Wryknow

I plan on attending as well. Jason

Hmmm. Well, it could be some sort of disease. It could also have something to do with a Ph swing or salinity swing (at night for example,) or an ammonia spike that caused some toxicity. Clowns are pretty resistant to nitrates/nitrites but ammonia is a killer. It could also just have been stress (a combination of a lot of little things.) Some fish have a hard time acclimating to their new homes. My $.02 on feeding: I can't tell what size or quanitity of frozen brine shrimp you're feeding but the clowns need something a bit meatier long-term (brine shrimp are not terribly nutritious) and should be fed at least every day. I feed Spectrum sinking pellets myself and all of my fish eat them greedily. There's a lot of choices out there though for prepared foods. I try to stay away from flake food because of the high phosphates. Definitely look into an auto-top off unit too. That can cause a lot of salinity and Ph movement in a smaller tank.

Very nice!

OK, let's ask the really obvious: What/when/how much were you feeding them and were they eating well? Was there any type of markings or injuries on the fish corpses? (little white spots, gashes in the sides, etc) Jason

I would try a two-part epoxy since. It's kind of tacky so it should stick to the glass while it sets.

You can DIY with a dremmel tool and glass cutting bits. (You need two of them though - one to make a hole, and one to cut the circle.) the advantage of the standard over-flow versus the external overflow is that ther are fewer seems to potentially leak when the over-flow is in the tank. Jason

I think the trick with Berghia is to get the right number of them for your tank. If you add too many they all starve to death too quickly and can cause problems with contamination. If you have too few they won't keep up with the aptasia growth. You kind of need to have the right balance to where there's enough Berghia to keep the aptasia at a minimum from what I've read.

IMHO the majority phosphate "eliminators" are not that helpful. Their chemical make just does not allow them to absorb very much phosphate relative to the dosage. You really need the ferros-based phosphate reducers in order to adsorb a significant percentage of the phosphates. There are a couple of them on the market and they are all fairly expensive unfortunately (like $15 for a 150g container but they are good for 3 months for a 150 gallon tank so it's not that terrible really.) Phosban is the one I use but there are a couple of others with very similar composition that will most likely work just as well. The key to them is that have to move water through them pretty slowly - if the flow is too fast the particles will break down into dust and you don't want that to happen. (100-150 gph of flow is good.) You can buy a small Phosban branded reactor but a small canister filter works just as well and is great for carbon and mechanical filtration too so that seemed like a no-brainer to me. It will take a couple of weeks before you see the results but you'll be glad that you did it.

I would recommend doing a large water change (like 25-50%) or two with RO/DI water for starters. I would then also use some Phosban to help control the phosphates. I just run Phosban in an E-heim canister filter on my tank along with some activated carbon and filter pads and it makes a big difference in algae growth and general water quality. As long as your not over-feeding the tank it should start to clear up in a couple of weeks. are you skimming your tank? What kind of skimmer are you using?

Watch out though - this flu bug going around has been pretty nasty and you might be on your back for a couple of days yourself. I'd hate to be in the middle of moving a tank when it hit me. Hermits and snails will be OK with live rock, an air pump, and a heater for a couple of days or maybe even more though in my experience. Absolutely put some live rock in the bucket with them though. The rock will still be assisting in biological filtration.

Never use soap or oils as they will contaminate your tank. Go to HEB and get a gallon of distilled white vinegar ($1.49) and use that to soak whatever you need to clean up. I mix about 1:5 vinegar to water, disassemble the pump, and then give it an over night soak. All of the algae and crud brush right off after that (a tooth brush works great.) Then I rinse it off with a little RO water and put it back in the tank. Pumps should be leaned every six months or so I guess but this varies alot by individual preferences. If you're getting a lot of crud in your sump then you can always take it out and wash it I guess, but that seems like a lot of work to me. I have a live sand bed and algae in my sump so I just let the micro-fauna take care of clean up. Using a micron bag over your over-flow drains to catch debris would do the trick too I suppose.

You may need to supplement the iron a bit in order to get the chaeto to take off. (I use the Seachem myself but I haven't heard any evidence that there is much difference between any of them.) Also, how many watts of light are you using? I'm just using a GE 150w daylight DE MH ($6/bulb) on a shop light and mine grows like crazy.

W is a unit of power consumption, not light output. Just because something consumes more power doesn't mean that it necessarily creates as much useful light. Three big reasons I like the T5s are: their slender profile allows very efficient parabolic reflectors to reflect a greater percentage of light into the tank, the bulb temperature is much lower than the MH bulbs so they create a LOT less heat in the tank, and HO T5 bulbs can be over-driven by the ICECAP ballast to create about 50% more PAR per bulb (with a similar increase in power consumption.) I do not use the T5 actinics myself. When I bought my set up (about 1 year ago) the actinic bulbs available on the market were really pretty crummy - more like weak 14K bulbs than true actinics IMHO. That's why I use the 6' VHO bulbs for the actinic supplementation - it's more for appearances than PAR anyway. I have read some reports from other reefers that the new true actinic bulbs are much better than they used to be but I plan sticking with my VHOs for now.

