jestep

Welcome

NP, also, this is roughly where I have my pump located, and did the same when I had my 50 gallon (36 x 18 x 18) running:

Basically as high up as possible without it sucking air.

Does yours have the S1, S2, S3 functions on the controller, or just the H, L, W1, W2, W3? There are 2 versions of controllers for this and the one with the S functions offers much better speed control.

Also, if needed you can run these off a 12V power supply and get roughly 50% of the flow from the same pump.

Anyway, I would put the pump at the S3 position, and then W1 on the wave side. Slowly adjust the frequency and at certain points you should see the wave quickly get bigger with each pulse, and then all the water in the tank will be part of the back and forth wave. This is basically what you're looking for.

Personally I think it's more complicated than just an arbitrary volume per gallons, but there's a few things going on here. Euphyllia will typically inflate when the water flow goes down, so this is normal. If it's trying to fully retract or expels all the water from its tissue, it's too much flow, but otherwise what you're explaining sounds normal.

Unless you're using an oscillator or other wave function, I would just ignore the return pump for in tank flow. Yeah, it's providing some flow, but it's directional and should be calculated into figuring in tank flow.

How high up do you have the WP40 on the tank? Also, most importantly, do you have the frequency of the WP40 so that you are getting an actual harmonic wave in the tank? Basically this is when you have the perfect frequency where the pump is on, pushing water towards the other side, then turns off, for the same amount of time, and then turns on exactly when the previous wave bounces back off the same wall the pump is mounted on. Once you hit the correct frequency for a wave, the moving water reinforces its own movement. The pump might only be pushing 800gph, but there's actually tens of thousands of gallons of movement per hour. The other good thing about making a wave like this, is that's is fairly mellow flow in most of the tank compared to having power heads actually aimed directly at rockwork and coral.

I run a RW15 which is basically the newer version of the WP40, and I have to keep it at almost the lowest setting in a 90 gallon tank. I still have a roughly 1in wave on the water surface and there is only a tiny section where there was a dead spot, just due to my rockwork. At more than 50%, I think I could probably get my stand to start skipping across my tile floor and will definitely be splashing water out of the tank. I can't imagine running a WP40 on 50% on a 50 gallon, let alone needing more WP10 on the same tank. It sounds to me like you might want to play with the frequency some more before making a decision on adding or removing pumps.

I think I got a virus or something but I lost both my orange and rainbow hammers in the past year. No other coral including other wall hammers seemed to be affected. Had them both for years.

These were the AAF pictures and the color was spot on:

Welcome.

Personally, I like SW Austin for the schools and the general lack of city feel, but it's blowing up around here as well.

Pretty much all the LFS's are good.

Aquadome

Aquatek

RCA

are the long time staples.

We now also have stinky's, fish gallery, just reef, nikos, and some others, I'm probably missing a few. Austin aqua farm is also a great place for coral, they are open on Saturdays for pickup and have stock on their website and weekly ebay auctions.

40 gallon breeder is a good dimension, but you can get a 30, 50, or even a 65 gallon in the same 36 x 18 footprint.

If you're interested I still have a really nice ADA rimless 50 gallon tank in my garage, last thing I had for sale in my garage cleanout thread, there's a link to a picture as well: http://www.austinreefclub.com/topic/31928-garage-sale-consolidation-tanks-lights-and-a-few-supplies/

But otherwise, welcome to the club / hobby / addiction...

I'm finding myself without the time to properly care for my FW aquarium, so am putting the entire setup, except the light, for sale. Currently running low tech with a tek 4 bulb T5HO fixture, which is far too much light for the tank when not running CO2, hence the large algae balls in the front. You should be fine with any 2 - 4 bulb T5HO or equivalent. Most of these plants are very hardy so will probably work with less light, just make sure to use good quality (5000K - 7000K) daylight bulbs.

It's a standard 75 gallon glass aquarium with about 2" of caribsea torpedo beach substrate.

The rear wall has a foam textured background which looks absolutely awesome. There is space behind it but I've never had any problems with the space back there. I did run a canister intake back there for several years, but I haven't noticed any difference.

The 2 pieces of wood have many plants attached to them, java ferns and anubias.

Here's a picture from a few years ago so you can see the background and wood better.

