Wryknow

The other think that may help is reducing the volume of water going through your return pump. Is there much of a difference between th bottom of the overflow slots and the top of your water line?

On a large tank you want enough room that you can run your arm behind it if you need to. That's usually around 4-5" depending on your arms. You really don't need to get behind the tank too much except to run wires or power cords.

Thought I would post a couple of pictures of the aquarium. It is mostly empty except for water, sand, and a couple of fish so there's not too much to see at this poin. I did add a beer can for a size reference on the 2nd photo.

Well, a good pair of tongs can do wonders but I understand

Due to the over-whelming success of the sale of my live stock I am prepared to sell my tank as early as this weekend. It is a 6 year old 215 gallon Oceanic reef ready with facory 30" oak stand and canopy. Stain is a medium oak stain. This is a very solid and HEAVY aquarium made by one of the highest quality manufacturers. It retailed for over $3000 when I bought it, I'm sure I don't even want to know what they would charge for it now. Measurements are 72" long, 24" wide, and 29" tall. It is made of standard glass and does have a center brace. Glass is scratch free except for a small scratch on the left side panel where some live rock fell over on it years ago. I am including 4 x 3" ICECAP variable speed fans that I attached to the canopy for air circulation. I live in Jollyville if you'd like to come by and take a look at it. Yours for $950. Buyer must pick up and move the aquarium. It is VERY HEAVY and is going to take a crew of at least 4 strong men to move. (It took 5 and a furniture dolly to get it in the house and up on the stand when I bought it. Perhaps someone who knew what they were doing and had the right equipment could do it with less, but don't say I didn't warn you.) I am willing to help lift and carry but the buyer will assume all risks for moving it. It is currently filled with water and some sand but I will drain and empty it prior to the big day.

I would recommend just running the 4 x VHO actinic bulbs and using them for actinic supplementation. 2 x VHOs are plenty of supplemental light on a 24" tank - you can take a look at mine on Sunday if you want to see it.

It looks like I am taking everything down on Sunday due to the popularity of my other sales. Iv'e got a couple more things to add for sale: mated pair of pajama cardinal fish - $20 fancy brittle sea star - $10 tiger brittle sea star - $10 Also, I will do a price drop on the remaining fishies 2 large purple tangs - $60 ea / both for $100 1 large yellow tang - $20 coral beauty angel - $10

royal gramma and bi-color blenny are pending to Mike McD sailfin is pending to Robert Ochoa, next in line is VW Mike

Efr Efrain - I reckon I can save you out a piece or two of really infected live rock as long as PBNJ doesn't object too strongly I do not have any that's growing on egg crate or anything like that that I could give you unfortunately.

Did you have a Ph change? 8.0 seems a bit low. Are you dosing kalk water or anything to help the Ph?

Well, if you change your mind on the wood colors I've got a light pine stand and canopy (48 x 18) from Pewtsmart in pretty good shape that is taking up space in my garage. You can always paint it. Yours for $50 if you pick it up. There is also an 80 gallon aquarium with it but it has a clean crack in the top brace, which could be siliconed if you're handy and willing to patch it. (A piece of glass glued over it should work just fine.) I'll give you the tank for free if you want it.

....with extra super bonus deluxe aptasia! So I was thinking that I would get all of the coral out and then add an angel or butterfly or two to clean the rock before I sell it but I really don't want to mess with it. If you're willing to deal with the little pests you can get a fantastic deal on some nice Fiji liverock here. I've got about 150 pounds or so left I think, maybe more. Cash and carry only.

All PMs responded to.

I've got several healthy fish for sale that aren't going to fit in the new tank: All of my tangs are great eaters (pellets, frozen, seaweed, etc)and get along well with minimal aggression. They have been sharing the same aquarium for a couple of years now: 2 x large purple tangs (5") $80 ea 1 x large yellow tang (5") $30 1 x large sailfin tang (4.5")$20 or take all 4 tangs for $180 coral beauty angel (3") $20 bi-color blenny (2") $10 royal gramma (3") $10 or take all 7 fish for $200 Please let me know if you're interested. It will take me a little time to catch 'em all since I will need to remove some live rock but I can meet at a local LFS or other location

I had a similar thing happen to me. I pulled out the drain pipe and he got sucked down into the sump with the water and I just pulled him out of the filter sock. I'm not sure how big your fish or your drain line is though and I was standing by with a bucket of water and a net in case I needed to grab him out of the bottom of the overflow box or add more water to fluch him. Wrasse can certainly be a PITA sometimes. (Carpet surfin little ******** )

