etannert

Order will be placed in an hour. Anyone else?

I'd like to place the order ASAP since it's all dry goods, but I'm sure it won't come in till early next week due to the holiday. Also I'll have to have it delivered to me at school, and for some reason that seems to add a day to the delivery. I can hold things for folks until a mutually convenient pick-up can be arranged.

DShel got me over the free shipping hump so anyone else who wants to add on feel free, but not obligated. I'll give it through midnight tonight and place the order late tonight or first thing in the morning.

Anyone need anything? I'm $28 away from free shipping.

Now that the new 60g is nearly done, it's time for its predecessor to find a new home.

Solana tank and stand

34g Solana AIO

Black Solana stand

comes with return pump, Solana skimmer, glass top, and a nearly-new inTank Solana media rack/sponge holder set

NO LIGHT - I'm keeping the disco ball halide for the new set-up

I'm the set-up's second owner so there are some light scratches and the stand has some small damage from adhesive strips - nothing very noticeable.

Asking $200. Feel free to make me an offer; lowballs will be ignored. I'm willing to discount the price if you're willing to clean the tank - the layout of my apartment does not make maneuvering a big tank in and out of a tub an exciting prospect...

Tunze 9002 skimmer

Also available is a Tunze 9002 skimmer. I'll give it a good vinegar rinse and tune up before it goes to its new home. Comes with pump (not quite sure what I have running it right now, I think a MJ1200?) and inTank Solana lid. Bought this one used as well so not quite sure of its age. Asking $80.

I'm aiming for all equipment to be ready to pick up by next Friday or Saturday at the latest. Once I go back to school on Monday my schedule gets difficult to schedule pick-ups around, so keep that in mind.

I'll have some live items for free and for sale once the tank gets broken down:

used live sand (free)

a little leftover dry sand (free)

some LR I won't need in the new tank (prob around $20/rock)

Purchasers of the hardware/equipment can have first dibs on the above items.

I'll post pics tomorrow. PM with questions. Thanks for looking!

New tank got wet today. 20g in, about another 50 to go. I'm making RO 5 gallons at a time and dumping it in, then plan to add the salt at the end and mix in tank, so this will take a couple days. Good thing I have a whole 'nother week of winter break to go! I have some Dr. Tim's at the ready and plan to finish filling/mixing tomorrow, then transfer livestock around Wednesday or Thursday. Time to get the old tank listed for sale.

Fire shrimp don't eat shrooms. They probably floated into a crevice. They may have dissolved or you may one day move a rock and find them hiding there. Best way to secure a mushroom of any sort is with rubber band or some kind of mesh.

Ditto! And sorry I missed the party!

Hydrometers are notoriously inaccurate, even when the readings are repeatable (when an upward swing of just a few ppm can kill all your livestock, it's pretty important to be correct). Why not go to an LFS, ask them to check with a refractometer, and be sure? The worst that can happen is that they say your hydrometer is dead on. And you might find out that it's not. Better than spiking your salinity up to 1.031 and killing everything, and won't cost you anything but your time and gas.

If not working with a controller, then Bubble Magus.

That is definitely no bueno. Sorry as previusly said it can recover but it will be a long road.

Woooooooot!!!!!!!!! Way to make my day! I'll await your final confirmation, but thanks!

The cord runs through the metal hanging pipe so I guess I'm wondering how I would get that out without outright cutting/ripping something? Or maybe I shouldn't care about that?

Thanks for the suggestion!

I love my disco ball fixture for my Solana, so much so that I'm planning to move it over to the 60g cube when I get it wet. However... I have a sweet PAR38 bulb that I picked up from Brooks. (The original plan was to do a rescue coral area in the sump, but I'm not sure there will be enough room.)

What I'd really like to do is retrofit the disco ball (which is set up for 150w DE metal halide) to be able to accommodate the PAR38 bulb. However... I teach music, not electrical wiring. Is anyone on here handy enough to do this, and not burn down my apartment building??

Use bone cutters, and slice the rock just under the foot so it stays attached to its bit of rock but you can detach it and move it elsewhere. Beware, any small but of tissue left behind will eventually grow into a new one.

T5s can keep anything if the bulbs are good, rchavez had a 4-bulb Wavepoint (?? Might have screwed up that brand name) over his 20 tall and kept softies, zoas, LPS and sps quite happily. You might PM him since he took down that tank and might sell you the fixture.

Yep, anyone who wants one should read up on Elegance Coral disease, there's a lot on Reef Central about it. Also a lot of poor information, but the big threads are pretty accurate it seems.

I'm totally in if I'm available!!!!

Progress was made this weekend!!

Plumbing!

Couldn't resist finally putting the sand in...

And messing around with the rock. (I probably won't use all of this since I have live rock already in my currently-running tank, but it's fun making shapes - and it got one more box out of the living room!)

Also got the Durso standpipe and loc-line installed.

Twins!

I still have to get a couple parts for the TLF reactor, but everything else won't get moved till I'm ready to break down the Solana. And that won't happen for three more weeks at least, till competitive marching season is over. It's so close to being done that I'm really tempted to start making water and dumping it in, but I'm going to hold out until I have a little more time to devote to things that might go wrong.

You sure they're shrooms and not cyano?

Flatworm Exit aka FWE, follow the directions on the box. Dip any coral that has them, I found an iodine-based dip was the most sure way to kill them off as both I and Mitch have had the experience of a few surviving and becoming resistent to the FWE.

Hey Ty - I'd like a small fungia. Can pick up on Saturday?

Wow, I didn't even notice that when I posted it...

Well, you inspired me, Ian, so I took another look, decided I was smarter than some PVC, and managed to get it all fixed. Basically the needle wheel cover (inside the skimmer body) is attached to some kind of nozzle/cover/something or other (outside the skimmer body) that wasn't coming off. Since I was swapping the dead pump for the same variety, I decided to try to just put the old needle wheel cover on the new pump. I'd tried this before and failed, but this time I managed to get it on and put the rest of the skimmer back together without too many false starts or extra parts. Thanks for the inspiration, Ian!

Just want to give a big shout-out of thanks to Chris and his guys at GPS. They have done numerous custom projects for me and the high school guys and have always exceeded my expectations in both quality and pricing. Chris has even been willing to take products home and let me pick them up from him at his home waaaaaaay after hours, which has been a godsend.

Check out his latest project on our behalf: static cling decals for our drums...

which match our props and custom bass drum heads. (The drumheads are from Remo.)

He's also done our drumline t-shirts and a slew of custom stickers for us.

If you need ANYTHING printed, Chris is your man!

That's all the progress I've made for now. I've got to replace the pump in the skimmer, a BM NAC6A, and I've run into a touch of trouble getting a PVC plug off part of the old pump; haven't had much time to work on it (this being the time of year I regularly pull 70-80+ hr weeks at school), but neither hot water nor good old-fashioned tugging have gotten the job done. I'm open to suggestions. Maybe I'll post pics later.

We don't have a contest this weekend, so my goal is to get all the hardware and plumbing installed and mocked up this Saturday. I'm a little nervous about putting water in it until after contest season is over (Oct. 26) since I'm not home much these days and if there was a leak or some other problem, it might be later in the evening before I'd discover it. But since this build has taken many months so far, I guess there's no reason to be in a hurry!