Wryknow

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

pbnj, I am setting up an aiptasia tank to feed berghias, if you could spare/sell me a small piece of rock/rubble that has aiptasia on it to help colonize my tank it would help me out alot. I am in need of as much aiptasia as I can get at the moment.

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 am selling my Tunze universal osmolator as part of my pending tank break down and part out (the 215 oceanic is out and the 34 gallon nano is in.) The unit is about 5 years old and everything is in excellent working order. For those not familiar with the unit this is a top of the line auto top off system with a triple failure protection system. The water level is monitored by an optical sensor with a back up float switch shut off and alarm. The third safety is a timer on the control unit that will shut the pump off automatically if it runs to long. I will even include an extra pump for the unit that I never needed. $120 OBO.

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.

would like to see pics of the layout too if ya get em on the thread

or let me know and I'll PM my e-mail

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.

Wow. There's lots of answers to this one and mostly they just involve my opinion so take it as such. There are two main ways to approach this:

1) Sump only. This is just a simple chamber for water filtration and other equipment. It provides a good, light free area (which prevents algae growth) that lets you incorporate all of the various equipment that you'll need for a salt water tank without any of it being visible in the main tank. Things I would want for a basic sump -

a) The actual sump. This doesn't have to be fancy. Folks use second hand aquariums, stock tanks, etc. It just has to fit in wherever you're putting it and be easy to get in and out of to work in. If it's going under the tank then you should have a good 12 - 18" of clearance between the top of the sump and the tank so that you can get in there easily.

Filter socks/brackets. These just hang over the side of the sump and you run your drain lines into them. You need to wash these a couple of times a week so you will probably want an extra set of filter socks (I just throw them in the washing machine with a cup of bleach and rinse them twice.)

c) In-sump protein skimmer. I recommend the ATI BM200 for a 180 gallon tank but there are lots of other fine choices depending on your budget.

d) A canister filter for chemical filtration and water polishing. Any of the main brands are fine IMHO (E-heim, fluval, marineland - just get one that is easy to prime.) I use filter bags packed with carbon and GFO (granular ferric oxide) sandwiched in between fine fileter pads in mine.

e) A heater or two. A couple of 250W ebo-jagers would be my choice.

f) An automated top-off system. I like the Tunze osmolator and use it in conjunction with a PM kalk reactor to help maintain my calcium/alk/Ph levels.

g) An internal return pump. An e-heim 1262 would be ideal IMHO.

2) A combined sump/refugium

- this is a bit more complicated but I can out-line a recommended set-up if you're interested

I use two of the brute contaners (with wheels.) I marked them both with a 25 and 35 gallon water line calculated by filling them up with 5 gallon jugs and counting and then marked the inside of the trash cans with a sharpie. I just mix new water up to the line in one can, siphon/drain the tank water down into the second trash can up to the line, and then re-fill the aquarium with my back-up E-heim return pump. The entire process takes less than 10 minutes for a 35 gallon water change.

It depends a lot on whether you want an internal or external skimer and how much other stuff you need to squeeze in under there. Generally speaking, the bigger, the better but you need room for other stuff too. I'm not sure that there is a "best" answer for this.

I have a used custom sump that I'm looking to get rid of. It is designed to sit under a 180/215 tank with some room left on noth ends. It would pfit under a 150 gallon stand as well but there wouldn't be a lot of room left over. The sump is approximately 20" wide, 42" long, and 18" tall and is drilled for an external skimmer and external pump (but the holes are currently plugged since I was using an internal pump.) It also has a small hole for a float swith (also available) for top-off water/kalk dosing. It works just fine but I fooled around with my system set-up and no longer need this. Photos are available on request. $50 takes it. I might also be willing to make a trade for some good frags. (I have a soft spot for unusual and colorful zoanthids and encrusting montipora.)

Jason

My advice is to give them plenty of artificial plants or something similar to hide in. That's really about all that you can do unless you want to try and take the other fish out of the tank and create a nursery for them. They'll eat left over bits of flake from the other fish just fine and provide a nice source of protein for the bigger fish if they're not smart enough and fast enough to get out of the way . A couple will survive and and add to the tank's adult population eventually.