Chad and Jen May

Hilarious! Mark, you are a trip! Good job, shirt is awesome...haha

Its POOING!!! Mine do it too, all 3 of them

Yep, I have tons of these in my tank too, The population seems to increase and decrease at times but Ive never had a problem with them.

Pineapple sponge. No worries

Just dosed the Dr. Tims Waste Away yesterday. Started with the half-dose and will dose full strength next Monday. My algae problem that I previously posted about had cleared up completely, so I assume it was just diatoms. The sand bed is starting to brown up again, so I hope this stuff works. Ill update later.

How big is the Biocube? I have a HOB skimmer Im trying to sell.

Actually yes. Sorry for the late reply, my life has been a bit upside down lately. I am now leaning towards this just being a heavy diatom bloom. The sand is still a bit brown in places but NOWHERE near what it was. The rocks are clearing up too. I did add carbon, phosban, and Purigen to my system. I also cut my light cycle by 3 hours and added a much larger cleanup crew of hermits, snails, an urchin, and a conch. Its still not perfect, but its getting better. I should have in the mail right now Dr. Tim's Waste Away that Mark Callahan recommended for Cyano and just general cleaning. Going to start that tomorrow and I will report how it works after a few days. I didnt do anything to my KH or PH, but I still think slowly increasing those numbers would be a benefit. Fingers still crossed but Im pretty sure this is nothing serious after all and just my tank doing its natural thing while maturing. Thanks for all the help and advice!

I have the Coralife Turbo Twist and I like it. I dont know how well it controls parasites, but when I first put it on my 90g my Regal Tangs ich was GONE in 3 days. Maybe it was coincidence. I dont know. I now have the same one on my 180, its still size appropriate, and my Powder Blue has had mild ich for weeks. I used to run it 24/7 though and I now only run it 8 hours a day. So who knows.....

Sent text.

Ha! I remember your vid on catching your evil six line! Funny.....

Definitely looking into this! Thanks Mark!

I just used Chemi clean on my tank less than a week ago and my skimmer also went nuts. What I did was do a 20% water change.. then sat with a 5 gallon bucket on the floor next to the skimmer on the closed position. Every time the skimmer cup filled up, I unplugged it and emptied it into the bucket. It took about twenty minutes and three gallons of water to finally stabilize the skimmer enough that it stopped overflowing. I replaced the 3 gallons with new salt water and I left the skimmer in the almost closed position overnight and by morning (I did this in the evening around 7) it had not overflowed and I could finally open it up. Hope that helps.

Siphoning sand with a hose into a bucket, not reusing the water.. so Im doing frequent water changes, about 10-15 gallons every third day. I added carbon to my sump last night per the advice of LFS... going to keep up water changes and siphoning, and will very slowly raise PH and Alk.. hoping I can beat this soon, its ugly and annoying! I will stop the dried food, but that will be rough, my powder blue LOVES pellets.

The skimmer is PM Redline 225. http://www.precisionmarine.com/storefront/productdetail.aspx?idproduct=898