So I take it that you are just going to keep this tank as a FOWLR (fish only with live rock?) In that case I would sell the T5s - that's more light than you need and it will contribute to your algae problem. For a FOWLR tank I would just want a couple of 6' actinic VHO bulbs and only run them for maybe 4-6 hours a day when I was home. (saves mone on electricity too I might add.) Reduce the lighting and add a skimmer and refugium and that should make the difference. I think that emerald crabs would wind up being a quick snack with a 12" puffer in the tank. You might want to keep an eye out for a larger crab though - like a strawberry crab or something that will be too big for the puffer to eat. (There were a couple of giant hermit crabs at Aquatek as of last week I think.) Bigger crabs can cause problems in reef tanks but they are great scavenbgers in FOWLR tanks IMPO.

Hmmm, that's a big one. Let me take a quick stab at it though.... The algae is taking off because it has nutrients and light. Nutrients are primarily in the form of phosphates and nitrates and little bits of uneaten food, etc. plus light from the T5. There are a few options for combating algae: 1) Predators - there are lots of things that eat various forms of algae. Most on line vendors sell cleaner/algae crews that are prepackaged but generally your best bets IMHO are snails (turbo, astraea, bumble bee) crabs (hermits, emeralds) and some fish (lawnmower blenny or almost any tang will do battle with algae but tangs require good water conditions and it sounds like your tank has not completely cycled yet - I would wait before getting a tang.) 2) Reduce the lighting (self explanatory) Less lighting = less algae. This is a problem if you have photosynthetic corals that need light too though. 3) Reduce nutrients - You may be feeding too much or using food with high phosphates (flakes are notorious for causing phosphate problems.) A good protein skimmer is a must for organic nutrient export IMHO. Also, I stringly recommend using a granular ferric oxide (GFO) phosphate reducer (phosban, rowaphos, etc) to get some of the phosphates out of your system. Lots of folks (myself incuded) run refugiums as part of our systems where we encourage macro-algae growth in order to "out compete" nuisance algae as well. (4 - a lot of algae tends to do poorly in current as well so sometimes adding more flow to the tank makes a diffrerence as well) Jason

Yeah, I'd just run a filter sock for a while to clear up any floaters and check the ammonia and the nitrite/nitrate levels. If everything is good after 24 hours I'd say you're OK. As long as everything stays wet there may not be any cycle at all caused by the move (but there might be too so test! )

Cool. Give me a call. (I'll clear out my in box too:) )

IMPE 4 x of the 54W T5s with an ICECAP 660 ballast will be plenty of light for a 75, even for SPS. I would pick lower K (and higher PAR) bulbs however. A mix of 6.5K daylight and 12K aquablue is what I run. If you're feeling ambitious then you could add in a pair of 4' actinic VHO bulbs for color and extra PAR but this will certainly crown your canopy. Don't forget to add some fans though! The OD T5s absolutely need fans to run at peak efficiency.

I can give you a small live rock and a cup of live sand if you're willing to pick it up. I live in NW Austin (Jollyville.) E-mail me if you're interested and we can set up a time.

I just wanted to let you know that I posted pictures of the sump last night in my add on ARC. Please let me know if you're still interested. Regards, Jason

OK, there was a lot more interest in this than I thought there would be. Here's some photos of the sump. I was a little off on the over-all measurements (I was doing it from memory when I placed my original post.) The sump measurements are actually 37" x 18.5" x 18". It is partitioned for a large refugium and has a bubble trap on both ends. I've also got a float switch and a top-off water jug that makes a very reliable auto-top-off system. The water just gravity feeds into the sump when the water level drops and activates the float switch. Adding kalk is really easy too - just add a couple of tablespoons into the water jug and shake it whenever you add more top-off waqter to the jug. Anyway, the sump is $50 and for another $10 I'll throw in the float switch and the water jug so for $60 you can have a nice sump and top-off system. The set-up is designed for an external pump for the return and one to feed an external skimmer but I just added some PVC plugs and used internal pumps myself (an E-heim 1262 fits just fine in the return chamber.) I'm still willing to trade for frags as well. Just let me know what you've got if you're interested!

Just FYI - be careful with hang-on type over flows. If you have a power outage bad things can happen because the overflow can lose siphon. when the power comes back on the return pump will flood the tank. I highly recommend using a drilled tank for a reef aquarium.

I've bee using seios for 3 years and really like them. I've got hte 620, 1500, and 2600 and have never had any issues with any of them. You really need to get a magnetic mount for them though - the brackets that come with the pumps stink. One big plus with the Seios is that they have a good controller out for them now that adjusts the speed from 30% to 100% so you can get a good surge without ever shutting the pumps down.