Stand is 36" tall oak skyline from RJ aquatics. http://www.rjaquatics.com/products/skyline.html

Canister is an eheim pro II 2026. Personally, I'd take the time to replace the tubing when this is moved, it's really stiff at this point from previous CO2 usage. Takes eheim 16mm or standard 5/8 tubing.

Here's some of the plants, the first 4 are fairly rare in the US, the first 3 almost never seen.

Bucephalandra Biblis
Bucephalandra Acentana

Hydrocotyle tripartita (Will carpet under high light)
Alternanthera reineckii

A ton of java ferns, several different varieties (lace, trident, wendelov)

A ton of anubias, barteri, nana, coffeefolia, probably some others.

Tons of red crypts (wendtii)

Red tiger lotus pop up from time to time.

Right now there is a bunch of amazon frogbit floating on the surface, this is what you're seeing in the picture hanging down, not algae.

Will also come with some root fertilizer tabs and whatever FW additives that I can find.

I might consider parting out if nobody is interested in the full setup. This is probably in the realm of $200 - $300 worth of plants alone, so not willing to come down on the price right now.

They're a really simple design, so as long as you get things connected correctly, it's pretty hard to mess up.

I run my feed line using an aquamedic reducing tee which I have on my main return pump outlet. Saves me from having to use an aqualifter or other dedicated pump.

Look in the classifieds or craigslist or ebay for a used reg. The best regs are 2 stage regs, but they're really expensive. You can build them yourself as well, but it's it bit of a project. I can post some links to guides if you're interested. Single stage regs like the milwaukee MA957 are typically good enough, but they're often hard to get a consistent bubble rate and it will change as the pressure in the bottle goes down.

These are the cheapest cylinders I've been able to find if you want to purchase a new one: http://www.aquariumplants.com/Aluminum-Co2-Cylinders-p/t.htm

I don't think it's common to find used ones this cheap.

If you have any specific questions let us know. I've been using CO2 on my planted tank for more than 10 years, so have a ton of experience from that side as well as a few years of running a CaRX on my reef tank.

Zeovit works, but it's expensive and requires daily additions that cannot be easily automated. To me this is by far the biggest drawback with the system. It is as far away from set it and forget it you can possibly get. Zeo coral colors are also very pastel, and another drawback IMO is that frags from zeo systems do not initially do well when moved to higher nutrient tanks, they almost always quickly brown.

A hybrid works to some degree but requires very careful planning. Much of the zeovit system is designed to put a lot of nutrients back in the tank, and the zeolite prevents ammonia from breaking down in the first place. So without running the zeolite in a reactor, it's hit or miss whether you can create a balanced system. I'm concluding at this point that in a 50 or larger tank, NO3 is relatively easy to deal with, but PO4 is not by any means, and even using GFO has significant consequences when using it too quickly or incorrectly.

One thing you might try doing is using just zeostart and see if you can get your NO3 and PO4 levels down and somewhat balanced. The imbalanced ratio of these 2 is what leads to cyano and excessive algae in my experience.

I will say that stable Alk is the single most important factor to healthy SPS, with the exception of the very obvious stable salinity, temp, reasonably high Ca, etc. Beyond that the No3 and PO4 levels and the specific ratio of NO3 to PO4 would be #2.

Off the top of my head I don't think I have any before and after threads bookmarked, but i have a bunch of zeo and ULNS threads bookmarked, I'll see if I can find a relevant one to post.

It's a tetra of some sort. Really close to a lemon but not identical.

Blue and a yellow in there...

when we needed to move my 90 across the room on carpet.

we emptied it about 80% of the way and left all the fish in it.. then pushed it from the bottom across the room....

As long as the stand is sturdy and you go really slow, this is a better idea than trying to carry a tank where you can easily twist it and cause the silicon to crack or pull away from the glass. With a 55 and 3 or 4 people, you might be able to carry the entire tank and stand all together.

Here's one I use quite often, if you do water changes just using 5 gallon jugs for makeup, you can just put your jugs in the kitchen sink and run some hot water in the sink to increase the temperature. I can typically increase the temperature in 5 or 6 jugs by 10 degrees in about 10 minutes. Heat transfers very well through the side when it's sitting in hot water. Much, much, faster than combining them all and using an aquarium heater.

