now teaching (warping) young minds teaching them engineering (www.pltw.org).

You think managing adults is fun, try the same thing with really smart, but no common sense teenagers .

-Dan

Part of my order was not in the box. It was a small bottle so I'm sure it was just an oversight, but I can not seem to find an e-mail address for these folks on there web site. Does anyone have one?

Thank,

-Dan

You asked about your skimmer. Do you have an auto-topoff system? If not, then a skimmer will never work correctly. The ever changing water level will continually throw your skimmer out of it's optimum setting. I had this problem for quite a while. Auto topoff systems are not very expensive. They can be considerably less than $100. See Http://www.autopoff.com or http://www.aquahub.com.

Hmm, didn't realize that, but it makes sense I guess. I seem to loose about 1/2 - 3/4 inch a day in my sump. I was thinking about doing an ATO, I guess I need to up it on the priority list.

I just got one of the reefkeeper lite systems. They sell an dual switch ATO that I might have to look at getting.

-Dan

unfortunately a 75 is too small for a Hippo and a mandarin. The Tang needs at least a 6' tank. They get over a foot long. If you don't believe me go check out melevsreef.com and see the video of the Hippo he used to have in his 280g. The Mandarin will need at least 100 lbs of live rock unless you get very lucky and find one that will eat prepared food. Those are very rare though. I had one starve in a 125.

Wow, didn't realize that about the Hippo, glad I asked.

I've got about 130 pounds of live rock now, and I figure I'll add a bit more as I find good deals and/or pieces that are interesting. Should that be enough live rock for a Mandarin?

If not a hippo what else would you suggest? I was also thinking about maybe some frogspawn as an easy starter coral.

-Dan

So, it has been a very eventful 2.5 months for our tank, but it seems to finally be settling in.

The adventure with the heater made things quite "interesting", but thanks to some folks here we have mostly recovered from that. Marineland has been responsive, and has agreed to pay for our losses and expenses, so I have to give them credit for that.

Anyway, it looks like things are working well, all parameters are normal, everyone looks happy, is eating etc.

We currently have a Skunk cleaner (only thing other than the snails to survive the great heater explosion, so he is hearty), a yellow clown goby, a McCoskers(sp?) Wrasse, and a O. Clown. Plus about 30 assorted snails (margarita, Nasarius, etc.)

75 gallon tank, 20 gallon sump, currently two 36 inch T5 lights, but looking to upgrade to 4 48 inch VHO lights soon.

I do have a couple questions.

1) The skimmer is still not doing much. It will occasionally produce a little skimmate, but not much, and I can't get it adjusted to do anything consistantly. Is that just because I still have a pretty light bio-load, or do I need to do something?

2) We are still fighting a bit of algae. Nothing major, but I'd like to do/get something to make sure it doesn't get out of hand. Suggestions? Is it time for some crabs?

3) What should we look at getting next? I'd like to add a Hippo Tang at some point, and I'd really like a Mandarian somewhere down the road (I know that tank likely won't be ready for that for some time still).

Any thoughts or suggestions are appreciated.

-Dan

It should not have a significant impact at all. Heck, multiple people run a second RO unit off of the first one's effluent directly.

Thanks, that is what I figured. If I don't have to plumb a drain line for the waste it simplifies the install a lot, and I don't waste a lot of water that should be fine for irrigation.

-Dan

have a (maybe) sort of strange RO/DI question.

I just bought the 75 GPS deluxe unit as part of the Bulk Reef Supply group buy.

I have a pump house that has my well in it along with a 1500 gallon storage tank for the well water. I will be using (preasurized) water from the tank to make my RO water.

My question is, how big of a deal would it be to run the waste water back into the tank? The vas majority of the water in the tank is going to be used for irrigation, and I'm thinking diluting the waste into a 1500 gallon tank shouldn't have much of an impact on the RO system?

Thoughts?

Thanks,

-Dan

PM Sent

Shouldn't be. I didn't get charged tax.

It showed tax on my orde until I entered my shipping info, then it added the shipping, and took off the tax (almost the same price in my case).

-Dan

Got my order almost ready to go.

I have a couple questions.

I'm looking at the 75 GPS RO/DI 5 Stage Plus System, That should do everything I need, right?

I'm also looking at either the ReefKeeper Lite L1 or L3. I want something that will control my heater better than just using the heater thermostat. I'd also like to do an ATO at some point as well. It seems to have gotten good reviews, and is (semi) reasonably priced.

Any thoughts/suggestions?

-Dan

Talk to Shane at Fishy Business, he drilled my 75 and did a nice job with it.

-Dan

Why does it need to by cycled if it is dead? Can't you just put it into an established tank with live rock, and it will become "live" over time, or am I missing something (probably).

How much does he charge for this rock? I'd like to add a few more pounds to my tank eventually.

-Dan

you might want to look up pastic-mart.com. They have about any and every size shape plastic container you can think of they also will custom build a mold to make a tank to fit in an odd place. Might not be cheep for a custom one but hey what is in this hobbie lol.