I like the idea of using a "reef corner" in a big tank. You're absolutely right about only needing to light the portion that you're using for corals. (If it were me though, I would think about doing a reef "island" rather than corner. The pillars look very cool and fish can swim around it. Plus the spill-over light will be more evenly distributed and you won't have as many dark shadows, but I digress.) You can certainly use T5's for the island or corner that you're envisioning but you will need to place SPS high up in the water column, close to the lighting. I would recommend an ICECAP 660 with 4 x 39W (3') 10K bulbs with SLRs for the "spotlight" plus a couple of 6' VHO tubes for actinic supplementation in the tank (and to light up the rest of the tank a bit.) You can keep SPS under the T5s probably to depth of 12" IMHO, so you would need to be cognizant of this when you were placing the corals. Of course, MH tends to lend itself very naturally to "spotlights" just by the shape of the bulbs and reflectors. A single 250W HQI with a good reflector will light up a 2' x 2' area effectively so you could certainly consider this as well. I could easily envision a tank with a single 6.5K MH bulb to pump up the PAR on a reef pillar and then using the 6' actinic VHOs to light up the rest of the tank. Anyway you slice it you're going to have a hard time lighting this whole tank effectively because of the depth and the size of the tank. Using a small section of reef for corals and confining your lighting to that area seems like a very good idea to me and will create some interesting effects. A reef pillar with a small school of tangs swimming around it would be very cool indeed!

I'm not sure that I believe this story.

Good point Gabriel! A lot of the issues with lighting come down to aesthetics - what's best for the corals is not necessarily what's best to look at in the minds of most people. A 6K bulb is going to produce a ton more PAR than a 20K bulb but a lot of folks prefer the bluer look of the higher K bulbs. To be honest, the blue look is much more natural (as any scuba diver can tell you!) I don't want anyone to think that I'm knocking the metal halide systems either. They certainly have a proven track record and can get the job done. Many people like the metal halides because of the shimmer lines and, as Gabriel pointed out, the metal halides have a very intense light and that can be more easily focused to reach deeper into a tank. Personally, I'm sticking with T5s and I will recommend them to others because of their efficiency. Excellent T5 systems are available in the US and are certainly cost competitive with metal halide systems. I can't say that I can argue with someone that wants to use metal halide systems though. The good news is that reefers can use the same principles to optimize metal halide performance! - high quality reflectors - attention to water quality - coral placement relative to the light source Please note that nowhere in this discussion has the term WATTS PER GALLON been used. This little "rule of thumb" is the cause of 99% of all of the lighting confusion suffered by newcomers to the hobby IMHO. If it were up to me it would be banned from use. Coral does not care how many gallons of water it is sitting in. An SPS coral that is 8" from a 250W MH bulb in a 125 gallon tank gets the same PAR as it would if it were sitting 8" away from the same set-up in a 500 gallon tank! Use the light you that you need but don't waste energy and money lighting things that don't need it. Jason

OK - I'm going to confuse you a bit more. I agree that the lux reading is more useful than the wattage because wattage just measures total power consumption. Lux is a measure of total light output, but that can be misleading too because what we really care about is how much PAR (Photosynthetically Available Radiation) is actually striking our corals. Let me give you an example: A 400W bulb with a lux output of X in a tank without a reflector may have much, or most, of the light absorbed by the canopy, reflected off of the water, absorbed by discoloration in the water (dissolved organics, water bubbles, etc) and the total light received by the corals may only by 40% of potential output of the bulb in a given spot in the tank. If you had a top quality MH reflector and good water quality, this tank can easily be 50% more efficient and deliver 50% more PAR with the same power consumption and lux output. This is why I like T5 bulbs so much - the narrow profile allows very efficient parabolic reflectors and a higher percentage of the potential energy is actually available for the corals to use. I guess my point is that no one can tell you how much light you actually have without a PAR meter reading of your specific tank at the specific depth that the specific coral that you are interested in is at. The reflectors, water quality, and distance and position of the coral relative to the light source is at least as important as the bulbs that you are using. If you optimize your controllable variables then you can use much less power and achieve the same results with aquarium lighting.

In my experience, the six line wrasse is a great reef fish. I've never had any issues with one of those. The flame angel is good with other fish but, like most of the dwarf angels, some of them are coral nippers and may harass corals and clams in your tank. (This seems to be hit or miss but it's a son of a gun getting fish out of your tank sometimes so I prefer not to chance it myself.) The flame hawk is good with corals but can aggressive with shrimp and new fish, especially ones of a similar color and size as the flame hawk (like a flame angel for instance.) If you really want both the flame hawk and the flame angel then I would think about getting the hawk fish last.

I'm not an acrylic tank builder but I believe the wide bracing is required because of the nature of the material. Acrylic flexes quite easily and the tank will bow without this. I do sometimes see access holes drilled into the corner of the bracing though to allow cords, etc to pass through, so this may be a possibility for you.

Nice photo Gabriel! Thanks.

How about a pic? I really like the reef safe-wrasses in general. Very active and fun to watch!

Change salts to ProMarin PRO. It is designed with a low dKH (like 5 or 6)specifically for mature calcium reactor systems like yours that have elevated dKh levels. Mixing those salts will help you control your dKH just with routine water changes.

No! You should be able to satisfy 99% of your chemical needs with a good salt mix and kalkwasser. I occasionally need to add a little calcium chloride, baking soda (for alkalinity) or magnesium, but that's about it.

I've not had any noteworthy problems with any of the invertebrates that you have listed. The turbo snails do get big, but that's not a problem as long as your rock work or corals are all firmly attached to decent structure. I would personally be thinking along the lines of (and this is just my personal opinion): 4-8 hermits (red or blue legged) 6-10 nassarius snails 1 emerald crab (FYI I did have one once that decided it liked to eat xenia) 6-8 astraea 2-4 turbo snails 1 brittle star You do need to be cognizant of the fact that these animals need to eat. There should be plenty of algae for the snails but the crabs will get aggressive if they get hungry. (This isn't hard, I just feed my fish some sinking pellets every day (I like the Spectrum brand) and make sure a little bit of it makes its way into the rock work for the crabs.) I think that you'll find that the invertebrates on your list are fairly hardy critters. You shouldn't have any problems as long as you are doing basic tank maintenance and maintaining the parameters that you have listed.

You might want to drop JohnG a PM. I got a nice red/green blasto frag from him a couple of months ago and he does new frags pretty often.