What's your stocking and maintenance routine? Also, what NO3 are you measuring, sky high is a tad bit ambiguous?

We did our open water in a 65 foot deep, 95 degree hot springs crater in Utah. No fish, but extremely cool if anyone ever makes it out that way. It's called the homestead crater, close to Park City.

My schedule is usually pretty crazy, but you can put me on the list of interested at least. There's also flower garden, but it typically requires booking on a liveaboard, unless you like 200+ miles of travel on the water per day...

Ceast, if you guys are looking for something a little closer to home - I know Texas State, in San Marcos, is starting some new programs at the aquatic science camp this summer.

Edwards aquifer isn't salty, but it is crystal clear and an amazing place to explore/ learn about aquatic wildlife.

http://www.eardc.txstate.edu/education-center/camp.html

In comparing to some of the other camps we've looked at, the price on this is excellent. I've found a number of outdoor camps that run several thousand per week, some are more expensive than a suite in a 4 star hotel plus $30 per meal, 3 times a day.

Definitely interested and following this one as well. I have an 11 year old also, going into 6th grade next year, she's getting scuba/padi certified this summer, and is definitely in the same boat as far as interest goes. I think at this point it's more about getting some really cool experiences than actually having a goal of becoming a marine biologist.

Aqua dome had some a few weeks ago, can't remember if I saw any this weekend.

AAF has some right now also and they allow pickups on Saturday: https://austinaquafarms.com/product-category/dendrophyllia/

Welcome

Yeah, I think this subject needs more coverage, since the majority of beginners keep zoas and palys in their tank as they are easier to care for. I'd hate for someone to get it worse than I did. I started compiling a list of palys/zoas in the first post of this thread. If anybody has experience directly and want to add any other types, please send me a picture and I'll add it to the list.

I think it's probably a good idea to point out that the allergic reactions that people often get from working in a tank or getting stung by something are in no way the same ballpark as this. I've heard a number of stories where someone blamed palytoxin and it was pretty clearly a bad allergic reaction and they heard about palytoxin and ran with it.

Here's the wikipedia symptoms list which does have citations if anyone wants to see them.

The most common complication of palytoxin poisoning is rhabdomyolysis. This involves skeletal muscle breakdown and the leakage of intracellular contents into the blood plasma. Other symptoms associated with palytoxin poisoning in humans are characterized by a bitter/metallic taste, abdominal cramps, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, mild to acute lethargy, paresthesia, bradycardia, renal failure, impairment of sensation, muscle spasms, tremor myalgia, cyanosis, and respiratory distress. In the fatal cases of palytoxin poisoning, the poisoning mostly results in death due to myocardial injury.

Just to point out, this is thankfully not what you experience with most allergic reactions, although there may be some overlap in the case of the respiratory distress.

However, allergic reaction + panic attack because you think you have palytoxin poisoning, can probably replicate a whole bunch of symptoms that don't actually exist.

Did you actually have them tested, just curious?

When they did that study a few years ago, the ones that tested positive almost all looked like TT and the Mind-blowing ones you have. Every single one that tested positive had that sort of varigated multi color center to them. Not a single solid color paly tested positive, even ones from the same tanks. Just anecdotal, but something that seemed very obvious just visually speaking.

If you really do an apples to apples comparison, it's hard to find many other animals on earth that are as potentially as toxic as these can be. The amount that can be fatal to a human is so small it's incredible. Box jellyfish and a blue ring octopus are really the only ocean inhabitants that are even in the ballpark of these.

The symptoms are basically like a nerve agent, really scary stuff. Glad to hear you're ok, it's definitely a sobering wakeup call in how dangerous something so seemingly benign can be.

I wouldn't let a normal moover move any part of my tank including the stand. Between several personal and several company moves, it's just too often that something is damaged during a move.

How far are you moving?

Had this exact species show up in my nanocube way back in the day. Coolest thing in the world to watch them move around but I did lose a lot of snails in that tank.

Totally creepy how they almost flow over whatever they're moving across. I remember someone on ARC having a massive one a few years ago. I think these ones have been measured at 8"+.

Hmm I don't have any clams. Wonder what it's been eating

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They'll eat snails as well. Supposedly they don't need to eat often at all, so if it was a hitchhiker, it may just be slowly starving.