They are located in burnet texas about 3 miles from my house. they got from 1/2 gal up to 20ish thousand gal tanks.

I bought a 1500 gallon tank from them for my water well last fall. They where easy to deal with, and I thought very reasonable price wise.

Oh, and just as an FYI, if the tanks you get are for rainwater collection there is no sales tax in Texas.

-Dan

I want in!

-Dan

So it looks like a lot of folks just don't use heaters on there tanks. In Central Texas I can see not needing one the vast majority of the year, but right now, with the T5 lighting I'm running I need a heater.

I am thinking about upgrading to some VHO lighting in a couple months, but my understanding is that still (probably fortunately) doesn't put off a lot of heat at least not like the NMH lights.

Given my recent past experience, if I'm going to have to get another heater for my tank, I'd like something as safe as possible, so for those of you that do run a heater, what would you suggest?

Thanks,

-Dan

Just about have the 40 degree water that the Aquatek service brought out yesterday up to temp (still really don't understand that entire deal)

I'm going to do a forty gallon water change with that water, and hope we are almost back to normal.

Shane analyzed everything last night, and said the O2 levels where almost normal (they had been virtually 0 the day before) and everything else was ok to good.

I'll still run the mega carbon filters for a couple more days just to be sure, and I stuck in a polyfilter last night. It has not changed color as of this morning, so hopefully that indicates the toxins are gone.

The death toll is:

Bi-Color Blennie

Clown (Flirty, daughters favorite)

a number of snails

not sure on the brittle stars. I haven't seen them since the first night, hopefully they are just hiding in the rock, but I'm worried about them.

If everything goes well with the water change today, we will likely justlet everything sit until next weekend, and then look at reintroducing a couple CUC things (still have some algae issues).

Thanks for the suggestions from everyone.

-Dan

If I didn't run a heater in the winter my tank would be well under 70 degrees, from everything I've told that is bad, right?

I'm using T5 lighting currently, so that doesn't heat my tank a lot, and I don't keep my house that warm (72 when we are home, 62 at night and during the day).

So, unless I am missing something I have to have some sort of heat.

The real question is, what heater can I get that won't fail in a catastrophic manner? It shouldn't be that hard to design a heater that fails to an off position, and doesn't literally explode, leaking posion all over your tank...

-Dan

That saga continues...

I don't know the details, since I haven't gotten home yet, but apparantly the fish service wanted to do a water change with 40 degree water.....

On the plus side, Marineland is saying they will be for the damages, and is quite anxious to get the heater returned to them so they can do a root cause analysis on it, so that is encouraging.

The Clown (Flirty as my daughter calls him) is still alive. I honestly don't know how. He has looked dead for two full days now. But everytime I think he is dead, he will right him self off the bottom and swim a little. It looks like he just isn't getting any oxygen, he is just panting for breath. I have a couple bubblers in the tank, I've done 50 gallons of water changes in the last two days, I'm runing a huge amount of carbon, etc. I'm afraid he has damage to his gills, and just can't get enough to breath? Any thoughts on anything I can do to help this poor thing out? Every time my daughter walks by the tank and sees him she bursts into tears.

I'm also at the point I don't know what to do. How many water changes are too much? It can't be good for what is still left alive to change so much water, or does it matter? How do I know when the tank is ok again? How long should I run the Fluval, the bubbler, etc.?

-Dan

Craig,

Thanks for the reply, and yes my wife did say that you covered those items with her. It is however dissapointing that you did not take down our number to have Bruce call us back, or offer us any advice on what to do after the water change.

We were finally able to get a hold of Bruce this evening, and my wife had a long very pleasant talk with him. He also said this is the first failure of a marineland heater you have had, but you had only been carrying this model for about a month.

He is going to be able to get someone from your service out tomorrow to do another large (50 gallon) water change. This will be on top of the 30 gallon change we did last night, and the 30 gallon I just finished tonight. I just wish we had known about your service and could have got them out today. We might have been able to save some of our fish.

-Dan

I'd like to get in on a group order, end of the month is fine with me.

-Dan

They are black plastic, I think made by Marineland

Dan, if you need more Ro/Di tomorrow let me know. I have 55 gallons in the garage. I am out of salt but you are welcome to the water.

It is/was a black plastic marineland heater...

Thanks for the offer of the RO/DI water. My wife is going to go down to Fishy Business today at lunch and pick up another 30 gallons or so of SW, so I "think" we are ok, but I'll let you know if I need it.

After Aquatek was less than helpful last night. "Gee, we have never had one of those heaters fail before, you need to do a big water change", we got a hold of Shane at Fishy Business. He was quite a bit more helpful.

I had a Fluval 405 cannister filter from when the tank was FW. Based on Shane's advice I loaded it up with Carbon, and have been running it in addition to the sump.

The shrimp looks ok, the clown is alive, but lying on the bottom, and I don't see the blennie this morning...

I hope that at the very least aquatek is willing to pay for all of the expense associated with this.

-Dan