Hey ARC! This is in my 180 gallon tank... setup almost 2months ago. I used all my live rock and water from my 90g tank (which was up for 7 months without problems) and used 100lbs new Caribsea Aragonite substrate. Have 3X150w (14,000K Phoenix) MH's, 4X96w 460nm Actinic PC's. Running 55g sump with Skimmer, UV. Total gallons of water 210 gallons. Today's Params as follows: Temp - 78 - 80 (currently 80) Salinity - 1.025 Amm - 0 NitrI - 0 NitrA - 20ppm Phos - 0 or <0.25 Calc - 480 PH - 7.8 KH - 7 Livestock 2 Tomato Clowns 2 BlueGreen Chromis 2 Bartletts Anthias 2 Yellow Tangs 1 Powder Blue Tang 1 Regal Tang 1 Foxface Rabbitfish 1 Blue Mandarin Goby 1 Gold headed sleeper Goby 2 RBTA 1 Emerald Crab 1 Pink/Green Cucumber 1 Coral banded shrimp 1 Cleaner shrimp Cleanup crew consists of Longspine Urchin, 1 Conch snail, multiple Turbos and assorted snails and hermits. Assorted soft corals, mushroom, zoas, GSP. A few LPS, Blasto, Torch, Candy Cane. A few SPS frags. Feeding 1/2 cube plankton mixed with 1/2 cube mysis.. soaked in garlic/Zoe daily. A pinch of Formula 2 flakes in am and pm, its eaten right away. Go through 1 sheet of Nori daily between 4 tangs. Twice a week Cyclopeeze Marine Plankton and Pellets. The tank looked great for about 4 weeks then noticed a predictable diatom bloom. I waited that out, however... the tank never cleared and I am now dealing with what I believe to be Cyanobacteria, but fear it could be dinos. It looks brownish/red (more brown than red) looks slightly stringy and has attached air bubbles. It is mostly on the sand but it is also on the rocks. There are tons of trapped air bubbles under the sand, anytime my goby digs the bubbles rise to the surface. It cleans off very easily... when I scrub it from the rocks it comes off without ANY effort and looks "powdery" when released to the water. I had been siphoning this stuff off and refilling with new salt water, cut back on my MH light cycle from 8 hrs to 6, and redirected power heads trying to maximize flow across the sand (where its worse). I believe my flow is adequate with large return pumping to two corner returns, and 4 Koralia power heads. After no improvement I decided to treat the tank with Chemi Clean, as follows: Did a 30g water change/sand sift after scrubbing algae off rocks, followed by Chemi-clean dose-20 level scoops, accommodating for water volume loss from live rock/sand in tank and sump. I unplugged skimmer, UV and let the chemiclean work for two days. I did not see any reduction of the ?cyano besides initial decrease from siphoning the sand. At the end of the 2 days, I did a 35 water change, got the skimmer back online and waited a day before I decided to treat with an identical dose of chemi-clean again. The reason for the second treatment was that I did not see ANY reduction of this algae, in fact in came back during the first 2 day treatment just as bad as before I dosed. During this second treatment I turned off my MH's and ran Actinic PC's only. With MH's off the algae doesnt grow as quickly, but its still there. With MH on the stuff spreads like crazy. I waited another 2 days, did a 45gallon water change, siphoning out more gunk, got my skimmer and UV back on line and added PhosGuard and Purigen to the sump. That was three days ago and my sand bed is literally covered, and the rocks are covering up quickly now too. I know my Alk and PH are low, I have Kent Pro Buffer dKH and Seachem Carbonate that I can start dosing, but which one of those should I use? Would those two things being off contribute to this problem? Fish and corals all appear to be fine, they are eating, swimming, etc... Also, does this look like Cyano or something else? Advice is much appreciated! THANKS!!!!

Yes, thats the stuff.

Ill take it. When can I pick it up? PM'd also.

Also, depending on how low your salinity is... you can always top off with salt water instead of ro/di. Whats your salinity right now?

Welcome to ARC! I am also somewhat of a noobie. We started our first reef in March and have recently upgraded to a bigger tank (already)... this website has been invaluable to me as a learning resource, as well as a great place to find good condition used equipment. Everyone is super nice and very helpful... Advice you will hear again and again, but is truly fact... Patience is key!! Take your time, learn a lot, and do things right the first time! Hope you thoroughly enjoy this wonderful hobby!

Some algae growth is normal when starting up a tank, especially diatoms. They should dwindle as your tank cycles. However, if it were me, and my tank parameters were checking out (especially ammonia and niTRITE), Id go ahead and add a small CUC. Leave your lights off or cut the time they are on while your tank finishes its full cycle. I don't have a problem with my Turbo snails, they are work horses...I have about 15 of them in our 180, but yeah, if they fall over, they get stuck and need help getting back up or they will die. Also, I used Stability when cycling my tank, and still use it after big water changes to help my nitrifying bacteria flourish. It works great, and Ive read that Dr. Tim's is great stuff as well, just haven't been able to find it in any LFS around here. RCA sells Stability. I highly recommend it for a smooth, quick cycle. Good Luck!

Thanks guys! The JBJ looks perfect

I would like to upgrade the stock lighting on my Biocube8 to MH. Currently have zoas, palys, GSP, mushrooms, one adorably tiny RBTA, and two juvenile clownfish that are close to being big enough that Ill need to trade them for smaller fish. I found a clamp-on fixture on CL that houses one 150w MH with a 20k bulb (I can change this out if too much) and Im wondering if it would be too much light?

You will find that as the sand settles and moves around that the heavier pieces of rock/substrate are exposed as the finer pieces move down. They arent a problem, so long as you dont mind the look of them.

Green turf algae?

Thanks! It was nice meeting you, good luck with the new tank!